I think that if we had to fight WWII today we would not win
I believe that, were we to fight a war like WWII today, we would not be able to win. I don’t say that because we lack the weapons or the skills. I say it because I believe that we would fight with our hands voluntarily tied behind our backs. I base that on a few things.
One is the chart that can be found here. I can’t seem to copy it, so you’ll have to follow the link to see it, but it shows the results of a poll that demonstrates enormous generational differences in the answers to the question of whether Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack is fully justified. It goes from 81% agreement from those 65+ to 27% agreement from those who are 18-34 years old.
And then of course there is the woke agenda of so much of today’s military.
Another reason I doubt we could fight WWII today is that our young people no longer believe in evil – unless it’s the evil of those who would oppose abortion, or misgender someone, or have the gall to be white and not apologize in the required manner for their privilege. That is, they cannot recognize true evil when they see it, because the principles that have been drilled into them are as follows:
(1) Privileged people are guilty and the oppressed – as defined by the left – are always innocent no matter what they do.
(2) One cannot and should not judge a culture – except the culture of the West.
(3) History itself doesn’t need to be learned; just leftist ideas and principles.
(4) Well-meaning elite people can fix anything without bloodshed.
(5) All killing is bad unless it’s done by the underprivileged, in which case it’s a shame but understandable. Or maybe not even a shame.
(6) War never solves anything (see this). They don’t understand that some wars are for survival against an enemy bent on your subjugation or obliteration, and that those wars sometimes are – very very unfortunately – total wars. In total wars innocent people die, but something is indeed solved.
NOTE: Please also see this relevant piece.
I really did not like the wording of that poll. ‘Fully justified’? I bristle at such a categorical question regarding military action, as it is happening. The ‘fog of war’ can obscure a great deal of relevant facts. If asked that specific question, I’m not sure I would say yes. With the a qualifier such as ‘likely justified’ or even ‘highly likely justifed’, yes I could endorse it.
Of course, I’m not suggesting the younger folk are so reflective that they balked for the reasons I just stated. Perhaps a small percentage of them did, but I think a disproportionate amount do subscribe to the six principles Neo laid out.
A direct, and very deadly, attack on America might still jolt enough younger people from their fashionable ideology such that a subsequent war would be winnable. Real world consequences have a tendency to shatter fashionable nonsense rather quickly. But who knows? I wouldn’t bet on it
Yes Neo, we are in deep deep trouble.
I agree.
I just finished reading Ernie Pyle’s book on the men on the ground in WWII, and with exceptions, I do not find the sense of a call to duty to defend in today’s young people that existed then.. Fifty years of America-hating teaching in our schools probably will do that.
Hamas kills 1,000+ Jews. Biden gives Hamas 100 million dollars. If Hamas kills 2,000 Jews, will Biden give Hamas 200 million dollars?
Depressing.
J*F*M:
That which is rewarded is repeated.
It’s one of those cycles of somethings things.
This is a different point than neo’s, though not entirely different. A big factor in our WWII effort was the fact that FDR put Bill Knudsen in charge of much of the manufacturing end.
If the leftists and anti-capitalists in the FDR admin. had succeeded in pushing FDR around on this, and they did try…, then things would have gone much worse. Now think about how much influence the left has on the current presidency.
Neo:
I’ll be real brief; you are 100% right.
There needs to be a crash course on the history of Islamic aggression , including hundreds of years of aggression BEFORE the first crusade! They sacked the Vatican BEFORE the first crusade. They invaded Spain, BEFORE the first crusade. They were stopped in France at the Battle of Tours BEFORE the first crusade. Much of the middle east was one Christian. “Turkey ” was the center of the Greek Christian civilization!
A lot of people have accepted the idea that white people cannot ” appropriate” things from another culture but other cultures can appropriate white stuff.
Cultural Stockholm syndrome is huge thing among Western whites, especially white women.
Affluence breeds idiocy. Or more specifically, as the distance from hard consequences increases, the tendency to adopt self destructive belief systems increases.
Many young people in the Western world are unacquainted with true barbarism and savagery. Having never truly experienced them, such things exist at several removes. They may seem alien, unreal, and perhaps outright unbelievable. At most they’re things that only happen to strangers in far away places. As such, the brutal, naked savagery of Hamas terrorists may seem easy to doubt, dismiss as a lie, or an exaggeration.
It’s also easy to uncritically believe fashionable nonsense and sophistry that has been spoonfed to young people by a supposed authority figures like college professors, celebrities, and social media influencers and reinforced by peer pressure. It’s much more difficult to be critical, to go against the grain. And the truly negative consequences for promoting these bad ideas are often in the future, far away. Certainly they can’t imagine that their lives could be in danger, that they or their loved ones could be murdered, raped, their home burned to the ground.
I can only imagine what would happen if we ever got into a conflict on the scale of WWII.
Our ruling class has spent the last 30 years telling us how much they hate while males, so some not insignificant percentage of them will sit it out. Why die for a government that despises you?
The government might try a draft under those circumstances, but with the size of the foreign population we now have I think we can expect a large exodus of military age men of that background. At least our immigration problems would be lessened, so there’s that.
Along the same lines, what percentage of the current population are actually hostile to the country they call home? A congressional district that would elect someone like Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib will no doubt contain at least some people who would be receptive to working for whoever the adversary is that we’re fighting.
Last but not least too many of our young people cannot even meet the physical qualifications, and the have issues with drug use, type 2 diabetes, and other maladies.
I’m sure I can think of more, but you get the idea.
This is the point of the exercise
Neo, I think your article is spot on.
Peoples’ minds have been reprogrammed; now they are fools.
The ancient Persian king and conqueror Cyrus the Great said “Do what you want, but be prepared in that case to be ruled rather than to rule others… Soft countries breed soft men. For it is not possible for the same land to bear both wonderful fruits and men who are good at war.” He was perhaps being a bit to reductive, but he may have had a point.
I think there are still plenty of young people that would line up to fight a war should the US be attacked.
My son joined the Marine Corps in 2005 after graduating from high school in response to 9/11. One of the problems I see is we use our military in ways far afield from defeating our enemies.
And we still haven’t seemed to recognize the limits of a traditional uniformed military. Fighting an insurgent/terrorist army hiding among women and children requires an understanding that the traditional rules of war must be modified.
I think we could still win any war against a uniformed military, but that’s not the wars we will be fighting in the future. They will be wars where the enemy operates among civilians, both here and abroad.
To Neo’s point, given the constraints by the leftist narratives, it would be difficult to fight a traditional war. Given the current definition of war crimes, we committed war crimes in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1, Serbia, Iraq 2, and Afghanistan.
Many still wring their hands at the use of the atomic bombs, even though the fire bombing of Tokyo was more destructive.
“Many young people in the Western world are unacquainted with true barbarism and savagery.”
Well they just got a pretty good “in your face” lesson in the genre just about two weeks ago…
…And the usual suspects amongst them either rejected it all as fake news—AKA Israeli propaganda—or exulted in it…
…Or BOTH(!)
