The US will lose WW3

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > The US will lose WW3

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

mawarannahr posted:

I too support a less disciplined military whose air and space forces are addled by hourly bong hits
https://twitter.com/cnasdc/status/1623729443612024837

https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/stop-holding-recruits-to-one-size-fits-all-standards

I have an upcoming work thing on the book Rethinking Military Professionalism for the Changing Armed Forces, and the gist is contemporary western militaries are not willing to do the things people actually want, curb abuse, make the environment less hostile to women, better pay, housing, long term enlistments, so they are turning to this instead. They know what they have to do, they just don't want to, essentially. Also, modern liberal societies - and this was singled out in a chapter about Denmark - have voided nearly all social contracts and are ideologically hostile to the remaining ones, and that means most people do not want to kill or die for them. If there "is no such thing as a society", no nation that the state is obligated to, then the state cannot engender any kind of loyalty in return.

Neoliberals painted themselves into a corner.

# ? Feb 9, 2023 20:57

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# ? May 23, 2024 11:50

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

I feel like "career soldiers aren't all louts and brigands" is a pretty recent idea tbh, especially if you discount military aristocrats talking about themselves

# ? Feb 9, 2023 20:59

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

StashAugustine posted:

I feel like "career soldiers aren't all louts and brigands" is a pretty recent idea tbh, especially if you discount military aristocrats talking about themselves

The point of the Long Service Professional enlistment was to turn the scum of the gutters and emptied countryside into people who shared the values of the British middle class, and while short timers were always considered louts and brigands, the long serving NCOs who were supposed to impose order on them weren't. Even a corporal and his family were held to pretty high standards by the Mid-Victorian, he was expected to move out of barracks, maintain a stable home etc.

But that kind of middle class culture and sensibility all requires the commensurate income to make it possible in the first place.

# ? Feb 9, 2023 21:03

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

they should fill the ranks of the engineering corps with laid-off software engineers whose expertise lies in making metaverse demos and GitHub Actions

# ? Feb 9, 2023 21:16

Cao Ni Ma: May 25, 2010

I dont know why you'd need military coders/ data engineers / scientist or whatever in uniform. These are garrison jobs, you can fill them with DoD civilians and they wont have to meet any of the military physical standards.

Yes, some IT positions will be required in the field for maintainer/operators of information systems. And those are already fielded and I dont think they are having any particular retention issues than the other branches arent also going through right now.

# ? Feb 9, 2023 21:25

Hubbert: Mar 25, 2007; At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

guidoanselmi posted:

Understanding how an AIM-9 Sidewinder works is a perfect STEM project for HS thou. Rocket Eq, control loop algorithm, IR sensor, actuators, integration and test - every child should have access to AIM-9s.

The United States distributes missiles to schools across the world from time to time - just not the ones in America.

# ? Feb 9, 2023 21:46

Weka: May 5, 2019; Can't post for 15 hours!

Frosted Flake posted:

They permanently effected the number of Chinese Malays and their place in society, so I'm going to guess "yes".

Doesn't seem to have done the former although I guess you could make an argument it had something to do with declining birth rates, but that's a very different claim to saying they were all killed.

# ? Feb 9, 2023 21:54

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Frosted Flake posted:

Neoliberals painted themselves into a corner.

it is more than neoliberalism.

Look at the French Revolution:
�The National Assembly abolishes the Feudal system entirely.�

What is that essentially? it is the voiding of all social contracts. the peasants broke in and literally burned them. this is what modernity/ capitalism does . it breaks myths of origin.

the bourgeoise revolutions took those broken myths and rearranged their parts. into other myths like nation states. those rearranged myths are what is being broken now. and they aren�t currently being rearranged into anything else.

# ? Feb 9, 2023 21:54

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

StashAugustine posted:

I feel like "career soldiers aren't all louts and brigands" is a pretty recent idea tbh, especially if you discount military aristocrats talking about themselves

It definitely feels like a revision that came about after The Great War that got cemented by World War 2 with the whole citizen solider tbing that became part of the myth we built about why we are greater than the godless communists. That people joined the army out of self sacrifice rather than being gently caress ups with no other recourse

# ? Feb 9, 2023 22:16

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

If you're joining up for healthcare, education, and other perks, doesn't that make you a mercenary?

# ? Feb 9, 2023 22:50

Cuttlefush: Jan 15, 2014; gotta have my purp

skooma512 posted:

If you're joining up for healthcare, education, and other perks, doesn't that make you a mercenary?

by the laws of war and any conventional law or recognition, no. i think you kind of have to know what you're getting into to get the mercenary (pejorative) label. no noobs

# ? Feb 9, 2023 22:56

redneck nazgul: Apr 25, 2013

Cao Ni Ma posted:

I dont know why you'd need military coders/ data engineers / scientist or whatever in uniform. These are garrison jobs, you can fill them with DoD civilians and they wont have to meet any of the military physical standards.

Yes, some IT positions will be required in the field for maintainer/operators of information systems. And those are already fielded and I dont think they are having any particular retention issues than the other branches arent also going through right now.

it's more profitable to outsource to private contracting everything that isn't strictly limited to uniformed personnel. civilians count as a government function to do things contractors can't, but they still don't count as "uniformed" for certain purposes.

the ideal military organization is just enough military and civilians to cover those essential functions and then an army of 1099 contractors

# ? Feb 9, 2023 23:14

Filthy Hans: Jun 27, 2008; by Fluffdaddy
(and can't post for 10 years!)

