The Big Picture: A Guy Named Joe

[Therumancer]

Snip

War isn't won through brute force, you must destroy and demonize the central power and appeal to the people. These people aren't Aliens pre-programed to destroy, they're people with a slightly different ideaology than us. As people they have the ability to learn and understand. You can teach them to be tolerant and not listen to those extremist. You can phase out that silent man without destroying him and his culture. As this occurs the Taliban will look less like warriors fighting for their religion and more like a public menace.

That attitude is exactly why we haven't won any wars since World War II. It's also why pretty much every group of people who tried to limit their engagement doctrine wound up being defeated by the numbers, such as how Bushido lead to the Samurai Aristocricy being overthrown by peasants, and the flower of French knighthood got massacred when they came in according to the laws of Chivalry to engage in a battle they should have won and got mowed down like dogs with longbows.

To win a war the only thing that works is brute force, and doing whatever it takes. We didn't defeat the Nazis by talking things through with them. We dropped more bombs on germany than they did on England, decimated every bit of infrastructure we could (civilian and military) and then relentlessly killed everything not in an allied uniform until we were sure there weren't many people holding the nazi ideaology was left because everyone was screaming "no, no, stop killing us Arggghhh!". Then even after the war ended we continued to relentlessly track down and kill anyone we could identify as being sympathetic to that idealogy or having worn a Nazi uniform. The fact that the US pardoned scientists in exchange for them coming to work for us was contreversial for this reason. The Isrealis were especially vicious about this, doing things like tracking down 90 year old janitors who might have walked by outside a concentration camp once.

Nations like Rome won wars by simply killing and/or enslaving anyone who crossed them. If they couldn't control the territory, they salted the earth so any survivors wouldn't have anything lef there either. I could go on and on about this, but Rome is pretty much the nation that developed the doctrine of "Total War" and how to annihilate a people. In one way or another that's how pretty much every REAL war that has seen an actual end has wound up.

We're dealing with a group of people who can't be reasoned with here, despite being every bit as intelligent as we are. The reasons for the conflict with The Middle East are not entirely rational which is why logic and diplomacy fail. We have been trying to find solutions to the problem for decades now, without success. This has included everything from diplomacy, to measured armed response, to simply trusting the people in the region and hoping to come to a meeting of the minds. Incidently the whole issue with Saddam is because instead of invading Iran we decided to build up Iraq so The Middle East could resolve the problems internally without the issue of "infidel" armies engaging directly. Saddam sold out to the Russians so he could go a-conquering. The Taliban started as "freedom fighters" we backed against The Russians. Saudi Arabia are our friends on paper, yet they were the ones who exiled Bin ladin as opposed to putting him out of comission despite knowing what he was going to do. Pakistan's leadership has claimed to be our friends and want to engage in diplomacy, but the leaders doing that do not speak the minds of the people and have faced assasination attempts simply for trying to deal with us.

I just posted some links in another message in this thread to things like children's shows intended to condition kids to hate and kill Americans and Jews. Where we are trying to teach our kids tolerance, people like you are speaking against warfare, and we have constant rants about discimination against Muslims, they are having their equivilent of Mickey Mouse murdered by Jews to instill hatred in the children from the very beginning.

You might not want to believe it, but I'm far from ignorant on the subject. I also do not believe in the "peace at any price" philsophy. I believe war is something to be avoided, but I think we have exhausted every reasonable option at this point, and that's where we are at. It's us or them. I don't claim the US is some angelic power of pure good, thwarting the forces of darkness, actually like anyone involved in war I'm saying we need to be a group of murdering bastards (the biggest bastard wins in war). Both the US and The Middle East have valid viewpoints on various things, that's simply how reality is, it's never black and white, it's about who is going to be left when the fighting stops.


At any rate, the thing is that we in the US would like to think that there is a central power structure that can be toppled and everything will be peachy. That is how it is in fantasy, kill "The Dark Lord" and peace returns. Unfortunatly in reality, the people in situations like this are rarely enslaved, and that power structure is something they have created and support. If we go in and topple the leadership, the same basic kind of leadership will just reform under differant names because that is what the culture itself believes in. That's why the culture itself is the enemy.

