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To: Southack

What revisionism? I am quoting from a well-researched book by someone sympathetic to the Entente, which you do not address directly.

Of course Serbia did not want a war, being a small country. Neither Keegan or I say it did. Serbia wanted to get away with as much as possible diplomatically, and the Tsar, as well as the disposition of the previous crises in the Balkans, lead it to think it could respond with a certain degree of defiance. That was a fatal miscalculation.

This history is complex and no one is immune from blame. However, Austria was injured first, and so remains the only party for whom the war was entirely just.


258 posted on 04/21/2005 12:50:53 PM PDT by annalex
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To: annalex
"Of course Serbia did not want a war, being a small country. Neither Keegan or I say it did."

But you both did. You both claimed, bizarrely, that Serbia was somehow beligerant in its reply to Austria's ultimatum in order to enable Russian saber rattling (something that offered utterly no benefit to Serbia).

The truth is precisely the opposite: Serbia caved to Austria's ultimatum.

260 posted on 04/21/2005 12:55:00 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: annalex
"What revisionism? I am quoting from a well-researched book by someone sympathetic to the Entente, which you do not address directly."

Don't be obtuse.

Not only did I address that "book," but I quoted the most authoritative figure of the Central Powers who was physically THERE AT THE TIME, Germany's Kaiser William II, to refute it.

"No excuse for war."

261 posted on 04/21/2005 12:57:44 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: annalex
"This history is complex and no one is immune from blame. However, Austria was injured first, and so remains the only party for whom the war was entirely just."

Nonsense. Lots of people were immune from blame from that war (e.g. Pope Benedict XV), for one thing, and for another thing, Austria forfeited its right to invade when it presented its ultimatum.

Capitulate to an ultimatum and your enemy no longer has the right to invade you.

What you are doing, in perhaps a Freudian slip, is admitting that Austria's ultimatum to Serbia was merely an excuse for war; that whatever Serbia did or said that Austria was still going to invade (which it did).

But invading under false pretenses is by definition not justified...and that's what Austria did.

262 posted on 04/21/2005 1:01:50 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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