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Churchill was a prick

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Part Time James Flag 30 Jan 15 9.26am Send a Private Message to Part Time James Add Part Time James as a friend

Quote serial thriller at 23 May 2013 10.03pm

Quote nickgusset at 23 May 2013 9.57pm

Serial, why are you going for most provocative poster this early in the campaign? The new season hasn't even started yet!

Or perhaps yer starting with some low level stuff before coming out with the big guns (why Mullery was our greatest manager ever FACT)next April.


Damn, you caught me!

I'll have to scrap my 'Why Communism should be given another chance', 'All Hail the return of Our Lord and Saviour Tony Blair!' and 'Staffie is a C*nt' thread ideas now...

Edited by serial thriller (23 May 2013 10.04pm)


He won't be happy seeing his name spelt with a capital 'S'.

 




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Hoof Hearted 30 Jan 15 9.56am

At least Churchill didn't have to "sex up" documents to prosecute an illegal war.

 

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OldFella Flag London 30 Jan 15 10.09am Send a Private Message to OldFella Add OldFella as a friend

Quote Hoof Hearted at 30 Jan 2015 9.56am

At least Churchill didn't have to "sex up" documents to prosecute an illegal war.

Agreed! But oh no, here come all the loony lefties......


 


Jackson.. Wan Bissaka.... Sansom.. Nicholas.. Cannon.. Guehi.... Zaha... Thomas.. Byrne... Holton.. Rogers.. that should do it..

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jamiemartin721 Flag Reading 30 Jan 15 10.14am

Churchill was probably a prick he certainly seems like one, but he was the right prick for the job, and got it done (admittedly several hundred thousand people died in order to facilitate that success, I think leaders tend to get a bit too much credit - Churchill didn't win the war, he was just in charge of the country at the time and played his part).

That Bomber Harris seemed like a right c**t as well, but if you're going to have someone in charge of Bomber command during an all out, balls to the wall, war, you want someone I suppose who can give the kind of orders that result in Dresden.

Churchill, wasn't actually that much of a great politician outside of that period - Very much a War Time Leader, a bit of a drunk, plagued by depression, partial to cocaine, amazingly charismatic and quite witty (or cutting). Between 1939 and 1945 he was pretty vital.

Doesn't stop him being a prick. You can't really be a politician without being a prick.

 


"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

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sydtheeagle Flag England 30 Jan 15 10.44am Send a Private Message to sydtheeagle Add sydtheeagle as a friend

Quote jamiemartin721 at 30 Jan 2015 10.14am

Churchill was probably a prick he certainly seems like one, but he was the right prick for the job, and got it done (admittedly several hundred thousand people died in order to facilitate that success, I think leaders tend to get a bit too much credit - Churchill didn't win the war, he was just in charge of the country at the time and played his part).

That Bomber Harris seemed like a right c**t as well, but if you're going to have someone in charge of Bomber command during an all out, balls to the wall, war, you want someone I suppose who can give the kind of orders that result in Dresden.

Churchill, wasn't actually that much of a great politician outside of that period - Very much a War Time Leader, a bit of a drunk, plagued by depression, partial to cocaine, amazingly charismatic and quite witty (or cutting). Between 1939 and 1945 he was pretty vital.

Doesn't stop him being a prick. You can't really be a politician without being a prick.

Agree with all this. With regard to the highlighted bit, Russia did that.

 


Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

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TheJudge Flag 30 Jan 15 10.52am

You can say what you like about Churchill but it might be more pertinent to look at how Roosevelt was happy to allow the Russians to be given eastern Europe to keep them onside and Stalin himself and his brutal regime of tyranny. He was worse than Hitler.
Yes we can all second guess decision making from the past but it is a pointless pursuit. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

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sydtheeagle Flag England 30 Jan 15 11.15am Send a Private Message to sydtheeagle Add sydtheeagle as a friend

Quote TheJudge at 30 Jan 2015 10.52am

Yes we can all second guess decision making from the past but it is a pointless pursuit. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So what you're saying equates to "let's ignore a discussion of history because it can't teach us anything of use for the future."

On the contrary, NOT pointless at all. Hindsight isn't the only by-product of re-examining such events.

