Message text litehoof wrote:
bearx wrote: I don't see how Americans could fight for their country in WWI, because their country was not reachable directly with war that time. (Not counting possible Mexican intervention)
Even in WW2, USA wasn't reachable, when it gained arbitrtary position to Europe as GB was in WWI. And even British decision to participate in WWI was very unstable in beginning... How you can say "They were fighting for their own country" after this?
And, I didn't say "homeland", I said country in which volunteers (or their parents) was born.
More precisely, I meant volunteers, including all Americans in service of european air forces, years before USA officially entered WWI
Don't wanna to debate this topic anymore, because it needs deepest researches with sources, hardly understandable now, because of difference in people's psychology between 1900's, 1950's and current time. How can you say that the USA was not reachable in WW2? The Japanese did bomb Pearl Harbor to start the whole mess. They also fire bombed the northwest and shelled outside of SanFransico. Also They took Gaum, Wake, the Alutian Islands, and attacked Midway. The German U boats sank countless ships right off the coast. They used the city lights to navigate by. WW1 would have been hard to hit the US but by WW2 they did several times.
While I do not disagree with anything litehoof has just said, there is a much, much simpler aspect to this point.
Whenever the soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen of any country are within the weapon’s range of their enemies, then their country is “reachable” in the form of their own persons. During WWII, when a British Tommy was shot in the Egyptian desert, Great Britain was “reached” just as truly as when bombs fell on London. Similarly, when a German tank exploded in Southern France, Germany was “reached” as surely as when Berlin was bombed. When a U.S. soldier is shot in Iraq, the U.S. is “reached” just as on 9/11. A country is not just territory, it is a state of mind. The only distinction in the preceding examples is how the immediacy of the event impacts different individuals.
So I would ask; How you can say "They were not fighting for their own country" after this?
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