i think the real indictment is how we treat people who refuse to participate and die for the profit of the already rich; the government treats them with imprisonment while the rest of us treat them like a coward for standing up for themselves in thoroughly fucked up system…
During WWII in Britain, about 10% of the men drafted were sent down into the coal mines instead of being sent off to war. In addition to enduring the horrific conditions of the mines, they had to endure abuse for not fighting. For bonus points, the old-time miners would often haze these draftees by letting their elevator cages free-fall for a bit during their first trips down.
There were also the Order of the White Feather during WWI in the UK (and I’m sure other variations in other countries at the time). They were women who would walk around and try to shame young men into enlisting, or they would present a white feather to men who weren’t in uniform to highlight their “cowardice.”
Some of the men these women gave feathers to were on leave from the front lines, or even home after being discharged from some horrific injury sustained on the front. My personal favorite: article.
[…] none more so than Seaman George Samson who received a feather when he was on his way to a reception held in his honour to receive the Victoria Cross as a reward for his bravery at Gallipoli.
Especially amazing because it was pretty damn rare to still be alive to receive a Victoria Cross.
They were women who would walk around and try to shame young men into enlisting, or they would present a white feather to men who weren’t in uniform to highlight their “cowardice.”
If that were to happen today, you can give them the white feather and say “Why aren’t you serving?”
Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
I wish I could upvote this more, that show is amazing!
Best ever!
Alan Alda’s got a pretty good podcast now. I watched a lot of MASH reruns growing up. Feels strange that kids now don’t have the experience of watching a bunch of stuff that’s not made for them at all, just because that’s what’s on TV.
Yeah. MASH is my favorite show of all time, and the final episode aired just before I was born.
But it was always on reruns for decades.
Best show, ever.
I don’t remember this happening in the show. Was it before they shot out kingpin’s eye or after?
Relevant Futurama I think. https://youtu.be/fiG2HiXNIjs?si=0uLeNsQzrXasBg-0
😭 It was in the Operating Room too, which means it had no laugh track. I loved the versatility of this show, but the OR was dead serious. The optimism of Mulcahey against the emphatic cynicism of Hawk is a great character moment. I’m dead inside.
“war is people that know each other but don’t kill each other making people that don’t know each other, kill each other”
I can’t remember the author, but i love this old quote
Why do they always send the poor?
Why don’t presidents fight the war?
I saw a picture of George Washington leading troops on a crappy boat. Why isn’t Biden out on a crappy boat somewhere? Lol
Because he wasn’t president then. Eisenhower led troops as did Grant
George Washington did lead troops one time as president, with the secretary of the Treasury at his side.
There was a little revolt over taxes on whiskey and when he showed up they surrendered.
The joke was that Biden is really old.
Why wasn’t Trump? Why wasn’t Obama? Why wasn’t Bush? It’s hardly just Biden.
I wasn’t singling him out he is just the current president and I can’t imagine him in that position lol.
I like Joe.
Was Washington leading troops after he became president though?
Alexander the Great was the first over the wall when invading a city.
Edit: source
that’s almost certainly myth
Yea there’s no way the first person over a wall wouldn’t get immediately mercd by everyone on top who isn’t fighting anyone yet.
He was! He took an arrow to the lung and they thought he was dead!
America places a lot of value in the concept of the person having the final say over our armed forces being a civilian. There are multiple very good reasons for that.
Multiple presidents have served in the military prior to becoming president, many of whom have seen combat. The last American president to do so was George HW Bush, who served in the air force and was shot down over the Pacific in WW2.
As to why that hasn’t happened more recently, it’s because the American people don’t see it as a priority. HW Bush was replaced by Bill Clinton. W Bush won over purple heart recipient John Kerry. Obama won over veteran and POW John McCain. Clinton, Bush, and Trump went even farther and essentially dodged the draft.
Generals gathered in their masses. Just like witches at black masses.
Because they’re worth less, obviously!
Barbarisms by barbaras, with pointed heels
Great question. See, a farmer can’t stay behind and command the state because he is a farmer. The heads of state and the elite cannot all perish in trenches because then all that would remain are farmers. Established heirarchy for organizational power was invented probably by whatever primates we evolved from, and is observed among even some other species of primate.
Our country was built on well educated farmers taking up positions of governance. We’d be fine.
Which country is that?
The US
A country without farmers will perish, a country without “elites” will make do.
Well… a country without “elites” and only farmers will very quickly find itself with a set of elites, from another country, who can organize their farmers to take and conquer others’ farmland.
“War is where the old and bitter fool the young and reckless into killing each other”
Cousin, let’s go play bowling.
