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The Monkey Man posted:Isn't the War Nerd just satire anyway? No, but he is about as qualified to pontificate on military matters as your average Daily Mail editor.
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Dec 31, 2014 20:01
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The Monkey Man posted:Isn't the War Nerd just satire anyway? Nope, but he is so narcissistic and sounds so juvenile that he comes across as satire. He's also kind of a piece of poo poo and got fired from an American university in Iraq.
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Dec 31, 2014 20:25
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The main problem with any military, not just the U.S., is when the nationalism takes over. People see it less as a professional institution and more of an integral part of our ideological agenda (See the German Empire's military problem). Furthermore, the public tends to view the military as a means to political solutions when they clearly aren't. The IDF suffers from this immensely, in terms of trying to resolve the apartheid agenda created by their government.
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Dec 31, 2014 20:53
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Since when is the military not a means to enact political solutions? That's kind of the reason a military exists. 
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Dec 31, 2014 21:06
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Unless your agenda is annex, genocide, or preventing either of which then sorry, the military can't solve it alone.
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Dec 31, 2014 21:14
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Dilkington posted:How do you feel about Japan and South Korea acquiring nuclear weapons? As nationalistic as they are, I can't honestly say I think they're any more likely to do something dumb than we are to say start a war with Iran
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Dec 31, 2014 22:22
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icantfindaname posted:As nationalistic as they are, I can't honestly say I think they're any more likely to do something dumb than we are to say start a war with Iran The US isn't going to be starting a war with Iraq, Saudi on the other hand...
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Dec 31, 2014 22:25
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Also, for maximum irony value, the writer of the article in the OP is a draft dodger, which is utterly typical. I mean, it shows that the typical (white elitist) type who wants one thing, but when he is given the opportunity to do so, refuses. Honestly, I feel the entire article is a typical attempt to provide utter mealy mouth criticism which means nothing. I mean, between the putinista posters in this thread, the people unironically thinking the US is some sort of Banana republic (talk to me via PM, I can tell you what it is like being from an actual place with military rules). I mean this is similar to me reading the Africachat threads, when its all either students or NGO workers talking about a place that they have never lived in, or are not from. Please, honestly why do you all not understand how this works?
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Dec 31, 2014 22:30
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Isn't War Nerd the guy who jizzes his pants and declares the end of American hegemony every time there's a new announcement about some forever-in-developement military vaporware like the PAK-FA or DF-21D?
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Dec 31, 2014 22:47
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Isn't War Nerd the guy who jizzes his pants and declares the end of American hegemony every time there's a new announcement about some forever-in-developement military vaporware like the PAK-FA or DF-21D? Yep, and don't forget about how the millennium challenge made carriers useless. All you need to do is mount Sunburn's on Cessna's and therefor carriers are useless.
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Dec 31, 2014 23:52
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Ryand-Smith posted:Also, for maximum irony value, the writer of the article in the OP is a draft dodger, which is utterly typical. I mean, it shows that the typical (white elitist) type who wants one thing, but when he is given the opportunity to do so, refuses. What does he want that being drafted in the military would have afforded the opportunity to accomplish, exactly?
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Dec 31, 2014 23:58
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karthun posted:Yep, and don't forget about how the millennium challenge made carriers useless. All you need to do is mount Sunburn's on Cessna's and therefor carriers are useless. And motorcycle couriers suddenly gain FTL abilities and eidetic memory!
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Jan 1, 2015 00:03
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Ryand-Smith posted:Also, for maximum irony value, the writer of the article in the OP is a draft dodger, which is utterly typical. I mean, it shows that the typical (white elitist) type who wants one thing, but when he is given the opportunity to do so, refuses. Honestly, I feel the entire article is a typical attempt to provide utter mealy mouth criticism which means nothing. I mean, between the putinista posters in this thread, the people unironically thinking the US is some sort of Banana republic (talk to me via PM, I can tell you what it is like being from an actual place with military rules). I mean this is similar to me reading the Africachat threads, when its all either students or NGO workers talking about a place that they have never lived in, or are not from. Please, honestly why do you all not understand how this works? I thought the article completely collapsed at the end. Paragraph after paragraph of earnest hand-wringing, and the conclusion is that the President should say some things, and people should help others realize some things, etc. I also thought that the piece danced around the fact that a possible reason that the military isn't trying to recover from its failure is that the people/power-centers that matter don't think there's been a failure. The military's still around, it's still getting funded, there are still more problems in the world calling for a "strong defensive capability", there are new weapons to be bought, new officers to be promoted, and the stock market is way up.
