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Last year in March, I had a small series of posts called "War Is Hard." This one being the first. Now in that post one of the readers left this comment -
A lot of folks these days have this "Rambo" image of themselves in their minds. They seem to think they can go all "Lone Wolf" against any odds and win. Hollywood warrior mentality. What they didn't get out of that first Rambo movie (I didn't bother to watch the sequels) was why he was the way he was. He had all the training, and nothing to lose. When you have nothing to lose, everything changes. You know that sooner or later, you're going to die, and you accept that as fact. From there it is just a matter of killing as many of them as possible before they kill you. That Hollywood warrior mentality assumes immortality, which is of course idiotic. The reality of death, (and your own mortality) doesn't really hit home until you see it, up close and personal.
War is hard, cold and brutal. To succeed you have to become hard, cold and brutal. War is in the mind and once there, it never leaves.
The world is the way it is today because too few have seen war, or its' effects in any way except how it's portrayed (sensationalized) in action movies. The internet is full of keyboard warriors who talk about things like how we should become more actively involved in Ukraine, and should definitely establish a "no fly zone", because it's worth the risks, to teach Putin a lesson. Starting WW3 isn't going to teach anybody a lesson that's going to do them any good, and it certainly isn't going to save the people of Ukraine. It's just going to get everybody else killed, too.
The idiot in the story at the link has a wife and son at home, and he wants to go and fight in somebody else's war? Unbelievably stupid. You fight first for your home and family.
I read somewhere that the Ukraine military is turning down civilians who are volunteering to fight, I'm sure for the very reasons you lay out above, Sarge. Untrained combatants just get other people killed. Even skilled warriors generally can't just jump into another unit without learning how their command and control works. That's why so many militaries around the world do cross training exercises, to learn how other units work. (That is also why it usually ends up being a clusterfuck¹. Ask me how I know.)
Sleep with your rifle in your hands and your helmet for a pillow, and follow orders without question, and you might get out of this alive. Or you're just cannon fodder, it doesn't really matter. You've got nothing to lose anyhow, right?
War only makes sense in 2 cases; when you've got nothing to lose, or when you have everything to lose if you don't fight back. - Tank Killer, 16 March 2022
He made some rather good points which I didn't really follow up on at the time, life being busy and the war in Ukraine heating up. But in the search for something worthwhile to post, I went back to March of 2022. Tank Killer's comment was good enough to stand on its own, so I repeat it here.
As I'm currently reading about the Hell that was the Battle of Waterloo, I also believe that General Sherman was correct in the lines preceding the quote above -
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine.
Indeed.
As for right and wrong in Ukraine, Putin is wrong. Sure Zelenskyy is probably a crook, after all, he is a politician, but his country was invaded, not the other way around.
So to all the politicians, end this nonsense, you want to fight? Do it yourself you feckless bastards.
What say you?
¹ I was going to clean this up, then decided, "Heck, who am I to censor a fellow human?"
