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That's a good question. You seemed to be saying that the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and specifically US conduct in both, were worse than WWII. I disagree.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 3h

65,000 is the low-end estimate. The high-end estimate is ~200,000 in Vietnam and (up to) another 150,000 across Laos and Cambodia that are specifically attributable to US forces.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 4h

By modern standards, that's quite a lot of civilian deaths, even if you spread them over an 8-10 year period. In WWII, it was not uncommon for a belligerent power to kill that many civilians in a few months.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 4h

That's an estimate from a 1995 report on total civilian deaths in Vietnam between 1955 and 1975. How many of those were killed by Americans is harder to pin down; estimates vary from 4,000 to 10,000 civilians killed in massacres and anywhere from 65,000 to several hundred thousand in combat/bombing

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 5h

But even there, most of the bombs dropped by the US during the Vietnam war were attacks on troops in the field or supply chains in the PAVN's operational depth, whereas in WWII most air raids explicitly targeted cities. Bombing volumes dropped substantially in later conflicts when PGMs became common

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 5h

The US used more bombs in the Korean War than in the *Pacific theater* of WWII. Total US bomb use in WWII was more than double what was used in Korea, and nearly four times greater if you include British bombing efforts as well. The US did drop more bombs in Vietnam than WWII though.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 7h

That plus appreciating how much work it took for North Vietnam to fight the US to a standstill long enough for the war to become unpopular and for the US to eventually withdraw kinda requires some level of respect for US military power as a premise, and that's not really their thing either.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 8h

Given the very high quality of the French garrison and how green Giap's forces were, I think he can be cut a bit of slack. He was able to leverage better logistics and terrain against a qualitatively superior force and win a decisive battle that basically won half the country for the Communists.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 8h

If there's enough of a breeze for the SOTL to make ~5 or 6kts, it can just point its bow towards open seas and keep sailing until the oarsmen on the pursuing triremes collapse from exhaustion. Then the SOTL can accept their surrender without firing a shot.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 8h

If the battle in question takes place in open seas, for example, team trireme probably won't even show up.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 16h

IDF: lovely day of war criming, chevra! Great job all round. Except Berel, who deserted his post to try to fist-fuck a Palestinian teenager and almost got his whole squad killed. We should probably charge him or something. Kahanist politician: Berel the fist-fucking deserter is a national trteasure.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 16h

It's kind of wild that the more you look into Israeli politics: A) the more brutal and incompetent the IDF look compared to normal militaries B) the more domestic Israeli arguments you become aware of where somehow the IDF sounds like the voice of reason

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 16h

Also, an obscure theorist may not attract normies, but it also won't repel them and that's a very important part of the formula!

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 17h

Yeah, way too mainstream and also learning any specific facts about the PAVN seems to take the fun out of the rice farmer jokes or something.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 21h

"On the bright side, our forces have much more experience using commercial drones than the PLA!" "Wait, who makes those drones again?"

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 21h

Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia fighting China to a standstill in the border regions and first island chain while the PLA somehow drives the Russians back over the urals send post

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 21h

Also, let's be real. We've all seen how Russia fights. Even if the PRC's organizational problems are as bad as the most critical assessments suppose, Russia would get its ass kicked and start begging the US for help in 1-3 weeks.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 22h

If they built a movement around a guy who didn't suck, it would be way too mainstream and they'd probably end up marginalized by cooler and more normal group members.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 23h

If you can surprise a galleon/sotl in e.g. a harbour or river delta where it can't maneuver, your odds are decent but if the galleon gets out to open sea the galleys are in a bad spot. Just by continuing to move under sail, the galleon can probably keep the range open and exploit it with cannon fire

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 23h

Actually, it's a similar dynamic to the (main) reason handguns began to surpass war bows at about the same time; systems that can use something other than muscle power tend to have a significant advantage over systems that can't.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 23h

The galley needs a lot of sustained muscle power to reach and maintain its top speed. As the oarsmen get tired, sick and hungry, its performance is going to drop off a lot faster than the galleon. Galleys might challenge galleons in coastal waters but would struggle to pursue them to open seas.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

You might in the abstract be able to build 100 triremes for the cost of one ship of the line (I feel like you'd run into some bottlenecks but let's put that aside). Whether you could catch a force of sailing ships with any number of your triremes is a different question (answer is probably no).