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Jan 1, 2015 00:13
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emfive posted:I also thought that the piece danced around the fact that a possible reason that the military isn't trying to recover from its failure is that the people/power-centers that matter don't think there's been a failure. The military's still around, it's still getting funded, there are still more problems in the world calling for a "strong defensive capability", there are new weapons to be bought, new officers to be promoted, and the stock market is way up. Whether or not a military is still around isn't indicative whether or not there was a failure. The US is going to declare victory in Afghanistan and walk out, and the country is going to get overrun by warlords in ~2 months from then. The US military cannot compensate for bad policy. We know this. The problem the United States has is its insane military budget and its dependency on the military to do just about everything: force projection, peace keeping, invading, intervening, being a politically correct national jobs program (literally look at every recruiting ad), and generally trying to be on the right side of whatever conflicts it's involved in. No the United States isn't a Banana Republic, but it is an empire, even if nobody wants to admit it. And no military action will solve the crisis in Crimea, before this gets brought up. Also: Would anyone like to bring up an answer as to what's wrong with draft dodging? It's retarded to actively participate in a conflict you personally disagree with. Job Truniht fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Jan 1, 2015 |
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Jan 1, 2015 00:24
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I quite like War Nerd. I dont have to agree with what someone says to enjoy their point of view and I think he's done a decent job of becoming less of a sociopathic hawk. His articles about nonviolent resistance were interesting. Its just nice to read a different kind of bullshit than the regular bullshit honestly.
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Jan 1, 2015 00:26
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karthun posted:Yep, and don't forget about how the millennium challenge made carriers useless. All you need to do is mount Sunburn's on Cessna's and therefor carriers are useless The real scandal of that wargame is that the judges didn't tell Ripper to go gently caress himself earlier than the end of the first day.
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Jan 1, 2015 01:38
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There was a thread a few years ago where multiple goons expressed amazement that the entire exercise wasn't immediately shut down because this guy "won" it.
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Jan 1, 2015 02:18
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The reason draft dodging is bad is simple, and utterly self evident. It is and option only available to elite members of society. If you feel the war is bad, go to jail and serve your sentence. As Dr. king said in multiple essays, you can't be afraid of going to jail for the truly righteous cause. The author is the worst sort of left wing chicken hawk and honestly makes me hate us so called leftism.
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Jan 1, 2015 02:30
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Do you have an actual criticism of the content of his article, or are you content to dismiss it all out of hand because he didn't protest the war properly according to your preferences?
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Jan 1, 2015 03:35
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We're the only ones who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War rich people?
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Jan 1, 2015 03:48
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Job Truniht posted:We're the only ones who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War rich people?
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Jan 1, 2015 03:51
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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_evasion#Emigration_during_the_Vietnam_War C'mon guys are you really all this dense?
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Jan 1, 2015 03:54
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That has basically nothing to do with the essay, though.
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Jan 1, 2015 03:54
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Job Truniht posted:http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_evasion#Emigration_during_the_Vietnam_War Tezzor dodged the draft
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Jan 1, 2015 03:56
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I don't know why you're referencing me when I haven't posted in this thread at all. Let me rectify that. There are some major problems with The War Nerd columns (mostly to do with racism and jingoism and the half-ironic sentiment that war is great) but "is very critical of the military command and the supertech masturbating of military fanboys" is not among them.
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Jan 1, 2015 04:38
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If you are making the argument that joining the military is a defensible or desirable course of action what you are arguing is that ones' own rational self-interest is a defensible argument for committing deeply immoral actions. I'd like to see that carried to its natural conclusion.
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Jan 1, 2015 04:45
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Tezzor posted:If you are making the argument that joining the military is a defensible or desirable course of action what you are arguing is that ones' own rational self-interest is a defensible argument for committing deeply immoral actions. I'd like to see that carried to its natural conclusion. So you're against people stealing food when they're starving? Ok Mr. Iamthelaw.
