The attendance in the yard is as thus. Abe and his three sons, which I expected. Jeannette-Thereze, which I did not expect. Malachi, Pasteur and Buonaparte, which I expected. Moon Unit, which I did not expect. The rest stayed behind where the TV is alternating between playing music with visualizer and showing Loony Tunes shorts. I might have had more takers for the firearm demo if not for the cartoons, I suppose.
"Alright. Let's begin, then. I have a number of possible firearms to show you, however..." - I begin, as everyone settles down on the chairs under the awning. No reason to make people stand when there are comforts just a few steps away, innit?
"I would like to stress to everyone that what I AM showing you right now is just prototypes. Proofs of concept. The basics. Once you grasp those, I will outline what I am doing to improve on the things and how soon it could be expected." - I explain - "So, with that in mind, don't bother trying to work out if you want to adopt the things into service and how much it would cost, I have better stuff lined up that will become available before your order even can be fulfilled."
This is met with some muttering, but no one raises an objection. So I begin with the flintlock pistols. Showing the reloading in detail first off. Then aiming and firing. I had servants place a crate of pumpkins nearby, they make viscerally enjoyable targets.
"So... Who wants to try?" - I offer, as I lay out pistols on the table. In the end, turns out everyone does. I'm a little surprised Moon Unit is so enthusiastic about it, but if it makes her happy, I'm more than fine with it.
"This is quite impressive." - Buonaparte offers after a few shots - "Even if you did not have anything better in mind, I'd buy a number of those guns and issue them to my officers. No magic involved means it's a perfect counter to those damnable batal whenever they make an appearance. Putting them down quickly would discourage oijans right there and then."
Abe raises his brow. "Brigadier, you'd want to arm condotierri leaders with this?" - he quips.
Napulione smirks - "Sure, why not? Without the gun cotton, those firearms are just fancy mechanisms, and I would not hand out more cotton per person than maybe enough for a dozen shots. Having their fancy ace in the hole supplied would make them even more loyal, I would say."
"Devious." - Abraham admits after a moment of consideration - "We might consider this idea in more detail once we figure out what we would want supplied. I mean, we just were told that there's more than just these, no?"
Both of them turn to me. I sigh.
"Fair enough." - I offer with a smile, as I pull open the long crate. Musket draws a lot of attention, especially when I socket bayonet on it.
"This is a musket, and it is the prototype of the weapon intended for common footsoldiers." - I explain, noting the sharp peak of interest from Buonaparte - "The rough idea for use is to have soldiers form several rows. The front row is keeping their bayonets pointed out as a pike wall and shoots. Back row reloads. Once the reload is done, the back row takes two steps forward and becomes the front row, letting the former first row reload. More staggering is possible, for example having the first row take a knee, and the second row shoots over their heads, while the third and fourth are reloading. The exact workings of this, well... I'm sure brigadier Buonaparte would work out suitable formations in short order once he is familiar with the basics, isn't it so?"
"It does pose a very intriguing problem, yes." - he offers with a glint in his eye and calculating expression - "If I had the luxury of picking my battlefield and arriving to it first, then I believe those, ah.. muskets? Would be devastating against a charging enemy. It would probably take cavalry to ride through the volleys without a complete rout. Worse yet, if all of the soldiers in line were to fire at once... I can easily foresee the enemy breaking just from the effect of the first volley. Unlike arrows that arrive from above, that one would scythe just the first ranks, where the most courageous and experienced soldiers are. That would be a lot worse on morale than arrows. Cavalry would face horrible attrition from those as well, especially if the order is to aim at the horses."
I show that the musket is working on the same principles by reloading and firing it a few times. "One advantage a musket has over a pistol is the fact that it shoots much further and more accurately." - I explain - "Pistols are good at maybe, hm... twenty touse, give or take. Past that, while it would still cause a wound, landing an accurate shot becomes more of a gamble than skill. Musket can reliably hit a target at fifty touse, and with some training and practice with a specific musket, I imagine a diligent shooter would be able to guarantee an aimed shot at twice the distance. Volley firing would be effective for much further, owing to the saturation of projectiles. Like, say... two hundred touse, maybe two-fifty..."
