617
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
617 points (93.9% liked)
Technology
58138 readers
4338 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Russia is already using thermite charges, thermobaric weapons and tear gas. They get what's coming to them.
Phosphorous too IIRC
Even the US uses white phosphorus against infantry in violation of international law. I can't imagine what we'd resort to with Russian soliders on our soil.
Of course they do, it's main use is smoke generation.
It’s only a violation of international law when used near civilians
Oh man.....Geneva convention would be out the window and most land based invaders at that point would probably beg to be shipped back. And it's not because of the military in America. It's because of its inhabitants. When the banjos start tuning in the Appalachian forests you know Hell is a safer space than anywhere you're going to reach.
That's easy to say without bullet holes in your buildings and bombs being found every few months in your capital.
IMO the US public is presenting so warlike because they never experienced war directly to a scale of WWII as a populace, especially not in living memory.
War does not look like "let's use all our guns and go kick commie ass", especially resisting an occupation. It looks like your hometown burned and poisoned, never to be rebuilt in your lifetime. It looks like people you know and care about dying, being raped with impunity, or just plain disappearing. If you pick up a rifle, you are going up against trained and experienced and also more importantly, quite desensitized enemies who have been doing what you are planning to do for months if not years. And even if you shoot one, they will hang ten of your townsfolk tomorrow.
Just look at Mariupol and Gaza and think whether anyone would thrive in that environment.
Do you understand how many veterans are in America? How many militia there are? How many guns we have?
There's a reason America didn't get land invaded other than the giant ocean and logistical shit storm it would be. It's our gun per person situation.
You remember how hard it was for America to fight Afghanistan in the mountains? Imagine another country fighting America in their mountains lol. No infinite ammo to shell mountains, Americans trained with rifles commercially available to fire cleanly 1KM. Every. Single. American. Has one...most that own guns have a decent stock pile of ammo. Shit my 7 year old can shoot a soda cap off at 30 yards with iron sights.
We readily have explosives we can order from Amazon... 2/3 of our rural population drives what Europeans would consider monster trucks. That's one hell of a technical.
This wouldn't be a "go wolverines" situation. This would be 80+ years of war and gun culture ingrained in Americans through countless years in human lives of video games and television propaganda. Ukraine has a population of 38 million. America has 120 million just on its Eastern coasts. I think if we come to a middle ground here I think we can both agree it wouldn't be pretty but significant pushback and ultimate failure on an invaders advances purely on the geology and American civilian militarization factor.
I am not talking about whether strategically it would be a good idea to engage in conventional warfare with the US. I am talking about the fact that how you and a lot of Americans are talking about war means that they have never really experienced one, not in living memory at least.
War is a nightmare. It's not a valiant defence with plucky resistance fighters outwitting the enemy in the mountains. It's seeing your buddy still alive and conscious with half his face missing after being hit by a drone. It's your wife writing "please, it's the children here" in front of the school in chalk before they are hit anyway with white phosphorus, burning their flesh off slowly. It's soldiers raping you for fun, even if you are a man, before they kill you.
How many of those guns are effective against artillery? Against even 60 year old tanks? Against remote targeting machine guns with thermal sights? Against attack helicopters? Russia had more tanks per person than any country on Earth, they are still getting trounced. Modern warfare does not care about your semi auto at home.
You remember how that war looked? Look at this article. One battle, 18 dead from the occupying side, 1000+ local soldiers killed. Could you bear to read these in the US? Can you imagine how the US would look like after fighting 20 years of this? Let me help you, it would look like Afghanistan.
China has an army of 2 million at peacetime, and it is not maintaining as many overseas bases as the US. The US currently has around 1 million people in the army one way or another. Of course, if it was real, total war as you imagine, these numbers would go up, fast.
During WWII, the Soviet Union had a population of around 200 million. 26 million people died just on their side, of which only 10.5 million were soldiers. 2 million of these people died in a single battle, in Stalingrad. We have gotten much, much better at killing people since then.
You don't know war. War is hell on earth. It is tragedy on a mass scale, leaving scars for generations on whole societies. Seeing war movies in TV does not prepare you for shit. The US does not even have conscription.
Great, what will he do against incendiary rocket artillery at 10 km? You know, the kind which bursts in the air and covers him in burning napalm?
I fucking was talking about strategical suicide if anyone invaded the Eastern US...then you went all weird European "well actually, America has only ever toppled nations theirs has never been contested and the American population doesn't know war" -which is largely false based on the number of veterans we have.
See look your doing it right below this sentence.
How many of those guns are effective against artillery? Against even 60 year old tanks? Against remote targeting machine guns with thermal sights? Against attack helicopters? Russia had more tanks per person than any country on Earth, they are still getting trounced. Modern warfare does not care about your semi auto at home.
How does any country on the planet right now have the GDP to support THAT fucking logistics line? Lol
Again, please review terrain, civilian wellness, guns available in civilian life. As well as question as to what country has the financial means to support this "invasion"
Please review GDP of applicable enemy countries
Famine and disease in a northern country in winter!? No way! Whataboutisms galore!
