The ghosts of World War I still haunt us

The ghosts of World War I still haunt us

WORLD WAR I started one century ago. Wait,sac louis vuitton femme! Don stop reading.

For most Americans,hermes ceinture hemme, the war is like algebra or frog anatomy something you have to study briefly in school but then never have to think about again. Unlike World War II, with its unambiguous villains, epic battles and clear victory, World War I is a hot mess. Countries and forgotten empires declared war on each other in no small part because a bunch of aristocrats in funny clothes said they had to.

Everything about World War I from the seemingly ridiculous fighting techniques (who hasn watched a movie with trench warfare and thought, that a dumb way to die to the clothes and music seems anciently irrelevant.

But the truth is that almost no modern event can hold a candle to it. George Kennan observed that when studying the maladies of the 20th century, the lines of inquiry lead back to World War I. A century from now, people might say the same thing of the past two centuries.

Let start with the obvious. The staggering loss of military lives: 650,000 Italians,mulberry outlet york, 325,000 Turks, nearly a million from the British empire, over a million from Austro Hungarian lands, 1.4 million from France, 1.7 million Russians, 1.8 million Germans and 116,516 Americans not to mention 8.9 million civilian casualties worldwide. None of that counts the 50 million fatalities resulting from the influenza pandemic largely unleashed by the war.

Without World War I,magasin louis vuitton, you don get the second a poignant irony given that the former was sold as the to end all wars. The terms imposed on Germany, described as a peace by John Maynard Keynes,air jordan pas cher femme, made another war virtually inevitable. Much as Adolf Hitler found his life mission while fighting in World War I, Benito Mussolini fascism was a direct adaptation of what he called socialism of the trenches. That led to the Soviet Union mass murder, Eastern Europe enslavement,hermes, the Cold War and,sac louis vuitton femme, of course, Vladimir Putin career.

The Middle East travails can be traced in no small part to the Ottoman Empire dissolution at the end of WWI. Dividing their spoils, the British and French drew most of the contours of the Arab world to their benefit. According to a surely false legend,moncler pas cher, the line between Jordan and Saudi Arabia takes a crooked turn because someone bumped Winston Churchill elbow while he was drawing it. (Churchill himself blamed his errant pen on a liquid lunch.) What not disputed is that the resulting maps have fed countless conflicts and resentments ever since.

In the West,louis vuitton site officiel, the war opened a Pandora box, unleashing innumerable cultural and intellectual demons that we have decided to make peace with rather than defeat.

And then there America. Some good was hastened by the war, though it hard to believe women suffrage wasn inevitable. But it also hard to ignore the harm, at least from a libertarian perspective.

believe it is no exaggeration, wrote sociologist Robert Nisbet,mulberry outlet york, say that the West first real experience with totalitarianism political absolutism extended into every possible area of culture and society, education,isabel marant sneakers, religion,basket tn, industry, the arts, local community and family included, with a kind of terror always waiting in the wings came with the American war state under Woodrow Wilson. Pro Wilson intellectuals celebrated the possibilities of war,hermes, in the words of John Dewey. By that they meant the ability to force Americans to, as Frederick Lewis Allen put it, by our good natured individualism and march in step. The enduring notion that experts could plan the economy from Washington was largely born in Wilson socialism. Maybe so, but America joined that stupid and calamitous war very late in the game and by doing so abetted the Carthaginian peace. The correctness of that choice is an academic question. The consequences of it remain very much alive. I collision course 0Rollinsford's Hill has goals in mind 0Another View Marco Rubio: Brown will stop the Obama agenda, put us on a better course 2Another View Sean O'Kane: Jeanne Shaheen is a friend of NH's tourism industry 4Charles Arlinghaus: How the cult of celebrity destroys our political culture 0The Obamaconomy: Shea Porter shows its flaw 17 相关的主题文章：

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