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Cessna posted:The book was very fashionable in the 90's USMC. Lieutenants would carry a copy and recite its fortune-cookie aphorisms like they were deep wisdom. This led to one my favourite titles for this thread, I'll repeat the story in case you haven't heard it: A staff sergeant at boot camp loved the Art of War and quoted it constantly. One of his favourite lines was "an army must be like a river, flowing around any obstacle." One day a recruit with bad diarrhea said "Sir, my rear end is flowing like Sun Tzu's army!"
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Mar 28, 2020 17:14
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Tankers with free time are hilarious to see in the field, with 4 dudes hanging on top of their vehicle like mongooses. Most armored field time sleeping on ground is prohibited because of moving vehicles in the dark and since there really isnt a space to sleep inside aside for the driver the turret crew generally sleeps, eats, and plays spades or uno on top of the turret. Best place to sleep in an m1 is on the top of the engine deck way back- there is like exactly one spot where you can lay flat without having a hinge of engine access hatch or a 24mm bolt sitting on your back. Everywhere else you are either slanted or laying on top of a bolt.
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Mar 28, 2020 17:36
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Cessna posted:Tankers in my unit (which is scheduled to be deactivated) would have contests to see how long they could go without leaving the tank (stepping off onto ground). Once you've got a supply of food and water and mastered the art of hanging over the side to defecate and showering by pouring water on yourself on the engine deck you can go almost indefinitely. Some guys went for weeks during Desert Shield. Army: war is like a game of Capture the Flag Air Force: war is like a game of Checkers Navy: war is like a game of Go USMC: FLOOR IS LAVA!!!
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Mar 28, 2020 17:37
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Cessna posted:Tankers in my unit (which is scheduled to be deactivated) would have contests to see how long they could go without leaving the tank (stepping off onto ground). Once you've got a supply of food and water and mastered the art of hanging over the side to defecate and showering by pouring water on yourself on the engine deck you can go almost indefinitely. Some guys went for weeks during Desert Shield. So uh what are the Marines planning to do if one of their opponents brings a tank, going forward? Sort of seems like an important capability to lose entirely.
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Mar 28, 2020 17:51
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feedmegin posted:So uh what are the Marines planning to do if one of their opponents brings a tank, going forward? Sort of seems like an important capability to lose entirely. Helicopters. And it seems the usmc is junking everything armored so they can re-organise that proud american tradition of (looks at page)... mobile coastal artillery?
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Mar 28, 2020 18:38
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Great question since some recent force on force wargames have reiterated armor survivability and how little anti armor capability the marine corps has. One of the main reasons for the big personnel cuts are to free up money for modernization, hopefully some of that goes to more, and newer, AT weapons for infantry. The other aspect is with the emphasis on EABO the marine corps is just going to hope there are no tanks where it fights.ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Helicopters. Note the deactivation of two attack helicopter squadrons FastestGunAlive fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 18:44
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feedmegin posted:So uh what are the Marines planning to do if one of their opponents brings a tank, going forward? Sort of seems like an important capability to lose entirely. In addition to still being one of the most powerful armies on the planet, they can call upon the actual US Army.