It's sort of like why during World War II the conflict wasn't over with the death of Hitler. He and his major leaders were figureheads, but the Nazi party itself was a set of ideals that existed quite apart from him in the end, and given time it would have just produced new leaders. This is one of the reasons why so much effort was taken to decimate it, to ensure that it would not return.

 

[The Random One]

Great analysis, Bob.

You know, as much as we like to make fun of old curmudgeons who had to walk uphill both ways to school [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo] they have a point. Not that our generation, or the one preceding ours (that's yours Bob) is objectively a failure, but that we have nothing forcing us to fight for anything and thus we end up apathetic and without a care in the wordl. It's true that if the world doesn't demand we find our places we have to find that place ourselves, but if most people don't care for that then it's difficult to create any more societal changes such as the kind that brought us to where we are now. It's a sad state of affairs but it's a pretty much unavoidable side effect of long term prosperity and peace.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Very interesting show today Bob!

IMO modern society has changed from a stern patriarchal society of male bread winners to a quassi patriarchal open corporate society that seeks to cage and control the entrepreneurial spirit of the public in order to have more under paid drone to feed on. Its a start contrast to the 1900 or the 50s were good paying jobs were easy to find thus people felt worth something.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Great analysis, Bob.

You know, as much as we like to make fun of old curmudgeons who had to walk uphill both ways to school [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo] they have a point. Not that our generation, or the one preceding ours (that's yours Bob) is objectively a failure, but that we have nothing forcing us to fight for anything and thus we end up apathetic and without a care in the wordl. It's true that if the world doesn't demand we find our places we have to find that place ourselves, but if most people don't care for that then it's difficult to create any more societal changes such as the kind that brought us to where we are now. It's a sad state of affairs but it's a pretty much unavoidable side effect of long term prosperity and peace.

A edu system that tries to pass everyone through 1 or 2 square pegs and a lack of solid jobs dose not help with ones ability to raise up and be something.

 

[Smokescreen]

You also seem to misunderstand, I am not talking about going after Afghanistan. When I say "The Middle East" I mean "The Middle East".

Oh, I get it now.

No longer need to continue this conversation. Thanks for the illumination of your views, which I would find incoherent under the best of circumstances and vile otherwise. I won't pretend that I could conduct a civil, proper exchange of ideas with someone doing what you are so I'll just back away. Have a very nice day.

 

[Therumancer]

Well if that's how war is (you've got a point, no doubt) why do you think of people opposing war as hippocritic cowards?

Going to war is hard enough without people constantly whining about it, or trying to undermine the war effort. Wars, especially long wars, are hard for people, including the side that is winning due to families being seperated, and perhaps not seeing the family members off to war ever again.

What's more if you have people crying about the techniques being used, it can make it hard for the military to do what they need to in order to win. Not to mention the simple fact that if soldiers become afraid of being punished by their own people for doing what needs to be done to protect them, it makes it hard for them to do their job.

Let's take the "vanishing village" from your link there. I wasn't there, so I don't know what the guys who ordered it were actually thinking. Chances are it had some tactical nessecity at the time, as psychological warfare if nothing else. Heck, for all we know it might have saved lives by scaring away people in the region who might otherwise have stuck around, tried to fight, and gotten decimated. If you have three villages known to be bases for insurgents in the region, and by killing one in a paticularly horrible way you can make the other two flee without a fight, your technically saving lives compared to if you just carpet bombed all three of them. I can't guess though, other than to say someone probably thought it was a good idea for some reason, rather than saying "hey we all like to kill people in sadistic ways! let's go wipe out that village for fun". I think the nickname "Pinkville" (as in Pinko I'm assuming, which means commie) says something about what kind of people lived there, and what kind of intelligence was gathered...

At any rate, let's say you've got a good reason for wiping out the village. The problem with peaceniks is that soldiers are going to be concerned about doing things like this if they are afraid their own people are going to string them up for it. Let's say that by not doing it, it leads to insurgent attacks that wind up decimating the military prescence in the area, which starts a chain reaction that loses the whole war. A bit of an extreme outcome from one act, but the point here is that your peace at any price moralist hampers the abillity of the military to do it's job because they find it distasteful. If *I* am a soldier out in the field I want to come home, I shouldn't have to worry about "civilians" in an occupied country getting caught in the crossfire if I defend myself (like happens in The Middle East nowadays). I shouldn't have to worry about getting knifed in my sleep by guys in black pajamas because someone back home thinks that it's wrong for us to wipe out the village we know the local insurgents use as their base of operations. People with peace at any price sentiments wind up putting the value of people in other countries our troops are in, ahead of the soldiers that are out there risking their lives.

