Certainly. But is it worse than having a thousand lancasters rain fiery indiscriminate death by night, and thousands of liberators doing the same by day? Is it worse than having einzatsgruppen burn every village in the land because partisans blew up the train tracks? Is it worse than having whole regiments die in seconds after the whistle blows and they run up no man’s land?
No man. It’s glorious progress. Yes it’s still awful cruelty. It’s still killing. And that weighs heavy on a man’s soul (and it bloody well should!). And it incurs a debt of blood, as it always has and always will. It’s not something to do lightly. War never is, no matter how surgical. This perhaps is sometimes not heeded in recent decades.
Yeah, It should never be easy - the more involved you have to be the less likely you’ll engage in it - or engage others, hopefully. Everyone knows, deep down, the right answer (not counting psychopaths).
Reminds me of an old Star Trek episode. In that episode, the crew of the Enterprise beam down to a planet where it is involved in a virtual war with another planet waged by both of their supercomputers. No destruction of property, no damage to the planets but the those of the populace which are deemed casualties by the computers must report to disintegration chambers to be killed without any mess.
After Spock arrives, Kirk destroys the war simulation computers. Anan 7 condemns Kirk’s actions, arguing that it is unalterable nature to fight wars, so without the simulation they have no alternative but to fight a real war. Kirk instead believes that the only reason the war with Vendikar has gone on so long is because the simulation insulated both societies from the horrors of war and gave them little reason to end it. He convinces Anan 7 to call a ceasefire and begin peace negotiations, and Fox agrees to act as a neutral mediator between the planets.
“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” - Robert E. Lee
While I don’t generally like quoting Confederate generals, it is worth noting that Lee’s estate was seized by the federal government (it actually belonged to his wife), and Grant began using it as a cemetery for fallen Union soldiers. The Lee family was aghast that graves were literally adjacent to their home and campaigned unrelentingly to reclaim it. Eventually, they did. The US Supreme Court sided with the Lee family that the land had been illegally seized because the federal taxes had actually been paid right up until the war began. The Union government, now legally trespassing, offered to purchase the land. The family, now gazing upon thousands of graves of war dead that dotted the landscape of their ancestral home, people their army had killed in the single bloodiest war in US history, quickly settled on the sum of $150K, the fair market value of the property. In a peculiar turn of events, the man who signed for the land on behalf of the federal government was Robert Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln.
There’s this myth that floats around in the South that Lee donated his land by people who like to lessen the question of who Lee really was as a person. He sold it. As a Texan, I wish that we had only listened our elder stateman, Houston, who said Texas should have avoided the War like the plague and simply taken the opportunity to return to a peaceful, neutral republic. He was mercilessly hounded out of office for the sin of being smart.
And if my land had suddenly become a final resting place for thousands of people senselessly killed in an avoidable war that I had started, I suppose I would have said the same thing Lee did. It’s a good thing that war is so awful. Time has only made that truth even more self-evident. War is godawful.
But it’s a godawful thing that deserves to be studied, to make it as quick and as safe for one’s own people as possible. The simulation of these conflicts is critical to that study. I’ve been re-reading all of the Clancy books (in chronological order this time) and I just finished The Hunt for Red October. If one really looks at it, the entire central theme of the book is about men who are desperately trying to avoid the veil of war shrouding their nations. Combat simulation fans are an odd breed. The rest of the public looks at people who simulate war with the idea he or she is a bloodthirsty monster, not realizing that study actually prevents the loss of life.
I didn’t watch a lot of them. Not sure why, as those I did I liked (but there were only like, what, 20 TV shows even available then).
Hey, while we’re on this topic: what ST episode was it (or one of the movies, or maybe neither?) where an alien craft was attacking the ‘E’ and kickin it’s butt - but it shouldn’t have be able too (was, on paper, vastly inferior).
Seems it was over-powering it’s systems knowing its only chance was to go 110%, even though it would more likely result in self-destruction. There’s been several instances where that episode has come to mind but can’t recall the name of it.
The Enterprise is transporting several diplomatic delegations to a conference on Babel regarding the future of the mineral-rich planet Coridan. Among the passengers are Spock’s parents, Ambassador Sarek and Amanda. There is obviously a chill between father and son owing to Spock’s choice of pursuing a career in Starfleet. Unknown to Spock or his mother is the fact that Sarek is seriously ill. There is also much tension among the delegations and a spy on board is transmitting coded messages to a ship that attacks the Enterprise. With Captain Kirk wounded in an earlier knife attack, Spock is in temporary command just as his father needs a transfusion that only he can provide.
I like the idea of the innert JSOW. It kills with only kinnetic power. It simply does its best to eliminate colateral damage.
War will be hell no matter what. I shot a 190 and the engine burst into flames. I watched it go down and start to come back up. Then it went vertically into the ground. I could tell the exact moment when the pilot was dead. Fighter pilots in WW2 most often die a fiery death. That is the nature of war.
During Desert Storm I was in the 101st. We were bombarded with pictures of the casualties on the Iraqi side. The words of Patton kept ringing in my head. “What a waste of good infantry”. They died because thier goverment was too stuburn to face the reality of the situation. Same happened in Germany and Japan.
We wage war in a more precise and personal way now. Let us not forget, it is still war.
Presumably they were slightly less aghast at the particularly harsh terrorism Lee meted among his slaves. Cruel, even by the standards of Virginians of the day.
