faceh
2mo ago
I've never seen anything to suggest that the Vietnam War was particularly horrible by the standards of war; it suffers primarily from the way it is seen as a bad war (in much the same way as WW1 is seen as far worse than WW2).
I think fighting wars in humid Tropical Jungles so thick you have to use toxic chemicals and Napalm just to clear some space just sucks in a way that fighting in deciduous forest or even straight desert just doesn't. Maybe edged out by fighting in Russia during Winter.
The short campaign season limited the severity of individual campaigns but also meant that it was incredibly hard to deliver a decisive blow before your opponent got winter and spring to recover. They were also plagued by disease that killed far more soldiers than battle.
Yep, but that's arguably just a feature of the times, not specific to the warfare. Hell, the fact that the fighting WOULD have to pause for the seasons probably made it a little more bearable for the individual soldiers, as it placed a natural limit on how long they'd be deployed.
Now, of course, we have the capacity to engineer our own diseases to use as weapons... but we just kinda agree not to (or maybe we do anyway depending on which conspiracies you believe).
faceh
2mo ago
Yeah, I don't think there's any way I'd want to end up in the Russian Army in WWII, either.
Ironically if you chose the French in WWII you'd most likely either die in one of the early battles or be a POW or resistance fighter thereafter.
Not sure if that makes it better per se.
faceh
2mo ago
For a fun question I'd allow that decision.
If I wanted a serious though experiment: "You'll be reincarnated as a soldier in EACH side of the conflict you choose."
faceh
2mo ago
Yep.
All the worse because it inflicts pain on civilian population.
That said, it would also depend on the nature of the attacker, and whether you could expect decent treatment upon surrender.
The factor that really weighs against joining Medieval armies is the tortures one could end up in if captured by the other side. Although there's certainly evidence that we as humans haven't improved much in that regard.
I just watched a video on Vlad the Impaler and I can say that his existence ALONE is enough for me to not want to enlist to fight on EITHER side of the war with the Ottoman Turks in the mid to late 1400's.
The question as I intended it is approximately "manning a post in the physical location closest to the enemy and involved in combat such that the enemy does make occasional attempts to kill you."
And being fair, you also have to pick the war without being sure where you'd be stationed, precisely. WWII had so many theaters of operations you'd have to consider the pros and cons of each one before committing to signing papers and stepping in the time machine, as it could be anywhere.
My ultimate point is I think almost NOBODY would pick WWI as the one they'd suffer through if given the choice.
faceh
2mo ago
All true.
And why its fair to say Artillery is the modern day equivalent there.
You might still survive an Artillery barrage if you're in a heavily armored vehicle, but the existence of heavy artillery forever changed the tactics involved.
Obviously Cavalry was still used straight up into WWI itself, and flanking, exploiting weaknesses in the ranks and running down retreating enemies was still useful for a long time, but the days of 'individual glory' on the battlefield kinda ceased when massed projectiles are a risk.
faceh
2mo ago
Hah, that is a great way to look at it.
First movie especially.
But I'm imagining a film about a couple random Roman Legionaries or some privates in Napoleon's army as they're marching through Europe for like a week and just shooting the breeze along the way.
Of course that adaptation of Stephen King's The Long Walk just came out, but that's not quite on the theme I'm talking about.
faceh
2mo ago
I have read of that, and hence why it was valid strategy to burn your own fields while retreating.
I also read about, e.g. Alexander the Great's wars of conquest and the distances traveled and I gather that the greatest asset a soldier could have in those days was the ability to briskly walk for days on end and still be combat-effective after a bit of rest.
Are there any movies or T.V. shows that focus on depicting what it was like to just walk, walk, walk through slowly changing landscape on the way to a future battle?
faceh
2mo ago
Can imagine that getting frustrating for a bunch of guys who really just wanted to stab the enemy.
There is indeed something about drawn-out trench warfare that I find particularly distressing. Probably has something to do with one's fate feeling completely out of your own hands. Regardless of your skills as a warrior you're not really enhancing your own odds of survival since the thing that gets you won't be another dude, specifically, but something you never even saw coming.
