I have an idea. Why dont we tell the Syrians where we are going to hit them?
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Your take on Civil War fighting methods is entirely inaccurate. It wasn’t about honor; it was about the fact that guns at that time had no rifling and were completely inaccurate and unreliable. By standing together the way they did, there would at least be this huge volley of firepower all at once and more people would be hit at the other end of it as a result.[/quote]
I’m going to stay out of this pissing match and just swoop in to shoot down this one part of your post. The vast majority of soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War fought with rifled muskets that were very accurate and reliable. I hunt with a reproduction sometimes with which I have killed deer at well over 100 yards shooting off hand. There are reports of sharpshooters scoring kills at 600+ yards with standard issue rifles (see the excellent Model 1851 Enfield rifle). Casualties were horrible because technology usually outstrips tactics.
The main reason infantry fought in densley packed lines and squares for centuries was to protect them from calvary. No need to get into a long lecture on that.
But I agree with your overall point that honor is usually a concept used by those in power to send others off to die for causes they have no stake in.
[/quote]
Yep. One of the reasons the Civil War was so humongously big in the casualty department was that we were still fighting using Napoleonic tactics, but we had rifled guns, gatling guns, and much more accurate artillery. In short, it would have been the equivalent (very roughly speaking) of fighting trench warfare ala WW1 but using B-17 bombers instead of flimsy little biplanes incapable of meaningful ground bombardment. The technology was very far beyond what the tactics were drawn up to deal with.
[quote]rehanb_bl wrote:
whilst everyone is worried about a talentless sell out with shaky morals, US, UK and France are strongly suggestive of war in Syria. Where is the uproar? the US government funds the rebels who were reported to be the ones doing the chemical warfare and then goes around acting like a bastion of morality saying that the Assad regime is unacceptable.[/quote]
All I can say it’s this is going to be a big fucking mess no matter how we play this out. The Assad regime is bad and the opposition is bad. Our time to act has passed in the sense that supported what appeared to be the ‘good guys’ is no longer in play. There are no good guys, there are assholes and bigger assholes.
Now we have Al qauda and other various assortment of islamic assholes and you have Assad a supreme asshole.
Another thing I don’t get is why chemical weapons are the line in the sand? What about blowing up entire families with conventional weapons is better than gassing them? What about the murder of 100,000 people in various ways is less than gassing them?
What to do? I don’t know. I know a half assed effort is going to be a mess. Allowing Al qaeda to take over is not acceptable.
Dropping a few missiles on Assad is going to do what?
I don’t have any answers. I would say the dreaded nation building seems to me to be the only answer. We can’t let either side have control. Everybody hates us anyway, so we might as well set it up in a way that works best for us.
I think it’s to far gone to be salvagable any other way. Or we can let them duke it out, but at what human cost.
I really don’t know what the answer is?
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Quasi-Tech wrote:
DB, you asked a question, I’m answering it. The Geneva Convention was to provide protection for prisoners of war, to prevent torture, starvation, gas chambers, etc. You may not have an issue with a war being fought to win, but when women and children are murdered, raped, and then hung from the city walls and televised for the world to see, I think you might feel differently.
War is meant to be fought between men (and now women, yay equal rights/opportunity) and used to have a degree of honor. Look at how they used to fight in the Revolutionary / Civil War - stand in lines and fire into each other - not the best strategy, but it had to do with honor.
Sure, the US could win by many means. We have the tools, the technology (Starship Troopers obligatory, would you like to know more?), but we don’t use everything because our goal isn’t to eradicate a society, its to stop injustice. And the ends do not justify the means. There is reason for control of action, and as tempting as it sometimes may be, its a slippery slope that could lead to things like nuclear holocaust, epidemics, and genocide - which is why I’m guessing Jewbaca did the “…”[/quote]
First of all, I would not feel any differently if I saw women and children being hung from walls and all that shit. I don’t like war at all and that’s specifically because there are only two ways to fight it: the way the U.S. currently fights our wars (which drags things on longer than necessary and puts more of our troops in harm’s way as a result) and the way everyone who we fight seems to conduct war: to fight to win, inflict as much damage as possible, and end the enemy’s desire to fight. It’s ugly, period. I think that if we, the U.S., were to understand that war should ONLY be fought to win and not to maintain some bullshit form of “honor”, then we would realize that war is much more brutal and sadistic than the terms under which we currently conduct them. As a result, we might not get into nearly as many of these things if we understood that every time we DID go to war it would require us to stoop to barbaric levels, and perhaps even lower.
