Discussion of Military, real or fictional

[ijuin 572]

It looks like it is far too easy to hold that thing the wrong way around.

[mlooney 3,417]

Yes and no.  The trigger isn't going to able to be pulled if it backwards.  Plus the way the thumb hole is arranged would make it hard to hold backwards.  It's still a very silly thing. 

[Darth Fluffy 302]

On 6/16/2023 at 4:52 PM, mlooney said:

Yes and no.  The trigger isn't going to able to be pulled if it backwards.  Plus the way the thumb hole is arranged would make it hard to hold backwards.  It's still a very silly thing. 

Yeah, it looks viable, but why does it exist? I don't see the advantage, and there are seeming drawbacks. First thing, your shooting hand will likely be burned my muzzle flash. I think, too, you'd have much less control, the balance looks off. I could be wrong. Maybe the weight not near the pivot point makes it more stable.

It almost looks printed, but I bet it's a commercially available gun. Maybe the encasing weird mechanism was printed to modify an existing gun.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

On 6/11/2023 at 0:22 PM, mlooney said:

Fort Gregg-Adams.  Not named after a traitor any more.

I was wondering why it was still Fort 'Lee'. That answers my question.

The post-war revisionists painted Robert E. Lee as a great general. He really wasn't. He wasn't that good at all. He wasn't the worst of the war, but he doesn't stand out for superb leadership.

It is not quite fair to label him a traitor. He had misplaced loyalty to his home state, which, recall, were actually independent countries after the Revolution; the right to succeed was

Ah, the picture says Glock, wo at least the basic mechanism is a Glock. That is reassuring. Sigma is a S&W brand name, though.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

On 6/18/2023 at 5:41 PM, Darth Fluffy said:

It is not quite fair to label him a traitor.

The traitor label has little to do with fairness and everything to do with who gets to write the history books.

My personal attitude to calling him a traitor goes 'defending the right to own slaves? close enough to fit.'

[Don Edwards 548]

5 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

My personal attitude to calling him a traitor goes 'defending the right to own slaves? close enough to fit.'

There is an ironic detail about that. General Lee resigned from the Union Army, went home and freed all his slaves, and then accepted command of the Confederate Army. Making his slaves among the very first to be freed as a result of the Civil War.

Meanwhile, Union commander (and eventually top commander short of the President) General Grant and his wife held onto their slaves until the amendment banning slavery in the US took effect - making those among the very last to be freed.

Quite a few Southerners, at the start of the war, did not think it was primarily about slavery. Instead they thought it was about whether the Constitution gave the federal government only the powers defined for it (which is what you might think if you read the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, or if you wonder why the Constitution has a list of specific powers granted, and what quite a lot of people thought before the Civil War), or gave it every power not explicitly prohibited to it (which was the Republican Party's position in the 1850s, and became the more common interpretation in the aftermath of the war - and remains so today).

Granted, they were effectively applying that question and their answer in defense of slavery, which is despicable and makes them clearly not the good guys... but I can't say the Union were the good guys either.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

On 6/21/2023 at 1:46 AM, Don Edwards said:

Granted, they were effectively applying that question and their answer in defense of slavery, which is despicable and makes them clearly not the good guys... but I can't say the Union were the good guys either.

When did the war happen where one side was the good guys? I think I missed that one.

[ijuin 572]

50 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

When did the war happen where one side was the good guys? I think I missed that one.

The closest we have come to one of those in modern times was WWII, and that’s only because Germany and Japan decided to play the genocide card.

[Don Edwards 548]

Lots of wars where one side is the comparatively good guys...

Right now in eastern Europe we have one country that picked up a piece of "logic" that - if they really believed in it - would have them spontaneously and unilaterally surrendering to a certain other country, and using it as justification to invade that other country. And bragging about committing multiple war crimes in the course of that invasion.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

9 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Lots of wars where one side is the comparatively good guys...

That 'comparatively' is important. War is an incredibly filthy business and collateral damage does not care which side you are on. And often even the 'good guys' will have leaders that make to put it mildly rather doubtful decisions. This is not helped by the fact that sometimes these leaders get no good options at all and it becomes a question of which group of people you end up betraying.

