Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I think I am going to have to respectfully disagree with all those who think an apology is a good idea. I just cannot see how it helps us but can see how it harms us. A corporate apology tars the entire US establishment where an individual apology from the soldier doesnt. That is exactly how the Iraqis look at it too. I do not know how many times I personally was accused of torturing Iraqis in 2004 by other Iraqis. When I disputed this and voiced my disgust with the the activities at Abu Ghraib, they pointed to the apology from the government as proof of my guilt. There point was that if we all (American Soldiers) werent doing it, then why did the government apologize? That is the root of my opposition to this decision.Did you see where the President apologized yesterday? We are now stuck in the news cycle and this issue that at heart is small has become huge. Making a mountain out of a molehill in action.
Too bad most of the stuff on Futureweapons is crap that for the most part the Army has tested and found wanting.
besides the Autobahn and the Volkswagen, there can be little good said about Nazi Germany and it's socio-economic policies.That said, their weapons reseach and development was awsome. If they did not embrace anti-Semitism as an official govermental policy, I think Germany would have developed an atomic bomb before the US.And in airplanes, armor, and small arms, Germany would field designs whose influence would be felt well into the 70's.And, like it or not, Nazi Germany helped put a man on the moon.Sounds silly, but just think if all that talent was put to peaceful purposes....
Germany may have been advanced in weapons research but they could not gwet these advanced designs into production in high enough numbers to make a difference on the battlefield. It doesnt matter how cool your gadgets are if you cant make enough to use them.As to the free specch aspect, when I got married I shocked my wife. She is German and was amazed that I not only had a copy of Mein Kampf, but had read it as well. The book is way illegal in Germany, I think you can actually go to jail for posessing it, and to her it is amazing that we have the freedom to buy some of the seditious stuff you can find on the shelves over here. Needless to say, she has since read it and does not get why he was so popular. She trots out some very simplistic answers and cannot get beyond them. I tried to explain the historical time in which it was written but her attitudes towards the Nazis are an abject lesson in the power of the modern educational system to indoctrinate people. She is incapable of having a rational discussion of Nazism and its attraction for the Germans of the 1920's and 30's.
Peter the Great? He certainly brought the kind of majesty and grandeur that we see in Paris to Russia.One could argue that Marxism is anti-western, but that would presume that to be western is to be capitalistic. I think that nowadays much of the West adheres to capitalism but I don't think this was the case for much of the history of Europe. So to say that capitalism is Western would be like saying that freedom from slavery is "Western"; while it's true today in the West, it wasn't always that way.
One of the hallmarks of Western Civilisation is its dynamism. So yes, I think we can say that capitalism and freedom are Western attributes. Many other cultures in the world are static, Islam and the Caste System are good examples. They are what in the west we would call reactionary systems in that they oppose change on principle because they regard most change as inherently bad.
I have a copy of the SF COIN manual form 1969 and it is almost exactly the same as the new manual with some minor changes and additions. Petraues recycled and updated the old doctrine to bring it inline with the newer communication methods and more advanced cell structure of the insurgents in Iraq. Petraeus did not invent or introduce COIN to the US and world, he just relearned the lessons that we leasrned at such cost 40 years ago and have had to subsequently pay in blood to relearn because of our lack of instsitutional memory. The knowledge was there all along it just was not used.
The two best have to be “Sands of Iwo Jima” Because it's a classic and “Kelly's Heroes”. Telly Savalas was outstanding in Kelly's Heroes. For realism probably “Saving Private Ryan”
Ah but which outweighs the other? Our differences or our commonality of outlook. I would argue that what are considered traditional western attitudes and modern Japanese attitudes towards such things as individual rights and the role of the state vs religion have many commonalities. These outweigh the differences in the wider scheme of things, I think. It is easy to focus on differences because commonalities are not so easy to highlight. This is a by-product of the diversity is great crowd. They focus on diversity to exclusion of shared values and viewpoints. I prefer to focus on what brings people together rather than what tears them apart.
Anyway, this has kinda gotten off the topic don't you think?
Not really. It does stil go along with the OT of
I personally believe that the intangibles of leadership, ?lan, morale, and good doctrine contribute more to victory than any pure technological superiority.
and we are discussing leadership and doctrine.
