Tag: War

Guest Contributor – TomD – 31JUL2024 – Lessons of War

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

I would have thought that the main lesson of the Viet Nam and succeeding regional wars was or should have been: Don’t initiate or enter wars unless you intend to win and pay whatever price necessary to do so. WWII would be a prime example.

But, apparently, that lesson is too esoteric or functionally difficult to be put into practice by our masters. Just what has been accomplished by the US providing Ukraine with just enough weaponry and resources to prolong the war and kill millions on both sides? Not to mention waste God knows how many $100’s of billions of dollars. What was the point? Anyone? Send a message, perhaps?

 

Update:

Comments

photog in reply to TomD

If I had to guess what lesson they think they learned from Vietnam, it was to emulate what the Soviets did in that war. Find a proxy to fight your enemy for you. So Russia had the North Vietnamese. The neo-cons in the State Department have the Ukrainian Azov faction who are willing to burn Ukraine down to punish the Russo-Ukrainians who make up 25% of the population. The fact that millions will die and Russia will become our implacable foe forever is neither here nor there.

 

Chemist in reply to TomD.

Tom D asked: “What was the point?”
10% for the big guy.
Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but this has always been about graft.
At least is has from the US side.
I think the Poles genuinely wanted to get their licks into the Russians but the US congress, State dept and POTUS were all in for their cut.

 

photog in reply to Chemist.

I wonder where they’ll play the game next after Ukraine dries up? Iran?

 

War Pig commented

We leared the lesson of Vietnam when a Vietnam officer, General Schwarzkopf, refused to play Vietnam rules and insisted on using maximum effort to win-the-frigging-war.
It was LBJ who insisted that he knew better than generals how to fight a war. Ditto Biden.

The US won all the battles in both Vietnam and Afghanistan, but lost due to crooked and cowardly politicians. The lesson is that you do not face the US military head on, you nibble at the edges. Be prepared to take a horrible kill to death ratio because you will lose virtually every battle, and outlast American politicians.

 

 

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 10

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Military Movies

I’m sure everyone will say I left out one of their favorites.  War movies and movies about the military seem to be very personal in their impact.  And that’s easily remedied when you list your forgotten favorite in the comments!

I left out ancient wars so Spartacus and Henry V were too far back I thought.  “Master and Commander” is close to the line but is such a good movie I couldn’t leave it out.  Although it would still show up in an action category and a list of movies about the sea.  Of course, I was restricted to movies I’ve seen and I can’t claim to have seen most war movies.

  1. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) 3
  2. The Story of GI Joe (1945) 3
  3. They Were Expendable (1945) 3
  4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
  5. Fixed Bayonets! (1951) 3
  6. Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) 3
  7. From Here to Eternity (1953)
  8. Pork Chop Hill (1956) 1
  9. The Gallant Hours (1960) 3
  10. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 3
  11. The Longest Day (1962) 3
  12. The Great Escape (1963)
  13. Zulu (1964)
  14. Battle of the Bulge (1965) 3
  15. In Harm’s Way (1965) 3
  16. The Dirty Dozen (1967)
  17. Battle of Britain (1969) 3
  18. Patton (1970)
  19. A Bridge Too Far (1977) 3
  20. Big Red One (1980) 3
  21. Das Boot (1981)
  22. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
  23. Gettysburg (1993) 3
  24. Saving Private Ryan (1998) 2
  25. Band of Brothers (2001) 2 *
  26. Black Hawk Down (2001)
  27. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
  28. Downfall (2004)
  29. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) 3
  30. American Sniper (2014)
  31. Dunkirk (2017)

*(TV Series)

