The American colonies were invaded by the French, and the British. Then as the US, invaded by the British again in 1812.
This may depend on your definition of invasion, but we are keenly aware of it. Having to repel the invasion from two of the world's top superpowers at the time is no small matter, nor easily forgotten.
I don't really know anything about American history, so that's quite eye-opening.
Were these wars rape/pillage/atrocity invasions in which civilian populations were heavily involved? Or were they more conflicts between recognisable armies who (generally) killed each other?
Well, being British colonies, there were British red coats here. So, it was French troops/colonists/militia and local natives against British troops/colonists/militia with other local natives.
It was quite a mess.
The US has never really been invaded and the last invasion of the UK, although terrible for the victim, was the vikings.
We have no cultural memory of atrocity in that way, so we struggle to understand the impact.
I suspect that you can find at least some people in the US more than happy to talk about more recent cultural memories of wartime destruction.
Ethic cleansing (sounds hopeful)?
Well,Serbia is not a desert,and serbs are no arabs.
Hey, you've repeatedly used "arab" and "muslim" in a very negative manner. 1,2
Would you please stop this? I reported the messages now, so the moderators will have to decide, but those messages smell really really bad, especially as a general trend in your posts.
Ilja, I'm seeing factual statements. Ethnically-speaking, native Serbs are slavic, not arabic, peoples. That's not a slur. Also, to state that Muslim terrorists tend not to value their own lives in comparison to their jihad missions has an awful lot of scriptural and anecdotal evidence to support it.
One could just as easily accuse you of "Islamophobiaphobia." Neither is particularly helpful, as near as I can see.
Truth isn't slander!? Pshaw!
Ilja
I don't want to derail this thread further; sending you a PM instead.
Was anybody familiar with these journalists work?, apparently it came out in 2012:
The untold Yugoslavian arms trade scandal: In the Name of the State
Slovenian role in illegal (contra UN embargo and normal laws) arms trade to Croatia and Bosnia.
http://www.wobbing.eu/news/untold-yugoslavian-arms-trade-scandal-updated-do cuments
No expert, but there were quite a few ethnic cleansings in the 1940s: Ustasha vs. Chetniks vs. Partisans and that was just the big playas.Those weren't based on ethnicity. Different ideologies. Ustashas worked for the germans, Chetniks were loyal to the king an Partisans were communists.
To resurrect this, on the same basis one could say that the 1990 wars were also not based on ethnicity, but on politics. The Yugoslav regime was certainly "multiethnic" in terms of major Yugoslav ethnicities, after all. In the 1990 wars, the #1 popular voted Muslim politician (Abdic) was allied to Bosnian Serbs against Izetbegovic SDA forces and jihadi allies. The Bosnian Croats were an extension of Ustasha-inspired Croatian military. Despite post-war Montenegrin secession and ethnonationalism, they seem to have effectively been lumped in with Serbs during Bosnian and Kosovo war (both by themselves and enemy factions).
AFAIK, the main Yugoslav "ethnicities" (excluding Slovene and Albanian) are basically derived from political and imperial machinations, muslims were a creation of the Ottoman empire, Croatians (in modern understood sense) were a creation of Hapsburgs (and other Western powers) in differentiation vs. Orthodox Serbs. Nobody thinks Catholic South Vietnamese are a different ethnicity. I.e., any ethnic conflict there cannot be distinguished from political foundations, likewise the Serb faction of Bosnian war was not "ethnically" opposed to the other factions, but stood for a different political perspective (e.g. preference for Yugoslav approach, offering Yugoslav Presidency to Izetbegovic, etc).
As I understand it, some 'Croatian' dialects in east Croatia are closer to some Serbian dialects than they are to standard Croatian, these were Serbs (or Yugoslavs, if you prefer) who became Catholic and who thus "magically" became Croatian. Likewise the muslim-affiliated "ethnic" demonym "Bosniak" was and is used for many groups of muslim Serbs in other regions of Serbia, who are further removed from Bosnian-Herzegovinian regionalism... Yet despite that whole region being under sway of Ottomans for many centuries, and Bosnian muslim "Bosniaks" certainly being aware of these other "Bosniak" groups, they never distinguished their "ethnic" Bosniak identity from groups using the same name... i.e. it was accepted to be a sectarian term albeit with (incaccurate) regionalist/ethnic nomenclature. That dynamic is more reasonably described as sectarian, sectarianism not requiring actual religiosity or theocratic bent, but simply sectarian affiliation de facto mutually exclusive with other sects.