"So... One arpent for a trained soldier, two arpent for veteran, five arpent for a regiment firing in a volley, give or take?" - Buonaparte sums it up - "I've heard of Albish longbowmen regimens that offer the same performance with their bows. The usual archer falls short of that by about a third, if not full half. But given what I have seen so far, training people on these muskets will not be quite as long or talent-demanding as handling of a longbow."
Passing the muskets around so people can try them out takes a bit of time, and gives me a bit of time to prepare the next showpiece. Bombard is complicated. I only have one, and I'm probably not going to just pass it around. Flubbing a shot would, at worst, result in some embarrassment and a hole in the wall or flowerbed. Flubbing a bomb would rather convincingly wipe out our whole demonstration with the exception of me, unless I react in time and contain it somehow or manage to fling it away before it goes off. So... Not gonna mess around on this one.
"Right. This next piece is DANGEROUS." - I emphasize - "I only have ONE, and I am not going to pass it around for casual firing. You will see why in a moment."
The faces when the bomb goes off are very pleasing to my ego, I admit. The whole round-eyed "oh shit" thing is ever so pleasing.
"This is bombard. It shoots a bomb." - I proffer - "A bomb is a hollow iron sphere filled with guncotton. It also has a length of slowmatch coiled around the charge. There are two ways to use this. Unshielded is simply launching it. That way, the simple fire enchantment inscribed on the inner surface goes off when it impacts something. Another way is to tap this lever before shooting, it disables the impact-triggered enchant and instead lights up the slowmatch." This time the bomb falls on the ground and sits there ominously for three seconds before exploding.
"...And if you were to shoot this bombard into a loophole, the bomb with burning slowmatch would tumble down to the base of the fortification and damage the whole structure, possibly even make a hole or collapse a part of the wall...." - Malachi muses rasply - "This is of interest to Inquisition as well, now. There are certain problematic infestations that favor narrow passages into their lairs. We usually deal with those by shooting arrows with lit oil rags into them or rolling stones with same when it's below ground... Well, that and magic, obviously, but all of the methods are finicky and tricky to achieve properly without disgorging a swarm in process. Lobbing in the bomb that would just squash the majority of a hive in one go would definitely be welcome. Say, could the bomb be altered to maybe explode less, but burn more?"
Interesting question, actually. I pick up the bomb, and carefully slice it in halves. Leaving one half full of guncotton, I fill the other one with conjured phosphorus, snap the halves back together and seal the lid with a dollop of conjured acryl. Everyone is backing away while I do this. I wonder why. I'm not going to set it off like this. Loading and firing... Ah, that looks neat. Burning phosphorus particles are like tiny meteors, leaving behind clouds of smoke as they spread around.
"I think it's doable, sir Malachi." - I proffer in the lull that occurs - "At half the guncotton, the explosion is just strong enough to burst the case, and the remainder of space could be filled up with purified phosphorus."
"Ahem. That is impressive and intriguing, lady Gillespie, but what IS this phosphorus you are talking about?" - he requests - "It is certainly a grand agent of arson, that much I can tell you already, but I've never heard of such substance before."
Fuck. Wait, no, I'm pretty sure alchemists at least know this one. "A certain substance that can be obtained from particular minerals via alchemy. It is notoriously prone to bursting into the fire, so only a rare alchemist dares to put up with the hazards of making it. It can be contained, albeit with some rather stringent precautions." - I explain - "It is not really used in Champagne for much of anything, but I believe that Pharos Empire does use it as a part of their infamous incendiary mix."
"You know the composition of Pharos Flame?!" - Alexander yelps suddenly - "...Gods above, is there any secret you're not privy to?"