Kinda like the Longbow hard-countering the armored knight. Now some illiterate peasant with overdeveloped back muscles can one-shot you after a couple days instruction.
Without that issue, I can sort of conceive of a war as banding together with your bros for an adventure and your odds of survival turning much more on your individual skills AND your ability to plan and effectively coordinate rather than luck of the draw.
faceh
2mo ago
There's a possible one I saw recently.
Surprise! Its just a more advanced artillery round.
Less a 'countermeasure' to drones and more a way to delete any locations it might be possible to launch or pilot drones from.
faceh
2mo ago
Hundred Years War
Funny enough interspersed with truce periods.
And the black death, which wiped far more than the actual war itself could ever hope to.
And yeah there were also long-ass crusades with similar death counts. BUT.
Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?
This might actually be a decent Friday Fun thread topic. "Assume you're drafted into a 5 year stint in the military, and will be spending the duration on the front line, which you cannot desert but can be KIA. which long war in history would you prefer to end up fighting in?
Right, the two world wars basically squeezed all the remaining romanticism out of warfighting. Vietnam crapped on whatever was left. There hasn't been a single piece of media anywhere that I'm aware of that made the fighting in Vietnam look 'honorable' or 'cool.' (note, I ascribe at least part of that to Western Cultural institutions moving left, but even nonfiction accounts make it sound horrible).
Even the video games about the Vietnam war don't try to romanticize it. WWII games do put some emphasis on heroics but don't undercut how horrible e.g. Storming the Beach at Normandy was.
A tiny bit got injected back in with the GWOT and rise of modern special forces doing surgical strikes with high-tech equipment against relatively inferior opponents. The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Franchise is still a best-seller, at least.
But the Ukraine conflict is NOT THAT. Fair to say that the thought of this precise kind of warfare: long battle lines, grinding attrition to occasionally advance a few hundred yards at a time, and almost all the actual fighting done via 'indirect' means, you'll rarely see the thing that kills you coming... it makes me sick. Inflicting this on your fellow human is probably, dare I say, irredeemable.
Now, I don't think medieval warfare was 'better'. Dying of sepsis or bleeding out face-down in a muddy field after you got gut-stuck with a polearm is not any more appealing. But at least many conflicts of that era got settled with a basic handful of battles and the occasional siege.
Industrialization of the affair just means its an unceasing nightmare.
faceh
2mo ago
(allegedly <5% of wounds are from gunshot)
Jesus Christ what a horrifying implication. I mean, being wounded by a a bullet is surely bad enough. But at least you can generally shoot back at the guy trying to kill you with a gun.
I'd guess, then, the bulk of wounds are from drones, bombs/artillery, maybe landmines, and armored vehicles? Or maybe wounds sustained when your armored vehicle gets blasted?
And this leads me to wonder about that phenomenon we saw way towards the beginning of the war: Western Volunteers who joined up for a chance to fight fascism. Ukraine created a foreign legion for those guys.
As of a year and a half ago it apparently wasn't going well. I daresay the early /r/volunteersForUkraine days where they hyped each other up to grab a rifle and go may have gotten numerous people killed for no major benefit.
Some deeper questions there. Is there any possible rational benefit for a Non-Ukrainian to join up in an actual combat role? If not... what's the remaining rational benefit of Non-Ukrainians continuing to fund the war effort?
I'm sure there's an object-level argument for it, still, but it probably relies on a black-swan type event that utterly breaks Russia's resolve all in one go, similar to that aborted Prigozhin coup.
faceh
2mo ago
Two months ago, Charlie Kirk was still alive.
Is Hanania still denying that left wing violence is a major, ongoing problem and instead claiming its dumb righties causing all the main issues we're seeing?
I'll go ahead and triple down on calling Hanania a hack.
faceh
3mo ago
Right, but if you ask the law to treat any intentional shove on concrete as possibly 'deadly force,' there's a can of worms to open right there.
Especially since its pretty unlikely that the dead guy intended to use deadly force when he shoved him. Yes, falling to the ground is a predictable outcome, but unless he was verbally shouting "I'm gonna kill you" or similar, its a bit harder to gauge whether he would have continued the attack after that point.
