• andros_rex@lemmy.world
    472·
    7 days ago

    The best class I took in college was an intercession course about the Vietnam War. We had to read an entire book pretty much every day, which was great prep for grad school.

    I basically learned that the entire war was completely unjustified, it was horrific and brutal on both sides in ways that aren’t talked about, but that ultimately the United States had absolutely no business interfering. Vietnam had spent years under French colonial control, which they overthrew under their own power. They had already asserted a desire to rule themselves.

    Tonkin was also a genuine false flag, which just isn’t acknowledged? We manufactured the cause for an extremely unpopular war. So many young man died or were disabled because of something that was pointless.

    That class was first that really got me to question the patriotic narrative I was taught about American history in high school.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    7 days ago

    I’m the War on Christmas guy, and I’m getting my ass handed to me every single year.

  • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
    20·
    6 days ago

    i got the soviet-afghan war and wow did that recontextualize a lot of things about the modern world

      • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
        192·
        6 days ago

        bear in mind i was 10 during 9/11 so a lot of it was just upending things i had taken for granted. but like, how the US was pretty much allied with the taliban throughout the 80s, giving them training and weapons to fight against the soviet-friendly progressive, secular government of afghanistan.

        • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
          42·
          6 days ago

          The Soviet-friendly Afghan government wasn’t a) progressive and b) wasn’t secular. The government is explicitly Marxist-Leninist who oppressed and forced people to drop their religion as part of state atheism.

          The progressivism and secularism you refer to was during the kingdom era before being overthrown by the communist Afghan military. The more liberal attitude is only contained in a bubble in the capital city of Kabul. The rest of 80% of Afghans are still religious conservatives living rural and in poverty. An Afghan female former politician lamented not seeing this because she grew up in liberal Kabul.

          Also more importantly, it’s a misconception that the US helped the Taliban. The mujahideen was composed of various factions, some are secular, some are conservative, while some are more Islamists. But, the ultraconservative elements only came later in more definite form under the Taliban, which defeated both the secular and conservative forces.

          • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
            52·
            6 days ago

            forced people to drop their religion as part of state atheism.

            Sounds like

            progressivism and secularism

            To me

            • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
              2·
              6 days ago

              Forcing someone to change their beliefs is considered progressivism and secularism? I did not get the memo that progressives are authoritarians. What were the Afghans resisting the Soviets for then?

                • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  6 days ago

                  As much as I want religion to be gone, you can’t force people to change their beliefs overnight. We frown upon forced conversion by one religion on another; why can’t atheist apply the same standard to theists? That was the mistake of communist Afghans and it only led to a severe backlash of inducing the mostly conservative Afghans to become ultra-consenservative Islamists. Every reaction has an opposite but equal reaction. Social changes has to be organic.

              • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
                11·
                6 days ago

                Same as always

                People that make those decisions want to continue to make those decisions

        • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
          2·
          6 days ago

          Charlie Wilson’s War is a pretty great movie about that, starring Tom Hanks, directed by Mike Nichols and written by Aaron Sorkin, although it’s more of a political satire and plays it fast and loose with the historical details.

  • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    25·
    7 days ago

    WWIII nut here.

    Get yourself a Red Cross emergency kit, a lot of water jugs, and ramen. You’re underestimating your chances of survival and how much you’ll want to.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      7 days ago

      You’re underestimating your chances of survival and how much you’ll want to.

      yes, you too can live out the remainder of your miserable days scrambling for rat meat in the irradiated future.

      of course, the desire to live, to survive, overcomes a lot, but ‘want to live’ I think is stretching it a bit.

      • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        I’ve worked briefly with civil defense stuff and got to visit and learn a whole bunch about bunkers. That cemented my “take out the long chair, open my best bottle, put on some shades, and enjoy the brief light show” approach to a hypothetical nuclear alert.

      • Sergio@slrpnk.netEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        I suspect what they’re getting at is: there are a lot of scenarios other than “all out exchange between major powers”, and when the fallout starts floating, you can either just hang out at home (and die of cancer in a year or two), or shelter in a basement for a week (and emerge to a troubled but liveable world.)

          • Sergio@slrpnk.netEnglish
            3·
            7 days ago

            I’m familiar with the extinction event scenarios, and agree that in some cases one may not find the world worth living in. I recommend Krepinevich’s “7 Deadly Scenarios”, a couple of those involve nuclear attacks. The sitations are comparable to the recent Covid pandemic: millions of people die, the world is subsequently scarred, but life goes on for most people. A bit of planning can make things less horrible and a lot of it overlaps with natural disaster.

            • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              6 days ago

              I think you may misunderstand. <edit or I’m misreading your replies>

              Jacob’s book covers an all in exchange. everyone goes max. very little in the northern hemisphere would survive. a bit of planning, all the planning in the world - neither will save you when each side is maximizing the amount of fallout with ground strikes with megaton weapons.

              the ‘lucky’ folk in the southern hemisphere will just have to wait until the after effects catch up to them.

