I think we make too much of video games and movies.
They don't make us violent. We're already violent. That's why we buy them.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
A violently true depiction of what war really is
231–240 of 264 posts
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds a lot like what Krav Maga claims about its teachings. They certainly have a point when they say that fighting in the ring and fighting against gangs with guns and knives on the street is a very different situation that traditional martial arts do not do much about.
Unfortunately, from what I understand, Krav Maga students don't practice against resisting opponents. Because of this, it has been criticized as more of a "dance" art, where the student and the opponent are just going through a "kata" or predefined motions without meeting real resistance. Of course, it is rare to come across a situation in any martial art where your training opponent will be resisting 100%, the way a…
Krav Maga - Is not a 'dance' martial art. You will learn the quickest way to ensure your opponent is on the floor and will not be able to getting up again easily.
You will train against resisting opponents. You will train against multiple resisting opponents simultaneously. Then you will train against opponents with plastic knives and guns.
You are taught things like 'If your opponent is on the floor - keep kicking him - because then you look like a psycho and nobody wants to fight a psycho'.
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I do agree with you in some regards, there is a very real policy impact involved in having a professional all-volunteer army. When you have to draft chunks of your population in order to conduct warfare, public opinion is very much against you if your cause is not 'just'. "If a nation cannot get enough paid volunteers to fight a war, that war is simply not worth fighting." The flaw here is that there are always…
You can't just use draftees, as you'd have no senior staff unless you draft for life. In my opinion, draft is only justified for defensive wars where the nation is in total war.
Generally how this works is you draft people (or let them volunteer), but then people can volunteer to remain in longer.
Sometimes, after being drafted, one can (based on performance or aptitude) elect to go career early on -- staying longer, but going for more serious training.
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#234I am very tempted to flag this. the sociopath thing really rubs me the wrong way -- there are logical flaws with using that label. War is a part of society. If society tells you to go kill somebody and you do, you can't be a sociopath. Having said that, it's a great first-person account of what real combat is like, at least for this one guy. I am concerned the effect on HN discussion will be negative. Hopefully I'm w…
> If society tells you to go kill somebody and you do, you can't be a sociopath. I think there is social value to having some well-behaved sociopaths on your team (ie, the Jayne Cobb archetype). But certain jobs/roles will absolutely self-select in favor of violent individuals with little empathy (and if you're not one already, the military, and to a lesser extent the police, are happy to turn you into one). This obv…
"The opposition to Iraq would have come quicker [...]"
The opposition to the war was pretty quick already, coming at least three months before the invasion began.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/us/threats-responses-disse...
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=iraq+war+protest...
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#235I am an experienced soldier with combat experience in several corners of the world. I have a distinguished service record. The only units I've ever known are Special Forces units. I've operated in several tiers of the community. I was medically discharged following injuries sustained in combat operations. You deserve a better account than M provides. Please understand some detail must be left out. I am not an academi…
This is in line with my experience (I spent a bunch of time with tier 2 SOF (Army SF) and other parts of the military) -- the people who seemed like the mentally unhinged were either in line combat or combat support units which experienced a lot of combat, not the SOF crowd.
The Army SF guys (and the higher level people, who I didn't spend as much time with, and who you can't really talk about; the tier 2 missions were largely public like training, medical outreach, etc. and sometimes had reporters when they could get them...) were among the most mentally balanced, generally respectable, and moral people I met in the military. They were also a lot older than the majority of line infantry -- 28+. (Generally, Army SF, medical, and aviation were the people I found most intelligent, sane, and worth being around, but the medical people were in a lot of cases barely thinking of themselves as military, just as doctors who happened to be deployed.)
Some of the biggest dirtbags were the support troops assigned to SF (I think for JSOC/tier-1, you get tier-2 and some specialist JSOC parts for support, or Rangers when they need a large blocking force, but for tier-2, you would get a wide variety of detached troops as cooks, mechanics, etc.); and these guys acted like they were operators, and were a lot more likely to get in trouble. It was pretty hilarious.
The weirdest thing is that Army SF doctrinally has the Foreign Internal Defense mission (training local troops), which requires a high level of cultural sensitivity, etc. Yet, in a lot of Iraq/Afghanistan, they picked rank-compatible line units for that mission (i.e. an O-6 from an infantry unit advising an ANA general running an infantry unit), and often from the National Guard (where they were more "local" in their NG recruiting area, and thus even less culturally aware than regular army), and used even Army SF for direct action type missions. Then brought in contractors to do the direct mentoring mission, wtf.
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#236I am very tempted to flag this. the sociopath thing really rubs me the wrong way -- there are logical flaws with using that label. War is a part of society. If society tells you to go kill somebody and you do, you can't be a sociopath. Having said that, it's a great first-person account of what real combat is like, at least for this one guy. I am concerned the effect on HN discussion will be negative. Hopefully I'm w…
> War is part of society War is part of society? To barbaric ones maybe. Civilized societies don't settle disputes by mass murder. > If society tells you to go kill somebody and you do, you can't be a sociopath. Are you kidding me? Society can't tell a person to go kill somebody. A person tells another person to kill somebody. It is this absurd respect for authority that makes these wars possible, combined with a lac…
War is the norm throughout history. Peace is really just an interval between the normal behavior of countries.
And conflating war with mass murder is a tenuous argument. Was it mass murder when HMS Conqueror torpedoed the Belgrano in the Falklands killing 323?
How about all the deaths resulting from NATO interceding in the Libyan civil war? Or during the Kosovo/Serbian confict?
And that's just recent history. In Vietnam, you had Australia, France, and the US fighting a ruthless war. Are they all uncivilized?
Careful when you sling epithets at countries; most have a history of engaging in this barbarism you deplore.
And if you think that "we're all past that now," you need to do some reading of pre-WW1 literature and news. The idea tha t the Continent would engage in some of the most ruthless fighting was inconceivable. After all, it was a "civilized" time.
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#237With all that said, games like "Brothers in Arms" helped me experience, to a degree, the sacrifices brave men made.
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
US drafts work from the bottom up. Because as you go higher up (e.g. people in college, then blue collars, then white collars, then leadership...) those people are increasingly indispensable to the war effort. In Vietnam, they made universities give them lists of the students that were doing badly to draft first, once they ran out of people not going to college. And if I had children, I would definitely consider relo…
Back in the day, there was a serious social stigma to being a "draft dodger".
Back in the day there used to be serious social stigma to colored people using the same drinking fountains as white people.
Nationalism is just as bad as racism. People are people. Black and white are just the same as people from Country A and Country B. I dont want to go fight people whos only problem is me trying to kill them.
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#239Off topic, but it's really annoying when the actual content of a page represents 1/5 of its length and the rest are comments. The scrollbar is made to give you a hint of how much of the article is left. This completely defeats this purpose.
Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the day, there was a serious social stigma to being a "draft dodger".
Back in the day there used to be serious social stigma to colored people using the same drinking fountains as white people. Nationalism is just as bad as racism. People are people. Black and white are just the same as people from Country A and Country B. I dont want to go fight people whos only problem is me trying to kill them.
I think the better comparison is tax evasion; you're cheating the system to get out of paying your fair share.