re: #264 HappyWarrior

I hope we never see another like it again. I really think our attitudes about war in general are colored by the fact that war seldom ever enters our backyards. That’s why I always hated people calling the French “pussies.”

Casual students of history look at the French and British in the run up to WWII and think their actions were so obviously weak and stupid, but they discount the deep psychological effect WWI and its 4 years of pointless slaughter had on them.

To us, it was a great adventure - “Lafayette, we are here!” To them, it was muddy hell with random death raining down with no purpose, killing the best and the brightest of a whole generation, with nothing to show for it. Vietnam is a wound in the American psyche, and we only lost 58,000. Britain lost 3/4 of a Million, and France well over a Million in WWI.