Bigduke6

noob, For the purposes of this discussion, I'll define "people" as English-speakers with enough income to improve their level of knowledge if they choose. For general purposes, this is a developed world definition. I know education when I see it. It's when critical thinking functions. I'd say any one who has access to the internet, and speaks English, and remains uninformed, is doing so inentionally. There just about is nothing that an average person needs to know to live his life, that he cannot find out himself. There is no reason to take politicians or media at face value, there is no reason to accept the opinion of an expert just because he's an expert, there is no reason to let any one do your thinking for you. The information is out there. All you have to do, is winnow the wheat from the chaff. Which brings us back to critical thinking. People in supposedly democratic countries are willing to send their own people to other countries to fight and die in wars, and kill people in those countries as well, and at the same time find a war movie entertaining because it has big explosions and a hero they can identify with. If that's not turning off your brain, then I don't know what is. Real lives of others are more important than personal entertainment. However, if one lacks critical thinking, then one might well believe one's personal gratification, and indeed entertainment, is paramount. On a more basic level, a person like that might well start thinking war is cool and the bad guys are whoever the authorities say are the bad guys, and the bad guys deserve to die. People like that, if they are in the majority in a functioning democracy, will select politicians that cater to personal gratification of short-term goals simply grasped by citizens, rather than politicians that would cater to long-term goals whose choice and execution requires informed debate. If the people are simple and uninformed, they will seek out politicians that appeal on a simple level. One of the most simple appeals is "I will lead you against those bad guys." The most successful politician, in those circumstances, would be a very handsome person who was engaging, successful, and skilled at communicating with the least common denominator. He should couch his appeals in easy-to-understand terms, and who avoided voicing complicated answers to complicated language. Were he to present himself in a complex manner, the electorate literally would not understand him, and certainly would not vote for him. So in answer to your question, how come the educated politicians can't do anything, I would answer, a simple electorate gets performance from its representatives it deserves.

Great thread guys. Here's a couple of some questions I bet you can answer, that might (or might not) add to the conversation. Both are from the Red Army and have to do with the IS-2 tank. Anecdote 1: Once the IS-2 got sent into combat and tanks started getting killed, Soviet technicians noticed something peculiar: a certain percentage of the "killed" Stalins were to all intents and purposes functional, hull intact, turret in place, ammunition in bins, and in a couple of cases with all systems functioning and even the engine running. But the crew was dead inside and a single German AP penetration was found to be the cause. There weren't any numbers of cases like this so I can't offer any thing on which to build statistics. This was rather presented as evidence of the solidity of the Stalin tank - even when the crew inside gets killed, sometimes the tank itself isn't hurt. It was not presented as just a weird battlefield incident, but rather something that happened that was evidence supporting a conclusion, in this case that the Stalin's size and armor was substantial vs. German ammunition of the day. OK, so question one is: You have a Stalin, there are two guys in the turret and two in the forward hull, there is a single AP penetration. I think it's safe to assume the penetrating round was an L70 75mm or some variety of 88mm. What could happen after that penetration that would kill the entire crew, yet leave the tank itself essentially intact? Let's not forget IS-2 ammo was not unitary, i.e., it came not in one piece but two. Any one want to speculate on how that happened? Anecdote2: This one is better-researched. IS-2 as most reading this probably know were fielded in heavy tank regiments and used primarily as part of a major attack at whatever level of Soviet command was trying, and secondarily to make German armored breakthroughs painful. In general IS-2 was not, by the Soviets, considered an anti-tank weapon, however, because of the separate and independent nature of the Stalin regiments, and a higher level of education among Stalin crew, there is a moderate to tolerable amount of memoires and available battle reports on how IS-2 did when it did wind up shooting at German armored vehicles. There are lots of conclusions which have actually been beaten to death in other threads years ago, but this thread made me wonder about one of them. It seems like it was a general assumption, both by commanders throwing IS-2 regiments into combat, and by the crewmembers themselves, that the 122mm gun was powerful enough to defeat the armor of almost any vehicle in the German inventory, but, from most certainly not Tiger II from the frontal aspect, and possible a few of the heavy assault guns. But, and this is where my question comes from, even in those (really not so common) cases where the 122mm AP was deemed insufficient to overcome the German armor, it was considered a viable tactic to fire HE. The idea was the blast on the outside of the German tank would be sufficient to break it somehow. For the same reason, 122mm HE rounds were considered a possible munition for use against lighter German tanks. I can't prove that these anecdotes are the same as reality, but I can say the idea that "122mm HE really is enough to do a number on any German armored vehicle, but not always" seems to have been a common assumption in the Soviet memoires and battle accounts I've read. So, assuming that no one was lying, here's several questions for you smart guys: How could it be that a 122mm HE round could, without penetration, cause substantial damage even to a medium German tank, never mind a Tiger? The velocity of both the HE and the AP rounds appears to have been 800 meters a second. The HE shell appears to have weight 25 kg and the bursting charge 3.6 kg. Is that velocity plus weight plus bursting charge enough, reasonably, to cause substantial damage to a German medium tank? To a German heavy tank? If it's an HE round, is KE even a factor? Thanks ahead of time.

