“If the world determined that Americans were a “weak, flabby, divided, and indefinite people” who could be “insulted and assaulted and abused with impunity,” then the tide of history would flow “over us and we are gone. Our country is gone. Our union is gone. Our liberty is gone.”

“Cabinet Weighs War Plans,” New York Times, March 24, 1917”

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#GhostAtTheFeast #WWI #ElihuRoot #AmericanHistory #bookstodon #AmericanResolve #PastIsPrologue #Ukraine #Russia

PM Llyod George to the House of Commons, Dec 1916: British response to Wilson settlement proposal: "..quoted from Abraham Lincoln’s speech to a war-weary nation in the summer of 1864: 'We accepted this war for an object, and a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God I hope it will never end until that time.'”

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#PastIsPrologue
#GhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #LlyodGeorge #WWI #WoodrowWilson #lincoln #Ukraine #bookstodon

“For six months I have talked about the struggle between Autocracy and Democracy, but do not see that I have made any great impression.”

Excerpt From
The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan

Robert Lansing, Secretary of State from June 24, 1915, until February 13, 1920.

"What's past is prologue"

#ThenAsNow #PastIsPrologue
#GhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #RobertLansing #WWI #WoodrowWilson

“The British people, however, were so outraged at Germany, both for starting the war and for the tactics used during the war, that a peaceful settlement that left Germany intact and unharmed was hard for many to swallow.”

Like today; now, #pastisprologue #GhostAtTheFeast #WWI
#russia

Early 1916: “Even if Germany could be persuaded to give up Belgium and all its other gains, the Allies had no interest in restoring the status quo ante. Returning to the Europe that existed in July 1914 would leave Germany in the same powerful position, with no guarantee that it would not simply rearm and resume the war to complete the continental conquest it had failed to achieve in 1914.”

Like Russia today #WWI #GhostAtTheFeast #bookstodon

“Those are the shadows proper for Shadow Lawn; the shadows of deeds that were never done; the shadows of lofty words that were followed by no action; the shadows of the tortured dead.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt Bitterly Attacks Wilson, November 4, 1916, #nytimes #archive

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#WWI #GhostAtTheFeast #bookstodon

1915 WWI :

“Instead of creeping around in gum-shoes,” insisted German-born Congressman Richard Bartholdt of Missouri, German Americans had “to put on jack-boots.”

Excerpt from
The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan

* we’re looking at you, Senator Josh Hawley..et al.

#Bookstodon #GhostAtTheFeast #WWI #DifferentButTheSame #DeJaVu

It’s the same, right? It’s the same sh*t:

“Many Americans were appalled when German-language papers in Missouri argued that Germany had every right to sink the Lusitania.”

Our GOP crazy contingent is dangerous now. Dangerous then. Dangerous now.
Ibid.
#WWI #GhostAtTheFeast #morality

“Many had believed [..] that in the new age of interconnected economies and technological miracles “‘certain kinds of cruelty and violence could never occur on a large scale again.’”

This, referring to the atrocities of World War I.

Eerie. Different—but the same.

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#GhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #WWI #technology #cruelty #crueltyisthepoint