I don’t really understand this seemingly widespread notion - that is also represented in this comic - that nations “agree” to go to war.
That is not really how it works most of the time, there is usually an aggressor and a victim. It is usually not two powerful leaders butchering their own country’s population, but rather one powerful leader butchering two countries’ population.
I know it’s not the point of this comic, but this really, really annoys me.
I think WW1 was kind of like the comic. It was a bunch of squabbling family members who got into a pissing match and then sent their citizens to die. It never would have happened if Gramma Vicky had still been alive!
Sure, but this comic wasn’t made 100 years ago. It reeks of that “they should BOTH stop fighting!” rhetoric, that only benefits aggressors.
The world used to be more like the comic. Now it’s more unilateral.
But the one important detail never changes.
It’s a pretty stupid comic actually. The conversation usually goes more along the lines of one nation demanding territory from the other, and the other telling the first to fuck right off.
I in general agree with what you wrote, but the Israel/Iran brinkmanship does feel a bit like the portrayal in this comic at times. So the comic seems relevant to recent events.
Oh yes, the Middle East is pretty much the reason for my “usually”s and “mostly”s there.
Could someone bring me up to speed on the Middle East? Are they not getting along over there?
You could say that - they have been up to a few squabbles as of late, kerfuffles even.
I am sure it is nothing too serious, it will be over as quickly as it started and the region will soon be as peaceful as always.
Ironically, the modern Middle East is almost entirely a creation of WWI and its immediate aftermath when the Ottoman Empire was carved up by the victorious Allies.
Don’t forget proxy wars and subterfuge. It’s much easier to gain influence through “soft” power than through brutal invasion and occupation, but this “soft” power can still result in tremendous bloodshed, like instigated coups.
I think your premise is wrong. It’s more plausible that because war is beneficial for the 1 percent, that this song and dance of political theater is purely to keep you and I entertained and in line.
Or we could go with your idea that Putin thought it was a good idea to piss off the most powerful nations because he wanted to conquer some land. He was like A) I could peacefully hang out on my massive yacht or B) become enemies with a country that is notorious for stealth drone strikes.
War is beneficial for the 1% and there is no doubt about it. That doesn’t change anything that I wrote, and it’s not at all incompatible with Putin being an aggressor and a stupid asshat.
As someone put it: dictatorship is a job with amazing benefits, but a terrible retirement plan. Putin can never retire and chill on his yacht, he needed to be at war for his regime security.
He never meant to piss off the most powerful bloc in the world, he thought he could just snatch Ukraine and get away with it with a little frown from the west, like he did with parts of it before (Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk), like he did with Georgia (South Ossetia, Abkhazia). He miscalculated Ukraine’s response, and the west’s.
He is not the first dictator who believes his own bullshit about the rest of the world you know? Do you think Hitler wanted to go to total war with UK, France, USA and USSR all at once? Or do you think he was secretly in cahoots with Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin to have a nice little war together to enrich their 1% and historians are conspiring to hide this?
Hey thanks for the reply, but I don’t understand how you can attest to Putins intent. Does he confide in you? Do you read his blog?
There is just no way that this war is one sided. Didn’t US/Nato provoke Russia by moving resources into Ukraine, breaking the minck agreements? I don’t know if that’s true, but thats way more plausible than it’s just big bad Putin. He’s the villian. Case closed.
I honestly don’t KNOW anything for certain. History was written by the victor. Propaganda is everywhere. I just find it annoying when people claim to KNOW something because they watch the news or read history books. Were you there?
Can you one hundred percent positively say Putin is NOT just trying to defend his nation from this US/Nato proxy war? Don’t lie to me.
(I don’t necessarily think Putin is a good person, I just don’t think he’s the only bad one.)
I do appreciate you taking the time to set me straight. Not sarcasm.
Mate, I don’t have the resources to answer to all that. If after two and a half years of war you still believe the “nato provoked Putin” bullshit I don’t know what to tell you.
I cannot read Putin’s mind but I have read and listened to a plethora of explanations for the current state of affairs, from multiple POVs and to varying degrees of depth. Some of them make more sense, some of them less. The explanations you are bringing up (nato provoked, breach of minsk, defensive war, etc etc) are among those that makes the least sense under a bit of scrutiny.
I don’t want to have this debate under a fucking comic thread so I’ll disengage. I’ll just say that just because people you don’t like (government? newspapers? I don’t know) say something it doesn’t mean it is AUTOMATICALLY false and any other explanation is preferable. I know it’s boring, but maybe, just maybe, they are onto something once in a while.
Don’t trust them if you don’t want to, do your own research - but do it for real, not like the antivaxers. Maybe that propaganda bullshit you find more reasonable will appear for what it is.
