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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   24859 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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For a somewhat lower stakes culture war topic:

A few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered that troops who need an exemption from shaving their facial hair for longer than a year should get kicked out of the service.

The culture war aspect here is twofold:

  1. "The Department must remain vigilant in maintaining the grooming standards which underpin the warrior ethos" - SecDef Hegseth
  2. Waivers are primarily issued to black soldiers (who are more prone to shaving-related skin issues)

To the first, I have never been particularly impressed by the "warrior" posturing. Most proponents of it that I've met been underwhelming human beings (at best), but that might be forgivable if it cashed out in superior performance. However, if the performance of the Russian Army (or the IJA or...) is any indication, boring competence and logistical capability seems to heavily outweigh posturing about warrior spirit when it comes to combat performance. (These are not strictly in tension, but leaning into "warrior ethos" seems to go hand in hand with disdain for unglamorous organizational work).

It's also not really clear to me how beards compromise warrior ethos (especially since vets seem to love them), but I've also never been in the military, so it's possible there's a piece of experiential knowledge I am missing.

To the second: while I strongly doubt this is a scheme to purge the military of black soldiers, I struggle to think of a practical justification for this policy. The traditional rationale is for gas masks, but that doesn't apply to special operations forces (who are presumably so high speed and low drag that they outrun the poison gas) and beard-compatible respirators already exist.

The beard issue is silly ;what's more concerning is Hegseth saying that rules of engagement are for pussies. He advocated for trump to pardon men like eddie gallagher and the blackwater operators at nisour square. At least for now the military is limited to blowing up narco boats and standing around federal buildings.

I agree rules of engagement are for pussies. The United States should stop with this half ass shit. The US can destroy civilizations with the power of suns. If the US decides that you are deserving of its wrath there is no resistance, there is capitulation or everyone dies. Of course, the standard for such attention should be astronomically high.

Er, are you advocating that the US should only do nothing or destroy its enemies utterly? And if the standard for utter destruction is astronomically high, doesn't that imply that most of the time the US should do nothing?

It seems to me that the United States needs to be able to exercise a wide range of levels of military force in order to compel its enemies, including both the extremely high (destroying civilisations with the power of suns) and the moderate to low. As in Starship Troopers:

“Something still troubling you? Speak up. That’s what I’m here for, to answer your questions.”

“Uh, yes, sir. You said the sentry didn’t have any H-bomb. But he does have an H-bomb; that’s just the point. Well, at least we have, if we’re the sentry… and any sentry we’re up against is likely to have them, too. I don’t mean the sentry, I mean the side he’s on.”

“I understood you.”

“Well… you see, sir? If we can use an H-bomb—and, as you said, it’s no checker game; it’s real, it’s war and nobody is fooling around—isn’t it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed… and even losing the war… when you’ve got a real weapon you can use to win? What’s the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?”

Zim didn’t answer at once, which wasn’t like him at all. Then he said softly, “Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.”

Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, “Speak up!”

“I’m not itching to resign, sir. I’m going to sweat out my term.”

“I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn’t really qualified to answer… and one that you shouldn’t ask me. You’re supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?”

“What? Sure—yes, sir.”

“Then you’ve heard the answer. But I’ll give you my own—unofficial—views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?”

“Why… no, sir!”

“Of course not. You’d paddle it. There can be circumstances when it’s just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him… but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing… but controlled and purposeful violence. But it’s not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It’s never a soldier’s business to decide when or where or how—or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people—‘older and wiser heads,’ as they say—supply the control. Which is as it should be. That’s the best answer I can give you. If it doesn’t satisfy you, I’ll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can’t convince you—then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.”

Is any level of force short of complete annihilation 'half ass shit'? Do we need to either cut the baby's head off, or let the baby act out for as long as it likes?

Spanking is appropriate for a baby, community service is appropriate for a juvenile delinquent, and beheading is appropriate for a hardened, unrepentant public enemy.

Nobody thinks we should instantly behead babies or lunchtime rowdies, but many people think we should stop handing out spankings and community service to hardened, unrepentant public enemies.

Apparently zoink does.

As I indicated in my response to him, it's to illustrate a point in principle. Sure, the US military has often been used badly. The US military's record over the last thirty years is pretty darn embarrassing. The point I am making, citing Heinlein, is that past incompetence notwithstanding, it is both necessary and good for the US military to be able to deploy a wide range of levels of force, as appropriate for many different mission profiles.

I read @zoink's comment as calling for decisive action and full commitment. That does not require using maximum violence in all cases.

Well, he said, "The United States should stop with this half ass shit... If the US decides that you are deserving of its wrath there is no resistance, there is capitulation or everyone dies."

I asked a clarificatory question: "Er, are you advocating that the US should only do nothing or destroy its enemies utterly? And if the standard for utter destruction is astronomically high, doesn't that imply that most of the time the US should do nothing?"

His response to this question was: "Errr... um...errr.... ummm....uuuuur... Correct."

I took that to mean that, yes, his position is as I described it - that the US should either do nothing, or completely annihilate its enemies with nothing in between.

I believe that the point in the Starship Troopers passage, and the metaphor of punishing a baby by cutting its head off, is an effective argument against that position. Sometimes a military should enact a level of destruction that stops somewhere short of "everyone dies" (zoink's words) or "utter destruction" (mine), because the policy goals that a nation might wish to achieve with military action might be, well, something other than complete annihilation of its foes.

Now to his credit zoink seems to back off from his statement and say that he was using bombastic rhetoric. I'm not entirely sure what his actual position is - he rejects the child comparison but concedes he was using extreme rhetoric, but does he concede the actual point of controversy, that is, that some mission profiles call for less than maximum force, and that is desirable for the US military (or any military) to be able to exert controlled force for limited effect? But I stand by what I said as being a reasonable interpretation of what he had said at the time.

This is a more correct reading, but I was being bombastic and did reference nukes and killing "everyone". I completely deny the comparisons to disciplining children. The military breaks things until whatever the state wants to happen happens. Deploying the military should involve wailing and gnashing of teeth as we beg God for forgiveness for what we may do.

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