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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Selectric II who wrote (6837)	10/22/2001 10:44:12 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Selectric II; Britain lost the will to hold her empire and more or less gracefully freed it. This had nothing to do with either production or intelligence. The other three examples you gave are all good examples showing that when two countries go to war and one has higher production than the other, the result is that the country with the lower production gets its butt whipped. Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan all got their butts kicked by the U.S., U.S., and the Soviet Union, respectively. To verify this, do some quick research. How many times did Vietnamese planes drop bombs on the capital of the United States? How many tanks was Korea able to land in Hawaii? What were the surrender terms that the Afghanistanis accepted from the Soviet Union after they had burned Moscow? How many American women were raped by Vietcong? Did millions of American children die of starvation because of the Koreans? Where are there more grieving war widows, Russia or Afghanistan? Who lost more civilians? Who lost more soldiers? And is it really fair to compare the size of the United States to the size of Vietnam? Or did North Vietnam get help from somebody? Did North Korea get assistance from China and the Soviet Union? Was France helping the United States? Given this assistance, just how fair are these comparisons of production? The same applies to the American Revolution. When we asked for more in 1812, they came back and burned the White House, LOL. We waited them out, and we were very successful with raids on the high seas. And then, in the nick of time, France (a superpower) came and saved our nuts. Preponderance of production doesn't mean that you're going to win (especially if "winning" means being able to tell other people how to live), but it sure as hell goes a long way towards preventing the other guy from beating the crap out of you. The fact is that the United States did almost nothing but run away from Great Britain during the revolution, both on the water and on the land. We had a few great (and rightfully famous) frigates, but *we never captured nor destroyed a single ship of the line (Britain had 130, we, of course, had zero), and we were repeatedly outmatched on land until the French came to help us. By the War of 1812 the affair was more closely matched, but still they gave us a good thrashing except at New Orleans! Re: "We, on the other hand, knew the lay of the land, the weather, etc., ..." This is true, but the American Revolution was a civil war. There were colonists on both sides. Therefore, they also knew the lay of the land. Re: "... and had the spirit to fight." Now you're getting to the nitty gritty of it, but it is still necessary that we had the support of a great power (France). But in both wars, it was our privateer's effect on British commerce that was the most damaging thing we did to them: American Merchant Marine and Privateers in War of 1812* The War was fought by merchant ships, because the U.S. had almost no Navy. The battle cry was; "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights!" During the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy and Privateers together captured 30,000 prisoners, while the American army captured 6,000 British prisoners. Privateers captured British prizes worth almost $40,000,000. Comparison of Navy vs Privateers during War of 1812 U.S. Navy Privateers Total ships 23 517 Total guns on ships 556 2893 Enemy ships captured 254 1300 usmm.org -- Carl