Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
What factors decide wars? Luck? Fervent ideology? Preponderance of material resources? Or is advantage achieved by superior manpower and morale? In modern times, is victory found largely in lethal cutting-edge technology?
All these factors in varying degrees have in the past explained military success. Hernan Cortés’ destruction of the Aztec Empire (1521) was predicated on the vastly outnumbered, but well-led Spanish conquistadors alone possessing harquebuses, artillery, steel swords, metal breastplates and helmets, horses, and crossbows. That monopoly allowed a few hundred mounted knights to end an empire of millions in roughly two years.
The industrial might of the United States often ensured that American forces in the distant Pacific during the Second World War simply had far more food, weapons, medical care, and military infrastructure than did the imperial Japanese in their own environs. Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht was often outnumbered through much of 1939–41; nevertheless, in those three years, it managed to maintain greater fervor, morale, and conviction of purpose than did its surprised French, Soviet and disorganized British opponents.
Yet sometimes generals and the leadership that single individuals instill matter as much as all these seemingly larger inanimate factors. Often the fates of millions, both on the battlefield and to the rear, hinge on the abilities of just a few rare commanders of genius. They are perhaps the military equivalent of civilian airline pilots, whose skill or ineptness can determine whether hundreds of passengers live or die, regardless of the weather or the condition or model of the aircraft or the nature of the passengers on board.
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There’s also the willingness to do what needs to be done, something the US lost the stomach for quite some time ago.
Think about it. If we took off the gloves, the War on Terror would be over in about a week.
I made this exact point on some other blog not long ago, and some smarmy liberal came along after me and responded, “Well, we’re not Darth Fucking Vader.”
After I asked “Darth Fucking Vader? Who’s that? Was he in The Fucking Empire Strikes Back, or Return of the Fucking Jedi?” I remembered something I’ve learned from hours and hours of watching The Military Channel. (Yes, it’s a real satellite channel, one of the many that Discovery owns.)
“We’re not Darth Vader?” I wanted to ask. Could have fooled me.
What I learned from The Military Channel is that during World War II, American bomber crews inflicted suffering and casualties on civilians in Axis countries that would curl your hair. Our bombers not only flattened cities, they literally incinerated people by the thousands – and not just that infamous incident in Dresden, Germany. It was also done to other German cities, as well as to the Japanese. And this was years before the a-bombs were dropped. You think we confined our bombs to factories and other military targets? No. Not by a long shot.
The thinking was at the time that the nastier, uglier, ghastlier, and more horrifying the wartime experience, the quicker the whole thing might end….and the less likely the necessity to repeat such raids would arise in the future. Both of these could actually save lives in the long run.
That, and our government saw the civilian populations of these countries as being part-and-parcel of the war machine in Germany or Japan – directly responsible for putting their wartime leaders into power and keeping them there…as well as the civilians being the ones who grew the food to feed the army and worked in the factories making guns, tanks, ships, and bullets for the enemy’s military to use against Allied forces.
This is all direct from the mouths of the men who actually flew the planes and dropped the bombs. A number of them are still living and were interviewed on camera about their experiences. One of them also added that the Germans didn’t seem to have any compunction about burning 40,000 Brits to death by bombing London and other English cities earlier in the war – unprovokedly and with the intention of enslaving the surviving population after a follow-up amphibious assault, to boot.
Why am I bringing this up? Let’s just say I think there are some lessons we could learn from the period which are applicable to modern warfare. Maybe then it wouldn’t be necessary for modern conflicts to drag on for ten years or more, cost trillions of dollars to fight, and get thousands of American GI’s killed.
Don’t we have B52s now?
- cylarz | 02/12/2011 @ 22:44