"Erm... your excellency, you are jumping to conclusions. I strongly suspect that phosphorus is one of the components of that mix, as well as assorted oils and tars and possibly coal dust, but I never claimed to know how exactly they make it. Pharos Empire is rather insistent on not letting any foreigners in on that particular know-how." - I retort - "I can give you my notes on incendiary mixes later, if you are interested in pursuing the topic. I'm not. I've perused the reports, and I don't find it to be that great of a weapon."
He subsides with an odd crooked smile. "The implication being that you already have something better in mind, I presume." - he proffers - "Alright then. Bedazzle us with new and wondrous ways to cause death and destruction, lady Gillespie."
I shrug. "Bombard was actually the last of firearms I was intending to show." - I tell him - "This is the assortment that dwarves had produced to test the ideas I have given them and to build upon iteratively. I can show you some of the further developments of the idea, but you will have to put up with me not having any samples you could take back with you."
"Erm... Pardon me, lady Gillespie, but did you just imply you intend to gift us those firearms?" - Alexander's wife pipes up suddenly.
"Uh... yes? The whole point of bringing so many here was so that I could present a decent sized sample for consideration and initial familiarization. The idea being that by the time I'm ready with versions I deem improved enough to offer up for mass production, the most trusted knights of his highness' personal retinue would already have some grounding on how to handle firearms safely." - I reply. I mean, it's fucking obvious, I want people to have something to muck around with that's a little fussy to prepare, to begin with.
"There is a crate of pistols with two dozens of them, a crate of muskets containing a dozen, a barrel of guncotton and a sack of lead wads in total." - I explain - "I'm not including bombard in this, it's much more finicky to handle. A few samples of those with bomb supply will be delivered separately a few weeks later, once dwarves put them together. I'm thinking three bombards and a gross of bombs for training."
Men exchange glances. "That... is a little more than we expected." - Abe hedges cautiously then - "Though if your goal is to ensure we have enough to give men some basic training, I understand the reasoning. Now then, you promised to show us something more advanced?"
"Uh-huh. Let me start off by asking all of you to back off. I will be conjuring a big amount of molten iron and it's not going to be pleasant to be nearby." - I explain absentmindedly, as I start doing just that, letting it pour into telekinetic form. Early cannons are pretty fun, and while I initially did not intend on introducing the concept until much later, I find the idea of making Napuleone an artillerist again to be wildly hilarious. Now, I need to... Ah, why not? I don't bother conjuring the timber for the mount. Instead, I just use earth magic to form rudimentary support for the cannon. Speaking of which... shape good, cooling now. Phew, that was... intense. I really need to look into how I do this, the ability to just force the atomic grid into the desired shape while leaching excess energy is bullshit beyond compare.
"Behold, gentlemen and ladies. Cannon. The logical continuation of the idea." - I announce grandly as I stuff a handful of guncotton into it. Oughta be just enough. Now, ram it in... And now, I need to make a cannonball... Easy-peasy. And ram it in again.
"...If that is what I think it is..." - Buonaparte muses slowly, as he inches closer - "Milady, are you SURE about it? What you are making looks to me like it is to a musket like what a ballista is to a crossbow, and I am somewhat worried you might actually destroy a part of your mansion like this."
He blinks and chuckles as at my gesture a pile of rock slabs arranged like a sea conch arches out of the ground, angle designed to deflect the cannonball downwards. "I stand corrected, you have it well in hand." - he proffers as he retreats back.
"Everyone, you might want to plug your ears." - I tell them as I lift a stick of iron and focus some fire magic on the tip, heating it until it's glowing red. BOOM!... Well. Crap. I underestimated things lightly. I mean, the cannonball itself did get deflected into the ground alright, but the back part of the shell spalls out and collapses in a cloud of dust, revealing a pile of rubble and the shell split nearly in two, with a huge gash in the middle. Thankfully, the space behind it was sufficiently empty that only a couple gravel shards reached the back fence.