I agree with skiguy here. The heart of the topic and my initial point is that technology is not the be all end all in warfare. This is a point I think the American military has forgotten. The American military has pursued technology to dominate the battlefield while largely ignoring doctrine. With the appointment of Petraeus, this has started to change but I fear that it will be only a momentary thing. For some reason the military is in love with gadgets and think they can make up for any deficiency. We should not forget that the modern conception of firepower is largely an American invention.I think American military leadership is the best in the world. But, that being said, we seem to have forgotten some of the home truths of warfare in our blind quest for the holy grail of technology. The Germans proved in both world wars that leadership, ?lan, morale, and doctrine can amek up for any number of technological inferiorities. the fact the they eventually lost has more to do with the number of troops available than the individual quality of the German soldier. Both Mosier and Fergusson have shown that the German army consistently achieved kill ratios of anywhere from 3:1 to 6:1 in the world wars. The German army simply could not kill their opponents as fast as they could be replaced, technology had little to do with their loss. German tanks tended to be inferior to allied throughout the war and their advanced models, such as the Panther and Tiger were never available in great numbers. The German army accomplished wonders with what should have been training tanks but were instead used for frontline service because it is what they had available.The same is proving true in the current war. The insurgents are managing to do amazing damage given the material they have available, especially in the face of the technological know how America brings to bear. What does that say about the relative value of technology? The insurgents main weapons are their brains and determination not the physical weapons they use.
I think you are correct though. The fort or structure has the looks of something that was once a tower or bailey of a keep or donjon and the cliff face has since eroded, leaving what we see today. It does not even need to be thousands of years old. The seas around Ireland are very rough and it could be as young as 700-1000 years and if it was built close enough to the cliff erosion could have already done its work. Look at how fast the cliffs in parts of California have eroded, the same thing happens in other parts of the world too. That cliff looks precipitous enough that wave action could easily undermine a small part of the cliff causing a larger section to collapse.
Would you include modern-day Japan as part of the "West"?
Yes, the Japanese share many of the liberal attitudes that distinguishes western civilization. they would and do stand shoulder to shoulder with traditional westerners in the face of attacks against those same liberal attitudes. They also share the western views on freedom and inalienable rights.
Donald,I emailed you my paper yesterday. If you could please let me know what you think. I too, had always assumed history was a separate field. The postmodernists do not believe so and I was not aware of the effect that postmodernists had on history until I started reading more about it. The postmodern view is multi-disciplinary, they see no distinction, so talking history and religion is appropriate in this instance. To a postmodern thinker all disciplines are one and therefore they can be inclusive of all. They try to be jacks of all trades but end up knowing just enough about what they write about to get themselves in trouble. They are fine with this though, because they hold that all views are equally valid unless you disagree with the basics of postmodernism, in which case you are just wrong and subject to being mocked and ridiculed for your outdated beliefs.
We won the war! We are not fighting a war any more. Now we are just trying to secure a nation into a somewhat stable environment. I have tried to think about it this way, what if someone came over here and told us that we were living the wrong way. We know our beliefs and will do ANYTHING to ensure we can live the way WE want. Well they believe the same way. Not about the same belief but they are holding on to there with the same amount of passion.
How do you define the war? To the best of my knowledge the fighting has not stopped since the invasion. The only difference has been what group we are fighting. Counter-insurgency is still war. In your example, we would be fighting an insurgency against invaders, that is a war also.
4000-8000 years ago is 2000-6000 B.C. That is prehistoric. That is quite an advanced structure to be of that age. That would make it about the age of Stonehenge, which despite its immense size and precise positioning, is still quite primitive in its technique of construction.
I will start by delineating what I consider the geographic limits of the West. I consider this area to include Europe and North America, and including the descendants of European settlers in other parts of the world. The west is more a cast of mind than a geographical area. The West is defined more by its attitudes than location. North America is included because of the strong European influences on its present society, but historically the west is centered in Europe.These attitudes are characterized by an openness to rational scientific inquiry, the acceptance of certain universal rights, and a tolerance for dissenting views. It is also characterized by the relatively highly developed material position of westerners. The West enjoys and expects a certain standard of living.Western Civilization as it exists today is the culmination of thousands of years of societal development with its roots going back to the ancient Greeks. Greece is what I consider to be the cradle of Western Civilization and not Mesopotamia. The traditions of the West flow directly from Greece to Rome, to the Catholic Church, to the secular states of Europe to today. Western Civilization is by no means monolithic or static, it continually changes to meet new circumstances, and there is continuity with the past and an appreciation of where it came from. I hope and pray that Western Civilization is not losing its vitality and I think it is not, instead I believe it is in the midst of a search for change such as happened during the Enlightenment and Renaissance.That is my definition of Western Civilization.
