quote: Despite that long friendship, the French--along with Asians and overweight folks--remain one of the few groups Americans still feel free to openly insult.
What? You people still openly insult Asians? I'll kill you all! The second part is more amusing though, considering that the US has probably the worlds biggest concentration of overweight and obese people, implying that one of the groups Americans like to insult the most is....themselves?
quote: To be sure, France owed America a nice thank-you card for D-Day. But we owe them a more. Without France, the United States wouldn't even exist--it would still be a British colony.
quote: "It's quite possible that if we didn't send our troops there, the French people would all be speaking German."
Together, these quotes are quite interesting. Would America really be an English colony now? Sure the original revolution might have been crushed, but would the English really be able to hold onto the 52 states and 300 million(ish) people that comprises the US till 2003? On a parallel note, sure WW2 in Europe might have taken longer without the US, but with Russia knocking on one side and the Germans stuck at the Channel...would the Germans really have been able to control France for more than 50 years?
This kind of lingering national/historical debt thing doesn't really make much sense after awhile. (although the alternate history stories can be interesting to read)
Grocka/Shik: The French complain about the Quebecois too? Please elaborate!
Registered: Mar 1999
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Well, under any circumstances, though we might not be able to predict the exact nature of current conditions without one country helping the other, we can generally assume that the interrim period would have sucked quite mightily.
And we have 52 states, now?
Registered: Mar 1999
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Yeah; North and South Iraq are the two new ones.
quote: Every American schoolchild learns that a French naval blockade trapped Cornwallis' forces at Yorktown
If only that idiot Graves had ordered 'General chase' rather than 'Form Line of Battle.'
- more counterfactual for you there .
It was all so much easier when all foreign policy consisted of was go over to the continent every few years to put the frogs down, and colonising assorted places.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
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quote:To be sure, France owed America a nice thank-you card for D-Day. But we owe them a more. Without France, the United States wouldn't even exist--it would still be a British colony.
Paid that particular debt in WWI with a larger level of assistance than they gave us. (I don't recall many French ground troops joining in the battle, they stayed in their boats, with few exceptions, like the Marquis de Lafayette - who we named a county in my state for.. where's Eisenhower Province in France?)
Paid AGAIN in WWII, to a much greater extent, as I also don't recall French forces landing on the beaches and fighting to re-take New York when Washington had to abandon it.
Paid AGAIN during the Cold War, with the placing of American troops in harm's way in the most likely Warsaw Pact invasion route, and DESPITE the French pulling out from the military arm of NATO.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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just made by the Presbyterian Church
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"Paid that particular debt in WWI with a larger level of assistance than they gave us. (I don't recall many French ground troops joining in the battle, they stayed in their boats, with few exceptions, like the Marquis de Lafayette - who we named a county in my state for.. where's Eisenhower Province in France?)"
"But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife's heads."
"Paid AGAIN during the Cold War, with the placing of American troops in harm's way in the most likely Warsaw Pact invasion route, and DESPITE the French pulling out from the military arm of NATO."
Harm which never came. Also:
"France lost a staggering four percent of its population during the Great War. (Imagine a war that killed 11 million Americans today.) Twenty years later, in 1939, the French army still suffered from a massive manpower shortage. Demographics, lousy planning and equipment shortages--the Great Depression had also hit France--cost 100,000 French soldiers their lives during six awful weeks in 1940."
I'd say the score's been settled.
Registered: Nov 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Cartmaniac: "But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife's heads."
Of course, those lavish palaces had nothing to do with it. He supported us out of the goodness of hisThese were the "let them eat cake" people we're talking about here.
quote:Harm which never came. Also:
Irrelevant, and disengenuous to boot. Just because you were never kidnapped and murdered as a child, does not mean your parents didn't protect you. Do you honestly think the outcome would have been the same had the US left Europe to the tender mercies of the Warsaw Pact? If you do, you're beyond any assistance I can give you: seek psychiatric care immediately.
quote:"France lost a staggering four percent of its population during the Great War. (Imagine a war that killed 11 million Americans today.) Twenty years later, in 1939, the French army still suffered from a massive manpower shortage. Demographics, lousy planning and equipment shortages--the Great Depression had also hit France--cost 100,000 French soldiers their lives during six awful weeks in 1940."