In the case of the Baby Boomers (which is what I am being critical of) the opposition to the war(s) was largely based on them not wanting to go to war, no matter how it was justified. There was also no excuse at all for how a lot of them treated the members of their generation who did wind up going out to fight.

Let me be honest, turning someone like Jane "Hanoi Jane" Fonda into a folk hero (read about her during 'Nam), and jumping all over our troops as "baby killers" when they came home is totally inexcusable under any circumstances. Especially when you consider the guys making the accusations are by and large people who were in many cases dodging the draft themselves so they could sit around, get stoned, and have sex. Basically, attacking people who did what these guys avoided.

I also tend to think that people who argue about morality in war, tend to do so from the perspective that they will never have to fight in one. Half the people who will speak out against the stuff I mention are quite proud about saying they would flee to canada before fighting on behalf of their own country. OR have some delusional, comic-book idea of what war is going to be like, having not even read much about it to even be a proper armchair critic.

If your there in the field, I do not care who you are, you do not want to have your life P@ssed away because of some moral principle decided on by some goober on the other side of the world who your trying to defend. Again, when your actually there, people are getting killed by insurgents, and you know where those guys are, your opinion about wiping out the village they are coming from is going to be entirely differant.

By the same token if some dude fires on your patrol in a city in The Middle East while there is a crowd around trying to cover him (one of the problems, the civilians support the insurgents and tend to close ranks by all reports, as opposed to scattering from gun fire), I very much doubt you want to be put in the position of having a choice of being cut down right there, or returning fire to kill the guy, taking out some of the "civilians" in the process, surviving the ambush, and then being court martialed and/or turned over to a native prison for murder because some moralists in the USA think what you did was wrong. It's differant when it's YOUR life.

Incidently this is one of the reasons why I'd never willingly serve in the current military. I'd go if I was drafted (and they would take me) but would never volunteer. I am not going to willingly get myself killed for liberal principles. Dying is part of the risks of being a soldier, and I even accept that the leadership has to sacrifice soldiers (sending them out to do things knowing they will die... as a distraction or whatever) and that could be me, but I believe there is such a thing as spending those lives responsibly. That means minimizing the risks by letting the soldiers do what is needed to minimize the risks to themselves. That means using all of these horrendously deadly weapons. If you can level a village with artillery or air support, there is no real reason to send in infantry, other than so some liberal can feel good about himself due to minimal collateral damage. If I'm occupying a foreign country the people aren't supposed to like me, they are supposed to do what we want so we'll leave, my prescence there and the military operations is supposed to be there to either destroy them, or make them do whatever it takes to get us to leave willingly. Even more ridiculous than spending my life seriously, is to set up a stupid objective that can't be met. The military exists to kill people and break things, it's not the bloody peace corps. I shouldn't be there for political photo-ops and to try and make people like me. I shouldn't be there as the military to flip cheeseburgers for someone whose kids watch an insane version of Mickey Mouse rant about how it's their destiny to kill me and destroy everything I hold dear.

I know your not likely to agree with me, but think about it.

 

[kael013]

This kind of mentality has given birth to a situation today where we can't clearly identify a culture like that of The Middle East as an enemy, rather we need to take a reactive perspective and only target very specific individuals like those ACTIVELY engaged in terrorism rather than the core issues. The same could be said about China, or anyone else. Unlike previous generations where the media was making no bones about treating our enemies as enemies, and suggestiong violence and military action as a method of dealing with them, today the message is a naive one where violence is always wrong, there are always magical solutions that will arrive to avoid large scale violence, and worst of all is identifying an entire broad group of people as the enemy.

Today's mentality is one where we would not go to war against "Nazism" if it was to rise the same way. Rather we'd make a big deal about only opposing those guys at the top of the food chain, and misunderstanding the huge, international culture, with the fanatical millions behind it, we would of course wind up getting our tails kicked. It says a lot when you consider that people have made arguements that Patton was unworthy to wear a US uniform by modern standards because you know... he made no bones about wanting to destroy the enemy.