And more directly, if the guy shoved, then immediately turned and started walking away, surely you'd say its not justifiable to shoot him in the back, on the premise of "well, he could have turned around and came back!"
These are the things that make these fact situations messy.
faceh
3mo ago
Disagree, but in the direction, I think, you would agree with. Big dude comes over and the first thing he does is hard two hand shove. That's straight up an initiation of a fight with no pretense. If I'm on my ass after that and I have a pistol on me, I'm reaching, pulling, and firing.
Its an edge case. If the guy shoving was armed, I would probably be all-in on 'good shoot.'
I know from lots and lots of training that the person on the ground is at a massive disadvantage.
Problem is that a shove isn't really an escalation to deadly force. Just because you end up on the ground you're not really able to say "oh I thought he was going to kill me."
Else there'd be a "loophole" where one person could just lay down on the ground and shoot the other person b/c "what if he jumped on me."
Likewise, the guy who did the shove was seemingly coming to support his GF, where the shooter had actually started the conflict.
I do think that if I were in the shooter's shoes, I probably would not have drawn the gun on the spot, but I also could probably have gotten to my feet faster than that dude. I would not have instigated a conflict like that in the first place.
faceh
3mo ago
When I'm training people on the legalities of self defense, I still remind them that THEY have to determine where their personal 'line in the sand' is to determine when it is go time.
You draw it further from you, you'll probably respond more quickly and are more likely to survive, but risk legal consequences.
You draw it closer, you'll probably be legally safe but not before the attacker gets a couple blows in and thus you might end up dead if your reactions aren't quick.
No 'right' answer, but make sure you decide where your line is well in advance so you aren't thinking that over when the attack is already coming.
De-escalation IS a skill that carriers should try to develop... and of course noticing when someone you're talking to might be willing to throw hands over a 'friendly' argument.
This topic is near to my heart for a few reasons, also I'm a lawyer-brained Mottizen who has some criminal defense background so I've got EXTENSIVE working knowledge of this topic. Also:
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I was in high school in Florida when it passed the First modern "Stand Your Ground" Law in the country. Right around that time my class was doing a visit of the County Courthouse and we got to watch some court hearings and talk to the judge. The topic was broached and the Judge said, "Some people say it will turn Florida into the Wild West. I don't think that's going to happen. There will be some tough cases that will make a lot of people unhappy as we figure out the full implications of the law, but we'll get through it." Here's a great summary of how this law works in Florida if you're interested.
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The Gun Control debate led to a real political 'awakening' to for me when I actually dug into the stats and data and realized the entirety of the gun control narrative is mostly fabricated, with misleading definitions, cherrypicked examples, and reliance on emotional rhetoric over reliable data. Once that realization hit home, I suddenly saw that EVERYWHERE. People in this very thread are digging in and pointing out how that article twists the truth and obsfuscates reality.
Since that day back in High School I've seen Florida become a gun rights haven, with constitutional carry being implemented, and, most recently fully legal open carry. (I have yet to see anyone actually open carrying, I suppose at some point I might avail myself of the right).
Oh, and that infamous Anti-Riot law that offers legal protection if you intentionally run someone over during a riot. (emphasis on during a riot). Ever notice how you almost never see protestors pulling the 'road blocking' stunt in Florida? Hell, Florida barely got any rioting at all over the entirety of the George Floyd era.
I fully attribute that to "deterrence works" and "most protestors/rioters are rather cowardly." They won't try those tactics in a state where they are more likely to be prosecuted and/or shot for getting too uppity when there are ample states or cities with friendly laws and friendlier judicial systems to do them in.
Safe to say that whatever the stats are, politically the self-defense/gun rights trajectory in Florida has been starkly in favor of more protections in general. I don't think we're going back anytime soon.
However its not without its costs. "The Optimal Number of Wrongful Self-Defense Shootings is not zero." Florida also has its share of school shootings and such. I'm not particularly happy that David Hogg is now inflicted on the world.
I think that Judge nailed it back in 2005. Edge Cases keep popping up. Florida had the law in place for a while when the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin incident happened.
