Gordon Brown

[Macky]

Sorry David, are you saying that in hindsight illegally invading and destroying Iraq was a positive thing because it meant that they were too bogged down to continue down the road to Damascus?

 

[The Major]

:icon_conf A strange statement to make David, do you have any examples of kings that are w*s*r than historians?

Wiser than David Starkey surely?

 

[Macky]

w*s*r than David Starkey surely?

Not at all. Starkey is a very intelligent man. Problem is, he's also an odious bigot.



Also a bob-knobber as well, but I won't resort to any childish name calling. :icon_lol:

 

[Steven]

My posts have provoked some interesting and welcome replies as well as one indignant splutter.Using your wide definition I can see your point. Of course your definition makes communists into fascists and I can accept there are strong similarities but I would also argue differences. Certainly, communists always claimed to be anti-fascist and the people who claimed to be fascists when the term was first being used whether Mosley, Mussolini or the Falange in Spain all seemed to sincerely hate communism.

Using "the totality of the state" as a definition is certainly interesting since the present government of China would count as more fascist than Franco. Franco who I would regard as one of the fascist trinity was authoritarian, repressive, murderous but never a believer in the totality of the state.

Under your wide definition Castro and Mugabe would both rank as fascist Would I be right in thinking that you would count Putin and Mubarack as fascists?

Words can mean what we want them to mean but I think I prefer to confine my use of the word "fascism" to the mid-20th century and use the word "authoritarian" instead.

Yes to all of those countries even though I am in one of them now. Even so there is less passive surveillance of people on the street than there is in London. :icon_conf

 

[Matt_B]

My posts have provoked some interesting and welcome replies as well as one indignant splutter.Using your wide definition I can see your point. Of course your definition makes communists into fascists and I can accept there are strong similarities but I would also argue differences. Certainly, communists always claimed to be anti-fascist and the people who claimed to be fascists when the term was first being used whether Mosley, Mussolini or the Flange in Spain all seemed to sincerely hate communism.

Using "the totality of the state" as a definition is certainly interesting since the present government of China would count as more fascist than Franco. Franco who I would regard as one of the fascist trinity was authoritarian, repressive, murderous but never a believer in the totality of the state.

Under your wide definition Castro and Mugabe would both rank as fascist Would I be right in thinking that you would count Putin and Mubarack as fascists?

Words can mean what we want them to mean but I think I prefer to confine my use of the word "fascism" to the mid-20th century and use the word "authoritarian" instead.

*Snigger*

 

[Darth Vodka]

Instead of quoting the sentence about hindsight out of context I wish you had quoted the paragraph in which you would see I was not writing about WMDs.

The hindsight that I was refering to was that the Americans would get so bogged down that an invasion of Syria would be impossible. My reference to hindsight had nothing to do with WMDs. I do maintain that there were people in the Bush administration and among ordinary Republicans who would have said "Why stop at Iraq" and I would not have put such an action beyond Bush.
There was of course no connection between Saddam and 9-11. However, for Americans the connection between 9-11 and the invasion of 2003 was very strong.

One should never sneer at hindsight; it allows historians to imagine that they are w*s*r than Kings.

i didn't say you were writing about WMDs, i was just pointing out that saying our views are "distorted by hindsight" is faintly ridiculous in ANY situation

surely as time passes, human knowledge grows and studies increase into the subject?

if anything, we are distorted by the whole "we have to act now" malarky of shifty politicians and we have clarity through hindsight

 

[Boy Genius]

i didn't say you were writing about WMDs, i was just pointing out that saying our views are "distorted by hindsight" is faintly ridiculous in ANY situation

surely as time passes, human knowledge grows and studies increase into the subject?

if anything, we are distorted by the whole "we have to act now" malarky of shifty politicians and we have clarity through hindsight

What worried me at the time was that between us and the USA, we are supposed to have up to date technology in everything from surveillance to weapons. From satellites they can see anything and would have been monitoring Iraq amongst others. Large weaponry would be easy to see.
They went into Iraq on a mission to find and destroy the WMD Saddam was rumoured to have. Pure lies and nothing but lies and still people try to defend their actions.

 

[David Gwilliam]

i didn't say you were writing about WMDs, i was just pointing out that saying our views are "distorted by hindsight" is faintly ridiculous in ANY situation

surely as time passes, human knowledge grows and studies increase into the subject?

if anything, we are distorted by the whole "we have to act now" malarky of shifty politicians and we have clarity through hindsight

There have been so many good answers to my posts that I cannot answer them all.

To briefly answer Mackys point. I am not saying that the Iraq War was justified. I am saying that an Iraq War that got bogged down was less dangerous than an Iraq War that was easy. I am, of course, aware that this argument means little to the casualties of that war. I genuinely felt that there was a danger of much wider war in the aftermath of 9-11.

Darth made a much more general point whyich needs answering at length. Yes hindsight can add. The behaviour of Hitler and the Nazis in the mid-1920s becomes more significant because we know what happened in the 1930s. In the 1920s most contemporary experts without the benefit of hindsight seem to have felt that a communist Germany was more likely than a Nazi Germany and this affected their behaviour.

The example I always give is from my own period is Elizabeth I in the1560s. With hindsight we know she will become a great Queen, not marry withstand threats from Mary Stuart and from the Spanish, dying of natural causes as an old lady. This colours our view of the decade but none of this was known to the people living through that decade. To be flippant Elizabeth I would not have been a good insurance risk.

Thus we cannot avoid hindsight and hindsight can be useful but it does distort .

I have enjoyed the thread and the many interesting and amusing responses to my recent posts. Answering them carefully has inevitably made my posts overlong and there is a danger of my spending too much time on the posts and stretching the patience of other members of the forum. I hope members will understand if I make this my last post on this thread and concentrate on the football threads.

 

[SJN-Fox]

The example I always give is from my own period is Elizabeth I in the1560s. ...... I hope members will understand if I make this my last post on this thread and concentrate on the football threads.

Understandable for a man of your age.

 

[Darth Vodka]

The example I always give is from my own period is Elizabeth I

ah, timewarp, explains a lot

when you arrived, did you shout "what year is this?" like off of Back To The Future?

what i've always wanted to know, is the future fixed in "Bill & Ted's" rules?

or is it changable like in Terminator?

and what happend if you kill your Grandma?

 

[Jeff]

and what happend if you kill your Grandma?

That would depend on whether she'd given birth to your mother/father yet.

If she hadn't, it would, confusingly, be known as the grandfather paradox.

 

[RHYDAL]

ah, timewarp, explains a lot

when you arrived, did you shout "what year is this?" like off of Back To The Future?

what i've always wanted to know, is the future fixed in "Bill & Ted's" rules?

or is it changable like in Terminator?

and what happend if you kill your Grandma?

Gordon Who? would know.

 

[SJN-Fox]

and what happend if you kill your Grandma?

Or you could go back and sleep with your great great grandmother a la The Flipside of Dominick Hide and end up being your own great grandfather. :icon_conf

 

[lazzer]

Gordon Who? would know.

[youtube]oIHBUGvAUMo[/youtube]

 

[Darth Vodka]

Or you could go back and sleep with my mum and end up being my dad. :icon_conf

dream on