Jordan pilot hostage Moaz al-Kasasbeh 'burned alive'

[piscator]

Yes, Russia basically destroyed Napoleon's army, and the battle of Borodino, in so far as Napoleon thought of it as a victory, (which technically it was, what with the Russians having lost a lot more men than the French and forced to withdraw to the east of Moscow out of sheer exhaustion) was at best a Pyrrhic one. What beat him more than the Russian army, though, was what beat another vainglorious conqueror 120 years later: Logistics and the cold. By the time Napoleon arrived at Borodino, well over half his force had already perished, and over his entire Russian campaign way more of his soldiers died from freezing to death or starvation than in battle. The Russians basically burnt Moscow down when they evacuated. This left Napoleon nothing to feed his army with. Convinced that he had won the war, he sat there for six weeks, waiting for the Tsar to surrender. It never happened, of course. The Russians were biding their time, waiting for the French aggressor to finally come to the realisation that his army was melting away in front of his eyes because of the lack of food and heating.

As for Waterloo, you are right: Napoleon did not have 442,000 soldiers. He had 73,000. But then the coalition did not have 442,000 men either. It had even fewer than Napoleon - 68,000 - and not many more than half the number of cannon the French brought to the field. Nevertheless, Wellington managed to keep the situation finely balanced until the 72 year old arrived late in the afternoon with 50,000 troops (after an overnight forced march made additionally torturous by a recent downpour that turned the roads into morass) enabling the allies to roll over the enemy from one flank to the other.

To say "Russia kicked Napoleon's butt" is kind of true, but it is also so oversimplified that it makes that statement grossly inaccurate to the point of being bullshit. It is no better than claiming that (pick one of the following options) the Russian winter, Wellington, Blücher, Napoleon's hubris, massive ignorance of logistic requirements... kicked Napoleon's butt.

I didn't say the Russian Army or the Cossacks beat the Grande Armée, I said Russia did. Napoleon's letting the Russians escape at Borodino and Russia's scorched earth and -40 winter was what ultimately cost him everything. Not Wellington, or his brother in law Pakenham, who was soundly defeated by Andrew Jackson at Chalmette because he woefully underestimated the resolve and fighting qualities of the Americans.

[mistermack]

You forgot the Battle of New Orleans, where Americans, outnumbered almost 3:1, whipped a shitload of Peninsula War veterans backed by a large fleet of Limey warships intent on sailing up the Mississippi and just taking whatever the fuck they wanted, like they did in Spain.

Hugely overrated victory. It was a tiny little affair, made possible by the intervention of the virgin Mary.

But it was down to the same factors that led to the national humiliation of America in Vietnam.

If you are going to go to someone's country, and take them on in their back yard, you need huge advantages in men and weapons. The defenders have all the local knowledge, and the backup of the local population, and are dug in with well prepared defence plans.

[piscator]

You forgot the Battle of New Orleans, where Americans, outnumbered almost 3:1, whipped a shitload of Peninsula War veterans backed by a large fleet of Limey warships intent on sailing up the Mississippi and just taking whatever the fuck they wanted, like they did in Spain.

Hugely overrated victory. It was a tiny little affair, made possible by the intervention of the virgin Mary.

But it was down to the same factors that led to the national humiliation of America in Vietnam.

If you are going to go to someone's country, and take them on in their back yard, you need huge advantages in men and weapons. The defenders have all the local knowledge, and the backup of the local population, and are dug in with well prepared defence plans.

So you're saying the English populations were marching in the streets back home undermining the ability of poorly disciplined draftees to fight a war of pacification in an alien culture against an enemy remarkably skilled at both ambush and public relations?

[mistermack]

So you're saying the English populations were marching in the streets back home undermining the ability of poorly disciplined draftees to fight a war of pacification in an alien culture against an enemy remarkably skilled at both ambush and public relations?

No.

[piscator]

You should bring up that incident in the Kuriles, where 2 Japanese heavy cruisers fired their 5 & 8" guns at close range at a zigzagging American light cruiser with a damaged engine that couldn't get away, and missed 2200 times, and had to flee after expending their magazines. It's a great story, bro.

[mistermack]

Or you could bring up that incident where they dropped two atomic bombs on cities, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children.

And then wined and dined the emperor, and called him his majesty.

[piscator]

Or you could bring up that incident where they dropped two atomic bombs on cities, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children.

And then wined and dined the emperor, and called him his majesty.

Subarus are great cars. I bet Ghandi would have liked one.

[Ian]

So Jordan hits back hard at ISIS... and I've been hearing conservatives whine about how that's the way you deal with them, and why can't Obama be tough against terrorism like that? Meanwhile I've been watching video of dozens of US strikes per week for months, wondering when it'll lighten up.

We've been raining Hellfire missiles on them like ducks in a barrel, and that's the only reason they haven't taken Baghdad and beyond. I'd like to see us set an expiration date for the bombing, wait for our allies in the region to not take up the slack, then watch the whole middle east collapse into the religious civil war it finally ought to have with itself.

Grumble grumble

[Seth]

To piscator

I did not forget the battle of New Orleans. The British were ensconsed in the war with Napoleon when the USA invaded Canada, and there is little doubt that the USA chose to invade at that time out of cowardice, knowing that the Canadians had a smaller militia than the USA and that Britain was too heavily involved in Europe to render much aid. However, the Canadians were tougher than the yellow bellied USA politicians realised and fought back with courage and ferocity. However, the USA, with bigger forces, still won a number of victories.