THAT was also a political awakening for me, seeing how much truth got twisted to make Zimmerman out to be an evilish white supremacist. You wanna know why I deeply mistrust mainstream media sources? This is why.
Interestingly, SYG laws didn't save him, he just got a straight up not-guilty verdict.
This does illuminate the difficulty that having a defense that, if proven, completely immunizes the Defendant from prosecution (that's how it works in Florida, anyway), when the actual facts on the ground can be messy.
THIS was one of the most hard-to-call cases that happened here. If you get shoved to the ground by an unarmed man... who then steps towards you with some unknown intent, are you justified in shooting him? Complicated here by the fact that the guy immediately started backing off once the gun came out. And that the guy on the ground was outnumbered. But he also technically initiated the conflict.
We discussed this one on the old Subreddit. (He was found guilty and went to prison). Also the victim had the last name McGlockton... and he was in fact shot with one. Truly tragic case of nominative determinism.
Then, however, there are some pretty freakin' clear situations where the law protects a legitimate 'Good Samaritan:'
Cop is literally getting beaten down in the middle of a highway, bystander approaches with a gun, issues a verbal warning, and then ends the threat efficiently. Look at how calmly that guy walks up to the scene. Just textbook.
This is also why the previous example isn't 'clear cut.' If someone knocks you to the ground then climbs on top to start beating you further, that IS a deadly threat. So once you've been knocked down, you better make the decision on whether to shoot or not before they get to you.
Allow me to point out some of the racial dynamics in the three above examples.
White/Hispanic Guy shoots Black Teen: Acquitted.
White Guy shoots Black adult (in front of his kid): Convicted, 20 years in prison.
Aaaand Black Guy Shoots Black guy (in defense of a cop, no less): not even charged, gets a free gun.
Yeah welcome to Florida its an interesting state.
I think the one thing that people probably do get wrong about the law here is that it DOES NOT let you draw your weapon as a deterrent alone (that's "Brandishing"), or fire a 'warning shot.' So on the margins people are probably a little too quick to deploy the weapon before its legally justifiable.
But the stats in Florida still tend to come down in favor of the law:
Concealed Carry permit holders (the ones who are most likely to carry a weapon) tend to commit very few crimes overall (some contest John Lott's data on this, but I've seen NO data rebut this). Florida has a LOT of those, somewhere around 15% of the adult population.
Violent Crime has been on a decline, starting right around 2007... after the law was implemented. We can get all tangled up on whether SYG is causing certain crimes to not get charged, but its still an absolute decline in your individual odds of being victimized.
Property crime has also been on the decline. Even in absolute numbers, as the population grows. Like I said, "deterrence works."
Do I attribute all these declines to SYG? NO. The decline also happened on a national level. However I just find that as good evidence that no, the liberalization of gun laws and extension of self defense laws isn't a driver of violence... SO WHY NOT LIBERALIZE AND EXTEND?
The reason I will defend "Stand Your Ground" laws even without considering firearm presence is that the alternative is batshit insane in my opinion. "Duty to Retreat" means if someone comes at you swinging (or shooting) your legal obligation is to flee as far as you're able to and if and only if fleeing is impossible may you respond with proportionate force.
I despise any law that places the 'benefit of the doubt' on the alleged attacker. Note, fleeing is usually your best option in the vast majority of cases. But a legal obligation to flee removes even the option to attempt to defend your community or family if you feel that is the best, most sensible option. Or most pro-social option overall. Remember my dawg up there who went out of his way to defend a cop.
Yes, its burdensome to have to actually dig into the facts and make a determination rather than just charging and punishing everyone involved. But I strongly, STRONGLY believe that if your government doesn't not trust its Law-Abiding, otherwise peaceable citizens to keep weapons on their person and deploy force on certain occasions, you don't really get to call yourself a 'free' state.
And on the flip side, I believe that any law-abiding citizen should be legally protected if they choose to step up in good-faith defense of their community. I think the equilibrium that you arrive at when any given citizen can and might deploy deadly force against any threats is inherently superior to the one arrived at when attackers can generally expect potential victims are unarmed and legally obligated to escape rather than fight back.
