Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (213921)	12/28/2004 7:29:43 AM
From: Taro	Respond to of 1572886

I lifted this from the OVTI thread on Yahoo and believe it has some bearing to this thread as well. Enjoy and learn some history. Taro "Hey, dumbf... do you have a clue why the Poles and Ukraines support our cause in Iraq? Because, unlike a dumbf... like yourself, they understand that what goes around comes around. They either stand up and support democracy elsewhere when necessary or expect no support for their own democracies" >NEW YORK POST >OUR FORGOTTEN ALLIES >By RALPH >December 22, 2003 >THE decisive turning point in the West's long struggle against >Islamic conquerors came on the afternoon of Sept. 12, 1683, during >the last Turkish siege of Vienna. Severely outnumbered Polish >hussars - the finest cavalry Europe ever produced - charged into the >massed Ottoman ranks with lowered lances and a wild battle cry. > >Led by the valiant King Jan Sobieski, the Poles had marched to save >Vienna while other Europeans looked away. The French - surprise! - >had cut a deal with the sultan. (To Louis XIV, humbling the rival >Habsburgs trumped the fate of Western civilization.) > >The odds were grim. Many of King Jan's nobles feared disaster. But >Sobieski risked his kingdom - actually a rough-and-tumble democracy >- to save a continent. > >On that fateful afternoon, the Polish cavalry struck the Turkish >lines with such force that 2,000 lances shattered. The charge >stunned the Ottoman army. A hundred thousand Turks ran for the >Danube. > >No army from the Islamic world ever posed such a threat to the West >again. >Poland's thanks for its courage? In the next century, the country >was sliced up like a pie by the ungrateful Habsburgs, along with the >Romanovs of Russia and the Prussian Hohenzollerns. It was the most >cynical action in European history until the Molotov-Ribbentrop >Pact, which divided Poland again in 1939. >But the Poles never gave up their belief in their country - or in >freedom. During our own revolution, our first allies were Polish >freedom fighters such as Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciusko. >(Paris only joined the fight when it looked like we might win. And >France intervened to spite Britain, not to help us.) > >Throughout the 19th century, Poles fought for freedom wherever the >struggle raged, in Latin America, Greece and Italy, and on the Union >side in our Civil War. Although their country had been raped by the >great powers of Europe, Poles kept her cause alive. >Again and again, Poles rose against their occupiers, only to be >savagely put down, with their finest young men slaughtered or >marched to Siberian prisons. Then, at the end of the Great War, >Poland suddenly reappeared on the maps. > >What did the Poles do? They immediately saved Western civilization >yet again. In the now-forgotten "Miracle on the Vistula, August >14-15, 1920" a patched-together Polish army turned back the Red >hordes headed for Berlin. One of history's most brilliant campaigns, >it saved defeated Germany from a communist takeover. > >Poland's thanks? The slaughter of World War II. Then the Soviet >occupation. >But the Poles never gave up. Their language, their faith - and their >martial traditions - were maintained with rigor and pride. Of all >the countries that gained their freedom as the Soviet Union >collapsed, none had struggled for liberty as relentlessly as Poland. ---Continued..