Your take on Civil War fighting methods is entirely inaccurate. It wasn’t about honor; it was about the fact that guns at that time had no rifling and were completely inaccurate and unreliable. By standing together the way they did, there would at least be this huge volley of firepower all at once and more people would be hit at the other end of it as a result. There’s no honor in warfare. That’s just some bullshit construct that people who start the wars but don’t fight in them perpetrated in order to make it easier to send men off to die for nothing. I’d rather be alive and without honor than dead and with honor. If you talk to people who have been to war, and I have many relatives who have fought in every major armed conflict since WWII and have talked with all of them about this very thing, they all understand that there are two goals: win and survive. Maintaining honor is for people who like to play video games and romanticize one of the ugliest, most vicious, brutal aspects of humanity.
We fight to stop injustice? Really? Are you THAT naive? We don’t fight to stop injustice at all. We fight to protect our interests, and justice isn’t one of them. If we fought to stop injustice, we wouldn’t be rattling the sabers every time Iran makes some technological nuclear breakthrough. We wouldn’t go into countries and tell them that we stand for democracy and all that fluffy bullshit and then turn around and back the powers that remove a democratically-elected leader/regime because we don’t like them (see: Iran in the early 1950’s, Egypt today, etc, etc).
There are definitely reasons to control our actions, but NOT when it comes to war. How would you like to be the one who tells the mothers of fallen American soldiers that their sons died halfway around the world because the U.S. had to control its actions, that we had to maintain honor, that maintaining a fucking IMAGE is more important than her kid’s life?
[/quote]
Well I agree with one point, you fight wars ruthlessly and destroy your enemy as quickly as possible. The ironly in that is that is the most human way in that you want to end the war as quickly as possible and half-assed measures draw wars out and lead to more bloodshed.
My Civil war guns were rifles, not muskets though some were used. Especially the much maligned malitia used rifles because they used guerilla tactics and fired at long distances. The lesser armed south ended up using muskets more that the better armed north, but muskets were not the predominant weapon in the civil war.
Had Lincoln gotten his way, it would have been a much shorter war, we wanted to arm all his troops with Spencer repeating rifles, but his secretary of war over road this decision and when with muzzled loaded single shooters. A fatal mistake on many levels.
The Revolution saw the predominance of muskets, the civil war was predominantly rifles. Large caliber rifles.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Quasi-Tech wrote:
DB, you asked a question, I’m answering it. The Geneva Convention was to provide protection for prisoners of war, to prevent torture, starvation, gas chambers, etc. You may not have an issue with a war being fought to win, but when women and children are murdered, raped, and then hung from the city walls and televised for the world to see, I think you might feel differently.
War is meant to be fought between men (and now women, yay equal rights/opportunity) and used to have a degree of honor. Look at how they used to fight in the Revolutionary / Civil War - stand in lines and fire into each other - not the best strategy, but it had to do with honor.
Sure, the US could win by many means. We have the tools, the technology (Starship Troopers obligatory, would you like to know more?), but we don’t use everything because our goal isn’t to eradicate a society, its to stop injustice. And the ends do not justify the means. There is reason for control of action, and as tempting as it sometimes may be, its a slippery slope that could lead to things like nuclear holocaust, epidemics, and genocide - which is why I’m guessing Jewbaca did the “…”[/quote]
First of all, I would not feel any differently if I saw women and children being hung from walls and all that shit. I don’t like war at all and that’s specifically because there are only two ways to fight it: the way the U.S. currently fights our wars (which drags things on longer than necessary and puts more of our troops in harm’s way as a result) and the way everyone who we fight seems to conduct war: to fight to win, inflict as much damage as possible, and end the enemy’s desire to fight. It’s ugly, period. I think that if we, the U.S., were to understand that war should ONLY be fought to win and not to maintain some bullshit form of “honor”, then we would realize that war is much more brutal and sadistic than the terms under which we currently conduct them. As a result, we might not get into nearly as many of these things if we understood that every time we DID go to war it would require us to stoop to barbaric levels, and perhaps even lower.
Your take on Civil War fighting methods is entirely inaccurate. It wasn’t about honor; it was about the fact that guns at that time had no rifling and were completely inaccurate and unreliable. By standing together the way they did, there would at least be this huge volley of firepower all at once and more people would be hit at the other end of it as a result. There’s no honor in warfare. That’s just some bullshit construct that people who start the wars but don’t fight in them perpetrated in order to make it easier to send men off to die for nothing. I’d rather be alive and without honor than dead and with honor. If you talk to people who have been to war, and I have many relatives who have fought in every major armed conflict since WWII and have talked with all of them about this very thing, they all understand that there are two goals: win and survive. Maintaining honor is for people who like to play video games and romanticize one of the ugliest, most vicious, brutal aspects of humanity.