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Mar 28, 2020 19:35
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Epicurius posted:Confucius wasnt a reactionary traditionalist. He was a reformer who said that rulers have an obligation to the people they rule, that governments shouldn't use the fear of punishment to get people to follow the law, but instead teach morality, and that the first duty of government is to look after its people rather than to pursue wealth or lower at their expense. As in any historical question context is important to understanding the development of Confucianism. Centuries after Confucius and Mencius, their philosophy became the official basis of statecraft and social relations in China as well as some other countries. Intensive study of Confucian texts was part of the examination required for all aspiring state officials, so the government was dominated by scholars who had absorbed Confucian philosophy. Government service was also one of the only real means of social advancement, so it also gained even more cultural influence. By the time of the Ming Dynasty, Confucian scholars were the entrenched power structure of the Chinese state and society. Maintaining that position against challenges, putting neo-Confucian philosophy into action formally as state policy and informally as the hegemonic culture, and exercising social control to ensure stability and harmony (the main goal of Confucian philosophy) meant that these scholars eventually assumed a reactionary traditionalist posture. Their ideas were dominant, so any change to that status quo would tend to undermine their position, and their philosophy itself held that instability (such as resulting from their position being undermined) was terribly destructive. The modern reputation of Confucianism as hopelessly reactionary was established by their victorious enemies in the Nationalist and Chinese Communist movements, who had to defeat the power structure of scholars and officials to remake Chinese government and society after their own, newer ideas. However, Confucianism developed in a time of chaos and war. The Zhou Dynasty was in terminal decline, leading to the collapse of central authority and constant competition and warfare between local feudal lords. Confucius himself spent most of his career in wandering exile, while Mencius's refinements to Confucian thought were composed during the Warring States Period. The chaos, uncertainty, and violence of the time affected all levels of society but fell especially hard on ordinary people. Accounts of warfare at the time are mostly legendary and therefore unreliable, but they make frequent references to mass executions of prisoners, sacks of major cities, and widespread destruction. Confucianism was far from the only philosophical movement that tried to reason a way out. This period is also called the Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought. Although, nine of them had a major impact. I think to better understand Confucianism it is useful to compare it to Legalism. The two schools were rivals for some time after the Warring States period but Legalism eventually went into decline. Certain of their ideas remained popular and were absorbed by other schools, including Confucianism, but in the end they lost out. Being brief, Confucian philosophy is based on the idea that human beings develop as a result of their experience and education, under the influence of people around them like their friends and family. Social life is made up of hierarchical relationships modeled on the family. In any relationship one party is superior and the other is inferior, but each relationship carries mutual obligations. Through positive influences and continuous effort, people can be made virtuous. When the hierarchy breaks down--children are disobedient, parents are cruel, government officials are corrupt, etc.--society is plunged into the kind of chaos that Confucius and Mencius suffered under for basically their entire lives. Legalism was heavily associated with the feudal state of Qin, and Qin Shi Huang established it as the basis of the imperial state when he conquered China and established the Qin Dynasty. Under Legalism, human beings are seen as fundamentally selfish and evil and can only be restrained by an absolute ruler. Behavior is to be regulated by an all-encompassing body of laws and rules which give no leeway for subjective decision-making. Individual morality and relationships between people are irrelevant, even dangerous, and social position is determined solely by adherence to the law. Again, because people are inherently evil they will be inclined to disobey laws whenever they perceive it would be advantageous, so the Legalists said lawbreaking should be discouraged by imposing draconian punishments even for minor infractions, that escalate in proportion to the severity of the crime. This is, for example, the origin of the notorious "death by a thousand cuts" in which the execution would make small incisions on the body, and/or remove small pieces of the body, until the criminal expired from blood loss and accumulated injury. One of the major figures in the development of Legalism, the Qin official Shang Yang, fell from power and sentenced to death by being torn in pieces by chariots. You can decide for yourself which sounds better. I think this is an interesting topic for the thread, because Confucianism, Legalism, and other schools of thought around the same time are effectively reactions to the problem of warfare. Sun Tzu was a contemporary of Confucius, for example, who focused on how to fight and win wars efficiently, and how those principles could be applied to other areas of statecraft. Schenck v. U.S. fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 20:01
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Well, Legalism declined as a formal thing but a lot of Chinese dynasties/states basically ruled with legalism with varying levels of a Confucian front to it.
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Mar 28, 2020 20:12
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Don't forget the chapter in the Analects where good old Kong dawg* just lists various hats and poo poo he owns. That's the best part. This is super inside baseball, but he also spoke in a specifically archaic fashion for the time. You can contrast how he uses inter-nominal copulas with contemporaries and he's super stuffy. And semi related but "tzu" needs to die. 1) it's "zi" ; pinyin ain't hard and 2) it's a title, not part of name. Hence Sun Zi, Kong Zi, Lao Zi, etc. It literally means "child" and is a shortening of "child of a lord" i.e. a noble and eventually came to be used as an honorific kind of like "Lord Soandso". God all those years reading Classical Chinese are finally paying off**. *My loathing of turning "Kong zi" into "Confucius" just for the sake of Latin=smart is eternal, endless, like some kind of dark and terrible god out of space and time. **No they're not. 