…Which might remind one of those earnest types that on the one hand are absolutely certain that the Holocaust NEVER happened—never POSSIBLY could have happened—OR was grossly exaggerated; and on the other that the Nazis and their fine feathered fiends didn’t murder nearly enough Jews…(which is a shame…or perhaps an opportunity—depending on how you view it—because now someone else has to do it).
Go figure…
Maybe.
But many of the Brits that fought in WW2 were the same ones that just a few years earlier had sworn that they wouldn’t fight for king or country.
So, maybe things aren’t as concrete as they seem.
As Sen. Cotton said about Biden giving millions to Gaza, “We didn’t fund the Nazis during WW2.”
While there are always doubts, I think it comes down to who we are fighting.
1940’s Japan and Germany? I think we’d still be able to take them. The logistics still favor us. Now, if the UK roles over without a Churchill? Yeah, that’s a game changer.
Fighting Russia or China today? For now, we are still good. Russia can’t even beat the Ukraine. I don’t think the US would be able to invade and conquer Russia (nobody really can do that), but Russia wouldn’t be able to defeat the US in a non-proxy war. Similarly China. Aside from a great deal of success killing their own, the Chinese military is still a communist, decrepit force best suited for ‘Internal Security.’
I do understand the feeling that we don’t have the national will to succeed. But, I do think an existential battle is unlikely to be lost to an EXTERNAL opponent. We are at much greater risk of being sold (further) down the river by the globalists in both parties (Bush/Clinton/Obama/Biden coalition)
A few Random Thoughts:
I think the removal of religion from most people’s lives has resulted in this moral relativism. Remember Obummer defining “sin” as something that he thought was wrong? Sin was relative to his moral world. When people believed in the Bible, there was an objective wrong: Sin was what was defined as sin in the Bible.
Sir Charles James Napier would never exist today. Unfortunately.
We would never win WWII today: We have a military hell-bent on alienating the sort of recruits who could make the US military great. We have a mega-bloated bureaucracy of officious little pencil pushers would would never let such things as the miracles that production of things like the Liberty Ships happen. We have made the whole idea of “patriotism” seem like something bad. I despair.
Reports keep mentioning “torture.” of the victims by Hamas. Me, I had a really hard time thinking of what that could be. Basically, I couldn’t imagine it. Until I saw an interview with two gentlemen from Zaka who described the torture. My imagination would never have come up with what Hamas did to people. I say this because I think that is one of the problems. The people who feel sorry for Hamas are the ones who think waterboarding is the most unbelievably awful torture. I think the Israelis who were tortured would have preferred being waterboarded.
In 1941, as in 1917, Americans believed that we had been dragged into a war against our will. The Japanese would have told you that our sanctions on oil and other commodities had forced them into war. Fortunately, most of our people didn’t agree with them. Now that we have been so involved all around the world, people are more skeptical about our role in the world and our innocence or righteousness. I’m referring to the Russia-Ukraine war and to the Iraq War 20 years ago, rather than to the current Israel-Hamas war.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-warship-shoots-down-missiles-from-yemen-thought-to-be-heading-for-israel/
Just a region, not the world I guess.
Seeing the state of both East and West today, I am not sure the people who fought WW2 would do so today.
Neo’s link says, quite correctly, “Evil has a way of disabling moral receptivity and short-circuiting intelligence.”
We see this on college campuses nationwide, demonstrations of pro-Palestinian slaughter of Israelis, anti-“colonization” of Gaza by Israel. Their intelligence, morality, and judgment have indeed been short-circuited.
America’s future is grim. We do not have the armaments inventory because Biden has sent most of it to Ukraine, and it will take 10 years to rebuild according to experts, because Democrats (the majority, who elected Biden, after all) will oppose the funding needed.
America is committing slow but sure suicide. I am old and will likely not live to see it, but America’s ruin is coming for sure. Maybe the terrorist elements are already here, coming via our southern (HaHa) “border”.
To win, you have to first understand who your enemy is and then take the threat seriously. Plus, if you are knocked back on your heels, as the US was on Dec. 7, 1945, you have to be able to adjust quickly and formidably.
Jonathan Spyer has some cogent thoughts on who is truly serious today…and who has been—seriously—helping them:
“Political Islam Now Commands the Middle East”—
https://www.meforum.org/65004/political-islam-now-commands-the-middle-east
H/T Powerline blog.
Houthi “rebels” and Iran “know nothing, nothing” about such missiles. I would wonder who gave such missiles to the Houthis?
Brandonites know not to ask questions with known but unfortunate answers. See “I know nothing, nothing!”
Good thing there aren’t any hospitals in the Red Sea. Or are there?
Related:
Asking the right questions….and providing some definitive answers.
IOW the terrible need for Israel to fully comprehend that is NOW facing a real, not a theoretical, existential crisis.
“Expert Analysis: The Coming Storm – Insights After Nine Days of War in Israel”
https://sofrep.com/news/expert-analysis-the-coming-storm-insights-after-nine-days-of-war-in-israel
P.S. And not just Israel….
I agree that we could not win WWII today.
First, we have such moral confusion about good and evil.
Second, we have dismantled the industries that won the war.
The US Navy cannot even design a functional ship.
The Army has been stripped of war fighters by Obama, et al.
Our youth is soft. In the 1930s the CCC did a lot to get the youth ready for WWII.
Of course if war were invariably futile, we’d have no county for the mind-raped young to look down their callow snouts at. Smack dab in Valley Forge country, I’m ever mindful of one Quaker’s eyewitness report as Revolutionary soldiers got shot and bayoneted beyond the windows of his Kennett Square Meeting House during the Battle of Brandywine, one of the war’s longest and bloodiest:
“While there was much noise and confusion without,” he said, “all was quiet and peaceful within.”
Pingback:Instapundit » Blog Archive » NEO: I think that if we had to fight WWII today we would not win. I believe that, were we to fight
Nonapod @ c2:18–Exactly right.
Far too many of today’s “youts” are barely literate, badly educated (but highly propagandized), far too gullible and soft, and it appears that many of them view our History, the accomplishments of the West (which includes every invention which allows them to live with a level of knowledge (if they make the effort to even look for it) comfort, luxury, relative safety, and good health that was never available to the King of any country, any time or anywhere in the past), and Western culture with disdain, if not outright hatred.
Re: Sir Charles James Napier–among the many acts of sabotage our educational system has wrought is the destruction of our conviction about the superiority of Western culture–about our history, our Christian religion, our way of life, our laws, our moral values, our customs, and our behaviors.
Now there are no standards–no way of life, moral code and it’s attendant behaviors are better than any others (but, in reality, our children are taught that our ways are the inferior ones, and are to be condemned)–and any “standards” and all judgement are suspect.
Upon reflection, I have to agree with Neo’s assessment. I do think there are Americans willing to defend America– but as has been pointed out, the military and civilian bureaucracy has been so infiltrated with leftist ideology, the command structure would make making war impossible.
We were seeing that with the ROE in Afghanistan.
