Registration Delayed

[Matt Leese]

Originally posted by Karl


I hate to be a party-crasher, but here I am to correct you. Though you may be correct about the Gulf War thingy (Which if I recall correctly, wasn't actually a war) the fact is that FIRST has survived through many, many wars. It would be more accurate for you to state that "FIRST has never faced a declared war in which the United States have participated"

Obviously, if you include any war anywhere, than FIRST has survived through many. However, given that war's that don't involve any of the countries FIRST is in (US, Canada, and Brazil), then it really isn't a factor to FIRST. As far as other war's go, the Gulf War was not a declared war. In fact, the US has not declared war since World War 2 and also has only declared war on 5 occassions (War of 1812, Mexican War, Spanish-American War, World War 1, World War 2). Now, the definition of war is the level of intensity of a conflict. There are military actions that aren't wars. The intervention in Kosovo wasn't a war as it wasn't intense. The same goes for Somalia or the intervention in the former Yugoslovia or ongoing operations against Iraq. The Gulf War was a war in that it involved a large body of troops and significant battles. There was a winner and a loser and there was a treaty signed. So in reality, FIRST has not really had to deal with a war as there have been none that have affected it while it's been in existance (I should correct that, FIRST was founded in 1989 but the first FIRST Robotics Competition was 1992 but you get the idea). Of course this makes us wonder whether or not we'll be facing a war now. We may or we may not. The level of intensity hasn't shown itself to be a war yet (mainly since nothing has happened). While reserves have been called up, none have been committed to battle. So basically it's wait and see.

Matt