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Mar 28, 2020 20:20
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T-80 light tank Queue: MS-1 production, Churchill Mk.VII, Alecto, Assault Tank T14, S-51, SU-76I, T-26 with mine detection equipment, T-34M/T-44 (1941), T-43 (1942), T-43 (1943), Maus development in 1943-44, Trials of the LT vz. 35 in the USSR, Development of Slovakian tank forces 1939-1941, T-46, SU-76M (SU-15M) production, Object 237 (IS-1 prototype), ISU-122, Object 704, Jagdpanzer IV, VK 30.02 DB and other predecessors of the Panther, RSO tank destroyer, Sd.Kfz. 10/4, Czech anti-tank rifles in German service, Hotchkiss H 39/Pz.Kpfw.38H(f) in German service, Flakpanzer 38(t), Grille series, Jagdpanther, Boys and PIAT, Heavy Tank T26E5, History of German diesel engines for tanks, King Tiger trials in the USSR, T-44 prototypes, T-44 prototypes second round, Black Prince, PT-76, M4A3E2 Jumbo Sherman, M4A2 Sherman in the Red Army, T-54, T-44 prototypes, T-44 prototypes second round, T-44 production, Soviet HEAT anti-tank grenades, T-34-85M, Myths of Soviet tank building: interbellum tanks, Light Tank M24, German anti-tank rifles, PT-76 modernizations, ISU-122 front line impressions, German additional tank protection (zimmerit, schurzen, track links), Winter and swamp tracks, Paper light tank destroyers, Allied intel on the Maus , Summary of French interbellum tank development, Medium Tank T20, Medium Tank T23, Myths of Soviet tank building, GMC M10, Tiger II predecessors, Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.H-J,IS-6, SU-101/SU-102/Uralmash-1, Centurion Mk.I, SU-100 front line impressions, IS-2 front line impressions, Myths of Soviet tank building: early Great Patriotic War, Influence of the T-34 on German tank building Available for request:  IS-6 AT-1 Career of Semyon Aleksandrovich Ginzburg SU-5 Object 140 SU-76 frontline impressions Creation of the IS-3 Early Soviet tank development (MS-1, AN Teplokhod) NEW  Medium Tank T25 GMC M36 Heavy Tank T26/T26E1/T26E3 Career of Harry Knox  15 cm sFH 13/1 (Sf) Oerlikon and Solothurn anti-tank rifles Geschützwagen Tiger für 17cm K72 (Sf)  Lahti L-39 Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Mar 29, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 20:23
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Schenck v. U.S. posted:I think this is an interesting topic for the thread, because Confucianism, Legalism, and other schools of thought around the same time are effectively reactions to the problem of warfare. Sun Tzu was a contemporary of Confucius, for example, who focused on how to fight and win wars efficiently, and how those principles could be applied to other areas of statecraft. Agreed. Could you tell more about the differences of Confucianism and Mencianism?
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Mar 28, 2020 20:41
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rip mozi and mohism He's another contemporary of ye olde Kong, espousing a mix of utilitarianism (with order/stability, material wealth, and population instead of pleasure, limits ostentatiousness, etc. But also universal love and stuff. And lots of math. Apparently they went around as siege engineers to help out defenders.
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Mar 28, 2020 20:46
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Philosophy is the opposite of my thing but I did enjoy reading about the school of thought that was basically ur-nihilism, going something like: "You know the kings at the end of the Xia and Shang that fell into hedonism so deep they built lakes made of wine and trees made of roasted meat, causing the collapse of their dynasties and having their memories eternally damned for it? That is how we should all strive to live." As I recall basically the only stuff that survives about that philosophy is everyone else going "gently caress these guys," but I can kind of sympathize with how that philosophy would be compelling in the context of the time...
