World War III

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tomjasz said:
Not unlike our Viet Nam and Afghanistan?


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Well, it would be if the casualties were 20 or more times greater.

We Americans don't have a lot of experience in these decadent times with such a meat grinder. The casualty rates the Russians (and Ukrainians) are seeing are a lot closer to American and Japanese casualties in Okinawa and Iwo Jima than anything that has happened since, and those two battles were ferocious even by the pretty insane standards of the Pacific War. Some of the elite Russian and Ukrainian units have taken 60 to 80 percent losses in a very short period of time. You'd have to go back to Marine Divisions in WWII to find those kinds of casualty rates among Americans.

In more recent (but still pretty distant) history the best analogy would be the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, where all three sides (Syrians, Egyptians, and Israelis) kicked the snot out of each other over 21 furious days of fighting.
 
Mr. Coffee said:
Well, it would be if the casualties were 20 or more times greater.
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A veteran of service? I'm not being demeaning I have complete respect for your writings and opinions. But numbers don't make PTSD any easier...
 
tomjasz said:
A veteran of service? I'm not being demeaning I have complete respect for your writings and opinions. But numbers don't make PTSD any easier...
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No, and I'd never demean anybody's service. I've lost friends in Afghanistan and saw others come back grievously wounded. And even one person wounded or killed in a pointless and stupid war is one too many -- though one can argue that all wars, or nearly all wars, are pointless and stupid.

It is still important to realize that the scale of what is happening in Ukraine is so much larger than what happened in any recent American war. If the war continues at this level of intensity (I'm not even sure that is possible, in fact) both Ukraine and Russia are on track to lose 100,000 soldiers (and who knows how many civilians) in the very first year of the war. This from populations much smaller than America, with much lower birth rates, and smaller militaries. I'm not even counting the wounded in the above number, but it is easy to imagine there being half a million of wounded on each side.
 
tomjasz said:
Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan...Johnson...Nixon...Bush...
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And some you’ve missed…but the scale and naked brutality is off the charts. I look at what they did in Aleppo, Georgia, the Ukraine in 2014 and believe there is a stark difference.
 
Mulezen said:
And some you’ve missed…but the scale and naked brutality is off the charts. I look at what they did in Aleppo, Georgia, the Ukraine in 2014 and believe there is a stark difference.
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The problem isn't Russia or the U.S., or communism vs capitalism...the problem is people being treating other humans like animals !
we probably need to be invaded by spacemen to see all humans as human !
 
Mr. Coffee said:
It is still important to realize that the scale of what is happening in Ukraine is so much larger than what happened in any recent American war.
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Mulezen said:
And some you’ve missed…but the scale and naked brutality is off the charts.
Click to expand...
My only point, and yes off-topic, is for a combatant scale is hardly reassuring. I assure you I get it. And for the first time in my 70+ years I hope Ukraine perseveres and Putin and his American supporters eat s*it and die...
I just struggle with chicken hawks. I'm not referring the thoughtful group I don't have on ignore and respond to....
 
ChezCheese:) said:
From our perspective, it certainly makes no sense. It's not like the Russian people have no room or natural resources. In fact, thanks to climate change, they are getting more and more land liberated from permafrost and warmer temps in which to grow foods. So they don't actually have to invade another country to gain resources. (Of course, it would require knocking off the vodka to get the seeds planted and to harvest the crops...)

I think what we are seeing is the end of the usefulness of the imperialist brand of capitalism, based on ever-expanding consumption, the death throes of it. And we don't know what to replace it with or how to transition to a better system. We are killing the planet with consumption, to the point that pretty much everything we as a species do, hastens global warming and further fragments our populations into rival groups. We can't get together to solve or ameliorate the situation, and so continue to try our usual methods: war, resource grab, divide and conquer, denial, obfuscation, demonization of the other...

But I digress.
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I think what you say has a lot of merit.
 
JES2020 said:
The problem isn't Russia or the U.S., or communism vs capitalism...the problem is people being treating other humans like animals !
we probably need to be invaded by spacemen to see all humans as human !
Click to expand...
Some maintain its in the offing.
 
tomjasz said:
My only point, and yes off-topic, is for a combatant scale is hardly reassuring. I assure you I get it. And for the first time in my 70+ years I hope Ukraine perseveres and Putin and his American supporters eat s*it and die...
I just struggle with chicken hawks. I'm not referring the thoughtful group I don't have on ignore and respond to....
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Its time for the 'old guard" to move on(its happened already in a lot of Europe and in one central American country I know of.)
Handlebars said:
The answer is obvious. Ask yourself why would an American President do that, if a group decided to pack every surrounding country with biolabs and nukes aimed at America?
And you do understand that the forces being used are both local and others, and are not the war force of the armed forces - but a fraction. Right?
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Will have to consider what you postulated, one problem as will be inferred, the mindset, I find it extremely hard to act counter to my own prejudice and pre conceived notions of the world.My honesty bites me in the ass all the time, people assume you cannot act counter to what your background was.
 
kevinmccune said:
Its time for the 'old guard" to move on(its happened already in a lot of Europe and in one central American country I know of.)