The US doesn't need to conscript. Immigrants come here to join our militaries, our civilian way of life. Americans bring war when they travel. Not the other way around. Our local town police alone have more military power than a few 3rd world countries.
Missing the point to understand that gun culture is engrained in a lot of American lives. Missing the point my child can be part of "every blade of grass". Missing the point radicalization is just one missing meal or sleep away. Missing the point American terrain doesn't support tanks in the Appalachian. Missing the point no country on the planet can afford a conventional war with America let alone an invasion force. Missing the point Europeans rely heavily on American civilian willingness to perpetuate war tribe mentality.
Missing the point FBI is militarized Missing the point State police militarized Missing the point County police militarized Missing the point local town police militarized.
Missing the point you cannot convince this American of anything with your shit argument.
Being able to imagine your child as a soldier in war pretty much proves you don't know what war is.
Astoundingly large wet fart sounds.
WP isn’t illegal. It’s illegal to torch down civilian structures, with Willy Pete or any other technology. But it’s always been fair game to use incendiaries against combatants. War is hell.
Lol Russian soldiers on US soil? The US military would do good to hang back, avert their gaze, and let the US citizens handle things how they see fit. Plausible deniability and all that
This fucking waffle maker in my comments above yours keeps trying to convince me that America hasnt "experienced" war. And that war is horrible, as if America isn't the most successful War tribe in all of recorded history.
If successful means achieving none of your strategic objectives, but wasting trillions killing a whole bunch of civilians, sure.
Yea that.
Well shit Skippy ...weve been in some conflicts. How many aircraft carriers does your country have floating around?
The Korean War included the greatest retreat in US history, which was only stopped because we were fighting an enemy with barely any industrial capacity to resupply troops, or even supply them with enough radios, and we failed to achieve the objective of a unified Korea (letalone the bloodthirsty moron MacArthur's objective of invading China and becoming the "ceasar of the east").
We bombed a bunch of civilians, showed the world that our B2 stealth bomber could be shot down by 30 year old, man-portable AA. I'm still unsure what strategic use bombing embassies and apartments was.
America didn't didn't directly fight any of those.
We lost that one, our objective was to take Spanish America, and we failed that. They also burned the whitehouse.
Those the US did manage to achieve some of it's objectives, but WWII was 80 years ago.
Those were primarily against other Americans.
Yea the honerable mentions we're just assists. War of 1812 was a war I wanted to mention as one we fought. American civil war is a war America objectively won. And the American revolution America objectively won.
Yeah I'm not sure that war crimes work that way. You don't get a pass because the opponent is doing illegal things.
Using incendiaries away from civilians isn’t a war crime regardless of which side uses them
I don't think this qualifies as a war crime
You literally get a pass because its not illegal to set an enemy on fire any more than its illegal to blow a hole in their guts with a bullet or fill their torso full of shrapnel. I'm not sure why you think it would be.
If your enemy makes it very clear that they want to see you dead and your nation destroyed no matter the cost, why should you be beholden to giving them an advantage? Ukraine won't win with moral superiority.
I think that's exactly how it should work....
I see where you're coming from. It's like tolerating the intolerant. There is a point where Ukraine needs to choose between total destruction by Russia, or doing whatever it takes to get their land and people back.
It's not like Russia is held accountable for war crimes. Why would we be so critical of Ukraine when no one is doing anything to stop the atrocities of Putin?
I don't happily endorse the thermite drones, but you won't find me playing judge on what Ukraine is doing. They didn't start this war.
"They did it first" doesn't support the point, even when they're as bad as Russia has been.
"They did it first and continue to do it" is a pretty good reason in my book. The more decicive Russian losses are, the faster public sentiment will turn against Putin.
I hate war because it makes normal people say shit like this
It's the truth. Putin wanted this war and the Russian people have been indoctrinated into following him blindly. The allied carpet-bombings of Nazi Germany caused untold suffering, but they were necessary to break the German will to fight. Hitler could've stopped the carpet bombing by surrendering. He could've prevented them from ever occurring, if he hadn't started wars with all neighbouring countries. Just as Hitler then, Putin now can stop this war. And it is Putin that could've prevented this war from ever taking place, if he hadn't invaded. But he did invade Ukraine. The untold number of crimes against humanity have been committed by the Russian army under his watch and it was his decision to send over 600.000 Russian troops to get crippled or killed in Ukraine. It is his war that just caused this man to lose his wive and three daughters (trigger warning: r*ddit). I truly hold no sympathy for any Russian that chooses to participate in this invasion. Whatever happens to them, they deserve it.
No acknowledged historian believes that the strategic bombing of Germany shortened the war to any significant degree. The Nazi leaders didn't care and the civilians endured.
The Londoners didn't overthrow their government during their blitz, nor did the Germans during theirs.
Nope. Morale bombing by and large doesn't work and that's why it's illegal now. On the flipside you have German Nazis use that and say "Look at all those allied war crimes" -- but they weren't war crimes at the time. And the Nazis very much started with the bombing campaigns.
Have a Kraut video.