In accordance with my earlier remonstrations, I make a hole in the ground and stick the cannon into it vertically barrel-down before doing anything else. Then, I let everyone come up and examine the ruined stone.
"You do realize this weapon renders the majority of existing fortifications obsolete, right?" - Buonaparte remarks, as he runs his hand over the crumbling edge - "Good gods, a few of those cannons would batter down just about any wall within a day."
"Interested, brigadier?" - I quip at him.
"Oh, definitely." - he retorts - "A couple demonstrations like these, and there would be so much less belligerence across the southern coast."
"Well, there is an alternative method for using the cannon, you know?" - I suggest. It apparently catches everyone's interest enough to demand an immediate demonstration.
This time, instead of a cannonball, I conjure a bag of grapeshot, and instead of a stone shell, I put down a bunch of logs roughly human height and a stone backstop.
"Antifortification is important, of course, but cannon is also good in the field." - I suggest as I light up the touchhole again. The cone of destruction is impressive. in the axis, the logs are simply uprooted and shredded. Along the sides, they are just shredded. There is a very clear trapeze of ruin cut into the log formation now.
"Grapeshot." - I offer in the ensuing silence - "In the event of an enemy advancing in close formation, cannon excels at causing massive damage at once. The impact on morale from landing such a shot would be considerable, I presume. Also, this method is suitable for fending off ships - shredding the sails deprives ships of their mobility, leaving them stuck in the water to be leisurely shot by cannonballs from well beyond the best archer's reach."
"You are making the war a truly horrifying business, lady Gillespie." - sir Pasteur offers slowly - "To what end, I wonder, such brutal means are needed?"
"To make the war so awful no one in their right mind entertains the notions of it as anything but a move of desperation, sir Pasteur." - I tell him.
"To make the war so awful no one in their right mind entertains the notions of it as anything but a move of desperation, sir Pasteur." - I tell him.
Just like dynamite did? Or the machinegun? Or the nuke?
Yeah, She should be well aware at this point that that'll never happen.
Yeah, it's a nice idea, but indoctrination and information control limits the effectiveness. In times where Alyssa is, it'd be even easier: Blame heresy for it.
If you've never read it, I'd recommend giving the Safehold series by David Weber a read. That also involves high speed mechanization and civilization enhancement, where the other side uses religious fervour to do a pretty solid job of countering things.
It wouldn't work QUITE as well here, since gods actually exist in this story, and magic allows for things like explosives detection so suicide bombing would be harder. There's also the fact that there's no way Alyssa would START any war, and she'd be quite open that she doesn't want it to continue. If someone actually started a war against her, they'd probably be totally screwed over and be unable to attack or defend in any meaningful way by some kind of magic. They'd have to be a total dumbass, or have their head so far full up it they can't see anything.
She`s quoting Hiram Maxim on that one. ^_^
Alyssa is well aware better implements of war don`t discourage people from it much. But she doesn`t want to flat out tell the people present that she wants to have plausible reasons to field an army that can cheerfully ROFLstomp anything in their wake.
Totally missed that quote (And I really shouldn't have, to be honest: It doesn't QUITE vibe with her usual style of speaking).
That said, she doesn't need much of an excuse: The most plausible reason for an army that can cheerfully ROFLstomp anything is "No shit, it's Alyssa Gillspie's army. What did you expect to happen when she tried to make instruments of war?"
@ShaRose If it`s just on her, then it`s her being invincible abomination. If it`s actually something people have vague notions they MIGHT be able to reproduce, if only they thought a little harder, they`re gonna be thinking harder.
yepp, only who experienced war will show some caution. but as the brigadier said, it´s now much more easier - means cheaper - to train soldiers. and when everybody can shot a gun in some days - a soldier becomes cheap. if dead then just take another warm body.
to make the concept of fear work - you need to kill the most of several generations of soldiers. and even then it works only for a certain time.