Of course there is the relatively common example of an aggressive neighbour invading on the legal basis of What's Mine Is Mine And What's Yours Is Also Mine If I Can Grab It. It's fairly easy to sympathize with the defender in that case. But even these need not be clear cut. Example: the Spanish conquistadores are generally not considered nice people. But they got into a fight with the Aztec Empire and it is really hard for me to see the Aztecs as purely innocent victims. Sometimes two groups of different bastards get into a fight over the same spoils and you end up not caring much who wins. In that case the 'good guys' is the side that is the least likely to make trouble for you and your in-group when the fighting is over.

But even the 'good guys' too often end up with innocent blood on their hands. Winston Churchill for example was to put it mildly a creature of many parts. There are people who curse his name to this day and consider him not much of an improvement on the side he fought. Quite a few of those live in India.

10 hours ago, ijuin said:

The closest we have come to one of those in modern times was WWII, and that’s only because Germany and Japan decided to play the genocide card.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that aggressively persecuting and scapegoating minorities in order to consolidate and expand your own power is bad and that anyone who does it is also bad and should feel bad.

[ijuin 572]

I would say that anybody who takes it so far as to use their government in a serious attempt to eradicate a minority group by killing its members is completely reprehensible.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

15 hours ago, ijuin said:

I would say that anybody who takes it so far as to use their government in a serious attempt to eradicate a minority group by killing its members is completely reprehensible.

That fits de Santis well.

[mlooney 3,417]

[Darth Fluffy 302]

In days long past, kings led their troops into battle. In our times, the ones in power do not participate directly in their aggressive decisions. This makes a great deal of difference.

One of the unfortunate side effects is that both sides can be fighting for a 'just cause' that was sold to them.

 

[mlooney 3,417]

George II seems to be the last British king to lead troops in battle.  Napoleon III lead troops in battle.  The last western head of state to be directly involved in combat was General Pilsudski, President of Poland who lead troops in the 1920 Russo-Polish War 

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-2728,00.html

[The Old Hack 2,448]

14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

This makes a great deal of difference.

To be fair, modern capabilities of precisely targeting single individuals at long distances has removed a great deal of attraction from the act of leading from the front lines. In combination with the doctrine of decapitating enemy armies specifically by targeting their leadership it has rendered heroic charges while holding battle flags aloft positively unhealthy. I do not anticipate Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen leading cavalry formations with drawn saber any time soon.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

The term 'Chicken Hawks' has been applied to the saber rattlers who wouldn't actually wield a saber . . .

[mlooney 3,417]

58 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The term 'Chicken Hawks' has been applied to the saber rattlers who wouldn't actually wield a saber . . .

To be fair some of the people called chicken hawks served, just in peace time.  Of course, there were ones that didn't

[ijuin 572]

“Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

[Darth Fluffy 302]

5 hours ago, mlooney said:

To be fair some of the people called chicken hawks served, just in peace time.  Of course, there were ones that didn't

I served for 12 1/2 years, never in a combat zone. My biggest contribution was testing gear that was used in combat. I'm OK with that.

[ijuin 572]

Hey, anybody who is clearly contributing their labor above and beyond simply paying taxes and cheering and waving flags is aiding their country in my book.

[mlooney 3,417]

I served for 9 years during the Reagan military buildup / the ass end of the cold war.  I spent a lot of time on Nike Sites where we spent 1 week in 4 ready to fire a missile in 30 minutes or less from a warning given by higher headquarters. 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

21 minutes ago, mlooney said:

 . . . . ready to fire a missile in 30 minutes or less from a warning given by higher headquarters. 

This tech was adapted for civilian use by the pizza industrial complex.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

7 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

This tech was adapted for civilian use by the pizza industrial complex.

I think drones would be better. Gentler on the recipient and more likely to arrive with the pizza still in a state to eat.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

15 hours ago, mlooney said:

To be fair some of the people called chicken hawks served, just in peace time.  Of course, there were ones that didn't

Some of them got five draft deferments and called the people who went to fight 'stupid.'

I cannot understand how Republicans could support this cretin and still claim to be 'supporting the troops.'