This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
From what I've seen, the episodes on their platform are way darker and more serious. Also the people that leave comments there tend to seem very serious like "yell yeah! Truth! That's how it was!" So I'm a little concerned that maybe most of our military vets wish the war in Afghanistan was much more violent...
There's definitely strong selection bias in effect. The people who aren't hardcore fans are almost certainly not paying money for access.
Funnily enough, I personally think that the war in Afghanistan wasn't violent enough. If you can't solve your problems through violence, you're not applying enough violence. The American brass thought you could win against an insurgency by being nice, and that never gets you anywhere I'm afraid.
Well, i'm not a "hardcore fan" but I somehow found the change to pay $6 for access to non-censored, full episodes. other comments say the same thing.
I think you're just too young and underenformed about the war in Afghantistan. We weren't "nice". We stayed there 20 years killing a ton of civilians. It makes WW2 look nice by comparison.
edit: sorry that came across too harsh. I didn't mean to insult you. I just disagree with your opinion about the war in Afghanistan.
This is a bit extreme, even if you were going for hyperbole. I mean, WW2 ended with the US dropping two nukes on Japan lol
Let me rephrase that for you, @Skibboleth, @quiet_NaN and @JTarrou. (Yeah I should have written that differently. I was wrong.)
Since this post was inspired by a TV show, I was mostly thinking of the stuff that happened in the show. Which yeah, I know, isn't real, but it seems to portray itself as "based on true events" or something. All the episodes have comments saying things like "Scary how accurate this is" or "It's like I'm home again". The audience seems to really love it. If the events didn't happen, they wish it did.
Obviously nothing can compare to the sheer overall size of WW2. 50million+ dead is just mind boggling. But the US at least didn't have to do much counter-insurgency there. The places we occupied were pretty friendly to us. The strategic bombing, while it kill a lot of civilians, was at least nominally aimed at military targets and done in an impersonal way.
The stuff they show in "A Grunt's Life" is just straight-up war crimes. Any court would agree. Bombing Nagasaki certainly wasn't nice, but it was legal. This stuff would just get you sent to prison. That's the sense in which I think it's worse.
edit: here's another interesting comment i just saw on an episode from a paid subscriber: "Gotta love War Crimes 2/7. Some of the guys who were around for the 08 deployment told us how fucked up it was. Guys from 3/7 and 3/4 called us War Crimes when I was in the unit from 2012-2015." Granted just some anonymous internet comment, but... it raises my suspicions.
I think you might be doing a little WWII-washing of what wars are like. Everything you described seeing in A Grunt’s Life is stuff that occurred in WWII, and received much more of a wink and a nod or a slap on the wrist at the time. On the topic of body part collections, in 1944 a sitting U.S. Representative (D - Penn) presented President Roosevelt with a letter opener made from a Japanese soldier’s arm. That’s way higher level than an Lt hiding his tooth collection or whatever.
Fair enough! But those acts were also condemned at the time by most people. And it's not like they helped the war, they actually made things much worse by making the Japanese public more angry. Even the Greeks in the Iliad understood that desecrating dead bodies was not justified.
I think what you are seeing is less a difference in kind between WW2 and WiA and more that a) the memory of WW2 is heavily sanitized b) there are marked values dissonances within American subcultures.
In a modern context, compare and contrast reactions to, e.g. the Haditha Massacre and the Eddie Gallagher case. Nobody was like "actually the Haditha Massacre was good". There were excuses and denials, but approximately nobody was pro-massacring civilians. By contrast, the Gallagher case was divisive. Plenty of people were appalled, but no small number took the view that Gallagher did nothing wrong. Sure, he murdered a prisoner and desecrated the body, but the victim was ISIS so the whole thing was really an act of justice.
To be honest, I had actually never heard of either of those cases. Maybe I heard about them in passing but I don't remember. So I assume the general public was the same. They're both bad, but not enough to be an extended major news story in the US.
Reading up on it now... they seem pretty similar? In both cases you've got enlisted men going way over the line, committing multiple war crimes. Murdering civilians and prisoners. They're caught red-handed, and either let off with a warning or given only a minor punishment. I... don't see how that's supposed to make me feel good? It seems like the military has learned nothing from its 20 years in the war on terror and is still playing coverup to people who would have been hung in the Nuremburg trials.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link