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Mar 28, 2020 21:26
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Argas posted:Well, Legalism declined as a formal thing but a lot of Chinese dynasties/states basically ruled with legalism with varying levels of a Confucian front to it. So there's this Chinese movie I watched, and now I'm wondering if it was influenced by legalism. The film is the 2002 Hero, which was produced in mainland China. It's about a group of assassins who plan to kill Qin Shi Huang after his their families are slaughtered by his cruel armies. However at the last moment the hero realizes that actually, all that cruelty was really necessary in order to achieve the ultimate good: a unified China. He then allows himself to be killed by Emperor's soldiers, and the Emperor cries a little bit at his nobility as he nevertheless orders the execution. While watching I couldn't quite believe how cynical the themes of movie were, and felt an alarming sense of dread that the movie might be how the modern CCP justifies itself. Maybe that's reading to much into it but if I ran the censorship bureau I definitely wouldn't want to equate the modern government with Qin Shi Huang, because gently caress that.
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Mar 28, 2020 21:26
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I was under the impression Legalism actually got kind of re-embraced by the PRC, in which case that was probably exactly what they were trying to show.
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Mar 28, 2020 21:30
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One of the things to say for Legalism, though is the idea that the ruler can't be arbitrary or biased. The law is the law, and the person who violates the law should be punished, whether they're a duke or a peasant. Equally, the person appointed to a position should be the person most suited to the position, duke or peasant.
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Mar 28, 2020 21:50
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Koramei posted:I was under the impression Legalism actually got kind of re-embraced by the PRC, in which case that was probably exactly what they were trying to show. ugh, its just that, if you have to go down this ends justify the means rabbithole, do you really want to make the guy who's extravagant tomb is surrounded by mass graves your standard bearer? I finished Hero actually feeling alarmed that anybody could have thought it demonstrated good moral reasoning.
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Mar 28, 2020 22:23
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Squalid posted:ugh, its just that, if you have to go down this ends justify the means rabbithole, do you really want to make the guy who's extravagant tomb is surrounded by mass graves your standard bearer? I finished Hero actually feeling alarmed that anybody could have thought it demonstrated good moral reasoning. I mean Oda Nobunaga wasn't entirely pleasant either and all of the Unifiers were to varying degrees cruel bastards but at the end of the day they are still nonetheless a part of their national epic, a symbol of the process of establishing their core national identities. Think of how long Columbus was and still is a subject of honour in the American (especially Italian-American) consciousness. Qin Shi Huang was still y'know, an excellent general, seemed quite able and competent to extract the maximal amount of war fighting potential out of the Qin Kingdom and conquered a vast amount of territory that at the end of the day forged the start of a unified national identity. I think its less about rehabilitating legalism and more about rehabilitating ancient Chinese history to promote a national identity; which was severely hampered during the Cultural Revolution and the Communist era program of attempting to forge a new "Soviet Man" or whatever the Chinese version of that project was. I don't think there's much that I've noticed about current Chinese policies that are specific to the long defunct philosophical tradition (the Confucius Institute notwithstanding) and more about drawing on historical parallels to try to find by any means necessary, a new more enduring claim to legitimacy. You had the period of the 80's/90's/early Naughts where the bargain was, "Hey, you're material conditions will improve by leaps and bounds" all you gotta do is keep them in power. This is eroding and as per Susan L Shirk's China: Fragile Superpower they need new claims to legitimacy. And as Hu Jintao assumed power and the Long March generation of leaders died out or lost influence the ability for the leadership to keep the PLA and societies nationalist elements in check in a Nixonian "Only Nixon can go to china/only mao can sign a peace treaty with Japan" eroded; hence the increasing military budgets and increasing difficulties in keeping a lid on the rampant ultranationalism that's taken root that they encouraged as a means of claiming legitimacy. So they can't promise endless economic prosperity forever because there's a point where economic growth can't continue forever, whether due to climate change, pandemics, trade wars and so on. They can't just keep pulling a bait and switch and stoke tensions because eventually that will lead to a situation where they can't back down without provoking a worse backlash domestically and could lead to a destructive war; so they're basically just constantly playing a shell game of political legitimacy of trying to find the next thing they can claim legitimacy from. Hero the film was like a decade ago, so I wouldn't read too much into it, other then that narratively and thematically it's a film thats VERY convenient and aligned with the government's goals though it probably can't be verified/falsified as to whether they had a hand in it or not. So it isn't really about Qin Shi Huang or Legalism specifically; and I bet plenty of Warring States period philosophies are getting a look at by Chinese think tanks right now for the next end of history style of governance. As an aside, it's interesting that Confucianism *is* being pushed by the government, and is being promoted internationally via the Confucius Institute I believe, in a way similar to whatever that big CIA front NGO operation is called, Center for American Prosperity? One of those.