1 Master Diver

2 Tom D

3 War Pig

Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 18MAY2024 – 1914 and Now

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1914 could have been avoided, the use of chemical weapons by the Germans brought the English, and other western countries into what was just another small expansionist move by Germany. They had been going to war appx every 20 years for almost a century, without getting anyone else drug into it, as they slowly nibbled away at the eastern border of France in the purpose of taking the mineral and industrial rich eastern sections of France one bite at a time. These wars were fought mostly to move the border a small amount at a time, in response to past Napoleonic incursions into German territories, and until the use of gas were ignored for the most part by the rest of the world. We have no more right to the Ukrainian conflict than the German had to the French attacks. We have violated all of our promises of no membership to NATO, and no Eastward expansion which would allow us to garrison adjacent to the Russians border. We almost went to war in 62 over Soviet weapons in Cuba, and that was with a 90 mile ocean channel between their forces and ours, would we allow China to build a military base in Vancouver BC, Russia to build a base in Baja California, without protest?

What Will We Stumble into Next?

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What if the Europe of 1914 had figured out a way to avoid the Great War?  What would European civilization look like today?  Would the colonial empires have maintained their existence and by now have coalesced into a world completely dominated and controlled by Europe and its descendants?  Would the scientific and commercial progress of this civilization have produced the first truly global state?

It’s an interesting question.  But I think very mistaken.  World War I (and World War II) happened because they had to happen.  Humans (and Europeans specifically) have been struggling for the last five hundred years with the results of the Enlightenment.  Enormous technological and sociological change have engulfed the world and we are nowhere near figuring out how to harness these changes safely.

And just in time to finish off what’s left of western civilization, we have Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland playing nuclear chicken with Vladimir Putin.  For eighty years the existential nature of the nuclear threat has kept both the Americans and the Russians on their best behavior when it came to serious escalation.  But all that has changed over the last decade or so.  The CIA and the State Department have been embarked on a progressively more provocative series of “color” revolutions.  And now they’ve culminated in the Ukraine War as the capstone.  At least a hundred and fifty billion dollars of American aid and billions more euros have been transferred to Ukraine and something like a half-million Ukrainian lives have been sacrificed in this endeavor and now the neo-cons have pulled out all the stops and will allow the Ukrainians to use F-16s and long-range missiles into Russia proper.  And Putin has responded with statements to the effect that tactical nuclear weapons will now be on the table if western offensive weapons are used in Russia.

It doesn’t appear that we have many more tosses left before something pretty bad is going to happen.  If I were to guess what will precipitate the escalation, I’d say that it will be a major missile strike on Moscow.  The Russians will respond with a major attack on the western cities in Ukraine and I assume they’ll attempt to decapitate the Ukrainian military along with killing Zelinsky.  The question is whether they think they have to use a tactical nuke to achieve this.

But either way, the escalation will be extreme and the number of civilian deaths will be measured in the thousands.  Now, it’s somewhere in this part of the escalation that I think we could see this whole thing spin completely out of control.  Direct attacks on Moscow will eventually radicalize Putin’s reactions to this strategy.  And especially if the civilian casualties are high, we run the risk that the attacks on Western Ukraine could spill over into Eastern Europe and trigger a retaliatory strike from Poland on Russian territory.  And from there we have a direct path to a nuclear exchange.

Biden and Blinken seem to be the caliber of idiot that we could expect to bring on a nuclear war for absolutely no good reason at all.  When people look back on this, they’ll probably try to identify the ideological reasons why war broke out at this time.  What they should look for are Joe Biden’s college transcripts and Antony Blinken’s psych evaluation.  For once the villain won’t be artificial intelligence.  It will be lack of intelligence.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 13MAY2024 – Who Can Replace a Man?

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war pig

Infantry will be necessary for the foreseeable future. Urban fighting is still beyond drones. Furthermore, you do not own or control territory unless you have a soldier standing on it with a rifle and fixed bayonet.