Noob, Well then I need help. I consider most people woefully uneducated, and what's worse, a large portion of them appear to be perfectly happy in their ignorance. They literally do not want to inform themselves. I think the term "masses" is perfectly applicable. But if you prefer there are alternative terms like "the great unwashed" or "hoi polloi". I am most certainly not pointing fingers here; it's very hard to find a properly uninformed person in these forums. Indeed, that's one of the reasons I bought CM. It teaches me about a subject I am interested in. Which is, matter of fact, one of the reasons this is good forum. There are more than a few very intelligent people here, and I'm not talking just book-learning. Consuming an entertainment product is not the same as allowing an entertainer to manipulate your feelings willy-nilly. It is possible to view or listen critically. All it takes is engaging one's mind. In my opinion, far too many people fail to do this. I hope I am not one of them. Certainly a war movie, or any other form of art, need not depict "reality" perfectly, if for no other reason than one person's perception of reality will differ from another's. But I would say that, as war movies, SPR and Das Boot are very good art, because they get to a piece of what it is to force men to participate in war, and the human reaction to the situation they are in. This has much less to do with the accuracy of the equipment or the tactics depicted, although that's part of it, and more to do with the truthfulness of how humans and their behavior in war is depicted. Get the essence right, and you have a classic for the ages, look at the Iliad. Likewise, a war movie with pretty explosions and the bad guys mowed down to me is a waste of time. That's not war, that's a first-person shooter just from a passive, cinematic viewpoint. If I want to entertain myself watching pretend things die and explode, I'll go replay HL2 or something.

I am not sure that's an example of war media showing competent leaders and useless subordinates. Sharpe, of course, is former enlisted, talks with a midlands (right?) accent and the other officers in the series are pretty much all poofty upperclass snobbish dolts. Sharpe's enlisted mates, meanwhile, are hardrinking and womanizing when there is time, but in any case fine shots and they win their fights with marksmanship and their own fists. What I am trying to get at is this problem almost all war shows/movies have in depicting the to-whom-it-may-concern flying metal. They don't. I guess in small firefights or hand-to-hand melees there could be times when the fight is something like man-to-man, but most of the time it's just a battle of who can send more flying metal in the general direction of the opposition. But you watch most movies and it's like every one picks their targets and has great fire discipline, and indirect doesn't do much except make the infantry stop shooting for a while. Of course, it's kind of like CM. If we built scenarios that accurately reflected the kind of artillery the Allies brought to the table for most operations, especially 1944 onwards, the CM battles would just be a contest of whose FO could paste the other side of the map more effectively. War movies wouldn't be very interesting if you spent an hour or more developing a squad characters and giving them back histories and watching them go through training, and then in about a minute they get mortared in the open and half of them are dead, most of the rest are wounded, and the only guy that didn't get touched was the shirker who was hiding in a hole.

Steiner, I agree 100 per cent with what you say about the idiot consuming masses. I would say the only antidote is education, either in schools or real life. But I very much disagree with you on this: The chain of command works in most militaries pretty well as long as there is no stress. The moment you add stress, the chain of command starts deteriorating. It doesn't take much, you deprive of private of sleep for a day or two and where he might not lip back to a sergeant if he was fresh, he will when he's groggy. If the stress includes things like fear of death or dismemberment, noise, severe discomfort, that erodes the effectiveness of the chain of command even more. It doesn't have to be directly concerning the individual's own well-being. A junior officer who is unaware of how instructions from higher up can get his men killed for no reason, just stupidly, is more likely to disobey or undermine orders given him, than a junior officer who still believes his superiors know what they are doing and always have his best interests at heart. One of the problems about war movies is, most of the people watching them have not been subjected to the stresses wars create. Movie audiences are generally young, and those that have limited experience in life have even less of a yardstick to judge, how men react under stress. The whole point to organized militaries is to force the soldiers, who are people like every one else, to risk their lives, despite the stress. Teaching people to kill is comparatively easy; propaganda and distance and mechanization can overcome almost any person's inhibitions along those lines. But when people realize, I could die or get very seriously maimed if I follow that order, military discipline does not always prevail. I think SPR did a good job of depicting that happening. Men go into combat, they kill and have their buddies killed, and they are told to perform a mission whose point is not clear but whose danger is. John, I'd say your first two pix prove my point, those Red Army guys are all sharp-jawed and boney. Look at the belts. The FF guy is admittedly well-fed looking. He is of course an engineer.