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Mar 29, 2020 00:00
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Hero's essential message is that order and peace is more important than justice, generally speaking it's constructed so that there's no real villains.
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Mar 29, 2020 00:26
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I think that was one of the endings of Jade Empire too. It's a creepy idea that sounds like it'd be at home with Machiavelli, and could even look a little like Hobbes's Leviathan if look at it in the right light. It's not so much something I'd expect to do well when actually being considered in intellectual circles, but would probably have a very enthusiastic audience of people who have power and would like justification to use it unfettered. It's not as sweet as the theory of enlightened absolutism that the monarchs and nobility of Europe settled on before being mostly overcome by the series of events that led us to today. Now I think people in power tend to slant towards objectivism when trying to justify their actions.
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Mar 29, 2020 00:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think that was one of the endings of Jade Empire too. The thing you need to remember about China (at least in the period we are talking about with this film) is that it is run by the victims of the Cultural Revolution, in the name of the perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution. EDIT: To spell it out: The film does not merely defend the Emperor, but also condemns him - consider the majority of the film is painting the assassins as heroic and sympathetic, and calls out specifically the Emperor's Mao-style attacks on ancient culture. The thing that saves the Emperor is that he is the only one who can win the war, and striking him down would promote further conflict. At the end of the film the hero is in a position of power and decides in an ultimate show of wisdom to show mercy at the cost of his own life. Fangz fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Mar 29, 2020 |
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Mar 29, 2020 00:30
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Squalid posted:So there's this Chinese movie I watched, and now I'm wondering if it was influenced by legalism. The film is the 2002 Hero, which was produced in mainland China. It's about a group of assassins who plan to kill Qin Shi Huang after his their families are slaughtered by his cruel armies. However at the last moment the hero realizes that actually, all that cruelty was really necessary in order to achieve the ultimate good: a unified China. He then allows himself to be killed by Emperor's soldiers, and the Emperor cries a little bit at his nobility as he nevertheless orders the execution. You're selling the film a bit short, it's not an explicit morality play like the old ccp propaganda flicks. The cruelty is just the backstory for the assassin's rather than taking up 50% of the screentime. The implications are still there though. Legalism doesn't say that the ends justify the means, that's would be a further extrapolation from its fundamental stance. That's that the implementation of state and power should be devolved as far away as possible from emotionality or personal investment. A legalist leader doesn't even need to be successful, they just need to follow their own laws and resist any urge to subvert them or allow them to be subverted. They also shouldn't take anything personally at all, whether that be challenges and betrayals or acts of goodwill. In Hero the emperor ends up thinking the the assassins aren't unjustified and aren't just bloodthirsty and gives the guy a sword and decides to leave his life and his dream to the assassin's discretion. The assassin just comes to the same conclusion, but the emperor is the emperor and isn't allowed to let him go. He doesn't have the freedom to forgive somebody. The worst thing about the movie is how it misogynistically presents women as extraneous and totally unable to comprehend the male characters pure and noble rationality and reasoning. Schenck v. U.S. posted:
Legalism was a later school of thought than Confucianism. It has to said that it also arose from the same period of arbitrary, unceasing violence in the Late Zhou era. Confucianism was widely adopted but politics hadn't really changed much. The various scholars of legalism saw the holistic elements of Confucian leadership as unreliable, as even a competent ruler could show favouritism, and a bad ruler would just gently caress everything up. Worse were the nobility and mystics and other middle rankers of society who didn't have as clear an obligation as the ruler and basically did whatever they wanted. The idea of a legal code was apparently non-existent in China, so the legalists started from the concept of law as an equalizing force. How draconian the punishments are weren't an important consideration for the school as a whole. The important idea was that a punishment or a reward could be graded on a universal scale, rather than just being up to a Confucian's judgement.