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Jan 1, 2015 04:47
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spacetoaster posted:I disagree that military service is anything like welfare. You have to actually do things like random drug screenings (somehow I'm always in the 10% of the population for these tests. You indeed do something; however, what you do is so devoid of value, inefficient and actively harmful that it would be better if you were simply given a check, minus perhaps the arguable benefit of makework getting you out of the house. Tezzor fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jan 1, 2015 |
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Jan 1, 2015 04:48
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), pass physical requirements, education requirements, etc. You don't just show up and collect a check (no matter how much we like to joke about it).
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Nintendo Kid posted:So you're against people stealing food when they're starving? Ok Mr. Iamthelaw. I am against middle-class first worlders killing hundreds of thousands of actual bread-stealers because they would prefer not to work at Target or pay off student loans at the standard rate.
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Jan 1, 2015 04:49
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Tezzor posted:I am against middle-class first worlders killing hundreds of thousands of actual bread-stealers because they would prefer not to work at Target or pay off student loans at the standard rate. You said to carry out the argument to its fullest extent buddy!
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Jan 1, 2015 04:50
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Nintendo Kid posted:You said to carry out the argument to its fullest extent buddy! The argument to its fullest is not "steal bread to feed your family," it is "rob banks because you desire a first-world middle class lifestyle without getting a real job."
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Jan 1, 2015 04:51
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So, I served as a paratrooper in the Army from 2002 to 2006, and then as a security operator with the DIA from 2007 to 2010. There have been a lot of good posts and observations so far, but I thought I'd chime in with a few observations. 1) The Officer Corp, as it exists, is an antiquated relic of class enforcement that needs to be phased out. (Let me define a few terms really quick, since talking about class is always miserable when people are using the same language to define different things, or vice versa. The "Upper Class" is the group of people who, often individually, hold political, social and economic power in the form of influence, money, and capital - they employ people, they fire people, they make and break rules at will. The "Middle Class" is the group of people who have some degree of economic autonomy in the sense that they own their own businesses and means of livelihood, but they lack individual political and social influence so they must form blocs to get things done. The "Working Class" also must form blocs to effect political change, but they also don't own their own means of production and depend on the Upper Class and (to a lesser extent) the Middle Class for employment. Finally, the "Lower Class" is defined as the group that cannot maintain stable employment due to whatever economic or social conditions exist, and thus are the most alienated from any form of power. Mobility between the Lower and Working class is the most frequent. I am emphatically NOT using income as a measure of class - you can have a flat-broke aristocat that wields more political clout than an IT tech who pulls in $200k/yr.) Here's a historical quandary: Why do we have two chains of command within the same military organization? On one hand we have officers, which derive their commission from the President and lead on its behalf. On the other hand we have the Enlisted Corps which derives its leadership authority from the specific branch of the military (Army, Navy, etc). The short answer is because you can't trust the poors. Historically, Armies were levied or conscripted from the peasantry, and it was the job of the local lord, baron, or governor to equip, train, and mobilize them as needed. Generally, it was also expected that the local dude in charge was going to foot the bill for his levy units as well. But check it out, these levies are just a bunch of yokels and hicks, and most of them would just leave the war and go home if given half a chance. So, in addition, the local lord was expected to appoint trusted commanders over these levies, usually drawn from his immediate family (sons, sons-in-law, nephews, etc) and they might well get killed when they sally forth into battle. But that was part of the Aristocratic deal: you get to own land, and collect taxes, and have subjects - and when poo poo hits the fan you are obliged to shoulder the expensive burden of waging war. So don't go picking fights you don't want to pay for - or risk losing sons to - without just cause. A war mongers dynasty doesn't last too long if he manages to get all of his boys killed in frivolous wars. And this model really held up, in some degree until the end of WWI. Military service a rite of passage in many upper class families. One favored son might have been held back "just in case," but plenty of second and third-born sons got farmed out to West Point and the Naval College. It goes even deeper - you could just out-right buy a decent commission up until the Civil War. Can you afford to raise, arm, and equip a regiment of infantry? Congratulations, you're a Colonel. Got enough horses in your stables to put together a Cavalry Company? You get to be a Captain or a Major. Generals were appointed by the President, but lower ranks of officer were either purchased outright or appointed from the corps of cadets that was stocked by the nation's network of war colleges (West Point, VMI, etc). Now, post Civil War, there were a lot of army reforms intended to prevent a secession, and people could no longer fund their own private units. There might be the occasional exception of an impoverished, but boot-strappy young lad who impressed an aristocrat and got a scholarship, but still, the officer corps were largely made up of the sons of the landed elite. The Roosevelts are a classic, if extreme, example: Teddy Roosevelt insisted that his sons go fight in WWI. There was never a