I watched the trailer. The Russian movie by Bondarchuk will be awful. Trust me on this. The Russian market - at least as far as the Russian government is concerned - wants bang-up movies showing Soviet heroes holding out against great odds and technical superiority, for the sake of the Russian nation. There is a whole genre of Russian movies where, through the magic of celluloid, troops deployed by the superpower Soviet Union to Afghanistan, and by Russia to the dinky province Chechnya, manage repeatedly to be outnumbered and outgunned by locals. Who in RL are, for the most part, guys with AKs lacking air cover, communications, artillery, camoflage or regular deliveries of beans and bullets. Bondarchuk's 9th Company is an example of this genre. John, as to this comment: I would have to say I disagree, at least in this sense. It is sort of a matter of honor and policy in the Russian/Soviet army that the guys at the front edge of the fight are skinny and semi-starved; this the leadership believes makes them better fighters. The idea is a man is more aggressive and inclined to violence, on an empty stomach. As an aside, I think they're probably right. Anyway, the upshot of that is that Soviet/Russian combat troops by definition are skinny scarecrow types, and the Russians/Soviets have very little compunction about keeping to uniform standards in the field, so it's stick figures in baggy clothes. They're not concentration-camp emaciated but, as a group, these are guys carrying next to no body fat. This has been pretty much the rule for the last century at least. A generic truisim in the Russian army has always been, the staff and rear area guys, and especially the generals, are always better fed and heavier than the guys on the front edge. The guys on the front edge know that this is unfair, but since it's the Russian army they pretty much accept there's nothing they can do about it. Not surprisingly, Russian soldiers these days see NATO soldiers as overfed, bulky, and possibly on steriods. Sometimes I've even been asked what's the point of doing all those exercises and lifting all those weights like you see from time to time in NATO combat units. To the Russian way of thinking, that creates a soldier who is vulnerable to even a reduction of supply, break of routine, or loss of creature comforts. Russian soldiers, the argument goes, live tough lives day in and day out, so war for them is just more of the same, but with better looting opportunities.

Love stories are put in to attract a wider demographic of viewers. In this case, generally speaking, women. In general, most people don't think war is cool. You gotta put something in to attract viewers that aren't particularly into shooting and fighting. Arguably, that's why most war movies have really bright pretty explosions and fighting usually pits a known individual who kills his opponents with skill and/or cool weaponry. This appeals to young men, most of whom are genetically programmed to be interested in fighting, and are aided and abetted by testoserone. Come to think of it, maybe that's why officers, especially the immediate supervisers of the heroes, very often are jerks in war movies. If the average movie viewer is a young person in a crappy job, that sort of depiction of authority is something he will pay to watch. Think that's a silly? OK, how many war movies are there out there, where the officers have their act together and the sergeants and privates are a bunch of uneducated cowards whose lives wouldn't be worth much, without some decent leadership? I say if you want to know about war, on a personal level, go make friends with some paramedics and spend a couple of night shifts with them responding to car accidents. Tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

Well, considering the Chinese have been around and taking the long view for quite a while, wouldn't that mean they should have already established themselves as the leader of the world about a 1,000 years ago? It was those same long view Chinese that came up with the Great Leap Forward and the Gang of Four. A couple of generations from now we may be laughing at them for trying to keep the fiction of a Communist state dedicated to the public well being going, when even the Cubans and the Vietnamese never mind the Russians punted that idea as not just useless, but detrimental to society.

The answer to that pretty much depends on what possible realities you accept for the Soviet Union circa 1920s-1930s. The forced collectivizations were justified by the state as needed to break the class of citizens most resistant to Soviet rule, and to use agrarian resources to support massive industrialization. When the farm owners (I'm speaking generally) resisted, the state's response was not to negotiate or reduce its demands, but torque down on rural resisidents. This had several effects: the resistance of rural residents wanting to hang onto their property was broken, practically all available rural resources (by and large food) was transferred to the cities and the industrialization drive, and the fiat of the Soviet state was established to be unchallengable. So, the argument goes, ten years later when the Germans invaded the Soviets had gone from a agricularural nation to an industrial power of the first order, and had in place a functional dictatorship respected (if not loved) by the strong majority of Soviet citizens. Without industrial capacity and effective dictatorship, the standard explaination goes, the Soviet Union would have lost the war to the Germans, which would not just have destroyed the Soviet state, but reduced something like half the Soviet Union's citizens to a status of slaves, and probably subjected those people to genocide. The means used to reach those ends, of course, caused the death by forced starvation of something between 3 and 10 million people; the heavy majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians. It is still an open historical question whether Stalin wanted to wipe out the Ukrainians as a nation, or if he just didn't care what happened to them and had policy goals that led to their mass murder by forced starvation. To decide whether those deaths were justifiable, you have to answer questions like "Was there another way for the Soviet Union to industrialize than by forced collectivization?" and "Could the Soviet Union's rural residents in its wealthy agricultural districts, the strong majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, have been coerced to cooperate with the Stalinist regime, without starving them into submission?" Another good question is: "Was the man Josef Stalin capable of pushing policy goals by any other means except naked force or the threat of it?". This is a guy that won the power war inside the CPSU during the 1920s, defeating the likes of Trotsky in the process. All these questions also assume that the continued existence of the Soviet state was a good thing, or at least, better than what the Germans planned to do with the territory and its peoples. There are varying opinions on all of that.