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Mar 29, 2020 01:00
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feedmegin posted:So uh what are the Marines planning to do if one of their opponents brings a tank, going forward? Sort of seems like an important capability to lose entirely. The Chinese are building islands in the Pacific to use as forward bases. These islands won't have any tanks on them, so when the USMC is tasked with seizing them they won't need tanks themselves. No, really. And yes, this is a deeply stupid plan. In no particular order: - If there's a big war with China where we're directly attacking each other seizure of those bases is going to be a VERY low priority, relatively speaking. I suspect that if it came down to it, that would be important for about an hour and a half before things escalated to the point where the war was out of the USMC's hands. - If the intent is to somehow intimidate China, well, no. At best it's not a particularly impressive move, at worst it's an unnecessary threat that will needlessly anger them. - The capabilities the USMC is looking to pick up in trade - anti-ship missiles - are worse than pointless. The Marine Air Wing isn't set up for that mission; it will cost more money to realign it to take up that task, and doing so will only piss off the Navy, making budget and turf fights worse. - The USMC survives by being flexible. It can adapt itself to different situations. What are the odds a situation other than a big war with China comes up in the next decade or so? I'd bet good money that something will come up where tanks would have been VERY useful many times before there's even a hint of seizing a Chinese base. - I was on the Wespac that deployed to Somalia for Restore Hope. We didn't really do much but roll around and look mean. Whenever we showed up somewhere the hostiles were long gone. So the higher-ups decided we were a waste of time and money and pulled us out. A few weeks later, "Blackhawk Down" happened. I'm not saying we would have stopped it or prevented it, or that there us a sure cause-and-effect there. But I do know that tanks are just flat-out intimidating in a way that even the bad-rear end Delta operators in helos aren't, and never will be. Even now a part of me wonders if the hostiles were emboldened to act because there were no longer tanks in Mogadishu - I can prove nothing, but it's a suspicion. Not having tanks takes away this threat. - I had the honor of sitting on the edges of a briefing then-Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer (CO if I MEF) gave to the officers of my unit in the run-up to the 1st Gulf War. After the briefing he spent some time informally talking. The USMC had briefly considered doing something similar as the Cold War was ending, dropping "heavy" stuff like tanks and concentrating on "light" grunt stuff. He pointed out the fact that the incipient Gulf War showed how short-sighted this was. "Don't throw away the heavy stuff, you can always just leave it home, and you really don't want to be caught without it if you need it." All in all, it's a very, very bad move.
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Mar 29, 2020 01:21
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Alchenar posted:In addition to still being one of the most powerful armies on the planet, they can call upon the actual US Army. how are they supposed to get the tanks there without a beach head.
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Mar 29, 2020 01:30
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Stairmaster posted:how are they supposed to get the tanks there without a beach head.
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Mar 29, 2020 01:35
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Stairmaster posted:how are they supposed to get the tanks there without a beach head. If you've launched your amphibious landing onto an armoured division then you already done hosed up.
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Mar 29, 2020 01:38
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Stairmaster posted:how are they supposed to get the tanks there without a beach head. Submersible tanks, they'll drive them straight there from 29 palms.
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Mar 29, 2020 01:55
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If the Marines want to ditch heavy tanks and need them to be amphibious then there is only one solution
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Mar 29, 2020 02:26
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Hero is a pretty bad movie. Especially cause if you're colorblind it's just the same movie three times.
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Mar 29, 2020 02:28
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Ensign Expendable posted:If the Marines want to ditch heavy tanks and need them to be amphibious then there is only one solution Done for real in WWII and Korea:  And the USSR had their own amphibious tanks:  But they're a technological dead end. Useless against an MBT, too light for a real fight.
