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Centrist Committee posted:why are you using “we” here, you and I have nothing to do with the machinations of the imperial war machine nothing said in this thread, isn’t something I’ve heard either from other officers or while I was at the academy literally as a class discussion topics. like the book gradenko is going through was an assigned reading lol. a fair bit of the thread discussion is along US military internal heterodox lines of argument. and lol if you are a US citizen it’s we. and this world doesn’t have innocents period. existing bloodies all hands.
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Jan 14, 2022 19:58
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Ardennes posted:Also, “we” and “our” are grammatically correct in those two instances. Bar Ran Dun posted:and lol if you are a US citizen it’s we language is political, it's a little awkward at first but you don't have to use possessive pronouns when discussing the evils of the US
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Jan 14, 2022 20:07
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Centrist Committee posted:language is political, it's a little awkward at first but you don't have to use possessive pronouns when discussing the evils of the US If you are a US citizen (obviously not everyone is etc), I think it is necessary to own up to it even if you oppose it. We have lived a standard of living dependent on treasure from abroad, it isn’t really possible to sweep it under the rug at this point. Every time you take apart of the political process and vote you put a stamp of approval on the system as a whole.
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Jan 14, 2022 20:11
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Ardennes posted:If you are a US citizen (obviously not everyone is etc), I think it is necessary to own up to it even if you oppose it. We have lived a standard of living dependent on treasure from abroad, it isn’t really possible to sweep it under the rug at this point. I absolve you of your sins, my child. Go forth and denounce empire, free of the yolk of obligation to confess complicity!
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Jan 14, 2022 20:27
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the author of that technowar book did a public access tv interview to promote the book and this is an interesting watch https://youtu.be/lFvcuuS5eUI
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Jan 14, 2022 20:32
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Bar Ran Dun posted:and lol if you are a US citizen it’s we. and this world doesn’t have innocents period. existing bloodies all hands. troop brain. everyone’s a bad guy that’s why we had to gun down this village
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Jan 14, 2022 20:56
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Centrist Committee posted:language is political, it's a little awkward at first but you don't have to use possessive pronouns when discussing the evils of the US yes it is, and at the very least I do tho.
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Jan 14, 2022 21:08
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indigi posted:troop brain. everyone’s a bad guy that’s why we had to gun down this village no. only naive idealists think they are innocent. it’s kindof the biggest tell for that.
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Jan 14, 2022 21:23
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yep
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Jan 14, 2022 21:24
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You can only win a war, if you know the win condition. Eg. for North Vietnam it was national independence and unification of the country. What could it have been for USA? How would they know that they have won?
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Jan 14, 2022 21:25
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Centrist Committee posted:I absolve you of your sins, my child. Go forth and denounce empire, free of the yolk of obligation to confess complicity! 
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Jan 14, 2022 21:28
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Fish of hemp posted:You can only win a war, if you know the win condition. The US wins by keeping post-colonial states broken up indefinitely. We only gave up on South Vietnam because it was too obviously a lost cause.
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Jan 14, 2022 21:31
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Centrist Committee posted:language is political, it's a little awkward at first but you don't have to use possessive pronouns when discussing the evils of the US that's why i never ever called trump "our president" because he's not MY president #stillwithher
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Jan 14, 2022 21:42
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Trabisnikof posted:that's why i never ever called trump "our president" because he's not MY president #stillwithher imagine having a parasocial attachment to the us president lol
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Jan 14, 2022 22:11
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:The Fulda Gap was the right place to anticipate confrontation with the Warsaw Pact for all sorts of geographical reasons. There's no way for instance that anybody was going to be doing amphibious exercises in the Arctic or the Pacific, without even knowing who could win the naval war. Central Asia was a non-starter because the terrain is too difficult for large scale operations. The rest of the "Iron curtain" in Europe wouldn't work for the same reasons. The relatively flat terrain of Northern Germany was the only way to go for a big conventional war. It just smacks of this is the most obvious place for the Soviets to attack so it must be there, kind I'd like all the Nazis thinking oh no the Allied invasion has to come around Calais in France and oh Normandy must be a distraction, well into June 1944. The North German Plain is yeah the only way Soviet and NVA forces were going to cross into West Germany to fight the Brits, but America focusing exclusively on the Fulda gap in the South seems like maybe they picked the spot they wanted the Soviets to actually invade from and built every assumption around that without ever thinking that the a Soviets might not want to do what was so obviously expected of them. I'm sure NATO being loaded with the losers who got their poo poo wrecked by the Soviets didn't play into that at all
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Jan 14, 2022 23:35
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KomradeX posted:It just smacks of this is the most obvious place for the Soviets to attack so it must be there, kind I'd like all the Nazis thinking oh no the Allied invasion has to come around Calais in France and oh Normandy must be a distraction, well into June 1944. The North German Plain is yeah the only way Soviet and NVA forces were going to cross into West Germany to fight the Brits, but America focusing exclusively on the Fulda gap in the South seems like maybe they picked the spot they wanted the Soviets to actually invade from and built every assumption around that without ever thinking that the a Soviets might not want to do what was so obviously expected of them. I'm sure NATO being loaded with the losers who got their poo poo wrecked by the Soviets didn't play into that at all Anywhere else the Soviets could've attacked would've been across mountains, and that's not happening. It's not like an Ardennes situation where the French thought it was literally impossible to drive tanks through the forest, it's that mountainous terrain is too defensible, and there's not enough room for maneuvering.