At least in terms of what the Western view of Stalin is. In Russia, the official line is that Stalin and his brutality were necessary because that was what it took to defeat Nazi Germany, and had the Germans defeated the Soviets the entire Russian nation would have been enslaved and eventually eliminated, because the Nazis considered the Russians not just racially inferior, but subhuman, similar to the Jews. The official Kremlin line these days is, a strong central government is good for Russia, so without getting into a debate on whether or not that's the case, modern Russia's view of Stalin fits that fairly well. But of course Russia isn't all the Soviet Union. In the Baltic states Stalin is seen as responsible for invasion and setting back the region several decades, and in most (but not all) parts of Ukraine he's seen as responsible for genocide. In Georgia he's a "great man with human failings", in Azerbaijan and Armenia he's a Georgian thug, and in Central Asia he's just another one of the "Russians" that ruled the Kremlin. And in the Russian Far East he's either a national hero or a vicious dictator, in rough terms depending on whether the person you're talking to has ever had relatives in the gulag or not. Come to think of it, to my taste Beevor maybe could have done more on the personal characters of some of the key figures. But that's nitpicking, considering the subject he did a solid job and I recommend his East Front books. They're not ideal for CM scenarios but that's not the only definition of a worthwhile military history book.

Well Hell son, on the Soviet personal histories, that's easy. Go here: http://iremember.ru/ There's plenty to keep you busy. Just remember that the Russian-language side is about 10 times bigger than the English. If one can read Russian there is also a mass of personal account literature out there. It came in three waves: general officer accounts during the 1950s-60s, other officer accounts during the 1970s-80s, and personal memoires - usually to interviewers wanting to get the account on the record before the veteran died - in the 1990s through the present. I'm talking thousands of volumes. Pretty much any aspect of the war you want: female pilots of night bombers, Sturmovik drivers, punishment battalion commanders, a malcontent scout who miraculously survived a couple of years in the front OspetsNaz battaion, Is-2 commander, etc. etc. I would guess that very little of it has been translated into English, because of low demand for such books. It certainly is done sometimes, there's Loza's book on operating Shermans inside a Mech Corps for instance. As to the German vs. Soviet brutality question, I'm just not sure, but my gut feeling is that humans are humans. Just as the Red Army raping everything that it could catch once inside Prussia is sort of an accepted reality in Western accounts of the war, so is the German army murdering and raping while it was inside the SU, an accepted fact inside Russia/Belarus/Ukraine today. Just as, in Germany, there are hundreds if not thousands of people who were civilians at the time, that will or did testify to the brutality of the Soviet soldiers, there are what seems to me like the same amount of old people now, who were young then, who saw the German soldiers violate centuries military tradition and treat Soviet citizens like animals, or worse. As an aside, it seems to me that the German army probably did not rape to the scale the Red Army did in Prussia from say Jan-May 1945, but that the Wehrmacht and the SS operated field brothels with women forced to service troops, for years, during the German occupation of the western portion of the SU. One can make the arguement this meant the Germans were more disciplined and organized in raping Soviet women, but in terms of the scale of the crime and numbers of perpetrators and victims? Worse, I have to suspect that at least part of the "Red Army gone amok in East Germany" story, is NATO Cold War propaganda. This is not to say it didn't happen, but it is to say I suspect propaganda agencies in western governments actively sought out and publicized the "Red Army as rapists" story, to convince western taxpayers it was a good idea to finance big militaries in their own countries. It was in the interest of too many western government officials to blow up that story, for me to believe our perception of it now is based purely on sober historical fact. What I can't say is, of course, to what degree the information was manipulated. Looking at the other side of the brutality equation, in the Soviet Union, the western view is, roughly, it was just Einsatztruppen and maybe a few rear area Germans committing crimes of brutality against the Soviet civilians, and that in general the German soldiers conducted themselves properly. The prevailing Soviet/modern FSU view is very different, and it is wide-reaching. In the former Soviet Union, the view is, a majority of Wehrmacht soldiers were just men forced to fight in a war, but that there was a substantial minority willing to take advantage of Nazi policy on "race" and occupied portions of the SU, i.e., murdering or raping Soviet citizens is not murder or rape, as Soviet citizens are by Nazi definition not human. In the lands that were occupied, without question, the view is the brutality was not just the work of a tiny minority of specialists, nor that the Wehrmacht managed to keep its troops under control most of the time. It is a substantial disconnect from the western view. When you consider the occupied portions of the SU were also the scene of what was probably the biggest and best-organized insurgency of modern military history, and several years of civil war with ethnic cleansing to boot, and then remember the German army was the occupying force during all this, and that this was a total war, then at least for me it's pretty hard to buy the line "it was only the Einsatztruppen and the SS" that was brutal to the Soviet citizenry in a big way. I come back to humans and humans, and that if put young male humans into a situation where they can get killed randomly, and are told killing is ok, it is not so easy to keep them under control, once they understand other rules are out the window. My suspicion is the Soviet recollections are valid and that the Wehrmacht, as an organization, was a lot nastier to civilians on the Eastern Front than it is given credit for. It probably wasn't systemic, my guess it probably was that minority of Wehrmacht personnel - maybe substantial, maybe a minor percentage, but in either case far beyond the norms of conventional military discipline - who for whatever reason chose to murder or rape Soviet citizens, because the chances of being punished were minimal, and probably also because they felt like they were going to die anyway or that the civilians were complicit and they deserved it. Which is almost exactly what you will hear on the Red Army side, when it comes to the behavior of the Red Army in East Prussia.