That is not really how it works most of the time
That is indeed how it works most of the time
It’s loss, isn’t it?
It’s close, but no, the first panel has more than one person
It’s many losses
No, it’s just the one.
Kropp, on the other hand, is more philosophical. He reckons that all declarations of war ought to be made into a kind of festival, with entrance tickets and music, like they have at bullfights. Then the ministers and generals of the two countries would have to come into the ring, wearing boxing shorts, and armed with rubber truncheons, and have a go at each other. Whoever is left on his feet, his country is declared the winner. That would be simpler and fairer than things are out here, where the wrong people are fighting each other.
- All Quiet on the Western Front
Forget that. They need to face the same stakes that they’ve forced millions of other people to face. Deadly force. Put them through the same grueling conditions, and the cost of failure is death.
I assume Kropp was intentionally treating the leaders with more compassion than they treat their citizens.
So we should have a political system where the physically strongest get elected leader? Or would it be a elected position?
Current US election aside
It wouldn’t be a great system, but it would automatically have excluded the Toupee so it’s a better system than we have now.
Why don’t presidents fight in wars? Why do they always send the poor?
Zelensky has done a fine job getting directly involved, imo.
Oh now that’s a throwback!
Please remove the source indicator.
TBH this is a case where hiding away makes sense. Russia absolutely wants him dead, and his value rallying Western support alone is pivotal. Even dehumanized, he’s a strategic asset.
I wouldn’t imagine he lives a particularly luxurious life, either, even if its a very expensive one.
Getting directly involved in publicity photo shoots, that is.
Bc people are so stupid, they believe in nationalism and are easy to manipulate
There are definitely some wars I’d much rather were just MMA death fights between the PM’s and presidents.
And others where I’m glad they aren’t, because the country whose victory would be best for the common good is led by someone who would not win a physical fight.
The warrior-king model certainly had its own flaws, but at least when the king declared war, he picked up a sword and fought.
Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.
I have never understood war. Why a country want to attack another country. To me is it like I am free to move there so I have no need to attack them. You disagree, just walk away. They have resources? Stealing is not allowed so you can’t do that. You dont own the whole world. No one will. War only leads to people die. No one should be happy about that. Yes, I cannot fight in a war. I would be a coward and flee to a better place.
I’m no politologist or military strategist, but I’m pretty sure a lot of wars (not all of them) are started so that a nation’s government can get better control over their own population. If the state can declare an emergency situation, they can use it to justify cracking down on political dissidents, invasive surveillance, restrincting freedom of speech, etc in the eyes of the public. It can also be used to ramp up nationalism, which works in the ruling class’ favour. Pretty sure this is at least part of the reason behind putin and nettanyahu stirring shit up right now.
That is a very interesting observation. The anthropologists Davids Graeber and Wengrow studied how human groups had been controlled by charismatic leadership going back into prehistory. These groups could become authoritarian dictatorships which wage wars against their neighbors, engage in slavery, and human sacrifice. Alternatively when they were egalitarian and controlled by democratic institutions they were the opposite. More peaceful and equal.
This just sounds like corrupt govemernet. We all know the right way to fight their own government. Protests.
Stealing is not allowed so you can’t do that. You dont own the whole world.
The problem is that everything is allowed, so they just do that.
Those who don’t want to fight in some war - terrorize your population sufficiently and they’ll obey, or you can keep them under propaganda pressure and they’ll agree.
I would be a coward and flee to a better place.
What if someone wants to take your land, demolish thousand years old churches and fortresses and graveyards, kill all your countrymen they can, all that purely out of hate\envy and because they can?
Would you not want to kill some of those people? Would you not want to prevent such things happening.
I learned over time that things are just thing and can be replaced/rebuilt. However losing other people is hard, especially family. So I would probably try to convince them to flee as well.
I know that computer games like first shooter is really hard. In real life you can’t just reset when you die. You can’t learn from your mistakes. You are dead.
I know there are really brave people out there and fight for the right cause. I don’t understand how they make it thought the suffering. Just being on the field is a trauma if you survive.
I know there are many wars today. I don’t go to another country to support. I am unfortunately selfish in that regard. But if no one participant in war, then maybe there is no war at all. But that will never happen.
I guess if you feel enough trauma and humiliation and indignation from what happens there, you might be able to go.
But ultimately, I suppose, it’s just taking full responsibility for yourself, including possible suffering and death. In some sense being afraid is obeying the fear.
As they say, death is unfinished business. When you are not allowing yourself to drop everything and go, you won’t be able to consciously risk your life.
Why I want to talk about this - because someone should fight wars on the weaker side, where it is always harder. Otherwise our world will keep becoming more hellish.
