Mastodawn

In 1919 someone famous said this:

“I cannot understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes”

He was the government minister for war, and he was talking about the Middle East (Kurds and Afghans).

It was Winston Churchill. Not much has changed. The disregard for human life continues.

#IranWar

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Charlie Stross Mar 20

@dave @quixoticgeek

Yeah, what many anglophones today don't seem to realize is that Winston was a monstrous asshole.

For perspective, consider that it took fricken' HITLER to make him look good.

(In his defense: he was born in 1874 and as an officer in the British Army rode in cavalry charges against Pashtuns in what is now Pakistan: classic Victorian imperial soldiering. By the 20th century he was already a living fossil.)

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Steve Woods Mar 20

@cstross @dave @quixoticgeek In WW1 Churchill has the main cheerleader for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which saw my grandfather sent abroad for the first and only time in his life. He survived, unlike thousands of others.

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Charlie Stross Mar 20

@wood5y @dave @quixoticgeek Did you notice what Churchill did in the wake of Gallipoli? (Took full responsibility, resigned, joined the army, and was sent to the western front.)

Yes, it was a fuck-up: but can you see a modern politician doing that?

(Also: if Gallipoli had worked—I blame the failure on the Royal Navy leadership in the theatre—it would have shortened the war by two years and there'd have been no Russian revolution, Brest-Litovsk, or Kaiserslacht. Millions fewer dead.)

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Charlie Stross

@wood5y @dave @quixoticgeek Mind you, the Ottoman Empire was only in the war in the first place because Churchill fucked up and at the outset of hostilities with Germany requisitioned two battleships, Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel and Reşadiye, which the British built for a Turkish contract. Germany saw an opportunity and donated the Goeben and Breslau as replacements, and signed a treaty of alliance with Turkey. So it's Churchillian fuck-ups all the way down.