The point is a society that won't let you identify the bad guys as bad guys, and does everything in it's power to avoid confrontation, or at least confrontation on the level of a "total war", "us or them" level which would actually see a resolution.

Such are my thoughts.

So, you're suggesting we commit cultural genocide just because a few random extremists are being assholes? That's like wiping out christianity because of the Phelps family!

Being the enemy, as you say, all the works that were produced from the Middle Eastern culture, all the art and cities you'd need to burn down, not to mention the Millions slaughtered. We also might as well fore go all the inventions from the Middle East and deem them evil. To top it all off we should see if the pope is willing to back our conquest, just to prove how much we didn't fucking learn from history!

Therumancer, I see you as a natural born cynic that can only trust people as far as you can spit, but you're to smug about your self to ever excrite any bodily fluid. You need to learn that people are all rather fine, but they can occasionally be assholes. The only reason that Nazism and the Taliban ever came to power was because people were fucking afraid of those insane assholes, all we need to do is give people the power to stop extremism and they will.

I think he meant that nowadays we're told that all people are potential allies. Even if Nazism returned today, we'd be told that we have nothing to fear from them, then when they started a new Holocaust we'd be told that the people at the top were the only bad guys and that their followers (the citizenry, the army, etc.) don't believe the same things their leaders do and are just misunderstood (Our leaders and media would also say that a peaceful, diplomatic solution would be the best way to stop them from committing genocide). Then, we'd only go after the leaders, and once they were out of the way, we'd be all like "Good job, guys." and be taken completely by surprise when the citizenry and the army replaced the old leaders with new ones who had the exact same beliefs as the leaders we just removed from power. Also, your wrong that people were scared of the nazis, Hitler wrote a book that explained his views of things near the end of WWI and Germany still ELECTED him into power, then followed him fanatically enough that some Jews who returned to Germany were treated with hostility (and sometimes nearly beaten to death) for just being Jewish (in case you're wondering, I read that in a few Holocaust survivor memoirs).

Though I agree with you that he's blowing the whole terrorist thing way out of porportion (They're an organization, you can't say the whole culture in the Middle East is an enemy. That's like saying all hispanics in america are illegal immigrants, it's just not true. The terrorists manipulate the area's dominant religion to further their political agenda; that doesn't mean everyone there believes them) I think your taking things too far as well. Just because he has a different opinion than you about something doesn't give you the right to insult him.

EDIT: Oops, didn't read past philosophicalbastard's post, so I hadn't noticed that this entire thread had turned into a debate about war between therumancer and everyone else. Just ignore me and carry on.

 

[Therumancer]

and what happens if the locals are not so easliy intimidated by your butchery and deside that they are going to fight your forces to the death. when they start straping bombs to their chests and blowing you and themselves up in the process. Do you go though the whole country and kill every single man women and child to win? and if you did would that not makes you the "bad guy" and invite other to do the same to your country later on?

I think your beginning to get it, sort of.

Reality is not a comic book, or a morality play. There are no magical solutions that prevent the bad things from happening, or cause wars to come to nice, neat resolutions at the end of an allotted run time for a movie.

Should such a method not work, then yes, we keep trying to kill them until we either run out of people still holding onto the cultural ideals and resisting, or they defeat us. In some cases it might very well come down to killing every one of them. Indeed that's a big part of why we dropped the A-bombs on Japan. If we had gone in conventionally, we probably would have won, but their culture would have caused them to pretty much fight to the last man... going down in a heroic/honorable last stand. The A-Bombs were pretty much a psychological weapon, showing that they could either surrender, or die horribly like a group of dogs, there would be no honorable last stand, or last minute heroism, just pain, and death, at the hands of a weapon they couldn't even hope to confront. In this case it worked. Some alternative history writers have examined the issue of what might have happened if Japan had chosen not to surrender. Would the USA have stuck to it's guns and peppered the entire place with A-Bombs and killed every Japanese person? Would we have been terrified by our own power and gone in conventionally? Would there have been a mixture of those techniques with conventional invasions, followed by A-bombings if we met "Stalingrad" type resistance in specific areas? In this case it worked.