Think of foreign policy as a ladder, and you are the person in charge of your country (or at least their foreign relations). Each rung is a new action you can take to influence the behavior of other countries.
The first step is formal communications. That’s easy, you’re probably on that step with just about every other nation. The next few rings are all other friendly diplomatic steps, things like opening embassies, making trade agreements, non-aggression pacts, etc.
Now let’s say a neighboring country is doing something you don’t like. Your nation’s grievance with them will fall into one of a few broad categories: they are a threat to your security, they are a threat to your interests, or they are a threat to your honor (meaning your international reputation). Whatever the reason, your job is to change their behavior and none of the previous steps on the ladder have worked, so now you climb higher.
The next rungs are less friendly, but are still diplomatic. These are things like denouncements, cessation of trade, tariffs, and sanctions. At the very top of this set of rungs, you close your embassy and demand they close theirs. You break off most communication. Finally, you tell the whole world why they have wronged you.
Now you’ve done everything you can diplomatically, but their behavior is still a threat to your security, interest, or honor. How do you change their behavior? There are more rungs on the ladder.
Going all the way back to Sun Tzu, generals have known that their job was to take over when the diplomats failed. This doesn’t mean that total war is immediate or inevitable. The military could conduct raids, surgical strikes, or enforce an embargo. Warfare is simply the top rungs of the ladder of foreign policy. Some nations climb it more quickly or willingly than others, but war exists on the same spectrum as diplomacy.
Why a country want to attack another country.
A lot of reasons. The most common is a territorial dispute that escalates over time.
The Israel invasion of Gaza is a response to the Al Asqa Flood, which was a response to Israeli encroachment into the Al Asqa Mosque which was a response to Palestinian protests over Israeli treatment of protesters during the 2018 March of Return which was a response to the blah blah blah which was a response to the Israeli Nakba of 1948. And all of that is a consequence of British colonialism in the Middle East, followed by a sloppy (arguably deliberately so) partisan of territories between Arabs and Jews at the end of WW2.
We could play the same game with Ukraine/Russia, which is an extension of a conflict dating back to WW1 and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Or we could go to China/Taiwan and talk about the number of times that the island changed hands from early antiquity to the end of the Chinese Civil War.
Stealing is not allowed so you can’t do that.
Telling this to the American First Nations people. Passing the word along to descendants of African and Latin American slaves.
“I am free to move there”, saying you are American/western European without saying you are American/western European.
Power, ideology and ressources
Countries don’t attack other countries.
Governments attack other governments.
All of us normal folks who just want to live life are forced along for the ride because we happen to live within the boundaries of a particular government’s claimed territory.
Do you know why some countries wanted to attack Germany in the 1930s and 40s?
Sometimes the lesser evil really is war, but much more rarely than war hawks would like to claim. The Roman Empire famously caused strife among their neighbors and used that as an excuse to attack “for the safety of Rome.”
To me is it like I am free to move there
Usually countries at war don’t let conscription eligible people leave.
I think it is hard for them to stop that. Anyhow. At least I would not be on the front line.
Anybody ever play Advanced Wars?
I loved that game as a kid. But as I’ve gotten older, it’s really sad to watch my CO be this kid with something to prove sending people out to die because Yay Kaboom Wippee!
The cool thing about Advanced Wars (and other build-a-unit games) is that the units are not, themselves, people. They are simply widgets that exist long enough to complete a mission and then stop existing.
The problem with COs IRL is that they’re not just summoning combatants from the Ether. They’re calling up other real humans to do incredibly dangerous shit, ostensibly for the betterment of “the nation” (but in practice we know better). And these people don’t just appear/disappear for the war. They continue to live with the nightmare they survived, or they leave behind family and friends who have their own blood feuds to settle with the enemy nation.
You know, I didn’t pick that vibe in Advance Wars! I like it. They’re just tools.
It’s a good summary of “all quiet on the western front”.
Politicians hide themselves away/They only started the war/Why should they go out to fight?/They leave that all to the poor, yeah/Time will tell on their power minds/Making war just for fun/Treating people just like pawns in chess/Wait till their judgment day comes, yeah
It’s called the division of labor. You can’t have the guy in charge of running things get turned into Beefaroni in a foxhole.
that would be bad, yes. but you could also make the argument that the guy in charge of things would be much less likely to initiate a war if he knew there was a chance he could get turned into beefaroni in a foxhole.
No but you can conscript their kids and require them to be on the Frontline. You can have a conscription program that cannot be bought out or excused. You can require a military referendum.
There are ways to deal with this problem.
Just get another guy charge then?
Yes! We! Can!