@Nymus But you need to consider one thing ahead of time. This is feudalism. The core of army is knights. Being able to quickly raise militia that can punch up on par with a knight company is a huge deal-breaker, because you will run out of knights way the f*ck faster then opponent will run out of musketeers. So long as one government controls the guns, their opponents are sh*t out of luck.
That particular country, owning to being the first adopters, would have time to transition their knights to be assorted officers and tacticians and squad leaders. Everyone else would have to deal with the core of their army being obsoleted AND not having any good ways to replace it barring an all-out battle with superior opponent specifically designed to kill off the majority of your knights. Which is bad move for many reasons.
Or the worldbreaker?
@Cytotoxin funnily enough, that is another method of making war unpalatable except for desperation: make it so that your army so ridiculously and heavily out-techs and out-muscles any potential rival force. Once the specter of utter annihilation is clear... bing-bong you have much less war. the questions then lies: who earns the spot to be the unfortunate guinea pigs for the proof of concept.
@Sabruness I’d hazard a guess it’s either the Sultunate under Abbas or Transbalkans under Vlad, though that would be somewhat unintentional since he’d be attacking the place where Roxy’s family is
@Sabruness Tell that to Islamic terrorists.
They seemed to manage pretty well with fertilizer and cell phones against the vastly more technologically advanced US military.
If your opponent can't beat you at their own game, stop playing and find a new one that you CAN win.
That's the way we won the revolutionary war, and that's the way terrorists have been holding us back for over a decade.
@GA_Baller That`s because USA never tried to cut things off at the root. The way to deal with terrorists is simple - make it not profitable to be one. You can`t be much of a terrorist if you lack the funds or support to buy even fertilizer. But to do that means to heavily invest in Middle East, and not in bombs, but in schools and police. You can not amend the culture by beating it down, but you can eradicate it by supplanting it with more luxurious one.
@MarkofWisdom Good eye. Why not both?
@higgsboson On the contrary, for the most part it has worked out fairly well in reality.
You must first understand that, unlike today, historically wars were a near-constant facet of life. At any given time, multiple countries could be at war simultaneously, often completely unrelated to each other, and for the most spurious of reasons. Neighbors look different from you? Time for a war! Crop harvests less than usual one year? Let's send them off to war to avoid famine! Went to a bad dinner party and came down with food poisoning? War, war, war!
These were not wars as we know them today, nor were they wars as bad as the World Wars. Still, they were a horror all their own, filled with unwilling conscripts, poorly armed and untrained militias, with disease and death rampant in the camps even long before reaching the battlefield, and no rules of engagement to protect any civilians found in the path of the marching armies. Battles could, and did, end with the majority of both sides dead on the field, with the survivors often heavily wounded and waiting to die slowly and painfully to horrible infections... and those that survived even that could oft be found considering the dead to be the lucky ones. The victorious countries would frequently make the losers suffer under horrible reparations, prolonging a vicious cycle of hatred and violence.
In truth, the World Wars were essentially a continuation of this style of war, scaled up due to the advent of extreme military mobility. Weapons of true terror were unleashed in the forms of chlorine gas, napalm, extreme range artillery bombardment, and other horrors, with no regard to who would be hit. Atrocities beyond imagining went on daily, as nothing but a continuation of the practices of centuries past.
And then, finally, the first nuke fell. The world was horrified, but certain that it was a one time weapon. There was no way something that powerful could be brought out again any time soon! The Japanese government felt the same way, and refused to surrender, thinking threats of another attack were mere bluffs.
Then the second nuke fell, and suddenly the world began to realize: some weapons are too terrible to use. This would sink in even more as the years after showed the true evils of atomic weapons: the fallout.
Then later, after Nazi Germany finally fell, and the rebuilding of Japan got underway, the atrocities of the Nazi death camps and the Japanese Unit 731 showed the world that some actions are too monstrous to allow.