question of if, only how. But pick a line of American aristocracy in the early 1900's and odds are good that a majority of the boys were either Ivy League and commissioned or had some sort of formal military academy education. As awful as WWI was, though, it wasn't really ours. We got into it kind of late, and compared to the European powers, our losses were pretty light. But, for the Upper Class, the message was pretty clear: gone are the days of the glorious war to send a son off into. It's the meat grinder now, and no one wants to send a future oil or textile magnate off to charge into a machine gun nest. Thankfully on the eve of the Great War, ROTC was born, and the problem was largely solved. Instead of sending off Upper Class boys to supervise the enlisted ranks, why not let the boom of Middle Class young men attending state-funded colleges pick up that job? The war needed more officers than there were Upper Class sons, anyway. And this became the new normal, especially during WWII, when every male of military age was snatched up in the draft to be sent to fight in Europe or the Pacific. It made sense, in a way: Post-secondary education was no longer purely the domain of the Upper Class - increasingly, the Middle Class was being pushed into occupations that required a university degree (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc) - and an officer corp should be drawn from the educated. It made so much sense, that in a post WWII environment, ROTC was compulsory at most state schools... and it slowly faded from the Ivy League. By 1969, Harvard had given ROTC the heave-ho, and the hallmark of an Ivy Leaguer was not receiving a commission upon graduation. At the same time, the military universities began taking more and more Middle and Working class cadets. Fast forward to the late 80's. The system of technical colleges and trade schools is dying, even as the pressure on all students graduating high school to pursue post-secondary education is growing. Thousands of Working Class students are being told that if they have any hopes of working anywhere other than McDonald's, they'd best be going to college. Rising tuitions means that they're going to have to find a way to pay for it, and there's ROTC offering a subsidized ride through to graduation if they meet a few simple requirements and accept a commission upon completion. So what the hell does all this mean? A) It means that the job of overseer (  KRS1) has been farmed out to progressively lower class strata to a point where when real changes need to be made to the culture and mechanics of the military, they cannot be enacted. Officers have no political power beyond intra-service power plays, and they have few social connections to extra-military power holders that can act on their behalf.B) Promotion mechanics have become almost purely a "good old boy" popularity contest, with little regard to actual merit. Good, junior officers who display excellent critical thinking skills are often passed over in favor of charismatic rear end kissers that are simply willing to say "Yes, Sir!" to any superior. To be fair, this isn't that recent, but there's a new wrinkle in that a significant number of superior officers have been spoon fed right wing talk radio since they were in middle school. It's not just enough to be an rear end kisser, you have to be a Dittohead, too. C) While the current class of officers has not had the benefit of an Upper Class education and upbringing, ROTC certainly does instill a sense of privilege and superiority. I'd like to say it's "just a few rotten apples," but rather it's the other way around. I can count the number of "good" officers I knew without taking off my shoes. The culture encourages officers to treat their troops poorly - to expect them to act as machinery, but without the oil and maintenance needed to keep a machine running. Soldiers are routinely kept from proper medical care because it would "hurt readiness numbers." Family readiness has become a running joke with the wives of officers demanding that the wives of their subordinates treat them with proper respect, lest their husbands be denied promotion. To bring this to a point: Officers have been accorded the privileges of class without the necessary upbringing to make it inoffensive. What this leaves is an often confused and exasperated Enlisted Corps that has to carry out the day-to-day work of the military while simultaneously carrying around the baggage of a bloated and ineffective officer corps. When they succeed in their missions, it's often despite the officers assigned to them. I'd much rather see a gutting of the current officer system in favor of an expanded warrant officer program. Warrant officers are commissioned on the basis of their technical proficiency. Let them be drawn from within the ranks of experienced troops, and promoted on merit rather than popularity. It's a fevered pipe-dream, but it's long overdue. 2) The procurement and upgrade system is fundamentally broken I know this is beating a dead horse, but I can confirm that this is a serious issue. Things that really need replacement limp along getting anemic upgrades, while the military is flooded with equipment it neither needed or asked for. The reasons are self evident, but I can confirm that it is crippling. In 2005, we were sent enough pieces of add-on body armor to turn ourselves into small, ineffective bunkers. What we really needed was a replacement for the stinking M-4 rifle, which was an incremental improvement of the horrible M-16. Ten years later, the army still needs a replacement for the M-16/4 series of rifles. My grandfather used the CAR-15 in Vietnam. We've been using the same mediocre rifle that costs ~$400 per unit for the past 50 years. Ten years ago, we spent $5 billion to develop a camouflage pattern which is useless in all environments, and which was phased out in 2012. Next year the current camouflage pattern will be phased out in favor of yet another new pattern. Make of this what you will, but I won't belabor the point. Weltlich fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jan 1, 2015 |
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Jan 1, 2015 04:53
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The War Nerd is a character of John Dolan's creation guys, settle down. It's not meant to be authoritative, and if you keep that in mind he can be entertaining now and again. I swear to god, goons start throwing their poo poo around and hooting every time that guy's articles are mentioned.
