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  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by Lumocolor View Post
    What other examples would you have me use that would end up being understood by most people? I guess i could have talked about the USSR invading afghanistan or something else, but how does that reach most people on these forums that is mostly american oriented.

    I'm not stupid enough to blame the citizens of the US for what their elected officials have done in secret for decades, that makes no sense. Most americans citizens are great people. I just tried to use US examples so more people would be able to understand what i was attempting to say, nothing more. Again i will say, american citizens are great, US government foreign policies, not so great.

    All i was saying is that most people will find a way to justify what their side did or is doing. Say next monday a Texans linebacker takes out Tim Tebows knees, Texas fans will cheer their asses off, while people in NY will scream bloody murder.
    It's completely possible I misunderstood your point. What I took away from what you said was that you think 95% of Americans are cool with some of seedier aspects of our countries history. I took that to mean you think 95% of us are the "america, fuck yeah" kind of people. that's not true.

    Again, sorry if i misread.
    Get a grip man! It's CHEESE!

  2. #62
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Davendwarf View Post
    I don't know if I'd classify it as "competing for some kind of resource", but the atomic bombings in WWII are a fun topic for ambiguity.
    Perhaps as a topic but there's nothing ambiguous about it, it's just plain evil.

  3. #63
    Deleted
    Many situations in history are not so much morally ambigious as morally void. With the benefit of hindsight, it would look preferable for the Kuomintang to win the Chinese Civil War considering the mass deaths caused by Mao's rule. But the Nationalists were also very brutal and chaotic, and both parties were headed by egomaniacs.

    I'd argue a similar angle for the English Civil War - on the one hand Parliament took authority from the King (surely a great thing for the future of England?) on the other hand the Parliamentarians caused mass suffering and death in Ireland. And the views of Parliamentarian and Puritan leaders were even more malignant than the "divine right of Kings" that King Charles believed in. Many Puritans believed in Calvinist pre-destination - that is, they could be as nasty as they liked in the real life, because their place in heaven was guaranteed due to nothing more than social stature. Seems you get the same arrogance with "Christian" elected officials today! Meanwhile the King was more in favour of clerics who promoted Arminanism, that is a belief that access to heaven is gained by faith and grace alone, which whatever you think of religion, is a far more open policy than the former. But then the King was a weak ruler.

    A morally ambigious situation for me is the Pelopennesian War. Athens and Sparta allied to defeat the Persians in the first Greco-Persian War. Afterwards they split into rivals over the future of Greece, meaning the Persians could reap all the benefits from their division. Who to blame? Athens greedy ambitions and empire building, highanded and bullying treatment of allies/neighbors through her powerful navy, and provocative behaviour? Or Sparta for their inflexibility, hellbent on preserving their military caste system and keeping an iron grip over client and actual slave states, and opposing Athens on the principal that they disapprove of cities with "walls". Would it have been better if they remained allies against a larger threat?
    Last edited by mmoc2f7dfebfb1; 2012-10-06 at 08:46 PM.

  4. #64
    Quote Originally Posted by rainiothon View Post
    Many situations in history are not so much morally ambigious as morally void. With the benefit of hindsight, it would look preferable for the Kuomintang to win the Chinese Civil War considering the mass deaths caused by Mao's rule. But the Nationalists were also very brutal and chaotic, and both parties were headed by egomaniacs.
    As an aside, when the KMT came to Taiwan, they effectively wiped out the native-esque Taiwanese educated elite as a class. That said, overall the track record of the KMT, even on the continent, was still better than the Communists. They weren't as good as concealing their tracks though. Mostly the KMT is motivated by a perceived need to contain the Communist threat, although the vast amount of undisciplined third-party factions that affiliated themselves with the KMT (which was more of a coalition led by a central line around Chiang) didn't help.

  5. #65
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by semaphore View Post
    As an aside, when the KMT came to Taiwan, they effectively wiped out the native-esque Taiwanese educated elite as a class. That said, overall the track record of the KMT, even on the continent, was still better than the Communists. They weren't as good as concealing their tracks though. Mostly the KMT is motivated by a perceived need to contain the Communist threat, although the vast amount of undisciplined third-party factions that affiliated themselves with the KMT (which was more of a coalition led by a central line around Chiang) didn't help.
    I haven't a very informed view on the Chinese Civil War to be honest. The thing which stood out to me from what I learned of it was that the Nationalists kept prioritizing conflict with the Communists even as the Japanese were occupying the country. I don't know if there's any viable reasons for them doing so, but it gave me the impression they hadn't got their priorities straight.

  6. #66
    Quote Originally Posted by rainiothon View Post
    I haven't a very informed view on the Chinese Civil War to be honest. The thing which stood out to me from what I learned of it was that the Nationalists kept prioritizing conflict with the Communists even as the Japanese were occupying the country. I don't know if there's any viable reasons for them doing so, but it gave me the impression they hadn't got their priorities straight.
    I'm not sure why you would think that. Dealing with internal problems first, so that you can muster the strength of your whole country against foreign powers, is a very typical approach both in Chinese and other colonial history. Keep in mind Chiang strategy was to avoid an all out war with Japan until he could build up an effective fighting force to do that (with the help of recently arrived German help), so he wasn't exactly trying to kill commies while his country burn.

    Also the KMT and affiliated troops bore almost the entire burden of fighting the Japanese when all out war did start, whereas the Communists fought like exactly two battles (their excuse was that they were gueriilas).

  7. #67
    Deleted
    That makes more sense then. China needed to martial itself against Japan, and I think it's the case then as now that much of the population resides in the countryside which the Communists were also trying to keep hold of.

  8. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by rainiothon View Post
    That makes more sense then. China needed to martial itself against Japan, and I think it's the case then as now that much of the population resides in the countryside which the Communists were also trying to keep hold of.
    Yeah, it's a shame that the KMT got pushed into the war before it could finish building the modernised army it planned, complete with German fighters and bombers. As it were, Chinese factories were only just being set up to manufacture modern weaponry when the war started, and Germany pulled all support to avoid upsetting their ally.

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