While it is clear that 2023 America is not equipped to prevail in a WWII situation, it should also be noted that 1939 America was not equipped to prevail in a WWII situation, either. They’d spent 21 years beating swords into plowshares and gone through the Great Depression.
Fortunately, Americans of the time were a quick study.
Neo can’t argue anything you wrote.
Leftists have destroyed Nationality in young people, see protest of Israel in high schools.
Maybe Ron DeSantis can ship Hamas to the Ivy League schools.
No win for us. Remember, the Red Army defeated something like 75% of the German military on the Eastern Front. Without them to inflict massive ghastly casualties we don’t have a hope in hell of winning world war 2.
For the egotists who imagine that Russia is bogged down in a ‘war’ with Ukraine, consider one really basic factor. By simply squatting on what they took at the outset they have virtually totally disarmed NATO. All those mythical NATO military machines that people thought existed all these years are really nothing at all.
Sadly, I agree.
“I do think there are Americans willing to defend America…”
Keep in mind that one doesn’t hear about the ones who ARE willing. And eager.
Indeed, one ONLY hears about the squeaky wheels, who hate their country.
They exist, certainly, but their numbers are likely far smaller than the incessant Leftist propaganda would like everyone to believe. (The current Left, generally, is, after all determined to demoralize the citizenry—and yes, to some extent, it’s working…)
Still, never give up. Never lose hope.
There’s a lot of goodness in the country, and willingness to serve.
A whole lot.
a small part of this
https://twitter.com/paulsperry_/status/1715049739652100220
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12649759/French-wine-makers-destroy-crate-loads-Spanish-sparkling-wine-protest-cheap-imports.html
Well…at least a few Frenchmen know how to fight…or something.
The horror!
Fortunately we don’t have to fight WW II today.
When I worry about America’s decline, I notice the rest of the world is declining faster.
China, Russia, Germany, Japan, the Middle East are all in poor to terrible shape for serious warfighting.
The hard men who have the right attitudes have been and are being very systematically driven out of our military.
Seeing this, I’d imagine that a lot of potential recruits are deciding that today’s Lbtqxyz+ U.S. military is not for them.
I’m not sure whom we would be fighting, but the recent military performances of the Iranians and Russians don’t cause me great fear. The Norks are worm-infested midgets whose manufacturing capacity is less than ours. The Chinese haven’t been in combat in 40 years, they have no allies, and most of them are dirt poor, barely literate peasants.
I agree we might have trouble today with the Wehrmacht or the IJN, but we won’t be fighting any competent, intelligent first world countries anytime soon.
@ Lee Also
I loved your reference to Sir Charles James Napier when he prohibited suttee, the custom of burning widows in India on their husband’s funeral pyre, “Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
I think that if it ever came to it, there are enough folks remaining that would invoke “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
I’ve seen and half believe the statement that the ‘Light-bringer’ was the greatest gun salesman of the past 100 years.
If we have to fight a major war, it will be a come-as-you-are war, using the forces and equipment we have on hand. Don’t expect our stripped-down industrial base to backfill lost equipment, nor recruiters to backfill personnel losses. That depth just isn’t there anymore, and won’t come back. We’ll also be stuck with the slim munitions stockpiles we have, which have been gravely reduced to supply Ukraine and will take years to restock. If we don’t prevail quickly, we’ll be stuck in a drawn-out fight that will sap our capabilities.
Yes to huxley. A bit sad, but true. We suck less!
@John Guilfoyle
Leave it to the French to tread the Grapes of Wrath.
Well played, Sir!
Occasional Commenter is dead right on.Seconding my earlier comment. Dead right on!
The question is will the U.S. win WW III? I think not.
The question is will the U.S. win WW III? I think not.
Lee Merrick:
I don’t see anyone winning WW III.
WE SUCK LESS! (h/t Mike Plaiss)
We most probably WOULD NOT be able to win such a war, for several reasons.
1. We’ve given most of our missiles and artillery shells to Ukraine; we can’t even keep THEM supplied.
2. We no longer have the manufacturing infrastructure to build the weapons, or the shells. In WWII, American shipyards were pumping out destroyers in a few months, and the Kaiser shipyards were launching new cargo ships in TEN DAYS.
3. American men, mostly teenagers, were fit and ready to go to war after 8 weeks of training. American men now are flabby crybabies who take a lot longer to train, to the extent that you CAN train them.
4. We no longer have the resources. American mines are mostly shut down because they are polluting, and we buy metals from our enemies. It will take YEARS to reopen those mines, if we ever could.
5. Same problem with oil; Biden has shut down so much of the oil drilling business, and Hunter has sold off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to his pals in China. That, too, will take years to re-establish.
Simply put, we’re screwed.
There is an extension for Firefox called “Absolute Enable Right Click & Copy”. I just went to the chart you couldn’t copy, and copied it with no problem. Used it many times.
As for WWII – the government we have thinks we *deserve* to lose a war.
6. And the sky is falling.
Neo writes “ privilege. That is, they cannot recognize true evil when they see it, because [of] the principles that have been drilled into them…as follows:”
And identifies six of them.
Pace Cicero and Snow on The Pine, Zackary Goldsmith identifies PoMo rationalising brut power as the root nostrum within our elites’ mal-education.
Reaping the whirlwind from the “Demons We’ve Made,” at Law & Liberty
https://lawliberty.org/the-demons-weve-made/
Have you all watched Caroline Glick today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Niq4WPSxSOU
Conclusion: “This is what I say to the Israeli audience [with reference to US opinion and more broadly world opinion] is to NOT CARE about that window of legitimacy because it’s not real.” (my caps)
So because “we suck less” as Americans, and therefore will be late to take action, look to the Israelis to reach their limit and act.
Biden is NOT doing either Israel or the world a favor by his hypocrisy and passivity. His bluff will be called by the Israelis. My 2c.
Curtis loves some Roosia. Look up how many Soviets had to die to kill all those Nazi Germans and their allies. Millions on both sides.
Those Roosian tanks haven’t fared so well nor have the Roosian stratergeries. Western Europe wasn’t worried about Roosia from 1990 until 2022. That foolish hope is gone, Vlad is plain to see now.
Time will tell, as will cluster 155 rounds, ATACMS, GLSDBs, and F-16s? 🙂
Only the involvement of major powers can create a world war. In a world with nuclear weapons, a World War is suicidal.
Curtis’s is correct. The Russians won the war
We were lucky in WWII, Midway.
The United States could not win such a war, because it no longer exists. One can argue about how many different nations and peoples there are here whose primary loyalty is not to this country but to an ethnicity, a religion, a political philosophy, a foreign country who they invaded from, or other non-American Social Contract; but I am figuring a half dozen to a dozen large sections of the population who really are not loyal to this country. Toss in 6-7 million hostile foreign invaders in the last couple of years whose loyalty not to the US and a couple of generations of Americans who were raised without encountering the applied concept of consequences for actions, and who would fight such a war? And who would lead it? We have a Leftist ruling party with no opposition party whose only common features are contempt for those they rule and a disregard for the law, the Constitution, and the American Social Contract as exemplified by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
My original career goal as a child was to be a Navy officer. I had a Senator willing to send me to Annapolis. There were . . . complications, and by the time I took a military physical they were sprinkling me with holy water to get me out of the clinic. I ended up spending most of my life as a Commissioned Peace Officer protecting the public, with a sideline as a technical writer for various military journals.
