You know, Religeon is pretty obviously a bunch of bullshit. But unfortunately, a very high percentage of everything else is also bullshit. How about politics, advertising, military strategy for starters. How about the oil industry? With so much of everything being run on inherent dishonesty, how does the truth about anything have even a small chance of going mainstream?
It never will. But then, you don't have to be mainstream and there's nothing preventing you from being honest. Just don't expect to become a millionaire or a rockstar for being honest.
Quote from: "Outnumbered"You know, Religeon is pretty obviously a bunch of bullshit. But unfortunately, a very high percentage of everything else is also bullshit. How about politics, advertising, military strategy for starters. How about the oil industry? With so much of everything being run on inherent dishonesty, how does the truth about anything have even a small chance of going mainstream?
And real bullshit is bullshit, stinks too. Humanshit is even worse
Military strategy isn't bullshit.
Quote from: "Outnumbered"How about politics, advertising, military strategy for starters. How about the oil industry? With so much of everything being run on inherent dishonesty, how does the truth about anything have even a small chance of going mainstream?
There's a huge difference between those things and religion.
Those are all based on reality.
Religion, not so much...
The military is bullshit. "Military strategy" is a euphemism for "how many brown people can we kill and get away with it?"
'Kill Anything That Moves' (//http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-4264163.php)
Quote from: "Outnumbered"You know, Religeon is pretty obviously a bunch of bullshit. But unfortunately, a very high percentage of everything else is also bullshit. How about politics, advertising, military strategy for starters. How about the oil industry? With so much of everything being run on inherent dishonesty, how does the truth about anything have even a small chance of going mainstream?
Military strategies are not dishonest. What the military tells the public and its own service people about the strategy might be, the strategy itself is what it is. I think you're confusing military strategy with military public relations.
But your question has already been answered. It doesn't matter there is so much dishonesty in various industries and organizations. You have no real control over any of those anyway so it doesn't matter. But you do have control over yourself. You also have control over whom you choose to associate with and invest your time and emotional energy into. So you can make yourself an honest person and you can choose to invest your time and energy into other individuals who appear to do the same.
Quote from: "Johan"I think you're confusing military strategy with military public relations.
Point taken.
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Military strategy isn't bullshit.
Not all the time, but Haig's was somewhat suspect..... then I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing. :-k
Quote from: "Outnumbered"You know, Religeon is pretty obviously a bunch of bullshit. But unfortunately, a very high percentage of everything else is also bullshit. How about politics, advertising, military strategy for starters. How about the oil industry? With so much of everything being run on inherent dishonesty, how does the truth about anything have even a small chance of going mainstream?
Politics itself is not bullshit, the political process however has become bullshit. I wonder how much you know about military strategy. As indicated earler it is what is reported to the public that is bullshit. As far as the truth going mainstream, it will take some time to really get any truth out. Honestly, if people told the truth about everything we would be so pissed off there probably would be no peace.
Quote from: "Davka"The military is bullshit. "Military strategy" is a euphemism for "how many brown people can we kill and get away with it?"
'Kill Anything That Moves' (//http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-4264163.php)
You are applying ideology ineptly. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there's more to military strategy than one war, fifty years ago, where strategy wasn't formulated at the military level, but rather at the political level.
Tell us what you know about military strategy.
I accept that symantics enters into the point I was trying to make. I'm sure the military actually does know what they are planning. But entering into wars on trumped up reasons qualifies as bull shit to me. For example, the non existent naval attack that was used as a reason to start the Vietnam Nam war. Ask Colin Powell about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction with some hind sight. The term bull shit might come up. The point I was trying to make is that the stuff that atheists get upset about is not confined to religeon. We can change our little part of the world immediately around us to an extent. But there is so much integrated crap out there, that any real change is a very daunting task.
Quote from: "Outnumbered"I accept that symantics enters into the point I was trying to make. I'm sure the military actually does know what they are planning. But entering into wars on trumped up reasons qualifies as bull shit to me. For example, the non existent naval attack that was used as a reason to start the Vietnam Nam war. Ask Colin Powell about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction with some hind sight. The term bull shit might come up. The point I was trying to make is that the stuff that atheists get upset about is not confined to religeon. We can change our little part of the world immediately around us to an extent. But there is so much integrated crap out there, that any real change is a very daunting task.
