It’s worse that just losing their purpose. They’re in the process of losing their manhood. While there are still instances of deserved bravery and honor it’s not for lack of trying to destroy it by Obama and his leftist lackeys.

“By going for superior firepower, it seems to be a concession that they lacked the accuracy in combat as well as the H2H skills to hold the enemy back long enough to shoot them at certain places.

…The West has been historically very deficient in H2H and melee training. Especially now.”

During the entire decade or so of the Moro Rebellion the US had 116 KIA, 500 troops died of disease, and 189 WIA. The Moros on the other hand had between 10,000 – 20,000 KIA. The US army, as well as the navy, still took saber, cutlass, and bayonet training very seriously back then. But whatever their deficiencies in hand to hand combat, looking at those lopsided figures I can only conclude we need more of those deficiencies whatever they are.

“Wait a minute, Steve57 – are you saying that the US occupied and pacified Muslim lands in eight years? That’s impossible! Everybody knows you can’t beat Muslims by military force, it has to be a battle of ideas, right?”

Teddy Roosevelt and his generals such as Black Jack Pershing weren’t as sophisticated, hadn’t been editor of the Harvard Law Review, and didn’t have the community organizing experience that our current “professorial,” super intellectual wonder President has under his belt.

So they weren’t smart enough to know they were in an unwinnable quagmire. The rubes.

This would go back to the older European officer models of fighting and some civil war 1 methods.

Some of Black Jack Pershing’s better warriors and officers would have switched over to that method if they were good enough. I wonder how much of the legend behind the ACP was due to the warrior skills of those officers and leaders.

Depends on accuracy. A shot to the spinal cord or the base of the brain stem will circumvent the benefits of slow bleed through or drugs, as it disables the motor controls. If they are still moving around, it’ll be like a chicken with its head cut off.

By going for superior firepower, it seems to be a concession that they lacked the accuracy in combat as well as the H2H skills to hold the enemy back long enough to shoot them at certain places.

These were Moro swordsman who would attack armed Christian police and soldiers with their blades, which traditionally weren’t much larger than a big knife or a contemporary US army bayonet.

The West has been historically very deficient in H2H and melee training. Especially now.

The answer was always better logistics and more firepower, but that ends up being a crutch later on.

Everything else, such as democracy or talking, means nothing.

Similar things can happen to a person with a firearm, but if the user can manage to get the sight on target, stabilize the shot, and pull the trigger without pulling the gun too, then the rest is done by chemicals and firepower, maybe the wind for good or bad.

So intent is a big thing in melee weapons. You have to really really want to get the enemy. Whereas with more long ranged, abstract ish, weapons like a drone pilot or a gun user, it’s less of an issue. A gun can still kill even if the user had no intent to kill, for example.

Whereas the power of a melee tool to kill when the user has no intent to kill is very very low. One only generally sees it happen when an attacker falls on his own knife, held in the target’s hands, and that’s more the result of incompetence than anything else. Intent was there kill the enemy, but competence in avoiding death wasn’t there.

But tools help people use violence more effectively. What if you don’t have a tool, other than your physical arms? Then it gets interesting.