Keeping in mind that my father got US citizenship by being a combat infantry squad leader under Patton, and now looking at what the military has become, and what it has lost; I don’t think that sufficient Americans will stand and fight, nor will those in command be able or be willing to defeat a foreign enemy. I know that I am too old, and that my children are too. If I can, I intend to see that my grandchildren do not get sent to be slaughtered.
Subotai Bahadur
Regarding supply, we have managed to match the Russians in Ukraine when it comes to equipment. They are just as straitened as we are, and they are definitely not better supplied with equipment than the Ukrainians (though they have more men). And it it’s China, it will be a naval war, it will basically be fought with the equipment on hand, and we have 11 carriers to their 2, as well as more attack submarines.
@Subotai
I agree that if we’re talking on foreign soil, the US could not win a war.
On home turf, even this young ‘soft’ generation would be forced to wake up. Once survival and preservation of one’s way of life is at stake, the motivation multiplies accordingly.
Quoting from https://www.jns.org/make-no-mistake-israel-will-destroy-hamas/
“The cliche about the Yom Kippur war was that the ordinary rank and file soldiers were the ones who saved the country. It was the generals who were screwing things up.”
In such a case on home turf, don’t you think we become the Viet Cong in our own land, and incompetent leaders will be ignored? Shades of guerrilla warfare our Founding Fathers also utilized?
Look at Biden’s cabinet. Everything is DEI or climate change. They’ve lost the ability to focus on anything important. What should be their real job always takes a backseat to diversity and global warming. Imagine having to put the country’s production on a war footing and having to deal with environmental impact statements, diversity studies, lawsuits and carbon offsets.
One lasting DC cliche is new administrations crowing that “the adults are back in charge.” The adults are never in charge anymore. Maybe the adults who are referred to were the hardheaded generals, admirals, and industrialists who won WWII for us. They aren’t around anymore. There were many Wall Street lawyers and financiers among them, but they were a lot more hard-headed than lawyers or bankers or hedgefund operators are today. Maybe they weren’t as brutal as today’s sharks are, but they were certainly better at focusing on the job at hand and getting it done.
hmm, thought-provoking, and scary, comments Neo.
I’d like to think that we would win a WWIII. Truly, I would.
But, given the leaders we have had, especially the one we have now, I’d have to agree that we couldn’t win.
Academic, corporate, and government leaders are a bunch of morons.
Too many in the ivory towers haven’t got a clue about the real world and think “well, if we just sit down and talk with them to find out what we did wrong . . . we could solve the problem.” Even when evil like Hamas tells you the problem is you were born Jewish the left wing idiots still don’t understand.
Too many corporate leaders are too worried about their own golden parachutes for retirement that they wouldn’t care one iota about winning; they are too afraid of ticking off some aggrieved group. Their Board of Directors are too worried about the latest quarter’s dividends to see the long-term end game.
Too many in government, especially given the idiot that gave a “speech” tonight, are just stupid. I mean I couldn’t for a minute imagine FDR giving a speech telling us to avoid anti-German or anti-Japanese sentiment like ol’ Joe did tonight talking about avoiding Islamophobia. I didn’t watch the whole speech nor did I count but he seemed to mention Islamophobia more times than he said anything about anti-Jewish activities/rallies. I couldn’t imagine FDR telling the UK to not react with blind rage when London and the rest of the UK was blitzed. I couldn’t imagine FDR sending “aid” to help the starving civilians in Germany and Japan. And trust me when I say FDR was not one of my favorite presidents from US history – he prolonged the depression with government overreach; but, at least he knew we had to win the war.
Oh, I almost forgot the idiots in the news media – they’d be too willing to be broadcasting US troop movements for the enemy to hear just so they could “get the scoop”.
The satirical “Onion” couldn’t have made up more ironic fake news that the real news of the world today.
Biden would drop the pronoun bomb on the Russians, Chiness, and Iranians
I read through all the comments at the Unherd link they seem to represent a broad swath of opinion about Israel, Hamas, Palestine, history of the Middle East partition plan, and the current phase of the Muslim-Jewish War.
Some commenters are less ignorant than others.
I agree with Subotai (as I often do, one of the best commenters here). The US is no longer a nation-state, it is an economic zone. There is no reason for any patriotism in the US anymore, as can be proven by the open borders.
I am not a military expert, but I believe that if China seriously attacks Taiwan, the US would be powerless to intervene. They have supersonic missiles that can take out an aircraft carrier in a few minutes, against which we have no defense.
Re: Subotai Bahadur
…is one of the great conservative blog commenters. I first noticed him at Richard Fernandez’s “Belmont Club.” He’s now at Chicago Boyz with spot appearances here and there like the above.
However, as usual I am not so pessimistic about America. I’m still convinced the US is capable of changing directions and will.
Greetings, Subotai!
The relentless growth of diversity in this country has gradually sapped what was once a strong sense of nationhood. Humans are genetically tribal, and when citizens we do not know nevertheless share with us a general appearance and cultural norms, it is easier for us to believe that we are one people. This is the origin, in recent centuries, of nationalism in Europe and elsewhere.
We have tried to tell ourselves that ours is a nation based on founding principles. But that works only as long as most everybody identifies with those principles as strongly as a Frenchman or a Swede identifies with the French or Swedish people. This is no longer true, and so our sense of commonality is in the toilet.
Thank you, huxley, for pointing out to us where Subotai hangs out!
Legendary. Perhaps a result of Glenn Reynolds Instalaunch of this thread? Bring it.
Nanopod, very well put.
The Japanese in their pre-war thinking thought Americans wouldn’t stomach the deaths of their sons. They figured a year of war and the Americans would want to negotiate an end. They were wrong.
Neo, I agree with your points and I lean towards pessimistic, but I do hold out hope that we can still right this ship. I don’t think Neoneocon could thrive as it has if others didn’t feel at least a glimmer of hope.
Avi says “Curtis’s is correct. The Russians won the war.
Wrong. Despite Stalin’s mischef in self-sabotage, we see today in Ukraine again, how cheap life is to the Russian or Soviet. It truly remains Asiatic in temperament and military meat grinder tactics.
Only the US’s vast “Freedom’s Forge” (Arthur Herman) can explain Russian success against the odds.
The US transported entire factories to Russia via Vladivostok and Archangel, and sent enough materiel to make the Russkies the third largest maker of airplanes during the war.
I recall in the 1990s at Cornell where Curtis’ argument was strongly advanced in the course on WWII that I took — but Dr Herman later corrects that view that cannot be unbalanced again. The US contribution, despite low body counts, was what was decisive to winning.
