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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27386 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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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).

fighting in Russia during Winter

Napoleon and Hitler failed, but the Mongols, Swedes, Poles and Imperial Germans all won.

Still have to assume it was a miserable affair for all involved.

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