As a Virginian myself descended from slaveowners and ironically about to sell the plantation home built by one of those ancestors in 1810, I was raised on “victimized south” propaganda. In hindsight, I believe the victorious forces of the North should have steamrolled over us. But the desire for quick reunification meant the the southern people didn’t suffer the loss as well we should have. My mother would have said that Reconstruction was very much a steamroll. Maybe. But none of my plantation-owning ancestors lost their land. Planting continued under the sharecrop system which in many cases was just slavery under a different name. The terrorism only grew worse as the initial positive steps of reconstruction were reversed. The statues we talk about now were mostly built during the period of peak Jim Crow terror in the early 20th century.
What does any of this have to do with weapons the the morality of pretending to use them? Absolutely nothing. I just happen to really hate Gen. Lee.
For clarification, General Sherman’s “War is cruelty…” quote is from messages he exchanged with General Hood concerning the surrender of Atlanta. Sherman was planning to burn it to the ground, not something he shared with General Hood, and insisted that the sick and elderly be evacuated with the rest of the population. General Hood objected, stating that Sherman’s requiring the sick and elderly be uprooted was being overly cruel. Sherman countered with “War is cruelty…”
In one thinks about it, Sherman was being merciful. He did not want to see the elderly and sick burn inside their homes. Hood, on the other hand was, IMPO, a reckless and cruel commander. His ordering the disastrous attack at Franklin, several months later is thought by many, myself included, to punish his troops for previous lackluster performance. But I digress.
Regardless, the Battle of Atlanta and Sherman’s subsequent “March to the Sea” and then march through the Carolinas is often seen as a first instance of modern “total war” - i.e. making war on the civilian population that supports the fielded armies with their production; agriculture, foodstuffs, supplies, armaments, ammunition, etc. I say “modern” total war because the ancients practiced much the sam, e.g. the Spartans destroying Athenian farms and vineyards during the Peloponnesian War, 431-405 B.C.E.
So how different is “Global thermonuclear war, toe-to-toe with the Ruskies.” than what Archidamus II or Sherman practiced? [Discuss among yourselves.]
Not all wars are total wars. That means one can choose to take a moral high road and forego certain cruelties even if those might be expedient in prosecuting the action. A spread of thermobaric warheads on the city block containing Ali Ben ■■■■■■■ would do the job for certain. But a ninja hellfire through the roof of his car is cleaner. Even if it has a less certain PK.
Of course having a good cup of tea with Ali and hash out the differences would be better, but that’s not always in the cards, is it? It’s also not relevant to this discussion
Not having every conflict devolve into a city-burning, earth-salting total war is a sure sign of civilization imo. Just like you rather have a good talk with your neighbour about the noxious fumes coming off his barbeque rather than murdering his wife and children and torturing him to death over it.
Back in the 1980s, the Navy was having some trouble with their AIM-7s…don’t know the details but several had failed in routine training shots.
About the same time we had a rash of sailors losing their money in Coke vending machines. Several of these sailors had rocked the vending machine back-and-forth, in an attempt to get their coins out, and in doing so, had tipped the heavy machines over onto themselves, killing them.
In the gallows humor of my Navy fighter squadron, it was noted that Coke machines had a higher Pk than AIM-7s.
Thats the One! I think the also make a JSOW. Not sure now. Read about it in the Stars and Stripes. @Hangar200 I remember hearing about that. I was in the Army and they were very adomant about “Dont Rock the Candy Machines”. Funny how the Aim-7 was crap and the development everyone had to endure. Now I heard a soldier say, “The F-35 is crap” and I said, “They all start out as crap”.
How the single stupidest and most reckless general of the Confederacy got a US military post named after him is beyond my level of comprehension. I live within 45 minutes of Fort Hood and devoutly hope it is renamed soon.
I tend to agree that the US Civil War is a case study in winning a war and losing the peace. The war itself was conducted in the most efficient way possible to bring it to as quickly a close as possible. Overwhelming force, as it were. This was replicated in Europe and the Pacific in War 2 because War 1 was yet another example of winning the war and losing the peace. This was followed by very successful efforts like the Marshall Plan, rebuilding civilizations to functional levels in as rapidly a period of time as possible. Fast forward to today. We got to see it again, it was just on cable news this time.
The problem (as I solely see it) in winning the peace, is one of cognition. Because the worldview of cultures is so vastly different, victory and defeat are viewed through lenses that often make little sense to the eye of the beholder. Each conflict will present its own challenges. A particular region may view ‘liberation’ from an oppressive regime completely differently from those who had liberated it; perhaps they view matters less from a national identity than they do family and kin. This causes befuddlement to those who see their identity through the prism of a flag, borders, etc.
This is always going to be a problem to be studied by the professional officer corps of any military. The lessons might be transferable to budding conflicts, or that conflict may present wholly new challenges that no one could have anticipated, no matter how hard they studied.
You would have enjoyed some of the lectures seminars at the War College. I was there in 2005-2006, so right after the high intensity conflict part of Iraqi Freedom had ended and things were not going so well for “Winning the Peace” in Iraq. We had many discussions on what was going wrong and had a few of the higher level military and civilian leadership speak to us…off the record! That it was “interesting” is an understatement.
I would agree. (Although I think it is a tie between Hood and Jackson for “stupidest”.) That said, if one looks the wounds he suffered…if I remember correctly lost a leg, eye and use of an arm (if not the whole thing)…the guy was likely suffering from serious PTSD. Not an excuse, only an possible explanation.
At the risk of being “political”, I have always found the naming of Forts and Ships for confederate generals just plan wrong.
Some were truly good generals and their exploits on the battle field should be studied by those who practice the same profession. However, in the end they led armed insurrection against the United States of America. That is treason.
IMHO, treason cannot be overlooked, ignored or forgiven. Their personal reasons for doing what they did, are moot. While others have different reasons for not seeing these individuals honored in any way, that is my reason.