Response to eye81
Look closely and you’ll find that half our submarines cannot get underway and that is about the same for our CVN. And we don’t have any capability to repair battle damage west of Hawaii so just about anything that gets tagged is going to sink. We’ve been cross-decking missiles for over 40 years now to equip deploying ships. There’s really not very much there at all and far less than you imagine.
Meh. I think they are correct that the current generation is going to surprise you.
Things swing, and things are so far to the left that they cannot go anywhere but right.
Kids today are learning a lot by seeing the shit going down.
I consider myself, though (b. 1959) about 5y into Boomer territory, as a “Bleeding Edge Gen-Xer”.
I justify this by having noted that I was about the only one in my Sr Yr Humanities class (1975-76) who consistently argued for conservative/libertarian positions.
We had a lot of “college BS sessions” in the first half of the year, where the teacher threw out a proposition or question, and said, “have at it.” I recall that I was the only one who consistently backed one side of the argument, while almost everyone else backed the other. There were usually 1-3 or so who sided with me, but it was never consistently the same ones.
I was Alex P Keaton before his creators had any idea of the show.
Looking back, I think there was a distinction critical, given that we had all observed much the same undercurrents growing up:
Boomers observed Watergate (and yes, the biased media coverage), and concluded, “You can’t trust Republicans”.
Gen-Xers observed Watergate, and concluded, “You can’t trust the government”.
I would lay decent odds that a statistical analysis would find this to be a hard line that defined all the other aspects of “Boomer” v “Gen-X”. Answer that one question, and you could tell which way they’d think, mostly.
}}} The US contribution, despite low body counts, was what was decisive to winning.
Indeed. It was, no argument, the Soviet sacrifice of 20m of its people to break the German Army, not the events of the Western Theater. Moscow alone did enormous harm to the German Army. By Stalingrad, they were strongly dependent upon the Eastern European troops — Poles, Czechs, Slavs, and Romanians — that those latter were a significant part of captured troops during the retreat.
By the time of D-Day, many of the veteran, experienced professional fighting core of the German Army, the ones that smashed through France and England, were worm-food on the steppes of the Ukraine. America was fighting the newly trained troops and exhausted WWI remnants on the shores of Omaha and others.
Russia did the brutal job of breaking the back of the German Army, in 41-42 and 42-43.
But the only reason they could stay in it at all was because of the pre-war push to bring the USSR into the 20thC by US interests, and then, during the war, the additional push to keep them in war materiel which let them keep fighting for those key two years of battle.
America did not win the war by body count. It won the war by being far and away more productive, and making its allies more productive, than the Germans and the Japanese put together. Without tanks, which it lost constantly until their tankmen figured out WtF they were doing (The USSR had the best damned tank in all of WWII** at the start of the war, but they had no idea how to use them), Germany would have overrun the USSR, and taken Moscow and Stalingrad inside of a year.
=====
** Quick comment about this: The Soviet T-34 was, as I understand, the best tank in the world at the start of WWII — it had the most powerful gun of any tank in its class, the armor was sloped at 60 degrees, so many strikes bounced off, and it had a diesel engine, so it would not burn up if it was penetrated (diesel fuel does not burn as readily as gas). As of 2010, 130 were still in use around the world.
As to my comments, it was the most-produced tank of the war, as well as the second most-produced tank of all time. And, with 44,900 lost during the war, it also suffered the most tank losses ever.
Directly from the wiki:
@avi
No, he’s not, as I’ll discuss more.
But it’s more accurate to say that the Soviets avoided losing the war. Which is absolutely crucial for the war as it turned out, but was basically the second or third or so of Hitler’s 10 Step Plan to World Domination.
And note I said “Soviets.” Because while Russians made a clear majority of the Soviet war effort, they didn’t make up all of it. Indeed, a close study of things such as the mid-and-post-war food crisis in the USSR and the mass conscription in liberated (or in the case of wider Eastern Europe, occupied) civilians by the Soviets show that the USSR as it was – even fighting an ultimately one front war (albeit the bloodiest in human history), with Japan unable to attack it from the rear, and with truly massive Western aid – was able to pull through by the skin of its teeth.
“Russians” alone would have lost and lost quite badly, as we’d frankly expect most members of the Grand Alliance to do so save maybe the US and British Empire (and I wouldn’t put money on the latter), but with Russia being particularly vulnerable because it’s ultimately a continental power exposed from both angles.
@Curtis
I don’t think so. It’d probably be hard but WWII as it played out (in terms of the Axis and Allies style team listings) is fairly hard for the West to outright lose or not win some kind of achievement.
I got really, really sick of this meme years ago, and that hasn’t changed. I don’t “remember” that because it frankly isn’t something to be remembered.
This is ultimately a falsehood, albeit a falsehood based on a few kernels of truth. The core being that about 7-8 out of 10 of every *Heer* soldier was on the Eastern Front. And while I can’t remember if this included the Waffen SS I’d be willing to bet it breaks down similar.
The PROBLEM is that the Heer specifically refers to the German *LAND ARMY*, not the German Military (Wehrmacht) as a whole.
And the blunt reality is that the Kriegsmarine and Axis Navies without exception (unless we’re counting the Romanian and Finnish Navies) as a whole were overwhelmingly committed to fighting the Western Allied navies, which they ultimately lost.
Moreover, the Luftwaffe committed a majority of its airframes and personnel to the Eastern Front for…. I forget the exact number but it was something like one month to three months before they were forced to redirect their forces back West to contend with Western Allied (first RAF and then RAF and USAAF).
And this was AFTER the invasion of the Soviet Union was pushed in large part due to a mixture of the extreme losses the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine suffered in Norway (for the Kriegsmarine), the Netherlands (for the Luftwaffe), and the Battle of Britain (for both), and the failure of Hitler to get Stalin to enter the war on his side during the Winter of 1940-1941.
This is just a snippet of the Luftwaffe Strength and Losses from 1943-1944, and not exactly proportionate, but it gives you an idea.
http://don-caldwell.we.bs/jg26/thtrlosses.htm
I’d also note that while it doesn’t factor in non-German Axis Air Forces, those were divided between fighting the Soviets in the East and defending the home front against mostly-Allied bombers, and they were supporting roles anyway. Moreover, this in many ways massively underestimates the Western Allied contributions prior to that because it comes in after Italy has Surrendered/Switched Sides/Something in mid 1943.
So basically, the Soviets fought the bulk of the German *LAND* Army, but the absolute majority of the German Navy and Air Force were tied up with and ultimately beaten by the West (and while I know that the Navy and Air Force contain far fewer people than the Land Army does, their cost and importance is far outstripped compared to simple headcount). And even then we’re still looking at something like a minimum of one out of five German land troops in the West, as well as Hitler’s second strongest European ally (Fascist Italy) and either third or fourth strongest one (Vichy France).
And of course, absolutely none of this touches on the Pacific War.
It’s not often I have to praise Hitler’s strategic acumen, but I’m going to have to do it here because even the murderous druggie wasn’t quite so ignorant.