America should have fought the British when their forces were larger and stronger? Sheesh. That sort of idiocy is why England lost the Revolutionary War.

Then Britain and its allies kicked Napoleon's butt, and Britain sent forces to the USA and Canada. From that time, it was the turn of the USA forces to get its butt kicked. Even to the point of having Washington occupied and the White House burned down.

And look how that worked out for England...again.

The Battle of New Orleans was the only victory of the USA after that point, and was sufficient to persuade Britain to go to the treaty table. Otherwise the USA might have been totally conquered, which in my view would have made the world a better place. However, that is just an opinion.

The Brits tried several times to defeat us and never succeeded, which is all that matters.

Britain disgraced itself by forgetting its North American native allies, and walking away, leaving them to the dubious mercy of the barbaric white people of the USA.

You do know that the "smallpox blankets" hoax was actually perpetrated by a BRITISH officer, Amherst, prior to the formation of the United States. It's the first iteration of biological warfare and was proposed by Amherst as a "solution" to the "problem" of the fractious Indian tribes that troubled pre-revolutionary America. It never actually happened, so far as anyone can prove, but Amherst did suggest it in a letter, which still exists.

And as I said earlier, the practices of the Indian tribes, particularly in the west, were very much like those of the IS, which is why settlers and the US Army went to war with a number of tribes...and did not go to war with others.

But this is all just red herring material as we can easily go toe to toe, and win, with a recitation of England's barbarity during it's imperialistic period, which lasted for more than a thousand years.

It's all Wayback Machine fallacy piled on Wayback Machine fallacy.

[laklak]

Well, if the British Imperialist War Mongers hadn't imposed economic sanctions on the U.S. because we were trading with France, and had stopped kidnapping and enslaving American citizens we wouldn't have had to attack their running dog lackey Canadians.

[Blind groper]

Laklak

The USA alliance with France back then is one of the most reprehensible and disgusting things that America has done, at least up until it started destroying Vietnamese villages in order to save them.

Napoleon was the 19th Century equivalent of The Great and Evil Dictator. A tyrant who was out to enslave as much of the world as he could get away with. It is ironic that the American government (which like all governments is, and always has been, a bunch of total hypocrites) claims to stand for liberty, and then supported the great enslaver.

Any action taken by Britain back then to stop the USA supporting Napoleon was well justified.

[Blind groper]

Seth

Your comments about smallpox ridden blankets are pure red herring, since this was not even mentioned.

The point, though, is that the USA treated its native people abominably.

[laklak]

The enemy of my enemy, BG. Besides, without Nappy we wouldn't have zydeco or crawfish pie, so it's all good. Of course we also got Jingo Jindal along with the etouffee and beignets, but many a sword has two edges.

[Seth]

Seth

Your comments about smallpox ridden blankets are pure red herring, since this was not even mentioned.

It's an example of how abominably the English treated American Indians long before the United States came into being. Here's another: The "Walking Purchase" of 1737, in which the Iroquois Six Nations Council at Onondaga (Syracuse, NY) helped to extinguish Delaware land claims in Pennsylvania, calling the Delaware "dogs" and saying, correctly, that the Delaware had been defrauding English settlers for decades. One tribal group would sell some land, and then another would come along and demand payment all over again. The Iroquois chiefs told Thomas Penn, William Penn's son, that the Delaware had "no lands left" having sold them all long ago, and the Iroquois helped to enforce the Walking Purchase and other land claims against the Delaware, who joined the French during the French and Indian War of 1756-63. And lost.

The point, though, is that the USA treated its native people abominably.

And England treated native people all over the planet abominably, for far, far longer than the US ever did. Just ask Gandhi.

The United States was, until recently, the only nation on earth to recognize Indian lands as sovereign "domestic dependent nations" where Indians live according to their own laws. Canada did the same thing in ceding the Northwest Territories to the native people and changing the name to "Nunavut."

But, if you actually knew anything about American history and Indian policy you would know that there were many advocates for the Indians, and the Indians were also responsible for what happened to them because they consistently broke treaties as well.

This is not to say that it was all butterflies and unicorn farts, but America's history with the indigenous people is far more complex than you suggest.

So if you want to demean and disparage someone, demean and disparage your own people, and the UK, for its thousands of years of imperialism and despotism all over the planet.

[Seth]

Laklak

The USA alliance with France back then is one of the most reprehensible and disgusting things that America has done,

A loser like you would probably think so, but then again we're free and you aren't, so all in all it worked out just fine.

at least up until it started destroying Vietnamese villages in order to save them.

We weren't saving the villages, we were saving the people, who were being enslaved and used as cannon-fodder by the Viet Cong and NVA.

You really are a history dunce you know.

Napoleon was the 19th Century equivalent of The Great and Evil Dictator. A tyrant who was out to enslave as much of the world as he could get away with. It is ironic that the American government (which like all governments is, and always has been, a bunch of total hypocrites) claims to stand for liberty, and then supported the great enslaver.

But the British were worse. Far, far worse. Which is why we allied with France.