Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
We'll be building military bases in Poland in the not-too-distant future and downsizing in Germany. Both countries have the French to thank.
Originally posted by: Czar
Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
We'll be building military bases in Poland in the not-too-distant future and downsizing in Germany. Both countries have the French to thank.
but are you forgetting it were Frence, Germany and Russia who were the primary countries opposing the war?
why should France get the blame for US pulling out of Germany?
ah, just your opinion that puts the blame on France, ok thenOriginally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
Originally posted by: Czar
Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
We'll be building military bases in Poland in the not-too-distant future and downsizing in Germany. Both countries have the French to thank.
but are you forgetting it were Frence, Germany and Russia who were the primary countries opposing the war?
why should France get the blame for US pulling out of Germany?
...because I wholeheartedly believe the Germans followed France's lead; otherwise, had France of supported the effort, Germany would have had more pressure to "play with the team." Facts? Nope...personal opinion?that is all.
I'm sure most Germans would be happy to have US troops withdrawn from their territory. A total pullout would have only a minor economic effect on Europe's largest economy.
German industry earns billions of euros every year from supporting the US Army Europe which, although reduced from its Cold War heights, still totals 42,000 troops and 785 tanks - almost three times as many as the British Army owns. Many of these soldiers and their fighting equipment, including Apache helicopters, have already been sent to the Gulf.
German industry is heavily involved in supporting the US presence. Among the defence companies which stand to lose out are missile-maker Diehl, aerospace and defence giant EADS Deutschland, armaments maker Rheinmetall and vehicle maker Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.
every country in Europe except Poland was also against it.
Originally posted by: DamnDirtyApe
And as to the above, I'm sure most Germans would be happy to have US troops withdrawn from their territory. A total pullout would have only a minor economic effect on Europe's largest economy.
Originally posted by: arsbanned
From a Guardian article (which presumably would apply the most positive spin for the Germans):
Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
Originally posted by: Czar
Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
We'll be building military bases in Poland in the not-too-distant future and downsizing in Germany. Both countries have the French to thank.
but are you forgetting it were Frence, Germany and Russia who were the primary countries opposing the war?
why should France get the blame for US pulling out of Germany?
...because I wholeheartedly believe the Germans followed France's lead; otherwise, had France of supported the effort, Germany would have had more pressure to "play with the team." Facts? Nope...personal opinion?that is all.
Originally posted by: DamnDirtyApe
A total pullout would have only a minor economic effect on Europe's largest economy.
Why would you presume this? The Guardian is a UK paper, and is not especially left-wing from what I gather.
LinkThe Guardian Newspaper
The Guardian Newspaper of Manchester and London has a relatively small but loyal readership compared to other quality national daily papers. Politically left of centre, it is generally sympathetic to socialist ideals and values. As it's name suggests, it also champions the causes of minority interests and pressure groups
Originally posted by: kage69
every country in Europe except Poland was also against it.
Are you generalizing, or uninformed? Poland was not by itself in support for the US, sorry.
Who needs facts when they've got opinions?Yet, reality shows us otherwise. It was France that followed Germany's lead. You don't remember, but there was an election campaign in the summer of 2002 in Germany and Schroder's opposition to the war (and the endless america bashing) is what got him re-elected.
France started around October or November IIRC, even if they were more vocal by the end.
Polish leaders owe their current state of development to the EU.
Nah, thats not true. As a matter of fact it is one of the more ignorant statements.The europeans didn't "defeat communism", the U.S. lead by Ronald Reagan defeated communism, and ultimately freed Poland from being a Communist satrap.
Another false statement/misconception.It is generally accepted that Reagan promoted the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union by forcing them to direct more of their resources into military spending, which they were unable to sustain. This brought about the internal collapse to the goverment as it was less and less able to met the basic needs of its populace.
I would make a joke about sampling the midazolam . . . but no responsible anesthesiologist would let a surgeon get within arms reach of the IV anesthetics.believe the Poles understand better than most in this forum that the U.S. was responsible for defeating Communism and having that yoke removed from their back.
The europeans didn't "defeat communism", the U.S. lead by Ronald Reagan defeated communism, and ultimately freed Poland from being a Communist satrap.
It must have been the GOP nomination of Reagan that motivated the Polish.If any one event had helped to create the psychological climate in which Solidarity trades union emerged, it was the visit of Pope John Paul II to his homeland in June 1979. From the moment that the Pope knelt in Warsaw's airport to kiss the ground, he was cheered wildly by millions of Poles. John Paul never criticized the Communist regime directly, nor did he have to: his meaning was plain enough. "The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man," he told an enormous outdoor congregation in Warsaw. With that hardly veiled allusion to Communism, a deafening roar of approval filled the great city square. Says a Polish bishop of that day: "The Polish people broke the barrier of fear. They were hurling a challenge at their Marxist rulers."
During the August 1980 defiance of the communist authorities, the Lenin shipyard functioned as the emotional center of an extraordinary national movement. Festooned with flowers, white and red Polish flags and portraits of Pope John Paul II, the plant's iron gates came to symbolize that heady mixture of hope, faith and patriotism that sustained the workers through their vigil.
Some 900,000 Poles quit the Communist party after August 1980, reducing its strength to a mere 2.5 million, only 7% of the population. The resignations increased in October when the Central Committee urged party members, about 1 million of whom belonged to Solidarity, to quit the union. In a strikingly candid statement, Central Committee Member Marian Arendt recently told a Polish weekly: "Mostly it is workers who are leaving (the party). Once I was so naive as to think that a few evil men were responsible for the errors of the party. Now I no longer have such illusions. There is something wrong in our whole apparatus, in our entire structure. "The party was on the verge of total collapse.
In case you didn't bother to read these comments reflect 1981-1982 events.All the while, the Kremlin watched with rising anxiety. Solidarity's very existence was incompatible with the Communist Party's monopoly of power. But perhaps even more important, the drive for democracy within the Polish party challenged the Leninist doctrine of centralized party discipline. Poland's festering economic crisis also put a drain on the whole Soviet bloc, whose member nations' economies were interlocked within the COMECON trade organization. And in Moscow's worst-case scenario, the "Polish disease" might infect other East bloc countries and the Ukraine, posing a threat to the future of the Soviet empire.
Funny I don't see Reagan anywhere?Over the following years the Jaruzelski regime became even more unpopular as economic conditions worsened. Under Mikhail Gorbachev the Soviet Union was no longer prepared to use military force to keep communist parties in satellite states in power. The Polish Communist party was finally forced to again negotiate with Walesa and his colleagues in a revived Solidarity movement. The result was the holding of parliamentary elections in September 1989 which led to the establishment of a Solidarity led government.