Dude, that's not military strategy. That's geopolitical strategy. There's a difference.
Quote from: "Youssuf Ramadan"Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Military strategy isn't bullshit.
Not all the time, but Haig's was somewhat suspect..... then I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing. :-k
Oh, there're plenty of failed strategies, and frontal assaults on a fortified position are stupid. It didn't take hindsight either. Had Haig studied Cold Harbor at all, he would have seen the dangers of his chosen strategy, especially considering that the defenders of 1916 had automatic guns and more powerful explosives -- not to mention gases, weapons unavailable to Confederate troops.
Quote from: "billhilly"Dude, that's not military strategy. That's geopolitical strategy. There's a difference.
And even so, comparing geopolitical strategy to religion is a category error.
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Quote from: "Davka"The military is bullshit. "Military strategy" is a euphemism for "how many brown people can we kill and get away with it?"
'Kill Anything That Moves' (//http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-4264163.php)
You are applying ideology ineptly. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there's more to military strategy than one war, fifty years ago, where strategy wasn't formulated at the military level, but rather at the political level.
Tell us what you know about military strategy.
I know that military strategy in the USA has been formulated at the political level for well over 50 years.
What do
you know? Do you know that we don't currently have soldiers in the Middle East who are routinely killing brown people to jack up their body count, but that information about American military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan won't be publicly available for another 50 years?
Military strategy only works in war games. Real war is much too messy for such niceties.
Quote from: "Davka"What do you know? Do you know that we don't currently have soldiers in the Middle East who are routinely killing brown people to jack up their body count, but that information about American military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan won't be publicly available for another 50 years?
Yes, in fact current Rules of Engagement make it more dangerous for our soldiers as they pretty much have to waiy until the get shot to do anything.
QuoteMilitary strategy only works in war games. Real war is much too messy for such niceties.
Not at all, you are limiting the definition to just point and shoot, there is quite a lot more than that to it.
Quote from: "Alaric I"Quote from: "Davka"What do you know? Do you know that we don't currently have soldiers in the Middle East who are routinely killing brown people to jack up their body count, but that information about American military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan won't be publicly available for another 50 years?
Yes, in fact current Rules of Engagement make it more dangerous for our soldiers as they pretty much have to waiy until the get shot to do anything.
Which is why no soldiers have been caught indiscriminately killing civilians, because the Rules of Engagement prohibit such things. :roll:
QuoteQuoteMilitary strategy only works in war games. Real war is much too messy for such niceties.
Not at all, you are limiting the definition to just point and shoot, there is quite a lot more than that to it.
I'm not limiting the definition at all. Nothing has been added to military strategy since Sun Tzu, who understood full well how rarely even the best strategies work out as planned on the battlefield.
If you want to talk chess strategy, I'll listen. But war has no rules, and is unpredictable. We've been fighting in Afghanistan for ten years now, with the best-trained military strategists in the world on our side, and what have we accomplished?
What does this have to do with the religions credibility? Ironic thread?
Make a off topic thread about how real aspects of peoples lives is bullshit instead.
Quote from: "Davka"I know that military strategy in the USA has been formulated at the political level for well over 50 years.
Actually, it's been formulated at the level for much longer. Our Constitution embodies the politician as the Commander-in-Chief, and even as far back as Lincoln, decisions on strategy have been made at the Presidential level. As Clausewitz wrote, "War is an extension of politics" -- and that was 175 years ago. Even then, it was only stating what had been obvious for centuries prior.
Quote from: "Davka"What do you know?
I know that military strategy is not in the same category of thought as religion, and that comparing the two is silly.
Quote from: "Davka"Do you know that we don't currently have soldiers in the Middle East who are routinely killing brown people to jack up their body count, but that information about American military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan won't be publicly available for another 50 years?
We actually
do have soldiers (in Afghanistan,
not the Middle East), but whether they're committing murders that are being kept secret, as you allege, is open to conjecture.