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Jan 14, 2022 23:38
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Anywhere else the Soviets could've attacked would've been across mountains, and that's not happening. It's not like an Ardennes situation where the French thought it was literally impossible to drive tanks through the forest, it's that mountainous terrain is too defensible, and there's not enough room for maneuvering. That's a fair point, going to be pretty tough to get a tank division over a mountain
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Jan 14, 2022 23:42
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it seems like a dumb thing from both sides. a conventional European war was never in the cards
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Jan 15, 2022 00:44
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indigi posted:it seems like a dumb thing from both sides. a conventional European war was never in the cards Conventional war is a step on the path of escalation. There needs to be a conventional war first to justify a nuclear exchange.
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Jan 15, 2022 02:34
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weren't there lots of West German defensive deployments on the north German plain, too? fulda gap was just where the us troops were stationed so it got the Anglosphere spotlight
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Jan 15, 2022 03:38
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Aglet56 posted:weren't there lots of West German defensive deployments on the north German plain, too? fulda gap was just where the us troops were stationed so it got the Anglosphere spotlight and also British, but yes 
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Jan 15, 2022 03:59
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https://twitter.com/StevenBeynon/status/1481643227715276807 no one has told texas that they should always be paying their troops huh
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Jan 15, 2022 04:26
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"always pay your troops" is like rule #1 in how not to collapse your state
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Jan 15, 2022 04:28
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StashAugustine posted:"always pay your troops" is like rule #1 in how not to collapse your state to be fair the mutiny of the texas state guard would be the most ineffectual revolt in the history of militaries
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Jan 15, 2022 04:31
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Conventional war is a step on the path of escalation. There needs to be a conventional war first to justify a nuclear exchange. Don't need to justify anything if everyone is dead!
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Jan 15, 2022 10:36
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Aglet56 posted:weren't there lots of West German defensive deployments on the north German plain, too? fulda gap was just where the us troops were stationed so it got the Anglosphere spotlight
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Jan 15, 2022 11:05
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NVA: Gerade aus Fulda.
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Jan 15, 2022 11:27
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indigi posted:and even Iraq 2 went so poorly it led to ISIS Which destabilized Syria so working as intended imo.
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Jan 15, 2022 11:58
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Conventional war is a step on the path of escalation. There needs to be a conventional war first to justify a nuclear exchange. for sure but there's virtually no scenario where a conventional war in Germany wouldn't escalate within a day or two. it's just weird to plan for one as if it might begin and end without nukes flying. border skirmish with limited casualties sure, but actual factual war with armored companies advancing from either side? unless it's a cakewalk to Berlin NATO is gonna mash that launch button. I'd imagine that Moscow might have more restraint but if "tactical" US kt nukes come out who knows honestly
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Jan 16, 2022 00:15
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indigi posted:for sure but there's virtually no scenario where a conventional war in Germany wouldn't escalate within a day or two. it's just weird to plan for one as if it might begin and end without nukes flying. border skirmish with limited casualties sure, but actual factual war with armored companies advancing from either side? unless it's a cakewalk to Berlin NATO is gonna mash that launch button. I'd imagine that Moscow might have more restraint but if "tactical" US kt nukes come out who knows honestly I think that was kind of the point. Both sides came out of World War 2 with fully modernized militaries that ended up never being totally demobilized. The equipment and doctrine was all expecting a lightning fast war because of the scale of mechanization they were achieving. That means the most decisive phase of battle is the earliest stage, when most of your assets are going to get knocked out. Even if you're only looking at 2-5 days of combat before a nuclear exchange, you want to plan to win as decisively & as early as possible. Or if you weren't expecting to win on the ground like NATO did, you're trying to buy as much time as possible for a chance of de-escalation. Those attitudes came later though. American commanders were operating on nuclear supremacist delusions until well through the 60s and couldn't wait to start armageddon. They were planning to win up until the proliferation of thermonuclear weapons gave some perspective on the chances of "winning" any nuclear exchange.