The world decided, together, that war had become too horrible to let continue as it had, and so the Geneva conventions were made. Certain weapons and behaviors were outlawed, by international agreement.
War, as we know it, is downright sanitized compared to the horrors combatants on all sides would perform, even against their own people, in ages past. So yes, making war too horrible to continue has worked, after a fashion.
When was the last time you heard of a hamlet, village, town, or even city being wiped off the map by a passing army? Not even as the target or location of some battle, but merely for being somewhat near the path of a marching army. Once, it was something common. Now? Now it's unthinkable.
@MaskedCritic Well... Sooorta no.
Geneva conventions (there were four of them, and half were held in Hague, which is a fun barrel of worms in itself) were devised partially prior to WW1, and partially in the interim of the first and second world wars.
In particular, the original convention forbidding WMDs dates back to 1925, though it officially went into action in 1928. It didn`t include nuclear weapons for obvious reasons, those were added to the convention in the aftermath of Nurnberg process.
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There is no clearly defined reason as to why those conventions happened. Among factors contributing to them one should count proliferation of steam railroads, the invention of practical machineguns, the advancements in artillery and the advent of chemical warfare.
Furthermore, those conventions are not absolute in any fashion - for example, USSR had successfully used biological weaponry against Nazi during WW2.
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In a way, world wars are as much of a consequence of those conventions, as they are the reasons.
@MaskedCritic I don´t think your argument about wars are "sanitized" can stand against reality. I concur, some wars appear in that fashion but looking deeper and behind - lets call it smoke screens you find the horror all over again. Don´t fall for the prejudice that some parties involved in a war are innocent and free of atrocities. They all commit them. And it is very likely we would too. In a situation of life and death everyone make a decision until someone other makes that decision for you. Ugly, but true.
The concept of making war too horrible to continue HAS not really worked. There are still wars all over the place, it´s an ugly truth but a fact. Yes, the war against Japan ended after dropping two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But look what happened just a short time later? Another war.
The concept has a great flaw - they are called humans. Humans forget, humans perceive different, humans don´t like to be told what they shouldn´t do. It works a time, I´ll concede to that, but only a time. Give it some generations and the memory is just something in the history books or movies.
i dont think "sanitized" is perhaps the right word to use nor are generalizations either (i agree with you on that point). Is conventional modern warfare between peer level countries "clean and sanitized"? Arguably yes, but relatively to fights between shithole countries relying on 40 yr old technology.
realistically, though, warfare will always have it's (sometimes necessary) dirty and dark sides. Of course, what is considered a war has been drastically watered down since the last "real" war (Korea). Then again, the reality of warfare is that, quite often, you have to play dirty to try and avoid losing. That's why asymmetric warfare is a bit*h as usually one side has it's hands tied behind it's backs due to conventions that, while useful and well-meaning, were almost entirely drafted in a time where warfare almost always meant conventional armies fighting each other as the *main* point of conflict.
@Sabruness Well, do keep in mind that in case of war, if one of the sides resorts to guerilla warfare, it is usually done out of consideration they would not win in any of the more conventional modes of warfare. Guerilla fighting is absolute hell on infrastructure and populace and is rightfully considered a last resort in all sane cases of warfare. Something you do if the alternative is losing, and not losing in the sense of "forced to sign a peace treaty with unfavorable conditions", but as in "lost existence as a country and society".
@Cytotoxin We did A LOT of that. In Iraq and Afghanistan, given that we could barely ever have a straight fight with Taliban or Al Qaeda, we spent billions on schools, police, local militaries, government infrastructure, etc. The terrorists were just better at exploiting the home field advantage than we were of convincing enough people to go to school.
Which, in fairness, is hard enough without the threat of arson, demolition, and murder.
@GA_Baller You know the saying... "You can take the girl out of village, but you can`t take the village out of girl".