I would say his books are good for the general reader. They paint a solid big picture and he does a fair job of bringing in the the individual. He's a competent writer and the text flows. He's sort of a latter-day Cornelius Ryan, his technique is to weave the grand story toghether with the personal incidents. That said, IMO, Beevor's books are less "battle and fighting and men in combat" books, and more "societies at war" books. If you want to learn about the progress of operations, how logistics impacted, or how the grunts did tactics, his books are less useful. My criticisms would be that Beevor covers little new ground, and that his sourcing outside the English language is less than ideal. For instance he, in my opinion, relies heavily on Soviet general staff reports and much less on personal accounts and individual interviews to document the Red Army's activities, and more personal accounts and less Wehrmacht reports for the Germans. This gives his text, again in my opinon, a subtle slant; German activity is more human and fallible, while Soviet activity seems more ruthless and authoritarian. The imbalance runs throughout the text. The main criticism I have is, Beevor avoids controversy. The best-known example would be his treatment of Soviet atrocities as Red forces invaded Germany: he catalogues them, offers accounts by rape victims, and slams the Red Army's discipline across the organization, and paints Red soldiers as sex-crazed with a pretty broad brush. In other words, he offers the standard NATO treatment of what happened to the German civilians when Soviet forces crossed into Germany from Poland: rape, mayhem, and Asian-style destruction. I wouldn't try to excuse what the Soviets did in Germany, but Beevor's treatment leaves out, simply does not mention, several probable contributing factors, most importantly German behavior, for years, during their occupation of the western portions of the Soviet Union. Rape is not excusable. But, to put it frankly, in the minds of many Soviet soldiers of the day, not interfering if a fellow soldier raped a German woman was probably a reasonable act. The Germans had for years as occupiers in the Soviet Union not just raped but enslaved, torn apart families, and not just murdered but engaged in genocide; and the scale of those crimes was so great, generally speaking, most of the Soviet soldiers fighting in Germany either had a family member who had suffered personally under that occupation, or had a buddy in his squad who did. On a primitive human tribal, widespread rape is legitimate vengeance against a hostile tribe: it demonstrates to the women of that tribe the inability of their own men to protect them. A common Soviet response to the rape accusations is "well the Germans did worse to us, and the German women were left alive." There is elemental anger involved. Polish and even Soviet women forced into German labor were raped as well, and the standard Russian explaination runs along the lines of "some of them volunteered and others were unlucky, but in a war you can't do what the Germans did in the Soviet Union, and then expect an avenging army to maintain perfect discipline when it enters the attackers' territory." Also missing is the economic disconnect between Germany and the Soviet Union; the moment the Red soldiers entered Germany they were confronted with a level of individual wealth in houses and farms and cities etc., that most of them had never conceived of. The reaction "The Germans were this rich, this well off, and they decided not just to attack us and enslave us? We'll teach those rich bastards not to try that again!" is almost a universal thread in Red Army soldier letters and accounts. It's been a while since I read Downfall, but if I recall right Beevor never even mentions this. In Downfall, Beevor pretty much avoids the Why of Red atrocities in Germany. On the one hand it's a fair go it's complicated and controversial and requires backstory that might distract from the direction of his text. And relatively speaking, it's a lot easier to find personal accounts by German rape victims than Soviet soldiers who raped or condoned it. But at the end of the day, it's hard to discuss what the Soviets did to the German civilians, fairly, without considering the Red soldier, who at bottom was, in most cases, a young unmarried man who believed he was fighting a war to avenge what had happened in his own country. A less controversial, but equally compelling question that Beevor really never gets into, is why the Germans didn't quit sooner, what with the Red Army ransacking their country and the Wehrmacht coming apart at the seams. To do so is to open another line of not really politically safe questioning about German attitudes towards authority, and contradictions between the German officer corps' willingness - and as a group they prided themselves on being able to think on their own, better than any other nation's officers - to follow orders when doing so contributed directly to their country's increased ruin. Beevor has plenty of interviews with German officers, but if he asks them "What about the German officer's commitment to to sacrifice your life if necessary for the good of the nation?" the answers don't make it into Downfall. Beevor keeps to the grand battle narrative, which is safe and generic. If that's what the reader is looking for, Beevor is great.