Not sure why you think "brown" is important here, either. Do you think that the skin-color of the Afghanis has more to do with the war there than the support their government gave AQ before,, during, and after 9/11?
And finally, none of this has anything to do with military strategy as a field of study.
Quote from: "Davka"Military strategy only works in war games. Real war is much too messy for such niceties.
Study some military history. What was significant about Hannibal's victory at Cannae? And how was Hindenburg able to capitalize on having studied it, when he fought the Russians at Tannenberg? Strategy sure worked there. Ditto
Sichelschnitt,
Bagration, and the two-pronged strategy of Nimitz and MacArthur in the Pacific. I could go on.
Military strategy is the study of the operational art of war, and your pale echo of Clemenceau's adage ("War is too important to be left to the generals") doesn't hold true, at all. Real war has fog, but that doesn't mean there's no place for plans, and only an idiot wouldn't make plans guided by an overarching strategy in such a catastrophic set of circumstances. War fought without a strategy almost always results in a defeat.
Your "argument" -- and I'm using that term loosely here -- is not rational.
I'll ask you again -- tell us what you know about the field of military strategy?
Quote from: "Davka"But war has no rules, and is unpredictable.
No one has argued that war has "rules". This is a strawman.
Quote from: "Davka"We've been fighting in Afghanistan for ten years now, with the best-trained military strategists in the world on our side, and what have we accomplished?
And no one is arguing that having a strategy guarantees that that strategy will be victorious, because the enemy too will have a strategy. Wars most often are the contest between two strategies, taken to its extreme (because most strategies angle for a bloodless victory).
I think the idea was not that military strategy itself was bullshit, but rather that military strategy requires bullshitting everyone on both sides of the wars, with possibly more bullshit needed on your own side to convince your team to keep getting themselves killed than it requires towards the enemy.
Your country will feed you shovels full of crap in wartime to convince the enemy are all horrible demon-beasts and that you are the invincible forces of good with angels flying at your back. And it works, too.
A thread on semantics? Uh oh! *runs*
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Quote from: "Youssuf Ramadan"Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Military strategy isn't bullshit.
Not all the time, but Haig's was somewhat suspect..... then I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing. :-k
Oh, there're plenty of failed strategies, and frontal assaults on a fortified position are stupid. It didn't take hindsight either. Had Haig studied Cold Harbor at all, he would have seen the dangers of his chosen strategy, especially considering that the defenders of 1916 had automatic guns and more powerful explosives -- not to mention gases, weapons unavailable to Confederate troops.
Makes sense to me. :smile:
It not so much that military strategy is bullshit but military propaganda AKA political propaganda is, but you cannot draw comparisons with religion, but religion can draw comparisons with woo or fairy folklore which are all equally bullshit IMO.
One thing for sure . Religion is bullshit .
Oh well. I guess we should give religion a pass then?
Quote from: "St Giordano Bruno"It not so much that military strategy is bullshit but military propaganda AKA political propaganda is, but you cannot draw comparisons with religion, but religion can draw comparisons with woo or fairy folklore which are all equally bullshit IMO.
Actually, I think you can draw comparisons between
any sort of propaganda and religion. It's all about telling people to believe in bullshit that is not supported by objective reality, but which resonates on an emotional level. "Global warming is a myth" is not that different from "God answers prayer." And statements like "cutting taxes and deregulation makes everybody richer" or "raising the minimum wage will cause job loss" are even closer to religion, since neither one lines up with observable historical reality.
Quote from: "Davka"The military is bullshit. "Military strategy" is a euphemism for "how many brown people can we kill and get away with it?"
'Kill Anything That Moves' (//http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-4264163.php)
No military statagey isn't bullshit. You're right it use to be send in the coloreds and get them killed, but modern warfare isn't about getting people killed anymore. It's use the most expemsive equipment, spend billions to take out one enemy combatant.
The only bullshit in military planning comes from the defense contractors. Actual combat isn't bullshit at all. It's a science that has reduced operations to very low casualty rates for our side. The biggest threat is friendly fire, which in many cases is unavoidable.
