Charlie Stross wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 15, 2000 at 03:08:08PM -0400, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
> > > Just what on earth is there to love about _any_ country?
> > >
> > > Patriotism, IMO, is a very anti-extropian sentiment. For the proof of
> > > the pudding, just go read any history of the first world war (one that
> > > doesn't focus on the trivial US involvement in that struggle, but goes
> > > into the broad picture).
> >
> > 300,000 dead and several times that disfigured and disabled is hardly a
> > trivial involvement,
>
> Where did you get the 300,000 dead from? The figure I'm working from is
> 60,000 US soldiers dead -- putting the USA in roughly fourteenth place
> in the conflict. (Citation: "The First World War", Martin Gilbert.)
This is as I recall from school. I could be wrong, and I might have mixed that
up with WWII losses. In any event, even accepting your figures, that would be
more losses in less than two years than we incurred over more than ten years of
involvement in Vietnam, at a time when our population was something like 1/4 the
level it was at the time of Vietnam. All of this on something that really had
nothing to do with us. If it weren't for the Lusitania sinking and the Zimmerman
Telegram, we'd have likely stayed out of it. As it is, I think they were rather
lame reasons to go to war, as the boat wasn't ours and it WAS carrying
munitions. Smart money would have had us beef up Pershings forces on the Mexican
border, made some sort of ultimatum to the Mexicans to stay uninvolved, and
invested heavily in anti-submarine warfare to protect our shipping.
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