We fight to stop injustice? Really? Are you THAT naive? We don’t fight to stop injustice at all. We fight to protect our interests, and justice isn’t one of them. If we fought to stop injustice, we wouldn’t be rattling the sabers every time Iran makes some technological nuclear breakthrough. We wouldn’t go into countries and tell them that we stand for democracy and all that fluffy bullshit and then turn around and back the powers that remove a democratically-elected leader/regime because we don’t like them (see: Iran in the early 1950’s, Egypt today, etc, etc).
There are definitely reasons to control our actions, but NOT when it comes to war. How would you like to be the one who tells the mothers of fallen American soldiers that their sons died halfway around the world because the U.S. had to control its actions, that we had to maintain honor, that maintaining a fucking IMAGE is more important than her kid’s life?
[/quote]
Well I agree with one point, you fight wars ruthlessly and destroy your enemy as quickly as possible. The ironly in that is that is the most human way in that you want to end the war as quickly as possible and half-assed measures draw wars out and lead to more bloodshed.
My Civil war guns were rifles, not muskets though some were used. Especially the much maligned malitia used rifles because they used guerilla tactics and fired at long distances. The lesser armed south ended up using muskets more that the better armed north, but muskets were not the predominant weapon in the civil war.
Had Lincoln gotten his way, it would have been a much shorter war, we wanted to arm all his troops with Spencer repeating rifles, but his secretary of war over road this decision and when with muzzled loaded single shooters. A fatal mistake on many levels.
The Revolution saw the predominance of muskets, the civil war was predominantly rifles. Large caliber rifles.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Quasi-Tech wrote:
DB, you asked a question, I’m answering it. The Geneva Convention was to provide protection for prisoners of war, to prevent torture, starvation, gas chambers, etc. You may not have an issue with a war being fought to win, but when women and children are murdered, raped, and then hung from the city walls and televised for the world to see, I think you might feel differently.
War is meant to be fought between men (and now women, yay equal rights/opportunity) and used to have a degree of honor. Look at how they used to fight in the Revolutionary / Civil War - stand in lines and fire into each other - not the best strategy, but it had to do with honor.
Sure, the US could win by many means. We have the tools, the technology (Starship Troopers obligatory, would you like to know more?), but we don’t use everything because our goal isn’t to eradicate a society, its to stop injustice. And the ends do not justify the means. There is reason for control of action, and as tempting as it sometimes may be, its a slippery slope that could lead to things like nuclear holocaust, epidemics, and genocide - which is why I’m guessing Jewbaca did the “…”[/quote]
First of all, I would not feel any differently if I saw women and children being hung from walls and all that shit. I don’t like war at all and that’s specifically because there are only two ways to fight it: the way the U.S. currently fights our wars (which drags things on longer than necessary and puts more of our troops in harm’s way as a result) and the way everyone who we fight seems to conduct war: to fight to win, inflict as much damage as possible, and end the enemy’s desire to fight. It’s ugly, period. I think that if we, the U.S., were to understand that war should ONLY be fought to win and not to maintain some bullshit form of “honor”, then we would realize that war is much more brutal and sadistic than the terms under which we currently conduct them. As a result, we might not get into nearly as many of these things if we understood that every time we DID go to war it would require us to stoop to barbaric levels, and perhaps even lower.
Your take on Civil War fighting methods is entirely inaccurate. It wasn’t about honor; it was about the fact that guns at that time had no rifling and were completely inaccurate and unreliable. By standing together the way they did, there would at least be this huge volley of firepower all at once and more people would be hit at the other end of it as a result. There’s no honor in warfare. That’s just some bullshit construct that people who start the wars but don’t fight in them perpetrated in order to make it easier to send men off to die for nothing. I’d rather be alive and without honor than dead and with honor. If you talk to people who have been to war, and I have many relatives who have fought in every major armed conflict since WWII and have talked with all of them about this very thing, they all understand that there are two goals: win and survive. Maintaining honor is for people who like to play video games and romanticize one of the ugliest, most vicious, brutal aspects of humanity.
We fight to stop injustice? Really? Are you THAT naive? We don’t fight to stop injustice at all. We fight to protect our interests, and justice isn’t one of them. If we fought to stop injustice, we wouldn’t be rattling the sabers every time Iran makes some technological nuclear breakthrough. We wouldn’t go into countries and tell them that we stand for democracy and all that fluffy bullshit and then turn around and back the powers that remove a democratically-elected leader/regime because we don’t like them (see: Iran in the early 1950’s, Egypt today, etc, etc).