If people had failed to be intimidated by "Vlad The Impaler" and his displays of cruelty it's arguable that nations like Romania would no longer exist, and we probably wouldn't have stories about Dracula either.

I digress however.

The thing to consider is that what I am talking about is what war is in general. In any serious war, the other side is going to be trying to do the same thing to us. It's only modern morality developed after World War II that has lead people to believe that war can
be any other way. On a lot of levels our take on warfare and morality is both decadent and naive, and it's also why we're shocked when we see other nations and conflicts where people still understand war, and there aren't even any moral pretensions.

There is no good and evil in reality, in everyone's mind they are the "good guys" and the other side is the "bad guys". It's "us and them". To anyone going to war with the US we're going to be the bad guys, and as we're likely to be defending ourselves (or invading them)
we obviously are going to disagree and claim it's the other way around.

Once you realize that there is no "good" or "evil" in real war, and only a winner and a loser I think you'll understand the point I'm trying to make.

Also, do not misunderstand. I am not screaming about the glory of war or anything, quite the opposite actually. I believe in war as a last resort because it's so bloody ugly. I just feel that when you get to that point you shouldn't have any pretensions, trying to moralize is just going to put you at a disadvantage. In a real war you keep killing the enemy and breaking their stuff until they either relent and consent to ending things in your favor (and having themselves defanged so as not to be a further threat) or everyone on the other side is dead. Of course while your pursueing this agenda, they are trying to do the same to you, and are going to exploit any weakness you have, including a moral code that prevents you from engaging with full efficiency.

 

[philosophicalbastard]

Snip

War isn't won through brute force, you must destroy and demonize the central power and appeal to the people. These people aren't Aliens pre-programed to destroy, they're people with a slightly different ideaology than us. As people they have the ability to learn and understand. You can teach them to be tolerant and not listen to those extremist. You can phase out that silent man without destroying him and his culture. As this occurs the Taliban will look less like warriors fighting for their religion and more like a public menace.

I just posted some links in another message in this thread to things like children's shows intended to condition kids to hate and kill Americans and Jews. Where we are trying to teach our kids tolerance, people like you are speaking against warfare, and we have constant rants about discimination against Muslims, they are having their equivilent of Mickey Mouse murdered by Jews to instill hatred in the children from the very beginning.

I'm not speaking against warfare, I'd gladly see any member of the Taliban killed given evidence of their membership. I'm just saying you need to combat propoganda with facts and kindness. We don't need to kill civillians, destroy cultures, or salt lands in order to pacify an area.

 

[Geekeric]

I have a big bag of those old G.I. Joe action figures in my closet and I always looked back on them with fondness. After seeing this episode, I may just re-evaluate how that part of my childhood affected me.
This series is really in the groove, Bob. The last one about DC comics continuity and now this one...you rock!

 

[LandoCristo]

I didn't like this one as much. If I wanted to listen to some guy talk about finding your place in the world, I'd go to church and hear about Jesus.

 

[Therumancer]

Snip

War isn't won through brute force, you must destroy and demonize the central power and appeal to the people. These people aren't Aliens pre-programed to destroy, they're people with a slightly different ideaology than us. As people they have the ability to learn and understand. You can teach them to be tolerant and not listen to those extremist. You can phase out that silent man without destroying him and his culture. As this occurs the Taliban will look less like warriors fighting for their religion and more like a public menace.

I just posted some links in another message in this thread to things like children's shows intended to condition kids to hate and kill Americans and Jews. Where we are trying to teach our kids tolerance, people like you are speaking against warfare, and we have constant rants about discimination against Muslims, they are having their equivilent of Mickey Mouse murdered by Jews to instill hatred in the children from the very beginning.

I'm not speaking against warfare, I'd gladly see any member of the Taliban killed given evidence of their membership. I'm just saying you need to combat propoganda with facts and kindness. We don't need to kill civillians, destroy cultures, or salt lands in order to pacify an area.

Well, where we disagree here is the nature of the enemy being fought. We're not dealing with extremists, as much as what the culture is like in general. We in the US like to think we're dealing with a fringe element because it provides the illusion that we can win without resorting to the kinds of methods I'm talking about, I however have long since come to the conclusion that this is not the case.

