World War I panel sees similarities to today's wars

Another exciting panel discussion with the growing number of Wiz Kid Team, at Kirbys this Saturday. Since we only scrapped the tip of the Iceberg on World War I we decided that more can be said. Once again we had Paul Harvey Oswald, Casher O'Neal, Kenya Blue, and me, Red Rob Blogger starting off the discussion. Others joined in as we got the discussion going.

Paul had ordered a pot of coffee, while Casher and I had Mickey's Beer. We were watching CNN and they were discussing preparations for the Ferguson

decision on the cop who killed Michael Brown.

Red Rob Blogger: I like the quote I just saw, "what ever happened in the '60s, we saw it on TV. I saw the whole war live on TV every night, unlike today when people want to hide it from us.

Casher O'Neal: They're bracing for the Ferguson

 decision.

Paul Harvey Oswald: I brought some Chocolate Muffins. They were on sale.

At this time the group was joined by Kenya Blue, another active member, who began discussing the Battle of Verdun, were there were 70,000 casualties.

Kenya Blue: There was also the battle of Somme. There were 300,000 casualties. You got trench warfare going on. There was mass slaughter and they only moved about 7 miles. They learned that sending a bunch of men against guns didn't work.

Paul: The battle of Somme changed the way we fight wars even today....

We also saw the beginning of Chemical warfare.... Then this was the fist air planes used in war and aerial combat was used. They became important too. Air support was important.

At this point the group is distracted by a blond lady MC on HGTV. The distraction didn't last long.

Kenya: Wasn't this the war were the Germans tried to get Mexico to attack Texas?

Red: Yes. The Zimmerman Papers (Telegram). The English intercepted it and released it after the sinking of the Lusitania.

Casher: Woodrow Wilson was the president who didn't originally want to get in this war... You know his wife took over for a time when he was sick and actually ran the country. Some people consider her to be the first woman president.

President Wilson suffered a severe stroke in October 1919. Edith Wilson began to screen all matters of state and decided which were important enough to bring to the bedridden president. In doing so, she functionally ran the Executive branch of the government for the remainder of the president's second term, until March 1921- Wikipedia.

Next a person calling himself the Commander enters the panel and begins discussing guns.

Rob: Don't we usually see some one called the Colonel or the General, in  mystery stories?

The Commander: That is the Admiral.

Rob: Right.

By now panel members got distracted enough to put money in the juke box. The fist song was Warren Zevon - Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner.

Kenya: I can see some similarities to the battles against ISIS (Islamic State) and the battles of World War I. There are a lot of countries involved who say they just won't go along with this even though they are threatened by it.

Rob: Independent Senator Bernie Sanders said we (US) should not offer to fight THEIR wars and let them sit back while our people die.

Another comparison was the war in Ukraine and the role of Vladimir Putin. No one at the table seem to like Putin.

Rob: He's like the flip side of Ronald Reagan. He's popular in Russia for all the wrong reasons and he lacks any ideology. He is like Leonid Brezhnev, a clumsy brute, yet he lacks any of the socialist ideology of Brezhnev.

Kenya: It is like he is saying to the people in Crimea, "you owe us back payments for the last 10 years."

At this point Rob puts on Frank Zappa - Saint Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast.

Paul: a lot of what is going on today is a lot like what was going on in World War I, with countries making secret treaties and those secrets getting out.

Casher: Since 1917 Russia was strangely absent...Trotsky abandoned peace negotiations and that helped the hostilities from escalating....  

(The Bolsheviks came to power promising to stay out of the war.)

In the Great War the US sent American teenagers to save the world and we still follow this policy today  we sent our young and enthusiastic to be butchered on foreign soil.

Picture by Kevin Smith.

In this picture Casher O'Neal, Red Rob Blogger, Paul Harvey Oswald and Kenya Blue.