Philosophically, it is utter incoherent to me that the law would put the onus on the 'victim' to escape lest they be punished. This is such an asymmetry where, if someone acts to attack you and you have to actually have a mental process that goes "Oh gosh, I wonder if I have sufficient grounds to fight back" you're that much more likely to lose the fight.
Once again, if running is your first instinct, GREAT. But why should the victim be the one who has to consider all their options before they can respond with violence of their own? This inherently advantages the side that has already shown that they don't care about either the law or the wellbeing of others.
Its to the point where I'm reluctant to visit any places that don't have such protections enshrined in law because if I do get attacked, I'm going to defend myself if appropriate and I really don't want to get embroiled in a legal battle just because some other asshole took a swing or shot at me. If the KNOWN rule is "if you attack someone, they are legally entitled to fight back" then just assume that the attacker, if they're not completely incompetent, is accepting and consenting to the consequences of their actions.
Anyhow:
It's impossible to compile the stats to determine if that's actually the case or not, but the larger point remains; in a society with plunging basic trust, you're going to see levels of interpersonal violence spike.
You don't fix this by forcibly disarming everyone. Britain seemingly proving that, you fix it by helping move the equilibrium back towards high trust. Lowering the temperature. Trying to avoid divisive rhetoric and stoking paranoia, and for the love of God, reward and protect prosocial behavior!
I would argue that having robust weapons ownership protections and self-defense laws is a better foundation to build more trust on because its a selective pressure against those who would attack others and in favor of those who would defend their communities.
If every person who tries to fight back gets tried and some subset of them gets jailed, don't be surprised if on a genetic and cultural level, fewer and fewer people are willing to do that. Shoutout to Daniel Penny. And I don't think a population that is so helpless will survive any real crisis.
Dredged up one of my old Reddit comments where I say pretty much the same thing. I've held these positions for a while at this point.
faceh
3mo ago
and the cases of genuine self-defense seem to be massively outnumbered by instances of simian chest-beating that got out of hand or someone pulling a gun to win an argument.
Every stat I've read on the matter says the opposite, is the thing.
faceh
3mo ago
Yeah, I would agree that at this point the coverup is bigger than the 'crime.'
Its very interesting to me that Hasan immediately clocks that it will hurt his status if people realize he's shocking his dog as a training tool, but for some reason it never occurred to him not to use a dog as a prop in the first place.
He generally just comes across as a control freak (part and parcel with Narcissism) both for wanting his dog to be so strictly trained as to sit quietly in the backdrop of his stream, and for wanting everybody to believe he's NOT a control freak who would strictly train his dog to sit quietly in the backdrop. To the point where he's clearly pressuring/threatening others to bolster his position.
Noticing that this is the Orwellian sort of tactics that most leftist governments implement when they have power well, that's an exercise for the reader.
I daresay Mr. Piker is behaving Stalin-esque. He'd probably be having anyone who disagreed with his lie purged if he could.
faceh
3mo ago
The Modal congressperson seems completely and utterly happy to divvy most of their time between complaining and campaigning. Complaining that somehow the other side is rendering them completely unable to act, and then occasionally proposing a bill or voting on something to make the case for re-electing them anyway.
Partisan gridlock no longer seems like a bug, but a feature as far as they're concerned. Actually passing a bill tends to mean people blame you for outcomes in the bill, and you have to write your bill or amendments to it, read the bills proposed by others, and have orderly, informed debates on them.
Why not pass off the writing part to think tanks, the reading part to your staff, and then you can just yell your list of talking points as the 'debate,' and then vote the way you were always going to vote all along.
I think in my book, a 1% chance of being tortured using the most advanced methods a postclassical civilization can devise is intolerably high.
And there are a lot of slave or indentured servant jobs that were also pretty tortuous if only because they were indefinite in length. I wouldn't necessarily be unhappy with being forced to compete in Gladiatorial games, though.
To say nothing of being a Castrato or Eunuch. Not torture per se, but... ugh.
Although another 'fun' debate is how medieval torture compares to stuff the Drug Cartels do in modern day.
Anyway, I just want to stay far away from any battlefield where inflicting excess suffering on enemies is not tabooed harshly.
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