Things like "The Taliban" and "Al Queda" come from the culture itself, they are not an exterior force trying to impress themselves on the culture. This is why the people we take out are so quickly replaced. Even if we eliminated either organization we'd achieve nothing as a similar one would simply come into being.

It's sort of like how if the US was invaded, and we had our own insurgents running around screaming "Wolverines" and attacking the invaders, while sneaking people onto boats and planes to attack the homeland of the invaders in retaliation. Even if someone was to wipe these guys out, another group would simply form as long as the American idealogy continued
to exist. The only way to stop it, would be to pretty much wipe out the ideas being fought for.

The culture we are fighting against wants to see the destuction of the Western world, and the development of world-wide islamic theocracy. As long as that ideology exists, and it's held by the majority of people in that region, we're not going to be able to win. The enemies we've labeled now are a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. The people in the region are NOT clamouring for liberation, or to see a progressive goverment. Heck, when we gave both Iraq and Afghanistan the oppertunity to create new constitutions the first thing they did was define themselves as Islamic goverments (not making that up). Even worse is that we were making a big deal about bringing women's liberation to the region, and it simply put did not happen since the people were not going to willingly sign those kinds of provisions into law. Understand this is a place where a lot of the time our women have to wear robes and masks and have men speak for them, even if they are in charge still. That says a lot about the culture and what it actually stands for.

As I posted in some links a few messages ago, you also have TV shows through The Middle East indoctrinating children to hate Americans and Jews and engage in holy war. That's not a fringe element of extremists, that's the mainstream, this is what they consider so fundemental to their cultural identity that it's what they want their kids to grow up thinking. It's not like muslim parents are trying to block these signals or anything. These networks are not run by groups like The Taliban, or Al Queda, rather this is the work of an overall culture that is conditioning the people so they will lionize such groups, support them, or even seek membership (or to create replacements if they fall).

The problem with these arguements is that before I post such links (not that they are hidden) people generally aren't even aware of that level of propaganda being directed at children by the mainstream. It's seeing things like that, which show how deep the poison runs and what the problem actually is.

Understand we're not dealing with a situation where facts and kindness can work. The nature of the conflict from their end is religious, and a matter of destiny. They are fighting us because it's what they are supposed to do, and no matter how hopeless seeming their victory is pre-ordained. They are just as intelligent and cunning as we are as well, such beliefs do not make them stupid or gullible. Kindness is seen as being tricks, and while they might choose to play along, in the end we are still ultimatly their enemy.

While Islam can be practiced in a perfectly acceptable fashion, where it can exist in peace with other peoples, that's not the case with the cultures in the region.

I only posted a few links but if you do some digging you'll find plenty of clips of their "evil mickey mouse clone" complete with subtitles. Oddly the mainstream media seems to want to ignore it. Shows like that pretty much reinforce what I'm saying, including things like how to react from apparent kindness from the enemy (don't be tricked by the Jews and Americans!), the indoctrination becoming more and more extreme as time goes on. This is why reason cannot be used.

See, I'd agree with you if we hadn't been trying to deal with the region for decades now. It's not like 9/11 happened out of a vaccum and we decided to invade. There is a lot of history here from both ends (I mean there ARE valid points on both sides). Trying more diplomacy and to reason with these guys isn't going to work, all it does is leave us increasingly open and give them more time for conditioning and to prepare.

Understand we tried middle ground solutions for a long time, even Carter's failure (Hostage Rescue) was ultimatly an attempt to deal with a problem without an outright invasion. We tried trusting Saddam as well, and that didn't exactly work out well. While I seem like a monsterous war monger to many, my point is how many times are we going to try reason? Total War is not a nice thing, but I'm tired of the endless problems and being in danger. There is a point where we have to say that we were nice enough to let the cooler heads prevail for a long time, we gave them plenty of chances, now it's time to actually send out the hotheads and maniacs.

