Re: Wessticles gets hammered again.....

"Bill Woodier" wrote

In fact, they were on the verge of making a separate peace with England when the opportunities of 1781 presented themselves.

KL

Nice for you to slip in a little high-brow discussion. Self-interest is the game all right, and if De Grasse's fleet hadn't been off Yorktown at the right time, would Cornwallis have had to surrender? And how does the American Revolution turn after that? Oh, I'll agree that we'd have eventually prevailed obver the British--their long-term position was impossible by then. But to say that French help didn't matter is simply inaccurate. Also pretty irrelevant in the larger context--this is 223 years later, and a lot in the world is different.

France operated out of self-interest, even if some Frenchmen (perhaps Lafayette) were operating from a more noble cause. And that's exactly what we're doing in the foreign arena--as do most or all other nations. Or, at least, perceived self-interest. Nobility in foreign affairs is a very rare bird--the only unadulterated example I can think of in the last 25 years were the efforts of the Canadians in Tehran to smuggle American diplomats out under Canadian cover after a few had taken refuge in the Canadian embassy. The Canadians got nothing tangible and risked much--like having their own embassy invaded. Attempting to generate noble byproducts from actions in self-interest is not the same thing.

Mark Schynert

Hey Woodstain:

I'm not a historian nor do I play one on TV. But I remember something about a French fleet off-shore of Yorktown at a critical moment. ..../V