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Jan 1, 2015 04:54
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Tezzor posted:The argument to its fullest is not "steal bread to feed your family," it is "rob banks because you desire a first-world middle class lifestyle without getting a real job." Explain how professional thief is not a real job in a world where investment banker is. Check and mate.
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Jan 1, 2015 04:59
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If you are arguing that the really-existing military is justifiable as a system to give money to otherwise superfluous people, many of whom incidentally are rage-addled grabasstic sociopaths given license to kill above the law, then what you are arguing is that actually impoverished countries and their people are acceptable as pressure valves to the comparatively insignificant class suffering of the United States.
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Jan 1, 2015 05:00
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Tezzor posted:If you are arguing that the really-existing military is justifiable as a system to give money to otherwise superfluous people, many of whom incidentally are rage-addled grabasstic sociopaths given license to kill above the law, then what you are arguing is that actually impoverished countries and their people are acceptable as pressure valves to the comparatively insignificant class suffering of the United States. Wow, calling the poor superfluous. I thought Scrooge was dead.
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Jan 1, 2015 05:19
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Weltlich posted:So, I served as a paratrooper in the Army from 2002 to 2006, and then as a security operator with the DIA from 2007 to 2010. There have been a lot of good posts and observations so far, but I thought I'd chime in with a few observations. Thanks, that is pretty informative. I would, broadly speaking, add that the current conflicts the US is engaged in are still so lopsided that Darwinian accountability does simply not happen for the higherups very much. By contrast, the Chechens actually took out quite a lot of trashy higher ups in the Russian army as they were kind of big on assasination (both on the battlefield and off it).
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Jan 1, 2015 06:14
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Nintendo Kid posted:Wow, calling the poor superfluous. I thought Scrooge was dead. The class structure of the United States as it exists has no real use or need for large quantities of people, specifically to this point, young people. They are under the current schema superfluous by definition. If you advocate the use of the military to patch this hole, you are not only throwing thousands of actually poor people (at best) upon the temple altar, you are also advocating in practice not only that the underlying problem not be fixed, but also that it be patched in an extremely bloody, inefficient and counterproductive manner.
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Jan 1, 2015 06:28
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Weltlich posted:2) The procurement and upgrade system is fundamentally broken Back in 2010 a roommate's friend spent a few weeks couchsurfing with us after his enlistment with the US Navy terminated. He was just some mook sailor when he got out, but he had some stories to tell about ships allowed to rust at anchor so badly that they were held together by layers of paint, with places below-decks where you could simply push your finger into the wall and shove it through into the water outside. I can't imagine the last few years have remedied that trend.
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Jan 1, 2015 06:42
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zeal posted:Back in 2010 a roommate's friend spent a few weeks couchsurfing with us after his enlistment with the US Navy terminated. He was just some mook sailor when he got out, but he had some stories to tell about ships allowed to rust at anchor so badly that they were held together by layers of paint, with places below-decks where you could simply push your finger into the wall and shove it through into the water outside. I can't imagine the last few years have remedied that trend.
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Jan 1, 2015 06:47
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