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D-Day, as told by paratroopers

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Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#81

Post by rangerr »

rightbyte wrote: post #45
1992spacemovie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so. No offense intended, but did you really watch Saving Private Ryan? Both of those things you mention occurred within the first 60 seconds of the start of the beach scene.

Ye, but it was a long time ago. The point I am trying to make is that the opening is the 'low point' and then it becomes an action movie with the heroes in control.

This take is baffling... in SPR the protagonists lose man after man over the course of the movie, right up until the end. A central theme is the irony and tragedy of how the mission to rescue a single man costs so many lives.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#82

Post by rufus_foreman »

macintux wrote: post #71
rufus_foreman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There was a US isolationist strain as strong as it is today As strong as? I don't see much of an isolationist strain in the US today at all. The paleoconservatives are isolationist, but they barely exist any more. The Biden administration appointed a neoconservative as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

The former President reportedly was ready to pull the U.S. from NATO in his second term, and has demonstrated a strong affinity toward the autocrats currently making life miserable for our allies, which has carried over to his entire party.

Leaving NATO is not "isolationism".

And cutting ties with countries in NATO that repeatedly refuse to make the financial contributions towards defense that they pledged to make is also not "isolationism". NATO countries made a deal, part of that deal was 2% of GDP to defense, there are NATO countries that over and over have refused to keep their part of the deal, they promised to do something and year after year after year, broke their promise. Saying, "OK, we have had enough, deal is off" is not "isolationism", it's a common sense bargaining technique.

And "a strong affinity toward foreign autocrats", if it were true, would also not be "isolationism", it would be the opposite of isolationism. An isolationist country does not have a strong affinity for foreign leaders of any type.

I'm not quite an isolationist, but I lean that way. I wish Trump was an isolationist. I wish there was any major politician that was. Sadly, no.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#84

Post by jlpom »

bell-cot wrote: post #72
rightbyte wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is that Saving Private Ryan is "pro-war" movie like most Hollywood productions on the topic and not about 2WW really. The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency and do like cool self-govern manouvers, like the storming of the 80mm AA gun hill, etc. More like a teenage boy fantasy. Band of Brothers is another good example of cool agency. The opening assualt on the beach is some sort of low po…

How about these, instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front...

The Netflix adaptation is terrible

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#85

Post by nyolfen »

macintux wrote: post #71
rufus_foreman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There was a US isolationist strain as strong as it is today As strong as? I don't see much of an isolationist strain in the US today at all. The paleoconservatives are isolationist, but they barely exist any more. The Biden administration appointed a neoconservative as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

The former President reportedly was ready to pull the U.S. from NATO in his second term, and has demonstrated a strong affinity toward the autocrats currently making life miserable for our allies, which has carried over to his entire party.

you are confusing some words a former president said with actual events and material course of history. the US has been continuously directly or indirectly participating in wars for over 20 years at this point, while it directs the largest international military alliance in history and orchestrates the exclusion of its opponents from global financial markets. none of this is exclusive to any party; this is the logic of empire

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#86

Post by mediumsmart »

The worlds greatest, fiercest and bloodiest battle was Russia defeating nazi forces from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Croatia in Stalingrad. It broke the back of the Nazi Germany war machine and turned the tide of the Second World War resulting in allied victory and the raising of the Soviet flag over the Reichstag.

Wikipedia still has problems identifying that flag https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raising_a_flag_ove...

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#87

Post by keybored »

SkipperCat wrote: post #9
davidw wrote: post #5

I got unexpectedly shook up and a bit weepy reading about some of the goings on yesterday. I'm not much of a 'rah rah' guy, but those people stood up in the face of tyranny and many didn't come home. I thought what it'd be like for my own boy to go off to war. Democracy and freedom are worth defending.

A lot of people, including myself, feel similar when looking back at WWII. The roles of good and evil were very clearly defined and that has forged the US foreign policy up to today. Of course, there's a lot of things we know now which show the conflict was a lot more complex, but at its core, the Axis needed to be defeated for our western style of freedom to exist. I don't think we'll ever have something as clear cu…

> Of course, there's a lot of things we know now which show the conflict was a lot more complex, but at its core, the Axis needed to be defeated for our western style of freedom to exist.

The problem with this hero narrative is the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union (contrary to D-Day propaganda movies) was instrumental to winning the war. So how does the Soviet Union fit into that considering that these same patriots claim the the Soviet Union was evil and hated freedom?

Note that I make no claims about what the Soviet Union was about. This is about the cohesion of the “our western style of freedom” belief.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#88

Post by keybored »

macintux wrote: post #71
rufus_foreman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There was a US isolationist strain as strong as it is today As strong as? I don't see much of an isolationist strain in the US today at all. The paleoconservatives are isolationist, but they barely exist any more. The Biden administration appointed a neoconservative as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

The former President reportedly was ready to pull the U.S. from NATO in his second term, and has demonstrated a strong affinity toward the autocrats currently making life miserable for our allies, which has carried over to his entire party.

The words of one president versus having active military bases all over the worlf.

Re: D-Day, as told by paratroopers

#89

Post by [deleted] »

davidw wrote: post #5

I got unexpectedly shook up and a bit weepy reading about some of the goings on yesterday. I'm not much of a 'rah rah' guy, but those people stood up in the face of tyranny and many didn't come home. I thought what it'd be like for my own boy to go off to war. Democracy and freedom are worth defending.

[deleted]
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