A lot of people don't "get" (or like) the analogy, but I see very little reason why we shouldn't deal with this problem like we did the Nazis. Both the Muslim culture and Nazism were huge international movements, with powerful idealogies. We were able to "break" the Nazis and ensure our safety from that front, with the failure of dialogue over a number of decades why shouldn't we engage this enemy the same way? When you have puppets being used to convince children to kill Americans and Jews, and instill a sense of cultural supremacy and destiny in children, despite all the dialogue, what more can actually be said? It's hard to take any arguements for a peaceful resolution seriously when you look at things like that.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Bob I love your shows more and more. I agree, without the manly man stereotype being shoehorned onto guys, more sensitive men can be, well, men. Society still needs time to adjust, but it's getting better

 

[Melkor-III]

Thuremancer, you have quite an interesting mind. Your disgust of hippies, pacifists and inhabitants of the middle-east display a quite fascinating mixture of fundamentalism, value objectivism (but still making statements hinting at value nihilism), conservatism, islamophobia and glorification/justification of mass-murder, while still claiming that the social progression of the later part of the 19th century was for the better.

All these subject cannot be addressed as I lack the obsessive interest or belief that you are ready to change opinion required to formulate a response. I would, however, like to address your historical account of WWII and how extermination was supposedly used to rid the world of fascism.

On numerous occasions, you, stated that Nazism was destroyed by hunting them all down and citing this as an example of how massive, or perhaps even genocidal force, is necessary to destroy an enemy that is not simple soldiers and and leaders, but an ideology integrated into the very nature of a culture. Example:

Groups like "The Volkssturm" and "Hitler Youth" didn't evaporate, we killed them all off. It's just we don't bother to put the pictures of the corpse piles we made and talk about what bastards we were in order to win in our historical records.

To put things into another perspective, I again point to World War II. The Nazis were defeated by demonizing them beyond all reality, and then relentlessly exterminating them, including women and children. It went from a huge, international movement, to a tiny underground fringe after the war. We spent decades hunting down survivors even after the war ended.

My problem with this representation is that it is misleading. The Third Reich was not destroyed in the manner in which you propose. Yes, large potions of the army and especially the SS was either killed in battle or hunted down after the war (but not by death-squads, but by the judicial apparatus of the occupational forces). The civilian Nazis, however, where not killed with the intent of destroying the "infected culture" of a Germany comprising of a majority of Nazis.

Nazi Germany is not an example of cultural genocide through murder and military might. Rather, it is a perfect example of reconciliation and progression. Germany was not destroyed till no Nazis were left in this world, rather Germany was damaged and rebuilt in a new image. By economic assistance, constitutional reform, re-education, and successive lifting of restrictions, Germany was shaped in a way so Nazism would fade from the mind of Germans, not though a bullet between the eyes, but though other means.

In the years following the commencement of occupation, the allies realised that an extermination or even a general imprisonment of all Nazis was impossible without a humanitarian tragedy. For this reason, much of the bureaucracy (comprised of mostly Nazi officials) was left standing. Instead of murder, the allies utilized what is referred to as "Denazification", a process which was not always morally sound but far from the ?killing of women and children" that you speak of.
Following this, Germany was integrated into the broader European community and "the Marshall Plan" secured its reconstruction, thus reducing the resentment that had caused Nazism to rise following WWI. As an important step, the west Germans where allowed membership into NATO, turning foe into friend.

If anything, Nazi Germany teaches us that victory is not achieved by permanently viewing a group as the enemy, but rather to be capable of abandoning hatred. To win hearts and mind and to change people, not to kill them.

Finally, concerning your idea that "Hitler Youth" was not dispelled, but killed. I would like to point out that the Pope, Benedict XVI, was a "Hitler Youth" -- although an unwilling one-- and an infantryman in the German army before his desertion. The people believing in, or associated with, Nazism where not the permanent "them", but became "us". Let that be a lesson while making inaccurate parallels to contemporary conflicts.

 

[MrHero17]

snip

So to break the Muslim culture we should invade Indonesia right?Also you might want to start a thread in politics about this. I think your first post was tangential at best and it's getting more off-topic now, also you'll get more and better responses.

I thought this was a good video for this week, certainly a bit more relevant than the usual.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

This was great episode, in fact some points felt inspiring.

I just thought of something interesting though. You mention each generation's version of G.I. Joe and I though "whats this generation's version?" The first thing that came to mind was military FPS like CoD, and how popular it was for both men and boys. Its like the old G.I. Joe what with being about real life soldiers and special forces except its an interactive game. Maybe thats one of the reasons its so popular.(besides being a great game)

Try not to take most of this seriously. Like I said its just an interesting thought I had.