Hubbert posted:

The United States distributes missiles to schools across the world from time to time - just not the ones in America.

hellfire missiles are just part of the curriculum in Afghanistan

# ? Feb 10, 2023 00:11

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Cuttlefush posted:

by the laws of war and any conventional law or recognition, no. i think you kind of have to know what you're getting into to get the mercenary (pejorative) label. no noobs

# ? Feb 10, 2023 03:45

Cuttlefush: Jan 15, 2014; gotta have my purp

25-year-old sergeant 3rd SFG.... mechanic? i mean yeah.

# ? Feb 10, 2023 03:56

yellowcar: Feb 14, 2010

mawarannahr posted:

trump telling john kelly that his son died in afghanistan for nothing, to his face, at his grave, on memorial day owned so hard

zero push back from kelly. none. lmao

# ? Feb 10, 2023 04:20

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

KomradeX posted:

It definitely feels like a revision that came about after The Great War that got cemented by World War 2 with the whole citizen solider tbing that became part of the myth we built about why we are greater than the godless communists. That people joined the army out of self sacrifice rather than being gently caress ups with no other recourse

A citizen soldier is, by definition, not a career soldier. Wasn�t there like a Kid Rock song about that?

To be more serious, this is what Canadian military historians call �The Militia Myth�. The Canadian government has always been loathe to spend on the military and a bit hostile to the institution (Britain had previously footed the bill before the 1840s) so they created a false historical memory of The War of 1812, Fenian Raids etc. to say that militiamen could reliably fight and win. In actuality, only British Regulars were worth a drat and the militia was comically poor at fighting and mostly a Scotch-Canadian social club.

In the Boer War and World Wars they went to war with militia, got clobbered in early battles, realized this, professionalized, (in the world wars conscripted and had a social crisis edging towards civil war) and then forgot it as quickly as humanly possible.

The Americans had the same problem. Minutemen? Trash, ran away, lost every battle. In 1812 the militias were garbage, their history falsified that, they want to Bull Run with Zouaves and New York Militia in bearskins, everybody had a bad time, large, centrally organized military. Rinse repeat.

A recent historian has demonstrated that in Athens, where a lot of Romantic era nostalgia for citizen soldiers come from, or is directed (whichever), the citizen hoplites were trash, didn�t practice, were considered talented if they could stay in a straight line and nearly all fighting was done by mercenaries, who being professional and fulltime were more effective by something like 8:1, terrified the citizen armies and so were the real military force.

An other recent historian demonstrates this is even true for Sparta, where the Spartan Army was mostly a social club / way to steadily reward male aristocrats with the (his words) �special delight� of pederasty, and so maintained social stability, but for real fighting mercenaries were all that mattered and not the ritually hazed and abused, psychologically scared, citizens.

Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 06:31 on Feb 10, 2023

# ? Feb 10, 2023 06:17

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

Frosted Flake posted:

A citizen soldier is, by definition, not a career soldier. Wasn’t there like a Kid Rock song about that?

To be more serious, this is what Canadian military historians call “The Militia Myth”. The Canadian government has always been loathe to spend on the military and a bit hostile to the institution (Britain had previously footed the bill before the 1840s) so they created a false historical memory of The War of 1812, Fenian Raids etc. to say that militiamen could reliably fight and win. In actuality, only British Regulars were worth a drat and the militia was comically poor at fighting and mostly a Scotch-Canadian social club.

In the Boer War and World Wars they went to war with militia, got clobbered in early battles, realized this, professionalized, (in the world wars conscripted and had a social crisis edging towards civil war) and then forgot it as quickly as humanly possible.

The Americans had the same problem. Minutemen? Trash, ran away, lost every battle. In 1812 the militias were garbage, their history falsified that, they want to Bull Run with Zouaves and New York Militia in bearskins, everybody had a bad time, large, centrally organized military. Rinse repeat.

A recent historian has demonstrated that in Athens, where a lot of Romantic era nostalgia for citizen soldiers come from, or is directed (whichever), the citizen hoplites were trash, didn’t practice, were considered talented if they could stay in a straight line and nearly all fighting was done by mercenaries, who being professional and fulltime were more effective by something like 8:1, terrified the citizen armies and so were the real military force.

An other recent historian demonstrates this is even true for Sparta, where the Spartan Army was mostly a social club / way to steadily reward male aristocrats with the (his words) “special delight” of pederasty, and so maintained social stability, but for real fighting mercenaries were all that mattered and not the ritually hazed and abused, psychologically scared, citizens.

But it is that exact myth that whitewashes the reality. Especially to the public who only vaguely has the sword of conscription hanging over their heads so its all "Tbank You for your service" instead of realizing they're little more than a mafia enforcer with artillery. No offense

# ? Feb 10, 2023 06:50

Weka: May 5, 2019; Can't post for 15 hours!

Frosted Flake posted:

A recent historian
An other recent historian

If you could dredge their names from memory it's be much appreciated.

# ? Feb 10, 2023 06:59

Hubbert: Mar 25, 2007; At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Weka posted:

If you could dredge their names from memory it's be much appreciated.

# ? Feb 10, 2023 07:04

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Weka posted:

If you could dredge their names from memory it's be much appreciated.

Roel Konijnendijk, Donald Kagan, Gregory Viggiano, Myke Cole

KomradeX posted:

No offense

None taken, I think it�s a fair point. There�s a book about this in the Anglosphere countries but I can�t remember what it�s called for the life of me. The gist was it characterizes an �English speaking way of war� but is actually hugely detrimental militarily but very useful politically.

Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 09:17 on Feb 10, 2023

# ? Feb 10, 2023 09:13