I'd say the score's been settled.
Does it not mean anything, because the Germans lost an equal number of men in WWI? France lost 3.5% of their population in WWI, Germany 2.5%. Yet Germany recovered to a much greater extent than France OR England.
And if you want to get technical, Our military casualties in WWII? Nearly double the French. They come out ahead of us in civilian casualties only because the war was fought on their soil and not ours. (Although we still lost roughly 6000 civilians.) And not one Frenchman died protecting or recapturing American soil in any of those wars.
So our debt remains paid... with a considerable amount of interest.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Omega: Well, under any circumstances, though we might not be able to predict the exact nature of current conditions without one country helping the other, we can generally assume that the interrim period would have sucked quite mightily.
And we have 52 states, now?
Picky, picky. Typo-monger, although as Wraith pointed out, I might not be wrong for much longer
It might have sucked, it might have not. You're probably right, but we'll never know. In any case, this kind of "my-great-grandfather helped/harmed your great-grandfather, so you should help/sue me today, no matter what your beliefs are now" thinking is rather illogical. I mean, how far back are you going to draw the line? Perhaps your ancient ape-descendent stole a mammoth bone club from mine several hundred-years ago, so you owe me a genuine mammoth bone club today....either that or Snay's jeep, they both work.
Witness 1of2's and Cartmaniac's debate This could go on forever.
"Well the Americans ripped off Napoloean when he sold them all of that land in America, so the Americans owe the French more" "But thats ok, because they ripped of the native Americans, by buying the land with petty beads, so the French really owe the natives." "..who stole it from those Homo Erectus guys" "...who took it from our common ancestor" "Fine. Even accepting that, the French started this whole liberty thing, so you never would have been able to say "give me liberty, or give me death" or any other heroic dashing things" "But we gave you the invention of the airplane!" "We gave you nationalism, you don't even have your own language, stop saying "beef" and other French descended words! Hah!" ...and so on.
Obviously people are going to draw the line wherever they like, probably where they benefit the most, leading to one big mess. We should just forgo the whole thing.
Be aware of what mistakes our ancestors made, learn our lessons from them (i.e. as the Germans did from the Holocaust, and not push it under the rug like the Japanese), but any sort of modern-day retribution is just.....blah.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:And not one Frenchman died protecting or recapturing American soil in any of those wars.
What exactly should they have recaptured for us? Should the Free French forces should have landed troops in the Aleutian Islands?
And I guess the same thing could be said for the British. Only that the front lines were not in New York, rather in europe the front lines were in France and over the skies of southern England. The only fact missing is that plenty of British, French and Poles died ridding ridding the world of fascism. In essence, protecting the United States.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Cartmaniac: "But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife's heads."
Of course, those lavish palaces had nothing to do with it. He supported us out of the goodness of hisThese were the "let them eat cake" people we're talking about here.
Well no, he supported the Americans because it would hurt the British. But by the same token, the Americans only really supported Europe after WWII because it would stop the USSR.
But wait you say! This WAS out of the goodness of our hearts, we didn't want Europe to fall under horrible horrible communism. Ah but then we didn't want you guys to be stuck under the Britsh, as shown in "The Patriot" they were so very horrible
This could go on forever, so screw it. I'll stop it.
My damn ape-ancestor happened to own all of the freaking Pangea before the continents split. You can't prove it wrong, so I must be right. You all now owe me huge amounts of cash
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote: But wait you say! This WAS out of the goodness of our hearts, we didn't want Europe to fall under horrible horrible communism. Ah but then we didn't want you guys to be stuck under the Britsh, as shown in "The Patriot" they were so very horrible
Ah, yes; the world's most historically accurate movie.
look, let's stop argueing and get back to the fundamental truth; the world would be a lot better if we were in charge
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
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