But then again, he also knew better. After all, he was a veteran of WWI.
Without the Soviets to inflict massive ghastly casualties,
A: The Nazis and their allies would still have to fight the Western Allies in a horrifying, long war where they are still outnumbered, outgunned, contained to Continental Eurasia by Western naval superiority, out-resourced, and so on. And pace 1917-1918, would most likely still lose.
and
B: In addition to that they have to find resources to keep the “Fuhrer’s Peace” in the occupied territories, made worse by the Nazis doing a good job recruiting for the enemy and driving literally hundreds of thousands if not millions into guerilla fighting (Which the Western Allies would be well equipped to support, as they did in Yugoslavia where Tito went from claiming “The Sun will not rise in the West” ie to expect aid from the Mother Party in the USSR and not the West, to being in exile in an Adriatic Island under guard from British Commandos).
I’m viewed as one of those naysayers or contrarians because I actually argue the Axis had a chance (however slim) to win the war as it played out (in large part because people seriously underestimate the Soviet card). But it was always unlikely.
So most likely, Western Allies gulp, start tapering off operations against Japan after securing the Central Pacific in favor of blockade, and proceed to ramp up operations against the Euro Axis in a series of campaigns of the scale and cost we’d associate with the Western Fronts of WWI, in addition to probably nuking Berlin and a bunch of other German cities rather than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I’m not going to lie, this is going to be long and ugly and likely see a much, much higher death toll than we think of on par with WWI in the West or at least the projections for Operation Downfall. But the basic issue is the Axis really don’t have any good options beyond trying to juggle a lot of plates under B-17 and Lancaster bombing and massed commando raids.
The Soviets standing and preventing Hitler from seizing victory in his surprise backstab greatly simplified and shortened that for the West, but you’re not going to change the fact that Hitler and the wider Axis are playing a rather weak hand if the West does not magically collapse or sue for peace, that Hitler did not intend a conquest of the Soviet Union east of the A-A Line (and if you don’t know what that is, kindly look it up) for years, and that it’s hard to beat the West in naval dominance when your strongest navy is the Empire of Japan…. who can’t keep up with either British or American shipbuilding, *let alone both plus a bunch of friends.*
One doesn’t have to be an egotist to “imagine” that, because it is objective reality. You don’t pull out almost all the stops short of actual war declaration, including winnowing from the military academies, sending troops from the Polar North and Kamchatka, and beginning several rounds of both official and unofficial military mobilization (as well as apparently playing fast and loose with who is and isn’t legally allowed to be there) if you’re not bogged down.
And what’s crucial is that this is the best military the Russian Federation is going to have – qualitatively, quantitatively, equipment wise, experience wise – for at least several years, and it’s still mostly inferior to what went in to Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 only to get shot up. For all the talk about NATO “disarming” (….by giving guns to supply the Ukrainians shooting Russian troops), the brutal fact of the matter is that the Russians are far more dependent on their old Soviet Stocks than the West is, and they are less able to produce new.
And we’re already starting to see a bunch of signs of strain, starting with the politically unpalatable decision to cancel a bunch of contracts for military kit with foreign nation, put older and older vehicles (especially AFVs) into the front (where they get destroyed in visually confirmed info), and so on.
Even of Armata and Felon quit hiding and started rolling into the front today, they don’t have enough to make up for the large losses of T-80s, T-90s, later mode T-72s, and Fixed Wing and especially Rotor Winged Aviation.
And suffice it to say they probably are not going to roll into the Ukrainian battlefield any time soon, for similar reasons to why we haven’t seen them thus far.
Ok, I’ve considered it. And I’ve considered that is comically inaccurate and goddamn stupid.
Firstly: The Russian military haven’t been “Squatting on what they took at the outset’, unless you somehow missed things like the Kyiv Offensive, Bakhmut (which Prigozhin and his groupies claimed was the equivalent of Verdun without realizing how true it was, though Prigozhin and his PMC wound up even worse off than how Falkenhayn and the Westheer did after being cracked there) or Avadivka. This is not subject to realistic dispute, even among the most fanatical Z-waving Russian Tricolor Flying Kremlin Apologists who actually have some kind of connection to the front. Though if you’re going to ignore the largest naval conflicts in human history and the entire Pacific-East Asian War it would be about par for the course.
Secondly: The Kremlin hasn’t “virtually disarmed” NATO by a long shot, though the West is running low on some equipment categories and is going through a similar but far less severe issue of bringing production back into pace after a long time of coasting off Late Cold War stockpiles like the Russians did (though with the exception that our economies are generally larger and demographically heathier).
It’s a hell of an odd “disarmament” that sees more F-35s coming online.
NATO and the West have troubles, but frankly bringing new forms of production online and tending to equipment stockpiles aren’t much compared to dealing with the rot within such as the Woke and the Left’s hijack of so many of our institutions. Meanwhile the Kremlin is running low on most things, including non-Islamic population.
Here are a few sources that deal with the “NATO has been Disarmed by Russia” propaganda BS more conclusively than it frankly deserves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CmXz8Qd9yw
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2022/10/15/nato-scrambles-to-ramp-up-weapons-production-and-outlast-russia/
It’s also particularly worth noting when you realize that barring Putin deciding to escalate the war further in the face of one he already can’t win Tojo style (which is possible but unlikely), the hardest fighting of the war and the greatest strength of the Russian Federation is probably behind it. Even if the Kremlin could churn out a new Slava Class cruiser or two to replace the Moskva (and they probably can’t due to critical shortages of funds, lack of maritime engineering skill for vessels like it, and the fact that many of the old USSR’s best dry docks are now foreign, including Ukrainian), they couldn’t get it into the Black Sea because the Straits are closed to warships, the Kremlin doesn’t have a drydock in the Black Sea capable of producing a new one, and it’d be fairly cheap relative to the cost to sink this one in an inland sea (which Russian leadership either knows or SHOULD Know, since they’d be able to look to the Black Sea Campaign of WWII, where the Soviet Navy was driven to the Far East of the Black Sea by the famously not-that-great-at-anti-ship-warfare Luftwaffe, Romanians, Hungarians, and Bulgarians*, and where it basically became a battle between the One Eye and the Blind with the Soviets trying to preserve their rusting and poorly maintained ships without the resources or facilities for maintained while the Axis tried to play chicken with an enemy that outgunned and outnumbered them vastly. In the end the Soviets won that particular race to the bottom.)
* Yes I know they technically did not declare war on the USSR, but some of their naval and air assets played “casual” roles in it
Broadly true, and that’s one reason I’ve been a naval budget hawk, and point to our navies as being one of our great strengths but also more vulnerable issues.
However, I’ll also note that our barometers for “suitability to get underway” tend to be somewhat gold plated, and certainly moreso than the Russian or Chinese Navies have, especially when crunch time comes.
I’ll also note that we still have far, far more and generally better cap ships and subs than they do. Together.
Riiight. Where have I heard this before?
Oh right. Interwar Japanese Naval Circlejerks.
Because that wound up so well for them.