The politically forced tendency to over-differentiate Croat/Serb/Bosnian/Montenegrin "languages" (imposed over regional dialect variations) seems to be motivated exactly by the fact that actual ethnolinguistic differentiation (particularly along those specific divisions, as opposed to wide range of regional dialects which may cross those sectarian lines) is in fact historically weak, particularly when differentiated from sectarian and political/imperial affiliation.
*Within the paradigm of self-defined Croat/Serb/Bosniak "ethnicity"*, then Ustasha and Croatian nationalist policy certainly was centered about ethnic domination/conflict (albeit more accurately sectarian). I can't say for certain, but I get the impression Ustasha considered Croatian Communists differently (as 'traitors', i.e. who pertained to the Croat volksreich yet turned against it's "true manifestation" ala Ustasha) vs. Serbian Communists (who were not considered to have pertained to Croat volksreich in the first place). The Ustasha policy: kill 1/3 Serbs, expel 1/3 Serbs, convert 1/3 Serbs (the latter incidentally suggesting weakness of ethnic identity foundations) was directed against "Serbs", NOT non-fascist Croats.
I'm not sure on what the Serbian side based their war, other than madness and to make Great Serbia (while lying to the world that they are defending YU). On the Croatian side the reasons were mostly economical, not nationalistic. Planned by the communist elite through intelligence agencies like UDBA. They used the war to take control of most companies, or sell them to foreigners. Nationalism was an excuse to rally the masses, which was easy cause Croats had been second class citizens during both Jugoslavias.
Yugoslav ethnicity has never existed, Croatia existed since the early middle ages (7th-12th century), never unified with the Serbs, not until 1918. Dialects have nothing to do with ethnicity, eastern Croatian dialect is štokavski which is the same as standard Croatian.
Ustaše/HSP was a minor party before WW2 and had no support from most people. They were placed into power by Italy (cause they wanted Dalmatia) after HSS (most popular party) refused Hitler. Chetniks also worked with the Nazis.
As for the UN embargo, calling it illegal is ridiculous. Serbs (''Yugoslavs'') because of their privileged positions controlled the entire army, leaving all others defenseless.
The American colonies were invaded by the French, and the British. Then as the US, invaded by the British again in 1812.
This may depend on your definition of invasion, but we are keenly aware of it. Having to repel the invasion from two of the world's top superpowers at the time is no small matter, nor easily forgotten.
The mainland of the US was not invaded recently, the but US has actually been invaded in the past 100 years, and there are those who are still alive and remember.
I believe both the Phillipines and Guam were both taken by the Japanese in WWII. In addition, there was a major attack on Hawaii, and minor threats/attacks to California and Oregon. I believe an Island or two of Alaska was either taken/threatened as well.
The Phillipines had been granted commonwealth status at that point and the hope was to give them full independence within the next decade, but unfortunately World War 2 intruded with it's full roaring mantle before that could happen.
Wake Island was another that the US lost.
Of course, the US finally retook all the lost areas, but they were invaded, they were taken, and they were occupied.
One of the most atrocious points of US losses happened due to that in the Bataan Death march. So, I'd say the US has not only had to deal with invasions, but also dealt with loss of land and life due to those invasions.
Now that this has been stated, back to your regular programming in the thread topic.
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The mainland of the United States was last invaded in 1916.
Viva Pancho Villa!
I still can't understand how Iraq,with one of the best armies around,folded so quickly.
1) Iraq's army was large but not nearly as powerful as it was reputed to be.
2) America's military is absurdly advanced compared to most countries due to massive military spending, even if a large portion of the cost is just corruption stealing from the tax payers.3) The Iraqi army due to differences in army size and equipment needed to use guerilla tactics far earlier than it did.
I mostly meant that the vast majority of the 'history' found in primary and secondary school social studies and history classes has more in common with mythology than history. It's not that I don't like the events, I'm pretty neutral on them, I dislike mixing fiction, hagiography, and colorful apocryphal anecdotes in and calling the resulting mess 'history'.
My 'correct' versions are pretty much the standard interpretation and analysis you find among historians of that period of US and World history....
I don't know about other places but in Iowa that more neutral version is pretty much exactly what I was taught in high school (grades 9-12). Even in middle school (grades 6-8) they kept hammering home that all the founders were hypocrites for being slave holders. The more simplified "us good them bad" versions only ever seemed to come up in media that was decades old, but even then France was always mentioned as a needed ally.