Drones are a fine tool for some fighting and reconnaissance. They make good suicide weapons and you save casualties by using them. Our 6th generation fighters will have in-cockpit pilots as an option, not standard. But because of the reasons you stated about quantum mechanics and the human mind, drones/robots will not replace infantry/special ops/guerrillas. Humans can be darned unpredictable. In fact we can be crazier than a squirrel on methamphetamine. One way Bobby Fisher beat the supercomputer at chess was to make wildly unorthodox and apparently random moves. Confused the computer and he won.

Having worked on the ground where making life miserable for the other side by misdirection, dirty tricks and random acts of sabotage, I can say that the more random you go, the more the other side tries to analyze your acts and tactics until it takes up more and more of his resources and drives him to distraction. If humans have problems with that, given we’ve had a couple million years to improve our internal programming; what chance does an inflexible machine have?

 

 

 

 

Sawdust and Forever Wars

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Well, the boys from the road crew were back today and finished off the job, but good.  A tractor trailer was blocking my driveway and the trailer was an open topped box that was rapidly filled by an enormous wood chipper that ate whole sections of tree trunks that were ten feet around.  The noise that came off of this thing was considerable and the hounds were incensed.  The chipper finished off the big white pine in less than an hour and that included all the scraps that they had trimmed off the trunk.

Then they moved on and took care of the two ash trees.  These were smaller but the hardness of the wood gave the machine a different sonic tone as it spat the sawdust into the trailer.  And the wood was a lighter, cleaner looking stream as it flowed into the box.  And soon they were gone too.  Of course, gone didn’t include the debris that the crew left far and wide.  Between sawdust, small branches and pine needles I’ll be cleaning up the tree bits for the whole of the spring.

But I’ll have to say I’m impressed by the state of the art in robotic forestry.  It sort of reminded me of a Dr. Seuss book where some absurdly complicated string of machines reprocesses some thing into a completely different substance.  The only thing missing were the absurdly bright primary and secondary colors along with Thing One and Thing Two running the machinery.  And come to think of it, the foreman did look a little like the guy who didn’t want to eat the Green Eggs and Ham.

Well, after they finished, I went to work and when I got back home the temperature had dropped down into the forties and it was once again raining cats and dogs.  You know I’m pretty sick and tired of the rain.  Last year it rained endlessly from April to the end of June.  I dream of kidnapping Camera Girl and dragging her to Southern Utah.  When I was there, there was a little snow but the ground looked like a desert and at this point that would be A-OK with me.  But the lure of the grandkids is too powerful for her.

So, I heard a little while ago that Israel counterattacked in Iran and some other places.  Well, that’s a little disturbing.  The way Joe Biden has been talking I think maybe they’re ready for some really bad things.  I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.  I guess I’m just sick and tired of the forever wars.  Maybe I’m so tired of it I’m willing to see it all blow up now.    Just fire them all and let God sort it all out.  It sounds right.

But then I think of the kids and the grandkids and of course I don’t want that to happen to them.  So apparently, I’ll have to let the morons we have running our foreign policy continue on with their insane games and their demented strategies.  Ukraine, Iran, Israel, Syria, China.  All that crap.

Humans are the most remarkably clever animals. Look at those machines I saw working today. Reducing those trees to dust was an acceleration over nature of many orders of magnitude. They reduced the work of twenty or fifty years of natural processes to machine minutes. We are that paragon of animals that Shakespeare mentions. But simultaneously we are led by gibbering idiots. They could reduce the whole human race to dust in minutes. So, there it is.

How Would You Clean Out Gaza

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Netanyahu says he will destroy Hamas in Gaza.  But how exactly will he do that?  Other than leveling the whole place with artillery how can you accomplish that?  I’m assuming he wants a method that allows him to separate women and boys under military age from the men before delivering ordinance to the areas to be cleared.

My thought is to announce ahead of time what buildings are going to be leveled.  That way everyone gets out.  Once a good chunk of the city is rubble, the women and children will be living on the street and in order to survive they will be forced to turn themselves in to the Israeli authorities for warehousing separate from the combat zone in Gaza.  I suppose eventually all of Gaza will look like Bakhmut; a bombed out hellscape.  Of course, even that won’t be thorough enough.  The Palestinians have built extensive tunnels that go to Egypt and under the walls into Israel.  So, even the debris will have to be removed to search for tunnels.