 


Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

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jamiemartin721 Flag Reading 30 Jan 15 11.27am

Quote TheJudge at 30 Jan 2015 10.52am

You can say what you like about Churchill but it might be more pertinent to look at how Roosevelt was happy to allow the Russians to be given eastern Europe to keep them onside and Stalin himself and his brutal regime of tyranny. He was worse than Hitler.
Yes we can all second guess decision making from the past but it is a pointless pursuit. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Stalin or Roosevelt. I'm not really sure Stalin can be classed as worse than Hitler, on a parr maybe, but having read Mein Kampf, I can safely tell you what Hitler's long term plan was for 'Eastern Europe' was most certainly not as positive as the communist regimes that dominated Eastern Europe after 1945 - Which isn't a defense of those regimes.

Also its important to remember that the holocaust is only the tip of the Hitler / National Socialist genocide. When you include the depopulation and genocide following operation Barbarossa, the decades of soviet pogroms and '5 year plan famines' start to look positively tame (bearing in mind the Nazi's achieved something like 10-12m deaths in the space of a few years).

In truth, when genocide and whole sale murder is part of your domestic and/or foreign policy, you're 'as bad' as any other of the major murder junky c**ts of history. Its just a question of scale.

Murdering two people doesn't make you better or worse than someone who murders one person. You're still a murderer, its only a quantitative difference.


 


"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

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jamiemartin721 Flag Reading 30 Jan 15 11.29am

Quote sydtheeagle at 30 Jan 2015 11.15am

Quote TheJudge at 30 Jan 2015 10.52am

Yes we can all second guess decision making from the past but it is a pointless pursuit. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So what you're saying equates to "let's ignore a discussion of history because it can't teach us anything of use for the future."

On the contrary, NOT pointless at all. Hindsight isn't the only by-product of re-examining such events.

Worked quite well for Europe post 1945, remembering the horrors and instead of seeking dominance, seeking collaboration, interdependence and shared benefit has created a modern Europe that survived the cold war and has increasingly become driven as much by common cause, as direct competition.


 


"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

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topcat Flag Holmesdale / Surbiton 30 Jan 15 2.09pm Send a Private Message to topcat Add topcat as a friend

Quote OldFella at 30 Jan 2015 10.09am

Quote Hoof Hearted at 30 Jan 2015 9.56am

At least Churchill didn't have to "sex up" documents to prosecute an illegal war.

Agreed! But oh no, here come all the loony lefties......


Wasn't it the looney lefties that were against the war right from the start?

 


It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses.

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serial thriller Flag The Promised Land 30 Jan 15 2.26pm Send a Private Message to serial thriller Add serial thriller as a friend

Christ, nice bump whoever brought this back from the grave!

It's pretty difficult defending views that I expressed a couple of years ago because they've obviously altered. Churchill to me is an iconic figure who is mythologised in a way which severely distorts, downplays and accentuates certain fundamental aspects of his ideology and actions. History is purely interpretation, so I guess it's what you take and what you leave as to whether you see him as a prick or not.

In my mind, Churchill was a savage imperialist who oversaw and was complicit in acts of extreme atrocities in the remaining British colonies. His reaction in his second term in office to rebellion was almost always violent, thus the Malayan War and various other conflicts which sought to repress and subjugate were fought under his name.

To my mind such an ideology can't just be brushed under the carpet because he won the war, or was a good writer. People love to plug this line about without him there would be no free speech, but let's not pretend this was a man who was interested in universal freedoms. His aggressive colonial policy and support of disabled sterilisation show that his concept of liberty was just as divisive and sparing as those of the Nazis and the Soviets.

I wouldn't go so far as to call him a prick, but he's not someone I think we should look on so fondly.

 


If punk ever happened I'd be preaching the law, instead of listenin to Lydon lecture BBC4

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moorgreendude Flag Nottingham 30 Jan 15 3.43pm Send a Private Message to moorgreendude Add moorgreendude as a friend

Interesting to examine Churchill's role during the General Strike of 1926. He understood the importance of the need to control rather than allow free speech at critical times when the state / capitalism was experiencing a degree of strain.

 

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