There was a time when giants walked the earth... I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception." - Groucho Marx Take my wife ... please - Henny Youngman I get home from a trip, I decide to have some fun. I ask a cabbie where I can find some action. He takes me to my house. I tell ya, no respect! - Rodney Dangerfield I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either. - Jack Benny The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius. - Sid Caesar You can lead a man to Congress, but you can't make him think. - Milton Berle A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it. - Bob Hope Answer: A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou. Question: Name three things that have yeast. - Johnny Carson as the Amazing Carmac I'm not addicted to cocaine. I just like the way it smells. - Richard Pryor Water? I never touch the stuff. Fish fornicate in it you know - W.C. Fields A hard man is good to find. - Mae West I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I'm going to be if I grow up. - Lenny Bruce Who picks your clothes – Stevie Wonder? - Don Rickles Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them? - George Carlin Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. - Redd Foxx They say that housework can't kill you, but why take a chance? - Phyllis Diller Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs. - Lily Tomlin You’ll notice that Bush never speaks when Cheney is drinking water. - Robin Williams Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice. - Bill Cosby I once went outside and saw an elephant in my pajamas. What he was doing in my pajamas I'll never understand - Groucho Marx

An educational system designed to produce adults with critical thinking skills and a basic understanding of their country's history, rather than mindless consumers with gnat attention spans, would also be a big help.

See? I told you I was right.

Maybe on another planet. You don't run a pair of runious wars and let the military industrial complex do pretty much whatever it wants, and have a prayer of helping the economy. Of course, to be fair, as long as there are plenty of people willing to buy into the "ooh, dangerous threat, be scared" propaganda, and live their lives and judge their leaders with a pinheaded partisan mindset, then can we really condemn the people who are leaders for exploiting willful ignorance on the part of the people who aren't the leaders? Funny when the shoe fits.

I haven't seen the QB price tables, but as a general matter of principle 155mm generously applied usually makes Tigers go away. Not least because, if Mr. German is tactically competent and supporting his uebertankie with infantry, that concentrates them quite nicely for several minutes of anti-personnel missions. If open terrain favors the German and his uebertanks, long LOS also makes raining down death and destruction that much easier for the Americans, who are just overloaded with radios and telephones and binoculars and NCOs capable of seeing targets and adjusting fire, all the time while chewing unlit cigars. You want gamey, just buy a ton of artillery, enough infantry to observe everything, forget the objectives, and just hammer anything that moves.

Well, he had help of course. But incompetence is bipartisan. Clinton went right along with the idea that US military hegemony meant the US could dictate foreign policy worldwide, indefinitely. And Obama seems to think that taking what the generals say at face value, and making sure the weapons programs keep getting funded no matter what, is what it takes to be an effective commander in chief. It's like Ike said. The professional military and the industries that support it care far more about things like careers and benefits and increased status and spiffy new equipment and coporate income and continued profit and expansion, than the overall good of the nation. It is in their personal interest to lie about the how many real foreign enemies the country has, and it is in their interest to lie about those enemies' capabilities. So they do. They say they are patriotic and are defending the nation. In fact, and this becomes more and more true the higher you go up the pecking order, they are defending what is personally most profitable for them. The leadership of the country has been complicit for decades, but since the breakup of the Soviet Union it's been particularly bad. Looking back, it's got to have been one of the most idiotic foreign policy plays of the last couple of centuries, by any nation. In 1990 the US had defeated its Cold War opponent, the Soviet Union, and had the opportunity to take all that intellectual and industrial potential that had gone into fighting the Cold War, into economic capacity and insfrastructure. There was a moment of US primacy, where the country's leaders could take the nation in whatever direction they chose, there were no more viable outside threats. Think of what might have been, if the wealth and energy and political will that went into Iraq I and II and Afghanistan before/during/after surge, into the CIA and the TSA and the FBI and NRO and the NSA; had gone into building bridges and roads and schools and productive industry at home. I'm not advocating total disarmament, but just a domestic focus and a defensive, non-provocative stance against outside threats. Instead, we embarked on a series of increasingly stupid military expeditions more or less calculated to increase US influence over Middle Eastern fossil energy sources, or to supress Middle Easterners mad about those expeditions. We embarked on the biggest military buildup, by some standards at least, since WW2. And at the same time, we attempted to maintain military technological and operational primacy over the rest of the world. This was not a forced choice, it was a long-term path chosen and hewed to by a series of democratic and republican administrations. Are we wealthier? Is the nation better off? Is the economy booming? Are we more competative? Are we any safer? Is there more or less hope for a better future, for our children? Sure, if you're a career military or an arms plant worker, or somewhere else in the economy supporting that, you're probably doing somewhere between pretty well and outstanding these days. Last I heard for the desired MOSes a guy with a high school education can get a reup bonus sufficient to buy a pretty nice pickup truck or put a solid down payment on a house - try that in the civilian economy. If you're part of senior management or military leadership, times probably have never been better.