Now how will the Israelis differentiate between Hamas fighters and the rest of the men in Gaza?  I guess they can’t.  Does that mean they will kill all the adult men in Gaza or only those found under arms?  And if they allow surrender what will be the ultimate fate for these Gazans?  Will they execute them?  Will they imprison them for life?  These are not trivial considerations.  There are about two million Gazans.  If even 25% are adult males that’s five hundred thousand men.  In a country of seven million, that is like 7% of the population incarcerated for life.  That’s a staggering number and an enormous expense.

And if they intend to go building to building looking for the hostages then it’s a hopeless plight.  They’ll lose thousands of men during these endless frontal assaults on the high rises of Gaza.  I think my original idea is best.  Drop leaflets all over the city posting the schedule for which buildings will be leveled on which day and let the occupants be responsible for avoiding death.  That combined with a blockade on supplies will bring the Gazans to their knees in a few weeks.

The Siege of Gaza.  It sounds like an historical battle from the Roman era.  Who knows, maybe the Israelis will lose their nerve.  They will be vilified by Ivy League student organizations and the United Nations General Assembly.  And all those Gulf States that have begun diplomatic relations with them will turn on them too.  Maybe they’ll only make some symbolic attacks and instead build higher walls and add additional missile defense batteries.

But if they do, they’re doomed.  This will be the beginning of unending attacks from Gaza and the West Bank and Hezbollah in the north.  If they allow their women and children to be massacred with impunity it will break the Israelis’ belief in the strength and competence of their defense forces and it will ultimately undermine the stability of the nation.  Israel is an island of modernity surrounded by an ocean of medievalism.  To live with the barbarians always at the gates you have to have confidence that your leaders have developed a system to keep that ocean safely behind strong walls.

So, I think Netanyahu has no choice but to eliminate Hamas from Gaza.  But I’ll be damned if I know how, the hell, he’s going to do it.  I wish him luck.

ArthurinCali Has a Post on NeoCon Madness

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Arthur has a post on what the endless NeoCon wars meant to him on the receiving side:

“If a young enlisted kid could recognize the futility of trying to establish the concept of liberal democracy amongst the former nomadic Bedouin tribes that now, playact as “nations”, surely the men and women at the highest positions of US political power and advisement knew this as well. To believe otherwise is a sure indication of their lack of sanity.”

Guest Contributor – War Pig – War, Up Close & Personal

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A lot of real action with elite units is up close and personal. You have to be able to look them in the eye and kill them. You can smell and almosr taste their adrenaline, their fear, their natural body odor. You have to become almost animalistic in your fury. Killing up close is killing well when done correctly. They gift you with their lives and you can almost see the other side in their eyes but they glaze over too soon. One thing, if you ever kill up close as with a knife, you, yourself will never fear death again and that is the greatest gift.

A Handy Primer on Nuclear Weapons

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If you’ve got an hour and a half and want to find out exactly what a three stage thermonuclear weapon is and how it works or whether a neutron bomb was really invented to empty a city of humans but leave the buildings intact then this guide might interest you.  I’d always wanted to know how a cobalt bomb worked.

I watched it with great interest.  I learned a number of things that I hadn’t known.  For instance, in a multi-megaton bombardment of a city very few of the deaths will be by radiation poisoning.  The fireball and blast wave will kill mostly everyone who would have received a fatal dose of primary radiation from the fission and fusion neutrons and gamma radiation.  and the fallout will be dispersed into the stratosphere by the mushroom cloud for the whole world to enjoy later.  And I didn’t realize that hydrogen bombs were filled with styrofoam.  Don’t tthese monsters know how environmentally unfriendly styrofaom is?