Will have to consider what you postulated, one problem as will be inferred, the mindset, I find it extremely hard to act counter to my own prejudice and pre conceived notions of the world.My honesty bites me in the ass all the time, people assume you cannot act counter to what your background was.
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As they die off the world improves.
 
Mr. Coffee said:
No, and I'd never demean anybody's service. I've lost friends in Afghanistan and saw others come back grievously wounded. And even one person wounded or killed in a pointless and stupid war is one too many -- though one can argue that all wars, or nearly all wars, are pointless and stupid.

It is still important to realize that the scale of what is happening in Ukraine is so much larger than what happened in any recent American war. If the war continues at this level of intensity (I'm not even sure that is possible, in fact) both Ukraine and Russia are on track to lose 100,000 soldiers (and who knows how many civilians) in the very first year of the war. This from populations much smaller than America, with much lower birth rates, and smaller militaries. I'm not even counting the wounded in the above number, but it is easy to imagine there being half a million of wounded on each side.
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The estimates of the body count over the course of the Iraq war range from military estimates in the range of 200,000 to public health estimates that are between 500,000 and one million over the course of roughly eight years. So I guess even if you believe the higher estimates, (and being a public health guy, I trust those sources more) the raw fatality rate-- while in a similar range-- is still considerably higher.

The key words in your post, Mr. C., are "This from populations much smaller than America, with lower birth rates." Yeah-- so far, at least, this conflict has proved to be considerably more devastating.

I just think it's important not to minimize the devastating impact of the Iraq war, and its utter pointlessness. It was a watershed in US aggression, many countries will never forget what we did, and rightly so. We squandered whatever international goodwill we had left after Vietnam. It's inevitable-- and should have been predictable -- that tyrants would use this level of aggression to justify their own depravity.

That argument is still a fallacy, but it's an appealing one to many people, unfortunately.
Mulezen said:
the scale and naked brutality is off the charts.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this.
ChezCheese:) said:
I think what we are seeing is the end of the usefulness of the imperialist brand of capitalism, based on ever-expanding consumption, the death throes of it. And we don't know what to replace it with or how to transition to a better system. We are killing the planet with consumption...
Click to expand...
And absolutely this. My own take, which is not a popular one, is that unrestrained capitalism is both a humanitarian disaster and desperately inefficient. There has been little meaningful innovation in the last half century, and even less in the last 25 years. There are no cars I'd want to buy today, computers were faster and easier to use 20 to 40 years ago, benchmark testing is meaningless, and who cares if memory is cheaper? Touch screen sucks, voice recognition is still slower than typing for most people, social media is an open running sewer, and texting is awful-- I had far more meaningful communication with my friends 15 years ago, when we wrote emails like letters. Now no one has the patience; language has been destroyed.

There are outliers where capitalism has done well-- HIV drugs, eBikes, a few really useful strides forward. And 'capitalism' isn't just a private sector problem, either. Most non-profits are structured similarly; they have almost identical issues with bureaucracy, cronyism, you'll find the same stupid notes taped to the refrigerator in the break room.

JES2020 said:
The problem isn't Russia or the U.S., or communism vs capitalism...the problem is people being treating other humans like animals !
we probably need to be invaded by spacemen to see all humans as human !
Click to expand...

I totally agree that there is a dangerous moral shift here, and we need to stay focused on it-- it's one of the reasons I do the work that I do. And if I think about it, even my closest friends are probably more likely today to treat other humans inhumanely than they were even 10 years ago.

However, both problems are related, and I would argue that unrestrained capitalism is part of the reason we've lost respect for human and animal life-- not the only one, but one of the most important. People work in dead-end, meaningless jobs, advancement is often impossible, when people step off the straight and narrow, we cage them or drug them or send them back to the neighborhood they came from so the whole cycle can repeat again.

We used to understand that capitalism only worked with regulation to keep it in check. There's a reason that every house on the block doesn't have different power outlets that supply different voltages. There was a day when you could rent a car without having to read the manual to figure out the climate control, when you could buy a mobile phone and not have to budget half a day to figure out how to disable the bloat and spyware.

Capitalism has gotten really crazy, it means something different now. I have several students in my office every year just because of the way economics is taught. "My parents nearly bankrupted themselves to send me here, and the texts I'm reading and what the professors are saying makes absolutely no sense." This absolutely contributes to the current epidemic of human depravity. Sure, violent video games don't help, but the depersonalization comes from vast institutions in the public and private sector that make sure we never forget: The market doesn't exist to serve your needs. You will buy what we tell you to, be interested in what we say you'll be interested in. If you buy a 50 pound bag of dog food, we will bombard you with more ads for dog food even though you won't need any for three months. We don't care about you. You are nothing. You are nobody."