There’s a reason why US Damage Control set the TONE for basically every other (COMPETENT) Navy’s approach to damage control. The age of missiles would make this a lot more dangerous, but it wouldn’t mean everything that gets tagged gets sunk.
I will admit our failure to develop better infrastructure in the West Pacific is one of our great failures in the post-WWII world, but it’s still significantly less crippling than the ability of the Russian Navy or the CCP to field modern warships past the Second Island Chain.
I can believe that, but similar applies to the Russian and Chinese Navies, and for that matter the Islamic Republic’s Groupies.
The West needs to get back into maritime matters badly, but it is still the healthiest sick man on the planet. Especially the US.
I am not that afraid of conventional threats. I am fearful of unconventional ones.
A long review piece on a British TV documentary from 2019 corroborates my claims, US factory and materiel superiority won WWII. However, the piece does not say how Soviet’s did.
Instead, if this piece is accurate, “War Factories” (Free to stream video via YouTube) concerns the contrast between Nazi-style small competing groups, plus Hitler’s or his men’s interference, kept Germany from producing with the overwhelming efficiency of the US.
Although the author of “Second World Wars”, Victor Davis Hanson, is not interviewed for the documentary, his book strikes the same chords:
“Hitler’s obsession with so-called ‘wonder weapons’ meant that tens of thousands of conventional fighter planes were never built by the Nazis.
“ ‘Alternatively,’ VDH writes, ‘had Hitler canceled the V-2 program and used its resources to focus solely on the V-1s, he might have produced well over a hundred thousand more such cruise missiles, with a far greater likelihood of inciting terror among the British population. The misplacement of resources into the V-2 program, as in a litany of other grandiose German projects, proved a disaster of enormous proportions for the Wehrmacht that even today is not fully appreciated.’”
American mass military production proved too powerful for the innovative schemes by The Master Race.
https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2023/07/25/war-factories-n1713575
The Instapundit ping of Neo’s post also referred to a Hot Air “headline” post with commentary.
Two big boosts!
https://instapundit.com/612316/
https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/10/19/we-would-lose-wwii-today-n586196
@OBloodyHell Well said on the whole, though I have to disagree regarding the Holy T-34. I’d still put it somewhere up there (especially if we are talking about strategic/operational use and economics rather than simply comparing numbers and stated characteristics), but I’d have to give the Sherman top spot.
And it’s probably not a coincidence that in the more-common-than-one’d-think Cold War battles where the Sherman faced off against the T-34 and even later Soviet tanks like the IS and T-44, it generally beat them bloody.
A: Honestly tanks were important but I’d place them as less important than some others such as food and chromium for helping to sustain the Soviets.
B: Bluntly, the Soviet tankers kept losing their tanks in massive numbers right up until V-E Day (and arguably a bit afterwards because while the Japanese were not well equipped to inflict losses the decade plus or so of little studied guerilla war keeping Eastern Europe under foot was quite costly). It just became less glaring as the troops became more competent and the machines became better (both in terms of stated unit characteristics from new models and better craftmanship).
C: The bigger issue with Soviet tank use in early war probably had less to do with tanker training (though that could be abysmal) so much as logistical, doctrinal, and deployment stuff. The Soviet leadership shoved them far into the front and generally demanded they get into action quick. This meant they tended to get yeeted in huge numbers at the front (the largest tank battle in history was probably Brody in 1941, and it was a massive German sweep), and meant that if you had to withdraw you were much less likely to be able to do so both due to the enemy and stuff like Air roaming.
I’d be willing to consider that, though the Panzer IV might have give it a run for its money.
Maybe but it was comparable to what the Sherman and Panzer IV would come with in real terms, and that’s before we factor in things like substandard ammunition.
This is true, though in terms of overall effectiveness the armor was generally poorly made, and even at ideal terms was generally comparable to the likes of the Sherman and Panzer IV.
Ironically my understanding from the records is that Soviet tanks had a horrible reputation for catching fire when penetrated, and this led to horrifyingly high crew mortality and morbidity rates even in comparison to the likes of the Crusader and the early model “Ronson (Lighter)” Shermans. And this seems to be largely borne out by both what I know of the archival studies (including Archive Awareness), some friends
Including from a friend that worked as a guide at a Tank Museum.
They went on to mention an argument they were having with some Sovietaboos on a Girls und Panzers forum, and I asked what about.
* Tank Crew = IL-2 Sturmovik Tank Crew, a video game I admit, but one that is fairly hard core in simulation (and made by a Russian/Ukrainian Company based on pretty heavy research).
Obviously this is doing a somewhat dangerous thing with mixing Sim/Game Data with actual archival data, but I think it gives an idea of the many, many issues with this.
Mostly for ceremonial uses, not military ones.
I’ll freely admit the T-34 is on one of the Top 10s of GOAT tanks, but I don’t think it was the greatest of the war. And frankly the Sherman had comparable protection and armaments, better reliability, better optics and crew comforts, and better movement. And in general Shermans were quite popular among Red Army tankers (though a lot of that probably has to do with crew comforts/internal size alone).
And in general in wars like Korea and the Israel-Arab League Wars from 1948-1973 comparable Sherman makes beat comparable makes of T-34s and even some successes into the ground. And while I think much of that is due to crew training and equipment (nobody sane is going to argue the North Korean Tank Corps of 1950 was the greatest in the world), a lot of it probably has to do with the hard and soft failings of the design.
Perhaps we would have a better chance of winning wars if more of our internal enemies followed this example.
https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/10/19/state-department-official-resigns-over-us-support-of-israel-and-more-are-looking-for-an-exit-n2165304
Sounds like one of Vindman’s cohort.
I certainly hope they will follow Mr. Paul’s lead.
@AesopFan
Bingo. This is what I am really worried about. I’m not super worried about the conventional power of our enemies. The US has a whole host of problems but it is ultimately the healthiest of the sick men on the great power table sans maybe India. In almost every index we have a commanding lead over our probable OPFORs… conventionally.
The big issue is the unconventional. Demographic rot, culture war, and subversion. This I think is one thing the Soviets and other Marxists really got right, and the Islamists have also rediscovered it after the lapse of a couple centuries. It also is why I am more concerned about the “Muslim Street” or “Arab Street” than say the Kremlin or CCP right now. And it is certainly not like ugly sectarian and civil conflicts are alien to the US.
We need to clean house badly, and frankly make it unpalatable to openly promote this stuff even when it can’t be openly prosecuted.
On the whole I feel Kris and by extension Lincoln are right. WWII or WWI or WWIII on a conventional sense boil down to “who would be able to defeat us in a balls to the wall conventional military conflict?”
It’s the issue of unconventional conflicts both within and without that I think are more likely to screw us, and indeed already have.
I agree with Neo and Subotai Bahadur. Lots of good comments too. Denial of evil, or not taking it seriously has eroded our cities, states and country. The Rules of Engagement (ROE) that have been in place for many years now, make any military respinse meant to address evil a total joke in terms of winning a war. (not to mention loss of innocent military lives). We are watching the latest round of this in Israel. Sad beyond words.
neo wrote:
“(6) War never solves anything (see this). They don’t understand that some wars are for survival against an enemy bent on your subjugation or obliteration, and that those wars sometimes are – very very unfortunately – total wars. In total wars innocent people die, but something is indeed solved.”