If the special Anglo-Saxon relationship depends on the location of a statue bust, then it ain't much of a relationship. I think the real problem is that the US leadership has a couple of decades of properly bonehead foreign policy to account for, particularly expensive wars that have been economically ruinous, and for their own reasons the British leadership hitched their wagon to it. Basically the politicians played the "our societies are in great danger, you the people must sacrifice" card. One of the things that was sacrificed was something like a century of history of Britain and the US conducting foreign policy for the general good of both nations; we now have 20 years more or less of joint foreign policy that made things for average people in both countries a good deal worse. Had to happen sooner or later, I guess. Not so long ago the Americans thought China was a natural ally and just a wonderful country full of charming simple people, that belief is dead and gone too.

Nah, their major occupation is making a lot of money for themselves and their friends. Embarrassing their country is, you know, an unwanted but to them acceptable side effect. Like collateral damage. Never knew Mitt was a chicken hawk. Doesn't surprise me much. The real question is, if you took a guy like that and showed him a lot of dead and wounded soldiers and fathers and women and children, and the destroyed homes and smashed infastructure and the disease all that comes with it, and told him this is the price of using force to push a foreign policy objective, would a member of the political elite reconsider? Or would he figure it was just acceptable? A guy that high up on the social pyramid, how affected would he be by death and destruction visited on people not of his social class? He might just figure that those died - friend AND foe - really aren't that important. He might just decide the property that was destroyed was cheap and in any case belonged to some one else. And that his buddies and the economy did pretty well producing the weapons and developing the military infrastructure to go out and kill those foreign people. As to "if they saw the elephant maybe they would be more careful", well, maybe they would. But by and large they haven't. By my count the presidents who saw battle or battlefields in the last century were: - Teddy Roosevelt, at the head of a volunteer dismounted cavalry unit in Cuba. Was under heavy fire and saw close to half his command made casualties. - Truman, commanding a national guard artillery battery in France. In the last century at least he is probably the president who had the very best appreciation of what explosives and flying metal do to people and property. - IKE, although it should be noted he apparently never was shot at - JFK, commanding a PT boat in the Pacific, which is not exactly the best place to see what wars do to civilians. But certainly he saw his shipmates die. - Ford, junior officer on a light carrier in the Pacific that was under fire but never hit. Naval aviation being what it is, however, he saw plenty of people hurt and killed in accidents or in the next ship over. - Bush the elder, torpedo bomber pilot. A dangerous job where you or your buddies can die, but not one where one normally sees the effects of war on the ground To be fair, Hoover probably had a very good understanding of what wars do to countries in the big picture from his interwar humanitarian work. Going from the last century, if a man fought in the ranks in land combat, his chances of being elected are pretty small. Clearly navy jobs help; besides the above FDR, Carter and Nixon all were navy officers at one time or another. I think it is perhaps interesting that the presidents that had the best look at the nasty side of land war - TR and Truman - were the presidents that least trusted the military industrial complex and the corporations that ran it. Truman did not come from a particularly rich background but TR certainly did. Maybe there's a connection there, I dunno...

Hi there post-Cold War fans! You will be happy to hear our good friends the Russians are sending three amphibious assault ships to Tartus. The plan is they will "take on supplies". Here's a linkie: http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/118286/Russian_warships_to_visit_Syrian_port_of_Tartus The report says one of these ships carries about a company of naval assault infantry, but just a little googling makes clear the upper number is 225 infantry plus 10 tanks. So probably even more APCs if less tanks. The report says two of these ships will tie up at the floating pier the Russians have in Tartus, while the third will anchor nearby. It also says there are something like 30,000 Russian nationals in Syria. The source is apparently some kind of Russian general staff guy talking to the news agency Interfax, which for practical purposes we can treat as an official Kremlin press release. My guess is this is one of those planned-stops-that-also-is-a-useful-precautionary-measure. But in any case it looks like the Russians will have a nice little combined arms battalion in Syria by early next week - and the way things are going not a moment too soon.

Hollywood music. That's why we won. Them Narzis never had a chance.

Well, since the medical professionals like the education professionals have every interest in making access their services as wide and expensive as possible, I don't think we should hold our breath waiting for things to get better. It's the same in both industries; the professionals are squeezing maximum income out of the rest of the population for their services which, for generations, the population has been told are non-optional services; one must have the best possible. If I was a college kid these days I would party my ass off and skip on my loans, because I would be pretty damn sure whatever degree I could get, my chances of that degree giving me a stable income and a reasonable chance of supporting a family and making sure my own kids had a decent future, were pretty close to shot. There may be people that still believe in the American dream but I don't think very many of them go to university these days.

