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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25019 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.

There are rules of engagement that are to ensure a country does not win the tactical battle and thereby lose the propaganda war (see Vietnam, and being currently attempted by Israel in Gaza).

And then there are rules of engagement that are simply ass-covering for the REMFs who ordered the operation to begin with (see Afghanistan, Iraq).

And finally, there are rules of engagement for powers who follow Machiavelli's advice to kings (see all sides of WWII, the Mongols under Ghenghis and Kublai Khan, and Rome at its peak).

War is a terrible thing. The modern ideal is that it is to be "civilized" by more humanitarian rules of engagement, but I'm not sure this is true. What I am sure is true is that the current blend of caregory 1 and 2 RoEs used by the US manages to be about the worst of all possible worlds.

It seems to me the attempt to civilize war leads to incomplete victory leading to renewed tensions years down the line.

Unlike the famously complete victory in WW1? Or perhaps the famously civilized WW2?

You've reached a level of shitpost where I can't tell if you're ironically saying that WWII was civilized or sarcastically implying that it was not. Would you mind clarifying that a bit so that I can understand you better?

I wouldn’t call it a shitpost. I did screw up my phrasing. Mea culpa.

What I wanted to say was that the textbook “incomplete victory” had already discarded civility. The starvation, reprisals, and general weaponized disrespect only led to an even less civilized conflict.

I don’t believe WW2 was civilized, or that its atrocities can be credited with the completeness of the subsequent peace. @zeke5123a

Seemed to work vis-à-vis Japan

Correlation, causation.

We suborned Japan because we were able to completely restructure their government and economy. How we got to that point was much less important. If we’d applied a Treaty of Versailles, they’d have been back at our throats in twenty years, probably as a Soviet satellite.

I appreciate the clarification.

Is your argument that Dresden or Hiroshima were civilized?

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