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Boot camp is created to systematically break you down so you can be rebuilt to mindlessly follow orders and kill people.

I wouldn't really call that "badass" per se.

RETIRED.
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Mayonaise[/armory]
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Jerkonaise[/armory]

mindless drones who will do whatever someone else tells them are so badass and sexy snarf

We also aren't putting ourselves up as superior for having done military service.

And we didn't get all the perks associated with military service, not the least of which is a free ride through education.



Yes you did. You could have just said, "Oh well, I won't get what I want, but I'll do my duty anyway."

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Hold that candle to yourself.

ROFL

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Dvergar /
Quisling

That's pretty wise, Dvergar, but the thing is, we aren't making friends out of anyone, since our gestures are generally rebuffed as being mere self-interest or viewed as a sign of weakness. Mercy and compassion after you've ground your enemies under your heel works far better.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Because the heel grinding is working so well.

RETIRED.
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Mayonaise[/armory]
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Jerkonaise[/armory]

We haven't really tried to make friends out of anyone, we've simply bullied the world.

The quote was just one I liked and seemed appropriate. Realistically you can't and shouldn't befriend everyone, but "bomb first, questions are unpatriotic" isn't really working too well for us either.

Dvergar /
Quisling

It would be if we were grinding it, but we're not. We restrict ourselves, for good reasons like simple human decency and concern for the innocent, from bringing the fullness of our power to bear in a lot of the regions where we're flexing our muscles. We're not seeing the successes of the early-mid 20th century any longer because, starting with at least Vietnam, we've politicized our military endeavors instead of simply sending our forces in to kill people and break things. We have a fairly good history of cleaning up after ourselves when we're done, but we've come to confuse the cleaning up with the actual fighting and which of the two takes priority.

"Bomb first, questions are unpatriotic" is a simplistic rendition of modern history, but I'm of the opinion that actually killing crazy people that want to blow up other people has done a lot more to curb terrorism than the previous policies of treating terrorists as a law enforcement problem. WTC in 93 was followed by attacks on embassies and an assault on a military vessel (which was at least a legitimate military target) which in turn was followed by 9/11. When we finally got serious and started treating terrorism as a military/geopolitical problem instead of a criminal one, we had fewer attacks, and the few we did have were not successful.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Does "fairly good history" mean "Japan in 1945 and covering post-WW2 Europe in money because we were terrified of communists" or...

Because we failed hardcore at cleaning up after ourselves in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
Shuruppak Yuratuhl
Slaad Shrpk Breizh

So you are measuring our success as a country by how many other countries we've destroyed. And you're suggesting that we should spend a ridiculous amount of money on rebuilding these places after we've already spent a ridiculous amount of money destroying them. You're going to try and hold up post-ww2 as an example, but it should be fairly clear that the country/society/state neighborhood of Germany and Japan are quite different than that of Iraq or Afghanistan (or Vietnam, or Somalia). Even then our "just go kill everything" mindset didn't work in Korea, and look how well that turned out.

Not to mention you can't simply flatten a state because a non-national entity operates within it's borders. How would you feel if a fringe group killed a couple thousand over in China, and China decided the proper course of action was to declare total war on America? If you fought back it wasn't because you were defending yourself or your country, it was because you were a terrorist just like the ones that committed the act (no matter how despicable you may see them)



Terrorist attacks have increased many-fold since the "war on terror". Over fourteen thousand in 2005 alone sounds like they were pretty successful.

Dvergar /
Quisling

ITT: aestu talking about a free ride through education as if that's difficult to get through grants and scholarships.

anyone who thinks WW2 wasn't a good decision for the states to enter is a fool. germany and japan were unquivocably evil and would not have stopped until someone stopped them. There was no other decision to make here.

jubber is right about the fact that our military has been less effective because it has been hamstrung by politics. Not sending a lot of troops into laos and cambodia(though the VC and NVA had no problem using those countries to maneuver troops) did hurt us strategically speaking, and no mistake. I'm not saying we should have napalmed the entire area, but there could have been something done better in that regard. I hear a lot of praise for Obama because of the pakistani raid that killed bin laden, and there was a lot of political fallout for it. i'm not saying that we should do shit like that all the time, but a decisive action like that can often achieve a much greater success than a massive incursion of some other kind, and at a much cheaper cost in life and materiel.

It's hard enough that a lot of people can't. Like Eturnal, apparently. As well as both you and I, fwiw.

Were we right to enter WWII? Derp. Better question. Were we right to enter WWI?

WWII was a conventional military conflict against another nation-state, not a band of criminals, and it was won by a citizen-army, not a professional army. There's zero commonality between WWII and the current situation, and people only like to link the two because they want to relive the perceived glory of WWII.

The whole "kill people and break things" doesn't work and never has. It didn't work in Roman times either. I'm willing to bet you have no clue what the Social War was. Go figure.

More immediately, Vietnam and Korea proved that doesn't work in the here and now either. Before America's time, Clausewitz said, "War is politics by other means". That's always been true, what matters isn't the killing people and breaking things, it's how you leverage that capacity. That's where the political side comes in. If the strategy stops there then the result will be defeat every time. Go read about the epilogue to the Peloponnesian War and what happened when the Spartans tried to take over Athens.

The military has been less effective because it's obsolete. The military is hamstrung by politics because they made the choice to be there because they didn't like the decisions civilian leadership made.



...which made the military action redundant and moot. Why not do that from square one? Could we have won WWII that way? No, because we were fighting a nation-state, not a gang of criminals.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Actually i did get a free ride to college.

Don't confuse bin laden's death with the end of this conflict, because it wasn't the final battle by any means.