Same principle applies. You invested? Sure, you did. But you hired locals to be teachers. That doesn`t work. What WOULD have worked would be setting schools with teachers who lived in USA, used to the way things are done in USA and cared not one whit about "cultural identity" of kids they`re educating, instead giving them "good old yankee values". And a very extensive police that would both ensure no locals get the ideas about NOT permitting children to attend school or about punishing them for applying the school lessons. Your job would be, basically, to instill the whole generation to consider their parents to be subhuman.
Cultures, by nature, have their own self-preservation instinct. If you want to starve one out, you have to chain it first. And keep the chains on, and keep smacking it across the face any time it tries to blab something about right to exist.
@Cytotoxin too bad that wouldn't happens till the human resourses would be more valuable than oil and drugs.
@Jinx1988 Actually.... It didn`t happen because no one thought oil and drugs to be valuable enough to do this.
Killing a culture in this way is SERIOUSLY ugly. We`re talking administering daily beatings to parents to prevent them from passing the culture to children. The raids. The orphanages that are daily reinforced with new tenants who`s parents loved the elders koolaid just a little bit too much. The old people tossed out on the street like trash and treated like one. The whole process when the address to elderly changes from "Give us your wisdom, honorable elder." to "When are you going to die already, you worthless geezer?"
It`s possible. The results might even be preferable. But the process itself? There are very few things more brutal and dehumanizing then killing a culture.
@Cytotoxin Precisely why we did the best we could within the confines of morality.
It was just doomed from the start.
@GA_Baller It was an abortive effort at best. Honestly, you might have done the region more favor by simply taking the oil wells and opening the menial jobs to local populace. With the expectation of western standards behavior within the facilities.
@Cytotoxin Maybe. But, contrary to public opinion, the oil wells were not our only reason for being there.
People seem to forget that the US military is 100% volunteer. If our only purpose was to steal resources, not only does that run contrary to standard morals taught to every child in the US, it also runs contrary to the military's own indoctrination. If all we cared about was theft, no one would reinlist, and you would see a hell of a lot more veterans screaming that fact to the world.
The politicians may have wanted the region for oil, but the American people wanted it for the terrorists, and the soldiers agreed. As such, the politicians had to make an effort in that direction, even if it was abortive.
As happened in the Vietnam War, when politicians start dictating strategy, the war is basically lost.
@GA_Baller Don`t be naive. Army is contract-only, that is true. But there is no reason why FNG would actually know about the uglier side of what army does. And once you`re down in Iraq, it is kind of not possible to just go "hey, you are kinda immoral, I want out of this gig". Try to do that, and it`s court martial for attempting to desert or insubordination. They will basically make you follow orders. And once you are done, you are, as they say, "a part of the crime". A lot of soldiers don`t want to acknowledge the fact they committed atrocities out loud simply out of fear they will be held responsible for it, under orders or not. Nurnberg had amply demonstrated that "I was following orders" is not a valid defense, and for each person who would take being drummed out there are eleven who would avert their eyes and shoot that f*cking civilian as ordered.
@GA_Baller
As happened in the Vietnam War, when politicians start dictating strategy, the war is basically lost.
then every war is basically lost?
Hmmm, that seems sophistry even to me, ignore my question.
Nevertheless, i concur the average soldier may not be to happy about being misused as accomplice. Yet it happens every day. So far, I have not met any army that is an exception. Soldiers are only human and humans all have flaws in some way.
@Nymus Not necessarily. When politicians step out of the way and let the generals form the strategy, wars can be won. Its when the civilian politicians sitting in their comfy arm chairs start dictating what the generals can and can't do, then switching it up every two years as elections occur that problems arrise.
The Vietnam War was the first televised war, which meant that politicians, for the first time, had a window into how terrible war was. As a result, they did everything in their power to make it less terrible, not realising that in doing so, they prolonged it and got a lot of soldiers and civilians killed for no reason.