              Jacob’s scenario is megadeaths to gigadeaths - literally a billion dead directly (flash/blast/etc) and multiple billions dead shortly after. Krepinevich’s scenario is a few terrorists with tactical weapons.

              these are wildly different things.

              <edit I don’t think you’re meaning to downplay the seriousness of any kind of major nuclear exchange, but just underestimating how seriously civilization ending it is>

              • Sergio@slrpnk.netEnglish
                2·
                6 days ago

                Yeah, I suspect we basically agree on things. I grew up with Threads and The Day After, and later I read up on nuclear winter and EMPs so I realize that human extinction is a very real possibility.

                But apart from that, the question is: how to prepare for the “less than extinction” scenarios, the sort of thing that Krepinevich and ready.gov discuss.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    9·
    6 days ago

    I’m glad I missed this.

    btw, did you know that the Australian government killed almost 1000 Emus in the Great Emu War and still lost?

    The military used over 10,000 rounds of ammunition. that would mean they used around 10 rounds per Emu.

    • stevedice@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      They also used actual military tactics to fight the Emus, like mapping their routes and setting up ambushes. In one of these, they managed to get close to a flock of about a thousand emus and attacked them with machine guns only allowing the escape of… lemme check… about a thousand emus.

    • domdanial@reddthat.comEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      I typically have a 60% accuracy in Helldivers 2 and I’m fighting swarms of giant bugs. I think I’ll forgive the Australians for 10 rounds per bird, especially since winging an emu probably doesn’t stop it.

    • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      6 days ago

      Compared to the amount of bullets expended per casualty in any modern war that is actually very good. The US probably fired thousands of bullets for each insurgent killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

  • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
    234·
    7 days ago

    I missed the memo. I am just generally anti war and don’t like reading about them. War is all because of dickhead leaders that can’t act decent, treat others right, or talk things out without being little insecure manbabies. And when manchildren in power have their big boi pp insulted they make the less powerful fight for them instead of doing anything respectful. Some rebellions which lead to wars are justified. Gotta stick it back to the empowered manchildren sometimes. But it all comes down to a shitty leader.

    • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      7 days ago

      I decided to focus on wars of leftest and/or peasant uprisings. Often heart breaking, but man if you’ve ever enjoyed cheering for the underdog, they are definitely that. Plus, you’re automatically learning about the Class War at the same time :D

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
      6·
      7 days ago

      It can be very valuable and interesting to study the surrounding context of a war. Military history with battles and kill counts and discussions of tactics is something I find boring af, but there are endless discussions to be had about how the causes of the American Civil War can be traced back to before even the Revolution and tracing the repercussions of the war all the way up through to current politics.

      Think about how the Taiping Rebellion, which killed more than 20 million people, would have affected day to day life in 19th century China - which weakened China and rendered it more vulnerable to European powers. Think the Opium Wars. Think about how Hong Kong was just returned to China in 1999 - and all of the complexities that entailed.

      Or how the World Wars depopulated Russia. You had a generation dead or traumatized. Russian alcoholism is usually treated as a joke - trauma can have intergenerational changes in genetic expression.

      Wars also make excellent chronological signposts. I’ garbage at dates, but usually wars segment significant social/economic/cultural/blah/blah/blah changes that they help me keep events organized in my head.

    • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      21·
      7 days ago

      I think you missed the joke, it’s not making a point about all wars being bad it’s about middle aged dudes being obsessed with wars

      • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
        4·
        6 days ago

        I understood the joke just fine. I started my comment off with “I missed the memo” implying I never took any interest in wars or never got assigned a war to obsess over.

  • stevedice@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    91·
    6 days ago

    I got the second Punic war, but I think that’s just a freebie. I also spent a lot learning about the Falkland’s war just to annoy Argentinians online.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
    91·
    6 days ago

    Hey, the Falklands is the one I’m obsessed with and it’s actually really interesting. Only “modern” war between near peers before ukraine.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
    9·
    7 days ago

    I listened to Hardcore History’s series on World War I in that window, so that was my assigned war of interest.

    • ThePancake@lemmy.world
      5·
      7 days ago

      This was me too. I probably listened through the “Blueprint for Armageddon” series three times. Never really found any other history podcast that piqued my interest nearly as much as that did.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
        2·
        7 days ago

        I like that he’s very open about the fact that he’s not an expert/professional historian. He walks the line between storytelling and rigor pretty well for a pop historian. My favorite episode is the one about the Memnonite (edit: Anabaptist) rebellion that ended with corpses being left up for centuries.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    61·
    6 days ago

    My case was Paraguay War a few weeks ago and I learned so damn much that school completely glossed over. What surprised me the most was just how much of a madman Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan dictator, was. You dare bring bad news to him? You bet your ass you’ll be flogged. You failed to follow one of his suicidal orders? Off to forced labor camp. You didn’t put him above God and Christ? Say your prayers, you’ll be shot bayoneted in order to save bullets.