I haven’t see this discussed yet in the thread, but it is still very disorienting to me that the left went all-in on war in Ukraine. I’m old enough to remember when leftists drove around with “I’m already against the next war” bumper stickers. Now they’re the biggest hawks out there, making utilitarian arguments about the Ukraine war being a good “investment” because it is degrading the capability of an enemy. (I wholeheartedly agree with neo’s point above, but I find the “investment” argument for war to be morally indefensible. You can’t expect others to sacrifice their lives for the sake of your “investment.” You go to war, or support a war, to solve a problem that cannot be solved otherwise, not as an “investment.”)
And now that Israel has been the victim of the ugliest and most grotesque agression imaginable, the left snaps right back to form with the whole “kumbaya, war is not the answer” act.
Is there any charitable conclusion that one can draw from this about the left? There are certainly uncharitable conclusions – they’re a pack of raging anti-Semites? They have been bamboozled into an irrational hatred of Russia over social issues or because of years of Democratic and deep state machinations against Trump?
Seriously, how do you explain people abandoning long-held principles over Ukraine, which until about ten minutes ago had been part of greater Russia for centuries, and then snapping right back to those principles in a way that excuses a genocidal pogram against one of the most persecuted minority groups in human history?
@Bauxite
Yeah, I wish I were surprised about the left and its Hamas shilling, but I am not.
I’d argue perceptions are somewhat misleading. Many of the rank and file have, but their leadership has generally been much more “restrained”, particularly on things with giving the Ukrainians weapons with ranges to strike targets in the RF proper, and of course Biden’s “minor incursion” blather.
They’re less all-in than are often perceived, but they have an incentive to look like they are at least domestically so they can demonize us.
Which while I agree I find ironic coming from the same people behind the likes of Burmisa and Solyndra.
I don’t find it indefensible. I would think differently if the Ukrainians were by and large sacrificing their lives when they otherwise wouldn’t be for investment, but by and large the Ukrainian public has gone to war and fights and dies for its own interests such as territorial unity and sovereignty. That their doing so makes a good investment and lines up with some (at least stated/official if not always followed) principles for the US helps.
But I think it largely amounts to a mixture of Putin being an acceptable target to the Left to use to demonize us and justify clamp downs on us and similar targets like Hungary’s Orban (who I have mixed feelings about b it certainly isn’t Satan), and Putin overplaying his hand in the “rope a dope humiliation” phase of his cycle with US Presidents.
But as bad as Putin is – and people here should know I am quite the harsh anti-Putin hawk – Hamas is qualitatively worse, as is Iran. Putin may be the bigger overall threat but he is not dedicated to a Worldwide Caliphate (even if I think he might join as a willing Dhimmi). The Iranian dictatorship want apocalypse and the destruction of civilization and are at least willing to semi-publicly toy with the idea of nuclear apocalypse to do it. Why we decided to treat them as some kind of legitimate party is beyond me, and as much as I hate the IRA even the IRA were better than this.
I imagine there might be charitable conclusions but I don’t think most of them would be warranted in most cases. The horrors of revolutionary Third Worldism and the likes of Franz Fanon is truly a horrible, ugly pit and literally Satanic in essence, and it has been mingled heavily with Islamist support and Dhimmitude.
The logical answer I think is simple, pace James Lindsey and Mark Steyn. Those weren’t “long-held principles”, those were rhetorical talking points and agitprop that could be used and discarded and picked up again as befitting The Cause. Their real “principles” are far darker and more disturbing, such as always favoring their agenda and being willing to break any ethical or moral or legal boundary to do it, pace Lenin and co.
I also think we can see this because of where they part ways with those Leftists that actually have some principles. I can say a lot about Cindy Shehan/hag, but she is a grieving mother who protested the War in Iraq on principle, regardless of who was President. Which is why she was made an exemplar of the Left during Dubya’s term and promptly rejected her after, similar to how the body rolls vanished from CNN.
In essence, “It worked, didn’t it?” Harry Reid Style, as one of the cores of their “principles”.
WWII? Today we would lose the Revolutionary War by default as nation of no-shows.
I suspect there are a great many people living in this country – they can’t really be called “Americans” regardless of where they were born – who not only fully match your description, but would, if pressed, be quite willing to offer a contract for the task to whomever would take our money for it. They’re certainly everywhere, but I’d wager the highest concentration is in the zip codes clustered around 20500.
I don’t know, but I’ve been told. I have a great deal of confidence in the Marine Corps.
And then there are the hundreds of thousands, the millions, of illegal immigrants who are mostly military age young men. Who are already in the U.S. and Europe. With more arriving daily.
One could think we’ve already been invaded, the fighting just hasn’t started yet.
Wow! Now I know more than I wanted about Russian tanks. Though I do know why tanks are called tanks. (Smile)
AesopFan’s post led me to think that another reason the Deep State hated Trump was that he always pushed the idea of America First, as a US President should. Trump easily explained this during a trip to China. Speaking to the Chinese he said of course he put America first and you (the Chinese) should put China first. That got applause. The Deep State is all in on global brotherhood, and I’m sure one world government. Which I think would be very, very bad. Because the one thing that all governments do is meddle.
Regarding Soviet tanks and the mythic status foisted on the T-34, see videos on YouTube by Nicholas Moran (The Chieftain) or The Tank Museum (Bovington (UK) tank museum) consider that the T-34 had sh*t for optics, abdominal ergonomics (crew efficiency), no radio so every tank might as well have been on its own, a two man turret so the commander was overworked, unreliable transmissions, air filters so bad that an engine would be shot after 300 miles.
But the Soviets could produce them in astounding numbers (once the tank factories on the other side of the Ural Mtns. were running). But of course the life expectency of the “tankies” and “tank riders” was unexpectedly brief for such a “superior” weapon. It was fit for purpose, eventually, and there were worse weapons.
If you can loose millions of your own people and trade land for time, ‘quantity has a quality all its own.’
I can’t leave this discussion of the relative merits of armored vehicles without citing this old joke (long version).
https://news.amomama.com/268213-daily-joke-young-soldier-forgot-take-his.html
A graphical presentation of the deaths attributable to WW2.
8.4 million Soviet soldiers, 2.3 million German soldiers – just Barbarosa, see minute 6:56 of the video.
The Fallen of World War II – Neil Halloran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU
12 million views on YouTube since 2017
The proof of this post was in the first comment. Ackler, if you cannot see the absolute difference between the United States and Axis powers there is no help for you and you deserve not freedom, but tyranny.
This just in —
https://notthebee.com/article/68-percent-of-us-soldiers-are-overweight
“68% of US troops are overweight, including 21% who are obese … why are we trying to get involved in World War 3 again?”
4 – 6: “Use your words”