While Russian forces invade Georgia...

[fpb]

...the silver and bronze medallists of one of the Olympic gun competitions not only shook hands, but hugged and did everything in their power to demonstrate the deepest love for each other. The silver medalist was Russian, the bronze Georgian. The BBC commentators were all over this like white on rice, calling it a wonderful display of the power of sports to bring people together.

I find it revolting.

The proper word for it is collaborationist. It is, traitorous. It is, quisling. Sorry, but if your troops have just invaded my country and killed hundreds if not thousands of my people, I will NOT shake your hand and I will NOT act as your friend. There are too many dead between us. I hope the Georgian woman is chased out of her country by popular rage.

Comments

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

in order:
yes, sport is a replacement of war. That's the *point*, to get people would otherwise shoot each other happily playing together. You're in Britain, yes? Ever wondered why the British Commonwealth exists, when the other European empires are gone?
It's because everyone who used to be in the British Empire wants to beat the English at cricket. Not, politics, or culture, or history - beating the poms at cricket is everything.

Yes, the Soviet Olympic athletes were soldiers in the army: both metaphorically and literally (Spetnaz troops regarded international events as a chance to scope out enemy territory). And American athletes are a propaganda tool. So are everybody else's athletes. So?
One of the reasons this planet survived the Cold War is that the space race allowed the superpowers to compete non-violently: and in the process, created a friendly rivalry between cosmonaut and astronaut.

The propaganda message of "we're interested in discussing peace" is a good one, even if it is a lie. It gets people to the table.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The French Empire is much more existent than the walking pretence called the British Commonwealth. And nothing excuses embracing the representatives of the murderers of my people, while murder is still taking place. Read Benjamin Franklin's letter to William Strahan of July 5, 1775, or find out Louis Pasteur's reaction to the proposal that he should meet Dr.Robert Koch. This is Cain's morality - "What am I supposed to be, the guardian of my brother?"

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The special quality of our time is the cauterization of specific moral responses, and the promotion of immorality as real morality. This is most clearly seen in sexual morality, but it is quite as visible in the habit of some of my neocon friends to praise big business in default of any properly good thing to be said about it, and it can be seen just as much in the bizarre promotion of pacifism on behalf of murdering aggressors. While murder is going on, to support any kind of peace is to support the murderers and encourage them to get away with it. I find it very sad that you should be completely deaf to this elementary moral reflex - an obvious case of cauterized morality - and therefore willing to touch the pitch of political murder and its propaganda support.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

I am not a pacifist.

I would gladly fight for my country, and will always admire those who do so, whether the country they fight for is mine or not.
If I *wasn't* prepared to do so, then maybe you could persuade me to hate those who have been so evil as to be born into a country that was at war with mine.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That you are not a pacifist makes your bewildered and blind attitudes even worse. You are corrupted by the very attitudes you claim to reject. And incidentally, I still haven't heard one real word of apology for arguing as though I should defend a regime I loathe and that corrupted and destroyed my country.

Balls.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

'The propaganda message of "we're interested in discussing peace" is a good one, even if it is a lie. It gets people to the table.'

I shan't bother with the evident confusion that a propagandistic lie can be 'good'.

I merely note that you have just defended Munich.

Do feel free to set up as a moral arbiter; that's your pigeon. But for God's sake, leave off trying to pretend to any capacity as a historian.

Oh - as for your heart-tugging recounting of the Cowra Outbreak? I remind you that the interned diplomats of the Axis Powers, in the US, after 7 December 1941 finally brought the Yanks in, similarly fought amongst themselves, with no claims to a higher motive. Pure racism - naturally.

I'm sure you'll have much to whinge, I mean say, in response. I shan't be available to deal with your insufficiencies immediately; I've several things to do before the Glorious Twelfth. I shall try to remember to look out your your grousing after I deal with the actual grouse.

Re: Balls.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Munich was not the only case in which negotiations with an enemy bent on war turned out to be worse than resistance. I just mention the peace "deal" between America and North Vietnam that got Kissinger and his NV counterpart their peace prizes, swiftly followed by the fall of South Vietnam and the tragedy of a million or so boat people. There are other instances, closer to us in time. There are worse things than war; namely, to yeld to governments whose very essence is war - who are at war with their own people before they ever are at war abroad - without resistance, and let them import their system of rule by aggression and terror. The time comes when, if you did not fight when you could, you will be fought against when you cannot fight.

Re: Balls.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

Munich - was a partial failure because of the weakness of the French and British. It was not, however, a complete failure - it taught Chamberlain that Hitler would not keep his word, which is why Britain was prepared to go to war over Poland. If the Munich talks hadn't happened, then it would have been Poland betrayed rather than Czechoslovakia: yet another nation absorbed into the Nazi war machine beforehand.

Yes, there are worse things than war. One of the purposes of talks is to determine whether or not this is one of those cases.
The fall of South Vietnam was not one of those things. We lost that war because we were trying to hold up a corrupt, evil government, similar to the ones you've panned elsewhere.

Re: Balls.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Munich was not a complete failure because it taught Chamberain that Hitler could not keep his word. IN other words, Munich was not a complete failure because it was a complete failure. I take it that Logic 101 was not a course you took.

As for the defeat in Vietnam, South Korea's government was just as bad, and look at the country now. Also, look at the tragedy of the boat people, which tells just how popular their Communist "liberators" were - no matter how corrupt or tyrannical the previous government. No: the defeat in South Vietnam arose from a basic political mistake. The Americans were stupid enough to send conscripts to fight what was basically a colonial war. Colonial wars should be fought by professional troops; the French even developed the Foreign Legion largely for this purpose, in spite of having the oldest and largest conscript army in Western Europe. As the war dragged on, the use of conscripts made it a party matter, as no war had been in America for a century; and as soon as the Democrats had beaten the Republicans, they took their revenge by cutting all aid to the South Vietnamese and leaving them helpless to the tender mercies of Soviet tanks and advisers. No such cut was ever made in the support of South Korea and of Taiwan, both of which started out as scarily corrupt military tyrannies. And look at them now; and look at Vietnam now.