If this sounds familiar, I hope those on the other side of the political aisle realize that we have a lot in common. We are being exploited and turned against each other. I'm sick of this. I don't want to do it anymore.
 
Catalyzt said:
The estimates of the body count over the course of the Iraq war range from military estimates in the range of 200,000 to public health estimates that are between 500,000 and one million over the course of roughly eight years. So I guess even if you believe the higher estimates, (and being a public health guy, I trust those sources more) the raw fatality rate-- while in a similar range-- is still considerably higher.

The key words in your post, Mr. C., are "This from populations much smaller than America, with lower birth rates." Yeah-- so far, at least, this conflict has proved to be considerably more devastating.

I just think it's important not to minimize the devastating impact of the Iraq war, and its utter pointlessness. It was a watershed in US aggression, many countries will never forget what we did, and rightly so. We squandered whatever international goodwill we had left after Vietnam. It's inevitable-- and should have been predictable -- that tyrants would use this level of aggression to justify their own depravity.

That argument is still a fallacy, but it's an appealing one to many people, unfortunately.

Yeah, this.

And absolutely this. My own take, which is not a popular one, is that unrestrained capitalism is both a humanitarian disaster and desperately inefficient. There has been little meaningful innovation in the last half century, and even less in the last 25 years. There are no cars I'd want to buy today, computers were faster and easier to use 20 to 40 years ago, benchmark testing is meaningless, and who cares if memory is cheaper? Touch screen sucks, voice recognition is still slower than typing for most people, social media is an open running sewer, and texting is awful-- I had far more meaningful communication with my friends 15 years ago, when we wrote emails like letters. Now no one has the patience; language has been destroyed.

There are outliers where capitalism has done well-- HIV drugs, eBikes, a few really useful strides forward. And 'capitalism' isn't just a private sector problem, either. Most non-profits are structured similarly; they have almost identical issues with bureaucracy, cronyism, you'll find the same stupid notes taped to the refrigerator in the break room.



I totally agree that there is a dangerous moral shift here, and we need to stay focused on it-- it's one of the reasons I do the work that I do. And if I think about it, even my closest friends are probably more likely today to treat other humans inhumanely than they were even 10 years ago.

However, both problems are related, and I would argue that unrestrained capitalism is part of the reason we've lost respect for human and animal life-- not the only one, but one of the most important. People work in dead-end, meaningless jobs, advancement is often impossible, when people step off the straight and narrow, we cage them or drug them or send them back to the neighborhood they came from so the whole cycle can repeat again.

We used to understand that capitalism only worked with regulation to keep it in check. There's a reason that every house on the block doesn't have different power outlets that supply different voltages. There was a day when you could rent a car without having to read the manual to figure out the climate control, when you could buy a mobile phone and not have to budget half a day to figure out how to disable the bloat and spyware.

Capitalism has gotten really crazy, it means something different now. I have several students in my office every year just because of the way economics is taught. "My parents nearly bankrupted themselves to send me here, and the texts I'm reading and what the professors are saying makes absolutely no sense." This absolutely contributes to the current epidemic of human depravity. Sure, violent video games don't help, but the depersonalization comes from vast institutions in the public and private sector that make sure we never forget: The market doesn't exist to serve your needs. You will buy what we tell you to, be interested in what we say you'll be interested in. If you buy a 50 pound bag of dog food, we will bombard you with more ads for dog food even though you won't need any for three months. We don't care about you. You are nothing. You are nobody."

If this sounds familiar, I hope those on the other side of the political aisle realize that we have a lot in common. We are being exploited and turned against each other. I'm sick of this. I don't want to do it anymore.
Click to expand...
People are beginning to see that the governments of today, capitalists, communist, fascist etc are ineffective means of governing AND they are revolting, like you , against it.

One interesting note, and I think it offers a partial solution to the WORLD WIDE governmental ineptitude.
The oldest and most time tested form of government is what we need to get back too.
I'm sure you know which form I speak of?
 
JES2020 said:
People are beginning to see that the governments of today, capitalists, communist, fascist etc are ineffective means of governing AND they are revolting, like you , against it.

One interesting note, and I think it offers a partial solution to the WORLD WIDE governmental ineptitude.
The oldest and most time tested form of government is what we need to get back too.
I'm sure you know which form I speak of?
Click to expand...
I'm not aware of what form of government you believe the world needs, but I do note Poland's savvy in getting its paws on the Ukrainian gold.
 
Ah, yes - it turns out that the Chinese firm Biden shipped Strategic Reserve Oil to, is the one Hunter got involved with. Joe flew Hunter to China in Air Force 2 as bagman.
 
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