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Mar 29, 2020 02:32
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You just got to make them bigger so they can displace more weight and mount some heavier armour. Give them a little more range. Maybe make them autonomous, and well protected by armour and secondary guns. Hell, if they get big enough, maybe they can carry around some of the smaller sea tanks and launch them from the side. Of course, those'll have to be well-protected and armed too. Maybe they'd benefit from a longer deployment range as well...
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Mar 29, 2020 02:36
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I recommend using nuclear blasting charges to create canals leading to where you want to go, allowing you to use destroyers instead of needing separate land vehicles.
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Mar 29, 2020 02:46
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Xiahou Dun posted:I have Strong Opinions about all translations of The Art of War, but the Cleary version is the least terrible. The Giles version is absolute hack work and I wouldn't mop up a piss-stain with it. It's just garbage. How is the Roger Ames translation? It's the only one I've ever read, since the Otto Jolles edition of On War I've got has it as a "forward" of sorts. (I presume since Sun Tzu is pretty slim reading it was done by the publisher to let them increase the price of the book)
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Mar 29, 2020 03:00
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Cessna posted:And the USSR had their own amphibious tanks: What is this? I want more details so I can add it to my game. I have no idea how I'd use it (in a mission sense) but I need it. EDIT: from the filename, a PT-76? TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Mar 29, 2020 |
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Mar 29, 2020 03:01
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Fangz posted:The thing you need to remember about China (at least in the period we are talking about with this film) is that it is run by the victims of the Cultural Revolution, in the name of the perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution. yeah this is a good summary. but what really creeps me out is the war the Emperor has to win isn't something thrust upon him, it's a war of conquest basically chosen by him. This is justified in the film because of course it is all China, and China has to be united. I couldn't help reading that in the context of modern China's geopolitical issues with Taiwan. Slim Jim Pickens posted:In Hero the emperor ends up thinking the the assassins aren't unjustified and aren't just bloodthirsty and gives the guy a sword and decides to leave his life and his dream to the assassin's discretion. The assassin just comes to the same conclusion, but the emperor is the emperor and isn't allowed to let him go. He doesn't have the freedom to forgive somebody. I found this element extremely creepy from a political point of view. I couldn't help but feel the assassin letting himself get murked at the end was supposed to represent how people should behave towards their government. No matter how morally messed up it is its necessary to maintain the system for the greater good. Cessna posted:
I read a lot of the Defense Department's post facto account of the operation and decision making process, and the plan was always to get you and your tanks out of their as fast as possible. Before you even set foot in Somalia the UN contingent from Pakistan and elsewhere was already lined up to replace you. The DoD had absolutely no intention of getting dragged into a lengthy occupation. Unfortunately one of the issues that lead to the "Blackhawk Down" situation was US leaders and UN peacekeepers had different and sometimes conflicting ideas about what the mission was, and they did a bad job of coordinating with each other. One result of this was the peacekeepers kept pushing for more and more mission creep, and the remaining American military contingent just kinda blithely followed their direction without a solid strategic plan. The change in Presidential administrations did not help the situation.
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Mar 29, 2020 03:06
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:What is this? I want more details so I can add it to my game. I have no idea how I'd use it (in a mission sense) but I need it. I’m sure someone here can tell you every detail about it, but it’s a PT-76.
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Mar 29, 2020 03:07
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:What is this? I want more details so I can add it to my game. I have no idea how I'd use it (in a mission sense) but I need it. A PT-76, a Soviet amphibious tank. They were used extensively as a light or recon tank in the Cold War, and some are still in use today.
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Mar 29, 2020 03:08
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Awesome, thank you!
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Mar 29, 2020 03:10
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Squalid posted:yeah this is a good summary. but what really creeps me out is the war the Emperor has to win isn't something thrust upon him, it's a war of conquest basically chosen by him. This is justified in the film because of course it is all China, and China has to be united. I couldn't help reading that in the context of modern China's geopolitical issues with Taiwan. That terrible adaptation Red Cliffs had a similar ending with the capture and release of Cao Cao by everyone, after a mild admonishment.
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Mar 29, 2020 04:19
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