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Why We Fight (Read 4903 times)
Sep 16th, 2012 at 11:04pm

Webb   Offline
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If you haven't seen these there is something seriously wrong with your country's educational system.

Use the enemy's own films to expose their enslaving ends. Let our boys hear the Nazis and the Japs shout their own claims of master-race crud—and our fighting men will know why they are in uniform.

...

Links to the 7 original films and a few extras.

Why We Fight is a series of seven documentary films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S. public to persuade them to support American involvement in the war. Each of them is in the common domain having been produced by the US government, available online, and linked below the fold:

Most of the films were directed by Frank Capra, who was daunted yet also impressed and challenged by Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film Triumph of the Will and who worked in direct response to it. The series faced a tough challenge: convincing an only recently non-interventionist nation of the need to become involved in the war and ally with the Soviets, among other things. In many of the films, Capra and other directors spliced in Axis powers propaganda footage going back twenty years, and recontextualized it so it promoted the cause of the Allies.
 

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...

Jim
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Reply #1 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 8:24am

wahubna   Offline
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There is something wrong with our education system...especially the whole college thing (far to expensive).

There are a lot of students that get excited when a history class gets to war because (and I quote) "war is cool!"....yep....but they cant name even the YEAR WW2 started or even the major belligerents. In short, they know very very little of any of the historical wars. The thing is, curriculums today do not leave enough time to discuss these world altering wars. They leave enough time to cover Martin Luther King Jr for a week...but covering a war that started the Cold War, killed 60million+, devastated several countries, hosted multiple genocides, was a clash of political ideals, advanced technology faster than anyother single event, and turned the US into a super power....nope, WW2 is no where near as important. Heck history classes talk about the hippies more than all of the major historical conflicts together!

Hopefully that does not happen to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars...if it does, there will be hell to pay!  Angry

I should mention my views on the grade school system are heavily skewed:
Spent most of my grade school in a rat hole of a school that was a cross between a ghetto and hick-ville...plus 2 administrators screwing around with the cheerleaders, 5+ faculty members arrested for some sexual offense, and the idiot that called in the bomb threat DID IT FROM THE LOBBY PAY PHONES OUTSIDE THE OFFICE ON A HALF DAY before the LAST CLASS with the intention of "getting out early"...yep, real winner of a school  Grin
Orchard View Public School: they got some new faculty, admins, and a new building after I left
 

‎"At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation."- Igor Sikorsky
...
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Reply #2 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 8:43am

Bass   Offline
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Every fight is about:
Menings and/or belief!
 
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Reply #3 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 11:06am

expat   Offline
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Ironic that we have to harp back to films that are 60 years old. Between the UK and the USA we could choose from;

1945-1946 War in Vietnam
1945-1949 Indonesian National Revolution
1946-1954 First Indochina War
1946-1949 Greek Civil War
1948-1960 Malayan Emergency
1952-1960 Mau Mau Uprising
1953-1975 Laotian Civil War
1954-1959 Jebel Akhdar War
1955-1975 Vietnam War
1956-1956 Suez Crisis
1962-1966 Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation
1962-1976 Dhofar Rebellion
1965-1965 Dominican Civil War
1965-1966 United States occupation of the Dominican
1967-1975 Cambodian Civil War
1975-2002 Angolan Civil War
1979-1989 Soviet war in Afghanistan taking the side of the Taliban
1982-1982 Falklands War
1983-1983 Invasion of Grenada
1989-1990 Invasion of Panama
1990-1991 Persian Gulf war
2003-Present Persian Gulf war Mk2
2001-Present Afghanistan

Matt
 

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Reply #4 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 2:25pm

Webb   Offline
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2003-2011 Present Persian Gulf war Mk2

The Iraq war ended last December.

Since the only goal of the war was to kill Saddam Hussein there was no reason to continue it for more than five years after his death.
 

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Reply #5 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 2:36pm

ftldave   Offline
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Over the weekend my son and I watched the original version of the movie Red Dawn, about a Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan invasion of the United States, a Cold War version of World War 3. One of most memorable scenes to me is when a downed Air Force pilot is explaining to young resistance fighters what might have caused the war to begin.

Darryl Bates: What started it?
Col. Andy Tanner: I don't know. Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later, they're gonna fight.
Jed Eckert: That simple, is it?
Col. Andy Tanner: Or maybe somebody just forgot what it was like.
 