That assumes Assad or his buddies are really on the way out of the Syrian political arena. Considering the Syrian regime's weaponry, will to use it, and Russia's ability to keep the guns and ammunition coming, I think that is a not a safe assumption to make. Further, what could Russia possibly gain from turning on Assad and supporting the opposition? Like, the world community will like Russia more? Does any one reading this think even for a moment the Kremlin cares? It's the friggen' Kremlin! Or, the Middle East will be more stable? Remember, the Russian economy depends on the price of oil, and the bottom of that price is falling out. Middle Eastern Regional tension, not conflict resolution, is in the Kremlin's interest. (Such instability also is in the interest of the likes of Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, the Saudi regime and amazingly enough Iran - but that's another thread.) Or maybe, it will make NATO happy? Trust me, that is not a top Kremlin priority. What's more, which do you think the Russians would like more, Turkey able to send troops and share intelligence with NATO, or NATO member Turkey all worked up and focused on the Kurds and the Syrians? This shoot down is terrific from the Russian POV, if it turns out the AC was over international waters NATO has to do something. Turkey is a NATO member and if there was no encroachment of Syrian airspace (admittedly extremely doubtful) then NATO has been subjected to outside aggression. And what better way to screw with NATO than to have an incident that, for NATO to intervene without getting in big international trouble itself, it would need an approval from the UN Security Council? Which of course is subject to a Russian veto. I'm not saying the Russians are driving the Syrian situation, indeed, I think that's hogwash. In fact NATO appears to be supporting the rebels to some unclear extent, and Russia the Assad regime to a greater extent. That suits Russia fine. If the outcome is not, "Assad says in charge with no changes," then the next most preferred outcome is "continued violence, conflict and instability inbetween NATO member Turkey and Israel. That's great from a Russian POV. There is little in the western media and even less from the western leaders, but the Russians have been making crystal clear for, well, years now that they are not going to stand still and let the western nations pull another middle eastern regime change like in Libya. They agreed to a UN intervenion in Libya and when NATO decided to turn that into an air campaign against Gadaffi, there was very little they could do but complain NATO was exceeding the UN mandate. But the Kremlin never, ever forgets stuff like that. There are policy geniuses in Washington and Paris and London and so forth that decided getting rid of Gadaffi was worth the risk of making the Russians mad. Syria is payback - and the Chinese agree with the Russians. As for the shoot down itself, I would suggest: - If it was a Phantom I would say odds are really good it was a reconnaissance flight as most Turkish fighters are F-16s. Pretty much in all NATO air forces once the front-line fighter is replaced, some of them get made over to recon platform. Further, every UAV in the US inventory, Turkey operates. (Oh sure, and by themselves too, no American "assistants" either, Turkey is a sovereign state, yada yada yada) - If I am speculating about whether the Phantom was on a recon flight or not, then I think we can take it as an established fact Turkey has to be the main base for pretty much all of NATO's intelligence collection effort on Syria. Which in turn argues for planners risking a manned reconnaissance flight on the edge of or even in Syrian air space. Perhaps Washington would like this shoot down to be seen in terms of an incident between Turkey and Syria. But Russia, which is really mad about all the US bases and UAVs and special forces guys and "reconnaissance assets" and so in Turkey and Iraq, isn't going to see things the way Washington wants. As far as the Kremlin is concerned, it is "The Americans sent a plane flown by their lackeys the Turks, and our lackeys the Syrians shot it down." Washington can talk all it wants, but it won't change the Russian position. What we are not hearing in reports so far, is what is it the Syrians used to shoot this plane down. Kind of curious. Last year the Russians sold Syria the latest version of the Buk SAM, which should be more than enough to shoot down a Phantom flying straight and taking no evasive measures. Any guesses on whether Russian "technicians" help their Syrian buddies operate Buk? Whatever it was, the US certainly tracked it from launch to impact. Thanks to the NSA they have already identified the launcher type and probably they have a pretty good idea of the launcher location (although if it was Buk then it probably has already moved). Since the US isn't making that information public, I have to wonder if maybe the reason is that the evidence is pretty clear a Russian missile with Russian technicians in the vicinity shot down a NATO military aircraft. See, because NATO has been concentrating on regime change and supporting democracy and so on for these last 20 years, and they've pretty much been assuming they don't really have the mission to defend the NATO region from Russia. A military confrontation with Russia would not be convenient, and admitting Russians shot down a NATO plane is a reasonable scenario for such a confrontation to begin. It is also worth noting that NATO would be unable to extract (without truly astronomical cost) its material in Afghanistan without the use of bases in Russia and in Central Asian states friendly to Russia. If this all seems like geniuses in NATO deciding Russia isn't worth paying attention to, and Russia doing its best to prove them wrong, well, there you go. From the Russian POV Turkey is a US ally, Israel is a US ally, and Iraq is a US ally. They see no reason they should not have the same thing in Syria. If that sounds all retro and Cold War, well, the Kremlin hasn't forgotten about that either.

Now Michael, let's not get cynical or paranoid or anything. I'm sure the people in the government have our best interests at heart. After all, that's what they tell us. Mind you, if NSA officials were to be blackmailing elected officials to keep the NSA budget growing, it would not be so easy to prove such a crime in court. The NSA budget is classified. You know, to protect the public interest. *Insert Twilight Zone theme music here*