The only clean war is one that isn't fought. So, if you're going to get dirty, do it all at once so you can clean back up as soon as possible.
@Nymus Also, remember that a war fought across the world took less than a third of the time to be completely over than a war fought in two small, backwards countries in the middle of the desert that never really ended.
@Cytotoxin Refusing to follow an immoral order is completely legal and is a valid defense for insubordination in the US military. It just doesn't happen much due to peer pressure.
That's why being held responsible for following an immoral order is a thing: the soldier actively chose to follow it.
Also, you're conflating reinlistment with abandonment of duty. Reinlistment happens only after your contract is up. After your contract is up, you get the choice to go back to being a civilian if you want to. Abandonment happens when you, well, abandon your post without leave, otherwise known as 'going AWOL'.
@GA_Baller You have to prove you actually received immoral order in order to take advantage of this defense. Otherwise, it is just insubordination. Officers are not idiots, they will not give orders in a way that lets them be implicated.
Not sure where you got the idea of me conflating reinlistment with dereliction. Anyone is legally entitled not to renew their contract once it runs out, if they wish to do so. I`m talking about how you are unable to simply quit in the middle of contract, regardless of how immoral you think the actions of army are. I mean, even if you refuse the order to, say, shoot people, there is no legal protection for you to refuse the order to bring ammo to people who shoot people. So if you`re squeamish, you`d simply be pressed into stevedoring, and refusing THAT is a desertion and you get court martial for trying to do that.
@Cytotoxin I say conflating because I never once mentioned dropping out part way through. I specifically said reinlist, because reinlistment is a voluntary act, which means that the soldiers doing it did not feel that they were working towards evil ends.
Americans taught morals->Americans join military->Americans serve tour->Americans reinlist. The idea that tens of thousands of Americans, taught standard western values in some way shape or form, would go to war, kill thousands in the name of dirty money, then come home and sign up again is incredibly improbable on the face of it.
That's the point I was making. Even if they followed an immoral order, chances are good they wouldn't reinlist.
@GA_Baller That`s nice, but what does it have to do with my point?
I was pointing out that first time enlistment happens under the "didn`t know just how bad it gets" conditions pretty much uniformly - army doesn`t like to air dirty laundry after all.
So like it or not, you have to do one term. It doesn`t matter if you take up another contract or no. One term is, at the very least, two years. More commonly, four to six, considering you will be cut off from the majority of job options if you take two or three year enlistment. That`s more then enough time to get your hands soaked in blood.
Once you signed up, you`re stuck for a few years following orders, and barring you lucking out to end up under an officer stupid enough to issue illegal order, you will be expected to follow them and punished for not doing so. Regardless of how immoral they seem to you, personally.
@Cytotoxin My point is that yours is irrelavent. I brought up reinlistment, the topic started with me. You haven't countered the point I made initially (using inductive reasoning, no mass cries from veterans and multiple reinlistment->probably aren't committing atrocities left and right in the name of getting oil).
Whether or not they can quit partway through or how long their tour is is completely irrelavent to my point. I only care about what happens after its up, because without being there, I'd be no better than the politicians to presume to know what did or did not happen there.
@GA_Baller Um, no? You brought up that USA army is 100% contractual, I pointed out that signing the contract means you`re stuck with it until the contract runs out, because barring exceptional circumstances, you won`t be able to step out in the middle of contract without being branded a deserter.
Then you somehow brought reenlistment into this, and I`ve been trying to find out why this should even matter for the topic at hand.
Well, hopefully in this world Alyssa will be strict enough with infosec concerns that nobody can traitorously hand over how to make nukes to an enemy nation 'in order to preserve the fairness' of the global political situation or whatever godsbedamned motivation they had.
@higgsboson Actually nukes seem to have worked decently well so far. At the negligable cost of risking untold millions of lives if things ever get sufficiantly off kilter.