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Jan 16, 2022 10:51
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as bad as the civilian leadership was at times during the cw, the military was frequently worse. There were really a lot of total lunatics running the asylum in Dexedrine induced psychosis
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Jan 16, 2022 20:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:my impression of the whole Fulda Gap thing was that NATO ground forces were always weaker than the nominal/predicted Warsaw Pact offensive force, and that they were designed to be deliberately be like this, such that they'd be overrun, which justifies the use of tactical nuclear weapons to stop the Russian tanks, but in the knowledge that use of tactical nukes would develop into escalations that go all the way up to MAD, and that the Soviets knew this, and it turns into a version of interlocking MAD all by itself: if you cross into West Germany, you will beat us, then we will nuke you, and you will nuke us back, and the world ends Its called a "plate glass wall" and its been our strategy in Korea for a very long time. All the US military stationed there would be wiped out by the initial exchange, same with the NK side. Then you can point to little johhny, the American Patriot who died for Our Freedom, as justification for nuclear exchange, without the cost of actually building and maintaining an even more robust conventional army.
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Jan 16, 2022 22:31
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Can someone explain the special forces tier one operator space marine fetish please? I recall this particular time where a commonwealth doctrine following line infantry regiment straight up smoked a US trained special forces unit in terrain that special forces were supposed to be dominant in. Hell even in pop history books like charlie wilson's war the US brain trust realised that the Soviets using special forces in regular firefights was a huge L because the situation had become too desperate. Smash cut to the entire post 9/11 world and you have so many special forces units running around and creating their own cult following and are returning home to be giga rightwing cranks.
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Jan 16, 2022 22:48
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I’m looking forward to betraying the US and joining China at literally the first opportunity
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Jan 16, 2022 23:00
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Tankbuster posted:Can someone explain the special forces tier one operator space marine fetish please? I recall this particular time where a commonwealth doctrine following line infantry regiment straight up smoked a US trained special forces unit in terrain that special forces were supposed to be dominant in. Hell even in pop history books like charlie wilson's war the US brain trust realised that the Soviets using special forces in regular firefights was a huge L because the situation had become too desperate. Smash cut to the entire post 9/11 world and you have so many special forces units running around and creating their own cult following and are returning home to be giga rightwing cranks. It's a combination of the US entering forever war with insurgencies all around the globe and the various services wanting to be relevant in the apparent future of no more conventional wars. Small units that can be deployed everywhere and can ideally also punch above their weight are more ideal for this because there's less political hassles, less logistical requirements, and less manpower requirements compared to a standard divisional deployment. Basically the same reason why the US moved to all the BCTs and slashed their artillery force to the bone: it's easier to use for forever wars with insurgents.
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Jan 16, 2022 23:03
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Who Is Paul Blart posted:I’m looking forward to betraying the US and joining China at literally the first opportunity they will be greeted as liberators
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Jan 16, 2022 23:04
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I'm pretty sure that was literally the plan for everyone NATO Solider in West Berlin, fight to the death for nothing
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Jan 16, 2022 23:42
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Those delusions weren't really at play in Vietnam though. The US military is just fundamentally not capable of fighting a political conflict because it's institutionally "depoliticized" at the national level. It's an organization designed to defeat foreign armies whenever the government tells them to and that's it. There's no room for the USM to have a political doctrine because that leaves the door open for the military to challenge civilian authority. i mean the Ethiopian army under the DERG was one of the most politicized armies in history, and yet it constantly kept losing to guerrilas.
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Jan 17, 2022 00:02
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Tankbuster posted:Can someone explain the special forces tier one operator space marine fetish please? I recall this particular time where a commonwealth doctrine following line infantry regiment straight up smoked a US trained special forces unit in terrain that special forces were supposed to be dominant in. Hell even in pop history books like charlie wilson's war the US brain trust realised that the Soviets using special forces in regular firefights was a huge L because the situation had become too desperate. Smash cut to the entire post 9/11 world and you have so many special forces units running around and creating their own cult following and are returning home to be giga rightwing cranks. movies and video games and hero worship
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Jan 17, 2022 00:03
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A Bakers Cousin posted:movies and video games and hero worship take out the air support and you are left with an inflated ego that won't last an hour against run of the mill chinese police
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Jan 17, 2022 01:26
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