There are definitely reasons to control our actions, but NOT when it comes to war. How would you like to be the one who tells the mothers of fallen American soldiers that their sons died halfway around the world because the U.S. had to control its actions, that we had to maintain honor, that maintaining a fucking IMAGE is more important than her kid’s life?
[/quote]
Well I agree with one point, you fight wars ruthlessly and destroy your enemy as quickly as possible. The ironly in that is that is the most human way in that you want to end the war as quickly as possible and half-assed measures draw wars out and lead to more bloodshed.
My Civil war guns were rifles, not muskets though some were used. Especially the much maligned malitia used rifles because they used guerilla tactics and fired at long distances. The lesser armed south ended up using muskets more that the better armed north, but muskets were not the predominant weapon in the civil war.
Had Lincoln gotten his way, it would have been a much shorter war, we wanted to arm all his troops with Spencer repeating rifles, but his secretary of war over road this decision and when with muzzled loaded single shooters. A fatal mistake on many levels.
The Revolution saw the predominance of muskets, the civil war was predominantly rifles. Large caliber rifles.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Your take on Civil War fighting methods is entirely inaccurate. It wasn’t about honor; it was about the fact that guns at that time had no rifling and were completely inaccurate and unreliable. By standing together the way they did, there would at least be this huge volley of firepower all at once and more people would be hit at the other end of it as a result.[/quote]
I’m going to stay out of this pissing match and just swoop in to shoot down this one part of your post. The vast majority of soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War fought with rifled muskets that were very accurate and reliable. I hunt with a reproduction sometimes with which I have killed deer at well over 100 yards shooting off hand. There are reports of sharpshooters scoring kills at 600+ yards with standard issue rifles (see the excellent Model 1851 Enfield rifle). Casualties were horrible because technology usually outstrips tactics.
The main reason infantry fought in densley packed lines and squares for centuries was to protect them from calvary. No need to get into a long lecture on that.
But I agree with your overall point that honor is usually a concept used by those in power to send others off to die for causes they have no stake in.
[/quote]
Yep. One of the reasons the Civil War was so humongously big in the casualty department was that we were still fighting using Napoleonic tactics, but we had rifled guns, gatling guns, and much more accurate artillery. In short, it would have been the equivalent (very roughly speaking) of fighting trench warfare ala WW1 but using B-17 bombers instead of flimsy little biplanes incapable of meaningful ground bombardment. The technology was very far beyond what the tactics were drawn up to deal with.[/quote]
It was weird, new tactical weapons with great accuracy, fighting methodologies from the previous 5 centuries. When using muskets, you could line up shoulder to shoulder and have a good chance of being missed. With rifled barrels, you were going down.
I would have been in a tree with the six shot rifle. Fuck standing in a line. That’s begging to die.
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Your take on Civil War fighting methods is entirely inaccurate. It wasn’t about honor; it was about the fact that guns at that time had no rifling and were completely inaccurate and unreliable. By standing together the way they did, there would at least be this huge volley of firepower all at once and more people would be hit at the other end of it as a result.[/quote]
I’m going to stay out of this pissing match and just swoop in to shoot down this one part of your post. The vast majority of soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War fought with rifled muskets that were very accurate and reliable. I hunt with a reproduction sometimes with which I have killed deer at well over 100 yards shooting off hand. There are reports of sharpshooters scoring kills at 600+ yards with standard issue rifles (see the excellent Model 1851 Enfield rifle). Casualties were horrible because technology usually outstrips tactics.
The main reason infantry fought in densley packed lines and squares for centuries was to protect them from calvary. No need to get into a long lecture on that.
But I agree with your overall point that honor is usually a concept used by those in power to send others off to die for causes they have no stake in.
[/quote]
Ah yes, the rifled musket. Technically there is no such thing, but they were called that because they essentially converted old muskets into rifles. But they used to be muskets, but they had their barrels rifled. So it was converted muskets, in the end they were really rifles that used to be muskets.
Pat, why did you post the same thing 3 times? hahahahahaha
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]kinein wrote:
Saudi Arabia has a military, so does Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, etc. Whats the point of training, arms, and selling them jets tanks etc if they aren’t going to use it.
[/quote]
No country can really project power much beyond their borders like the USA and, to a lesser extent England and then to a much lesser degree France. In short, yes, the countries you listed have able fighting forces, but they are really limited to protecting their country.
China, India, and Russia are trying to get force projection, but really are 3rd tier in comparison — the infrastructure is not there.