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

At their most critical, they still go out of their way to insist that Trump's actions are perfectly normal expressions of long-standing US policy. At their least critical, they talk about how Trump's illiberal behavior removes the veil from the true nature of US intentions.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It's not so much pro-Russia or anti-USA as anti-liberal, IMO. If a country/gov is coded as liberal, it's bad (even if the actual country isn't particularly liberal, see Israel). If it's coded as anti-liberal, it's good. The US is bad when governed by lib-coded people and neutral to good when not

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It's not clear to me if Tom has picked up on this, however.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Michael seems to be using "realism" to mean "accepting that the constraints of the real world sometimes preclude our ideal outcomes" and idealism to mean the opposite. But in the Ukrainian context, advocating negotiations with Russia is premised on Putin being open to them, which he simply is not.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

"I just found it so touching when the protagonist decided to celebrate the achievements of Socialist labour by naming his firstborn son 'Potassium.'"

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I just think it's amusing that roughly 0% of the people who tell you they enjoy Soviet art have ever managed to read a single socialist realist novel cover to cover. Which is a shame! I'd love to hear them gush over novel about Russian civil war veterans heroically meeting their concrete quotas.

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Reposted by Birb_at_Arms

finrodsauronvorecommissionfolderabsurdres @yungdreyfusard.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

to be perfectly honest i think assad and his allies probably have more to do with the half a million dead on account of them being the people physically dropping the bombs and shooting the bullets

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Commanded, yeah, but I'll go out on a limb and assume a majority of officers on both sides of most of these were non-WP grads

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It probably wouldn't have made a difference if the figures were reversed, either, because the Union and Confederate armies needed so many officers yesterday that a thousand-odd West Point graduates were probably a drop in the bucket.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Teargas makes sense if the Russians brought a lot of riot control kit in anticipation of putting down unrest after their quick military victory, then needed to find a use for it when that didn't happen. Sarin would be another thing entirely!

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Heavier-than-air gas can for sure seep into underground shelters, but the very low density of troop formations in Ukraine and the small payloads of drones lower the impact substantially. Sarin in particular is also a very volatile substance that takes quite a lot of effort to kill one guy at a time

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Yeah, I found a story from 2023 about a Russian brigade commander admitting his troops used drones to drop tear gas grenades to try to smoke Ukrainian troops out of trenches. I guess that kinda makes sense, but also I've been tear-gassed and I feel like I'd prefer that to actual grenades.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Maybe the Russians think it will scare the Ukrainians, maybe they're just using whatever and hoping for the best, or maybe

"We are lucky they are so fucking stupid"

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It's a bit odd that Russia is using chemical weapons in Ukraine, but it does seem to really happen at least occasionally! Which is bizarre, because the Ukrainian battlefield is not at all the sort of place where CW are effective and regular explosives are almost certainly better in this context.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Wondering whether to credit the SBU or AvtoVAZ for this one

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"The affirmation beam is guaranteed to change the number of cancer cells in all patients' bodies" "Does it increase or decrease the number of cancer cells?" "That's the neat part, it's different every time!"

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

If nothing else, I think this would make a Soviet campaign *significantly* more interesting

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I think Paradox should seriously consider hiring the guy behind the "True Imperial Japan Experience" ruleset if they get around to making another HOI. Or try to go for more of a CKII angle where you play some guy (e.g. the head of the military) and have to manage political support to keep the job.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I'm pretty sure at minimum 90% of Gatineau and like half of Montreal would be out in the streets demanding that Ottawa send in the Army again, too.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I don't think you're a secret fascist, I think you're an idiot.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's wild to me that people like you watched your country elect an actual fascist and all you dorks can think of to do is loudly deny that he is in any way unusual.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I can give several possible answers. The most straightforward is that it's mainly Israel that wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the hotels are the bribe Trump demands in exchange for helping. It's also possible he thinks Palestinians are dirty or otherwise distasteful and bad for business.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I would like you to answer my question first

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Do you think that expelling people of a particular ethnicity to build a tourist resort counts as ethnic cleansing? If so, why?

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I wonder why they think they have to fuck up the labour market to do this. Even if you restrict yourself to the English-speaking world, you've got literally hundreds of millions of women to recruit from. Surely, you can find like eight or nine who are willing to do this if the pay/benefits are OK.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Are you deliberately begging the question or can you just not read well enough to follow the argument?

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If you want to tell me there's no difference in the intent one can infer between A) someone saying that ethnic cleansing was a great business opportunity and B) someone calling for the protection of civilians ...then you're free to do so, I guess, but you shouldn't expect that to be convincing.

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