There are dangerous situations that don't allow superior firepower and technology to engage. Clearing houses for instance. Tactics and training have reduced the threat somewhat but it is still very dangerous. If only the enemy would cooperate and fight on a division level front, then we would sustain none if any casualties. They don't so we are faced with endless terrorist and gorrilla fire fights which cause injury and death to our own.
Actually the biggest threat to USA and ally forces is sickness and fatigue.
So no military planning is not "bullshit."
Quote from: "mykcob4"The biggest threat is friendly fire, which in many cases is unavoidable.
why is friendly fire unavoidable?
Quote from: "surly74"Quote from: "mykcob4"The biggest threat is friendly fire, which in many cases is unavoidable.
why is friendly fire unavoidable?
Because the fog of war clouds both sides. Friction besets all operations. Bullets go through walls. That sort of thing.
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Quote from: "surly74"Quote from: "mykcob4"The biggest threat is friendly fire, which in many cases is unavoidable.
why is friendly fire unavoidable?
Because the fog of war clouds both sides. Friction besets all operations. Bullets go through walls. That sort of thing.
I get that. problem is the US has had a notorious rep for being rather careless when it comes to combat. My grandfather told me a good line, When the British bomb the Luftwaffe duck. When the Luftwaffe bomb the British ducks, when the US bombs EVERYONE ducks. Where there is smoke there is fire. pun intended.
I get that friendly fire happens. It just flippant and arbitrary that steps can't be taken to avoid or reduce it. i guess it's another that is bullshit (in keeping with the topic)
Quote from: "surly74"I get that. problem is the US has had a notorious rep for being rather careless when it comes to combat. My grandfather told me a good line, When the British bomb the Luftwaffe duck. When the Luftwaffe bomb the British ducks, when the US bombs EVERYONE ducks. Where there is smoke there is fire. pun intended.
I get that friendly fire happens. It just flippant and arbitrary that steps can't be taken to avoid or reduce it. i guess it's another that is bullshit (in keeping with the topic)
Everyone is careless when the fog of war sets in. Most fratricide incidents happen because combatatns come upon a group of people. can't identify them, and open fire only to find out that they read a map wrong and they just shot up their own guys. When you start getting shot at you tend to just lob fire back in th directions the shots are coming from.
fog of war? seems like an excuse for poor planning or incompetence.
Quote from: "surly74"fog of war? seems like an excuse for poor planning or incompetence.
Not at all, it's a term used when emotions are running high and adrenaline is pumping. It's when you psychlogically go foggy and are running on pure instinct.
Quote from: "surly74"I get that. problem is the US has had a notorious rep for being rather careless when it comes to combat. My grandfather told me a good line, When the British bomb the Luftwaffe duck. When the Luftwaffe bomb the British ducks, when the US bombs EVERYONE ducks. Where there is smoke there is fire. pun intended.
Even sixty years ago, the US devoted more effort to ensuring accurate bombing of German cities (and admittedly failed given technological constraints of the era -- but the effort is the point). We've continued that process by pioneering smart weapons which minimize civilian casualties as much as possible. Whatever "rep" the US has seems clouded by disagreement with our foreign policy, which is an entirely different issue.
Your grandfather might wish to remember, too, that the policy of both the British and the Germans was one of wanton aerial bombing with the expressed intent of the disruption of civilian life. Indeed, in a fit of doublespeak, the British called their bombing program ""dehousing" (//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehousing#Production_and_contents_of_the_dehousing_paper), giving acknowledgement to the idea that they weren't attacking military targets at all.
Quote from: "surly74"I get that friendly fire happens. It just flippant and arbitrary that steps can't be taken to avoid or reduce it. i guess it's another that is bullshit (in keeping with the topic)
What purpose do you think drove the invention of smart weapons, if not the desire to ensure that a weapon landed on target, and not awry?
Wow, this thread has long since abandoned the "religion" category.
On a positive note, we've got another ricochet bullseye!
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"What purpose do you think drove the invention of smart weapons, if not the desire to ensure that a weapon landed on target, and not awry?
True, but on the flip side there is the continued use by many countries of cluster munitions, which are for the purpose of demoralisation of the the population, both military and civilian. Grim. :-|
Indeed, grim. Mines, as well.