The USA’s transport and logistics set up is second to none; it’s modeled after the Roman approach of seriously forward bases, on the theory it is better to fight elsewhere than back home.[/quote]
Yup, the reason why we would have to do it, is we are the only ones who can.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]rehanb_bl wrote:
whilst everyone is worried about a talentless sell out with shaky morals, US, UK and France are strongly suggestive of war in Syria. Where is the uproar? the US government funds the rebels who were reported to be the ones doing the chemical warfare and then goes around acting like a bastion of morality saying that the Assad regime is unacceptable.[/quote]
All I can say it’s this is going to be a big fucking mess no matter how we play this out. The Assad regime is bad and the opposition is bad. Our time to act has passed in the sense that supported what appeared to be the ‘good guys’ is no longer in play. There are no good guys, there are assholes and bigger assholes.
Now we have Al qauda and other various assortment of islamic assholes and you have Assad a supreme asshole.
Another thing I don’t get is why chemical weapons are the line in the sand? What about blowing up entire families with conventional weapons is better than gassing them? What about the murder of 100,000 people in various ways is less than gassing them?
What to do? I don’t know. I know a half assed effort is going to be a mess. Allowing Al qaeda to take over is not acceptable.
Dropping a few missiles on Assad is going to do what?
I don’t have any answers. I would say the dreaded nation building seems to me to be the only answer. We can’t let either side have control. Everybody hates us anyway, so we might as well set it up in a way that works best for us.
I think it’s to far gone to be salvagable any other way. Or we can let them duke it out, but at what human cost.
I really don’t know what the answer is?[/quote]
It’s not the number of people they care about it’s how easy they can use that method against the US. It would be much easier for them to unleash certain chemicals to kill mass Americans than other technologies.
I’m not going to sit here and argue the point. But folks need to understand, war works both ways, and escalation can occur quickly. The US won’t always be on top, and you may quickly change your mindset when we are no longer the big dog in the pound.
We can very easily drop a low level nuke or other incredible armament into Syria and wipe them out. But the retaliation from their Allies could very well be similar and the US would no longer be the “good guy.” War is fought on more than just the battlefront. Ground level view versus looking at the big picture.
Glad other people clarified on the accuracy of the muskets in that timeframe :). And impressive 100 yd shot Gabby, that’s damned impressive. Usually for hunting try to stay 50 yds and in.
There were articles by the way regarding Syrian threats to attack Israel if the US tries to get involved. Posturing most likely, but figured it would add to the conversation/situation.
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
Pat, why did you post the same thing 3 times? hahahahahaha[/quote]
Dang! I thought it was starting to seem familiar by the 3rd time through.
It was done for dramatic effect.
[quote]Quasi-Tech wrote:
I’m not going to sit here and argue the point. But folks need to understand, war works both ways, and escalation can occur quickly. The US won’t always be on top, and you may quickly change your mindset when we are no longer the big dog in the pound.
We can very easily drop a low level nuke or other incredible armament into Syria and wipe them out. But the retaliation from their Allies could very well be similar and the US would no longer be the “good guy.” War is fought on more than just the battlefront. Ground level view versus looking at the big picture.
Glad other people clarified on the accuracy of the muskets in that timeframe :). And impressive 100 yd shot Gabby, that’s damned impressive. Usually for hunting try to stay 50 yds and in.
There were articles by the way regarding Syrian threats to attack Israel if the US tries to get involved. Posturing most likely, but figured it would add to the conversation/situation.[/quote]
Of course people might feel differently if they were on the other side of the equation. That doesn’t change the reality of the situation though. War should be fought to win. Only losers feel differently because it turns the virtue of victory on its head and now they have something to cling to as compensation for losing. “We may have lost, but at least we have our dignity.” I’ll take my life over my dignity any day of the week.
Regarding escalation, I say bring it on. There is absolutely NO country/force/regime/whatever capable of escalating things to anywhere close to the level that the U.S. is. The U.S. can literally end any and all escalating threats; no one who would realistically fight us can even come close to doing that. We are one of the few countries capable of utterly destroying an enemy’s ability to make war against us, but we don’t do it.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Shamed into War
If Obama is going to strike Syria, he should do it constitutionally and with purpose.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357167/shamed-war-charles-krauthammer[/quote]
Our best hope for an effective tomahawk strike now is that they don’t light them and throw 'em back.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Shamed into War
If Obama is going to strike Syria, he should do it constitutionally and with purpose.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357167/shamed-war-charles-krauthammer[/quote]
Otherwise Biden might impeach him
Britain is not going to help us. You think Obama will go in by himself? I do not think Congress will approve it. Obama will have to actually make a decision. I do not think Obama will use military if Congress says no. Obama is a follower not a leader.
Obama has options, but he is balking a bit. He can not make a decision unless someone else makes it for him.