April 1 or April 2?

link?

It's discgraceful for the British Government to only apologise for the 2nd World War. What about apologising to Argentina for the Falklands, the Kaiser's family for WW!, the Boers for the Boer and the French for Agincourt? The British can't even win a war of defeatism. Wimps.

I bet Winston Churchill (remember him?) is turning in his grave! If he isn't, he soon will be, as he'll be dug up so he can be posthumously tried as a war criminal, and have his remains unceremoniously dumped in unhallowed ground! May as well sell all those war memorials, as well.
I wonder how long before the Americans apologise for the 1776-1782 unpleasantness? After all, if they'd only surrendered straight away, there'd have not been any war!

Sorry Thaddeus.
Next time maybe...

So you do April Fool's jokes over there in Britain too?

Yeh... Can you believe, we also do Christmas and Easter, too!

Anyway, I'm still waiting for an apology to the French for putting up so much resistance back in 1066...

You should also apologize to the Romans, Angles, Saxons, and Norwegians for your reactionary resistance to immigrantion.

Where I'm from, doing an April Fool after 12pm on April 1st reflects the 'foolery' on the 'fooler'.

[points and laughs]

Well, an apology for Dresden might not go astray, actually. Or for selling out the Lienz Cossacks to the Russians. Or for going along with the first and only aggressive use of atomic weapons, against a civilian target what's more, when attacking a military one would have had just as much impact on the Japanese. Or for drafting the moronic peace treaty which created the conditions for Hitler's rise to power in the first place. Or for failing to assist the Czechs when Hitler was still relatively weak and uncertain of how the West would react to his aggression.

But it's like they say, the victors write the history books. And luckily the Nazis were really, really, really incredibly nasty, and looked like they might win for a while there, so anything the Allies did is completely forgiven, right?

Mr Bateman,
While we're at it how about apologising for being a serial-killing yuppy in 1980s NYC?

Wait for Patricia Hewitt, or another of the leftwing rabble, to insist upon an apology for OpCorporate. Already we're getting Galtieri's family whining that their father was 'forced' into invading the Falklands; no doubt if the British had not been such bastards then Argentina would still be a nice happy military dictatorship.

Toss in an apology for sticking us with the Puritans and I'll see you one apology for a pirate/privateer/bad actor of your choice.

Dresden? Hitler was responsible for what happened to Dresden, since he started the whole mess in the first place. If you attack people with the intent of enslaving them, they are likely to get mad at you and even fight dirty in their efforts to resist you. Hitler was the one who ranted about total war and the need to fight in the most ruthless manner and so forth, with the apparent approval of much of the German population. The people in Dresden and the parts of Germany conquered by the Russians were just getting the brutality they justified against others thrown back in their own faces.

What's amazing is that the fog of political unreality is now so dense that a report of Britain apologizing for World War II would actually appear plausible. At this rate someone will be demanding an apology for the damage done by anti-aircraft fire to German bombers over London. I'm surprised the Germans haven't tested the waters by sending a bill.

You almost got me with that one! :)

It was only the comment from the SS that got me thinking!

On a serious point - I would have believed new labour capable of this - which really is sad. There doesn't seem to be any pride in oneself any more.

What is the point in having a war and having loads of people getting themselves killed so that the country wins if the politicians roll over afterwards and say sorry?

This is not an April Fools joke at all, its a parody of the British governments Falklands war commemorations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6515803.stm

Say good-bye to the Falklands... Worse, imagine which groups that are now and will be paying attention.

It's Patrick Bateman again!

When we hear some mea culpas for Bataan, Nanking, the nurses in Indonesia, Pearl Harbor, etc., we can talk about it. However, in view of the fact that the only other option for ending the war in the Pacific was an invasion of the home islands (with a projected butcher's bill well in excess of a million and an insurgency that will make Iraq look like policing a quiet suburb) I don't lose too much sleep over nuking two large centers of military industry (and sparing Kyoto, which was originally a target)

Okay...What?!?!?

Are you kidding me??
Someone send me the link to "UK gets nuetered", must've been a big story I missed.

Ahh, the political correctness of it all...maybe the UK should have suggested that Germany and allies only burn their trash on even numbered days.

When we hear some mea culpas for Bataan, Nanking, the nurses in Indonesia, Pearl Harbor, etc., we can talk about it. However, in view of the fact that the only other option for ending the war in the Pacific was an invasion of the home islands (with a projected butcher's bill well in excess of a million and an insurgency that will make Iraq look like policing a quiet suburb) I don't lose too much sleep over nuking two large centers of military industry (and sparing Kyoto, which was originally a target)

It was not the Japanese people who had to be cowed, it was the Emperor and the military leadership.

Explain to me why the annihilation of one or two of several huge military bases, rather than downtown in two large urban centres, wouldn't have been sufficiently effective?

Aside from the immediate military situation, the choice of targets may have been motivated by a desire to discourage future problems. In 1945 the pacifist Japan we know today was not a foregone conclusion -- probably it was almost unuimaginable.

In the future democratic Japan, the Japanese people would choose their rulers. They had to be shown that there were consequences for the kind of barbarism Japan had been committing, in order to deter them from choosing people who would follow the same course again.

Notice that it worked. Since 1945 the Japanese may have whined incessantly about their own suffering during the war while ignoring the vastly greater atrocities committed by their own troops, but they have never shown any sign of repeating those atrocities.

Dresden and the rough behavior of the Red Army in eastern Germany had the same effect on the Germans, whether that was the intention or not.

The purpose of punishment is to make the miscreant suffer severely for his actions in order to deter future misbehavior. It works.