God bless the military-industrial complex 🫡

And, therefore, spirit.

What does the constipated mathematician do to solve their problems?
They work it out with a pencil.

but by taking and holding territory (and while awful being less awful than the Nazis.)

It wasn't just a matter of territory or PR. The soviets placed a huge emphasis on logistics, both their own and the enemy's. A typical soviet operation was to attack with a first wave to find a breach, then send a fresh second wave into the breach to cause as much damage as possible to the enemy support crew. At that point, the second wave would evaluate whether they could hold against enemy reinforcements, and if not, retreat before they even arrived, satisfied with the damage they caused.

The key difference in their approaches to war was that to the soviets, every worker who manufactures goods or drives a supply truck or fixes a tank was just as important to the war effort as the person on the front charging the front line. The Nazis placed all the emphasis on "warrior spirit" or whatever nonsense, the people on the front line were the only ones who mattered, and so to retreat from a position, especially without a fight, would be seen as cowardly (with potentially severe repercussions) even if it was the correct decision.

The differences are also apparent in military technology. German tanks were very powerful, in line with Nazi power fantasies, but they were expensive to build and difficult to maintain or repair. Soviet tanks were much cheaper and mass produced, allowing them to field more of them, and of course the AK-47 is famous for it's simplistic design, if something goes wrong, it can easily be repaired in the field. As the war went on, German tanks and aircraft became increasingly convoluted and overengineered, ignoring that the actual weakness was logistics.

Actually this is utter nonsense. The Soviets killed around 80% of the Nazi soldiers and the West only 20%. The Allies did not do much killing because they did not do much in general. Besides trying to claim all the credit.

It depends on the objective of the war. Nation building is basically impossible. Killing the crap out of an enemy until they surrender is pretty effective historically. Killing the crap out of select targets while avoiding excessive civilian casualties is generally ineffective. WWII was a total war scenario, the US and USSR absolutely killed entire areas of German and Japanese towns.

When was the last time the US wasn't in wartime though?

E: And the results are in.

I specifically said “with troops deployed abroad,” giving everyone who has reacted here (A) the option to read that far and (B) the chance consider why that qualifier might be significant, knowing the knee jerk was likely but that it would demonstrate how used to the idea of a warrior class and risk-free acceptance of American imperialism we truly are.

US imperialism can only continue as long as all those who would object to violence can simply choose economic participation instead, enjoying the spoils at a safe distance while imagining their hands clean.

First Blood: War is horrible. War destroys people's minds, bodies, and souls. War spawns never-ending cycles of trauma and violence. Don't do war.

Every Subsequent Rambo Movie: FUCK YEAH, WAR, ARROOOO!!! 💥💥🧨🧨💪🏻💪🏻

See also: Rocky

Conservatives made sequels to Jarhead

I recently watched both for the first time and they were horrible. But why would they like the hippie homeless vet killing cops story in rambo 2?

Edit: I was thinking of rambo 1. Rambo 2 he rescues hostages he was supposed to ignore. I forget the rest I think I was too hugh

I don't think that does the Red Army justice. It was a brutal, ideologically driven force that absorbed horrific losses and kept fighting. It wasn't a "warrior cult" in the Japanese or Nazi sense, but it wasn't a bunch of civilians who'd "rather be doing anything else," either.

This is also a leadership problem.

The us military ran a massive wargame in 2002, and blue team got curbstomped by a red teamer who designed his strategy around what Iran would be able to do: shutting down shipping, avoiding sigint (using messengers on motorcycles to carry orders, for example), having a highly distributed and resilient command structure, using small speedboats to sneak in and damage American vessels who got too close.

The military said "boo not fair you're supposed to let us blow you all up".

Remarkably predictive all in all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

Are you suggesting we require certification to join the military?