Independent George, on 08 March 2012 - 06:30 PM, said:
The primary value of the resistance was providing intelligence supporting the Allied invasion, rather than actual military success versus the Germans. It wasn't guerillas that pushed back the Nazi advance on the Eastern front, but Russian T-34s and the massive logistical tail stretching to Stalingrad; the decisive battle was at Kursk. In Vietnam, the Viet Cong stopped being a factor after 1968, and the south eventually fell to a conventional infantry assault rather than an uprising.
The VC changed the public opinion in the US via the Tet offensive and thus the SVN government "fell" or rather was handed over to the advancing infantry through a massive US military withdraw. There was a date set and everything..my grandfather scribbled something in his notebook, sitting inside an holicopter looking down at the mass of people trying to get a "lift."
The way you say it, felt like the US military lost to the regular North VN infantry....
Slavery is a major theme and from the arguments in this thread it seems pretty heated. Instead of wasting so many pages, maybe RR Martin could have had POV of a slave's life, POV of a normal slaver turned into a slave and we'd see how their life changed through the appearance of the Mother of Dragons.
Look at Ramsey and Reek. Reek wants to die, yet he isn't a "slave." Give him "freedom" and he hardly knows what to do now.
Reflecting on Reek, I'd sure rather die than be a slave, I'd sure rather be a beggar on the street dirt poor and dying. But then maybe I'd have a rich master to treat me well, can I choose my master? Wait, I'm a slave, I can't decide.
I wonder what RR Martin would of wrote in that helicopter, looking down on the people his government gave hope to, then abandoned.
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