I'd say you're probably correct in saying that CoD is pretty much the modern version of GI Joe. Modern GI Joe isn't nearly as popular as it used to be, and seems to be completely irrelevant, as pointed out by Bob. Call of Duty (the first modern warfare at least) talks about the plights of the modern soldier, and demonstrates in more than one way that war is still hell. I really do think the mission where you live out the last moments of a dying soldier after the nuclear blast is one of the greatest gaming moments of the decade, just because it perfectly demonstrates our greatest fears in terms of the war on terror from the eyes of those most likely to experience it.

If COD is our GI Joe then thats a bad sign. Works about warfare should be less about the actual fighting and more about the experience of being a soldier. If anything, Band of Brothers should be our GI Joe, as it focused less on actual warfare and focused on the experience of male comradery in the military, the process of trying to find out just why we fight wars, the confusion of trying to make sense of a situation that has none. COD is too busy having us shoot rocket launchers at tanks and killing endless droves of Germans/Japanese/Terrorists/Russians/whatever than actually making any point about the enduring physical and psychological torment of warfare on a personal and human level.

 

[Acting like a FOOL]

yo bob...as far as the formation of the patriarchy goes, it is not consistent of old white men on the virtue of them being old white men it is on the virtue of them being ambitious, objectivist, prudes, that built dynastic connections via forms of masonry and basic "who-do-ya-know" company building.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

This was great episode, in fact some points felt inspiring.

I just thought of something interesting though. You mention each generation's version of G.I. Joe and I though "whats this generation's version?" The first thing that came to mind was military FPS like CoD, and how popular it was for both men and boys. Its like the old G.I. Joe what with being about real life soldiers and special forces except its an interactive game. Maybe thats one of the reasons its so popular.(besides being a great game)

Try not to take most of this seriously. Like I said its just an interesting thought I had.

I'd say you're probably correct in saying that CoD is pretty much the modern version of GI Joe. Modern GI Joe isn't nearly as popular as it used to be, and seems to be completely irrelevant, as pointed out by Bob. Call of Duty (the first modern warfare at least) talks about the plights of the modern soldier, and demonstrates in more than one way that war is still hell. I really do think the mission where you live out the last moments of a dying soldier after the nuclear blast is one of the greatest gaming moments of the decade, just because it perfectly demonstrates our greatest fears in terms of the war on terror from the eyes of those most likely to experience it.

If COD is our GI Joe then thats a bad sign. Works about warfare should be less about the actual fighting and more about the experience of being a soldier. If anything, Band of Brothers should be our GI Joe, as it focused less on actual warfare and focused on the experience of male comradery in the military, the process of trying to find out just why we fight wars, the confusion of trying to make sense of a situation that has none. COD is too busy having us shoot rocket launchers at tanks and killing endless droves of Germans/Japanese/Terrorists/Russians/whatever than actually making any point about the enduring physical and psychological torment of warfare on a personal and human level.

What should be and what is are way different. How many kids do you know that go on about Band of Brothers? I haven't even heard people my age talk about that since the time it was still on the air. Besides, while it didn't demonstrate all of those qualities, Call of Duty 4 did a good job of showing the plight of the modern soldier (exaggerated of course, but still). The last two games have been mindless of course, but the franchise as a whole isn't much for morals.

Another thing to note, GI Joe of the last generation didn't have any of those qualities you mentioned. Despite having some good morals and whatnot for children to follow, it had as much to do with soldiers and war as He-Man or the Thundercats.

 

[Dectilon]

How will we handle them? I'll tell you how we'll handle them!

We'll go to forums on the internet and write long rambling posts about how much they suck, while hoping someone else takes care of the actual problem.

 

[philosophicalbastard]

Snip

In your comparison between Nazism and Islam you seem to forget that Islam is a couple hundred year old world-wide religion. When you've completly destroyed all of Islam in the Middle East what do you do about the Muslims in other nations? Do you think they'll understand why you had to wipe out all those other muslims? In order to protect the country you'd need to round up all of them and stick them in some sort of camp, you'd also have to produce anti-Islamic propaganda to make sure the nation doesn't sympathise with them, those that did would have to be taken out. In the end you become a facist state that will piss off most of the world, and will have to be crushed like the Nazis. Ultimatly the Total War method is just bad for everyone.