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Reply #6 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 4:06pm

Hagar   Offline
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expat wrote on Sep 17th, 2012 at 11:06am:
Ironic that we have to harp back to films that are 60 years old. Between the UK and the USA we could choose from;

1945-1946 War in Vietnam
1945-1949 Indonesian National Revolution
1946-1954 First Indochina War
1946-1949 Greek Civil War
1948-1960 Malayan Emergency
1952-1960 Mau Mau Uprising
1953-1975 Laotian Civil War
1954-1959 Jebel Akhdar War
1955-1975 Vietnam War
1956-1956 Suez Crisis
1962-1966 Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation
1962-1976 Dhofar Rebellion
1965-1965 Dominican Civil War
1965-1966 United States occupation of the Dominican
1967-1975 Cambodian Civil War
1975-2002 Angolan Civil War
1979-1989 Soviet war in Afghanistan taking the side of the Taliban
1982-1982 Falklands War
1983-1983 Invasion of Grenada
1989-1990 Invasion of Panama
1990-1991 Persian Gulf war
2003-Present Persian Gulf war Mk2
2001-Present Afghanistan

Matt

You forgot Korea 1950 - 1953.
 

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Reply #7 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 4:34pm

Webb   Offline
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Military action should not be mistaken for war.  The United States has declared war only 5 times in its history.

War of 1812
Mexican-American War
Spanish-American War
World War I
World War II

 

A bad day at golf is better than a good day at work.

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Jim
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Reply #8 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 6:10pm

wahubna   Offline
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Webb wrote on Sep 17th, 2012 at 4:34pm:
Military action should not be mistaken for war.  The United States has declared war only 5 times in its history.

War of 1812
Mexican-American War
Spanish-American War
World War I
World War II



Which is why the school system needs to remind students how often weapons are used in anger and soldiers die even though its not an official war: 2 big points: Korea and Vietnam.
On the side, all the little spec ops campaigns around the world (central and south america)
 

‎"At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation."- Igor Sikorsky
...
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Reply #9 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 9:13pm

Webb   Offline
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The Korean War was a civil war.

The United States wasn't officially a party.  It send military forces under the United Nations back when people thought the UN could actually do something and it wasn't openly hostile to western democracies.

This of course has no relation to a series of films produced between 1942-1945.
 

A bad day at golf is better than a good day at work.

...

Jim
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Reply #10 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 10:32pm

expat   Offline
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Webb wrote on Sep 17th, 2012 at 4:34pm:
Military action should not be mistaken for war.  The United States has declared war only 5 times in its history.

War of 1812
Mexican-American War
Spanish-American War
World War I
World War II



Many mothers who's sons died due to the whims of politicians would argue is a fine line.....

Matt
 

PETA ... People Eating Tasty Animals.

B1 Boeing 737-800 and Dash8 Q-400
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Reply #11 - Sep 17th, 2012 at 10:58pm

Webb   Offline
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War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.

People die in wars.
 

A bad day at golf is better than a good day at work.

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Jim
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Reply #12 - Sep 18th, 2012 at 4:38am

wahubna   Offline
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Webb wrote on Sep 17th, 2012 at 10:58pm:
War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.

People die in wars.


Sad truth. Other sad truth, war is not leaving human society anytime soon. Which is why I support further weapons development. By having high precision bomb delivery for example, we went from HUNDREDS of bombers in WW2 to area bomb a city just to take out a factory to ONE fighter dropping ONE bomb to take out just that building. Obviously it should not come to dropping that bomb, but going from dropping thousands of 500lb dumb bombs to dropping ONE 1,000lb JDAM I would say that is a worthy improvement.
 

‎"At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation."- Igor Sikorsky
...
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Reply #13 - Sep 19th, 2012 at 1:20am

Webb   Offline
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Why didn't I just put this in Movies and Entertainment?

Classic series from the director of "It's A Wonderful Life" examines America's reluctant entry into World War II.
 

A bad day at golf is better than a good day at work.

...

Jim
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Reply #14 - Sep 23rd, 2012 at 3:29pm

C   Offline
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Hagar wrote on Sep 17th, 2012 at 4:06pm:
You forgot Korea 1950 - 1953.


Worth adding the events in the former Yugoslavian states between 1991 and 2000. Under the auspices of NATO, that was very close to being much bigger by the time they got to Kosovo (and bombed the backside off Mr Milosevic and his Serbian forces). The Chinese got a nose bashing too. Entirely accidentally too. Tongue

(As the wonderful American fighter pilot band sing:

But the bombing of the embassy in Moscow broke the ice,
Now that was just an accident and it happened only twice


It doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess what inspired those lines. Even if it did only happen once.) Smiley
 
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