this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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[–] blahsay 51 points 10 months ago

Q: How can they keep Putin at bay?

A: Probably the same way as usual

[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

This article brought to you by someone who doesn't understand current era military technology and training and fundamentally doesn't understand warfare.

Former military here and if I get a 70 year old willing to do paperwork for the army so I can move one more person to labour intensive operations, you bet your ass that old man is getting a pay cheque (assuming he passes the medical quals)

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (3 children)

OP constantly spreads pro-Russian propaganda.

[–] HollandJim 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Don't know that they've broken any World News rules. You'd have to ask the mods.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Lemmy has been getting hit hard with the propos too

[–] Alteon 2 points 10 months ago

I love putting notes on people. Helps me catch trends. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Just curious, why would you need medical quals for paperwork?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Military job == military target. That means their place of work is a lot more liable to be bombed or attacked, and they're going to have to be able to react quickly in order to move to safety, possibly including personal firearms training.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

The comment by 520 is pretty much spot on. In the event our office areas are attacked every single person in uniform is considered a rifleman, regardless of age gender or creed it is expected that you are to pick up a rifle and return fire as needed or assist with moving injured personnel to a safer location.

An example of medical qualification is wisdom teeth. A fun fact about the military I served with, every single person has their wisdom teeth pulled and gets a shop lecture on proper dental hygiene. The reason for this is so that we don’t have to send a team of 8-10 to return a person from the front due to wisdom teeth issues or hygiene issues causing health problems.

[–] Chickenstalker 2 points 10 months ago (5 children)

No. Use WOMEN for all non-combat roles. Heck, use WOMEN as DRONE OPERATORS. Farm out the job to WOMEN to pilot drones from the comfort of their living rooms. WOMEN.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah because they're too dumb and inferior to do those combat roles, that's a man's job! Make them run the mess halls and fix the uniforms!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

They already do, just not compulsively.

Also war is a very conservative sphere of human activity. A woman wearing a uniform and being a service member is under worse risks than a man, even if she only did paperwork.

[–] fox2263 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can women not be in combat roles?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Women can take any role in any NATO military. The reality is that very few women who can pass the entrance qualifications wants to continue service when they can get more money and respect from any other job.

This isn't a 'women get disrespected in the military' note, this is an objective review that anyone who does service in the military is a number and is intentionally approached with minimal appreciation of their human rights and dignity because that can cause problems in the field (not to mention in most militaries, if not all, you sign away your rights as a person for training as a weapon). If the officer says 'take the hill and die' it's expected that you are to take the hill and die. It does NOT matter whether or not you do paperwork, drone work, or are a combat arms trade, your superiors have to keep you at arms length so they can sacrifice you easily should the need arise.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Any woman who can do even remotely well in the military can do any other job for vastly superior pay and far more control of their lives.

Unless you're going to push a neutral requirement for service of both sexes, no amount of bitching or complaining will ever increase the number of women in the military because they don't have to sacrifice their health and welfare for a paycheque anywhere near as hard, it's an option to them and not one they would willingly take when any other job that requires the same performance standard can pay more with better time and more respect than the military.

Pretending otherwise is intellectually dishonest or the position of someone who has never performed military service and likely never will.

It's not a male dominated occupation because men inherently prefer destroying their bodies and minds with overexposure to violence and extreme physical labour with one of the highest rates of injury and death just from the training alone, it's because it's a job easily accessible to middle or lower educated individuals that can provide an effective specialization and education that could be applied in a civilian setting.

A male and female with the same education and physical fitness standard have drastically different occupation opportunities at the mid to low end of the education spectrum, and women tend to have higher level opportunities across the board, specifically ones which do not destroy them.

This is the educated opinion of a woman who's done close to a decade of grunt service in the military and another decade in the military industrial complex.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Let's say there's a pair of new parents, and that they don't have family support. This is already a common reality for many new families.

Let's say that now there's a mandated enlistment because of a war. Which parent will go? Will they play rock paper scissors, or will they have to trust the government to randonly decide for them? Is it ethical for the government to decide who goes? Is it ethical for them to make new parents make that choice?

If they're both going, who will care for the young child? I certainly wouldn't trust strangers to watch babies en masse if the parents would be gone for a very long time at minimum.

Maybe mandated enlistment isn't where it's at, and maybe we should also be making sure that we're giving people a reason to want to fight for their country again. Laws against fleeing will only do so much when we have such a large planet.

Do you do a better job when you're forced to do something, or do you do a better job when you're passionate about something?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You realize that instead of actually addressing anything that mattered in my statement you focused exclusively on an example that would not function from presentation?

Why do you think volunteer armies are superior to conscripted armies?

Can you read through what I wrote please.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

If that's sarcasm, can you put a /s please?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wow, agism much? I’m no young kid, but I bet I can strategize most of them right off a chess board. War isn’t all that different.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I guess so that physical training they put soldiers through is just for fun.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You mean grabbing Russian prisoners and throwing them on the battlefield with half a clip and a grenade?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nowadays it's no clip and half a grenade

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

An M-80 and a butter knife.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I guess that means there's a huge pool of younger Ukrainians still to pull from for the military? I'm guessing that's a good thing for their long term recruiting prospects.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Correct. Ukraine's current conscription age is 27. They're discussing reducing it to 25 though.

[–] JustUseMint 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Woah that's way older than I would've expected

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's for being mobilized. I think their mandatory service age is the same as in most ex-Soviet countries.

[–] JustUseMint 1 points 10 months ago

I mean yeah sure, mobilized, that's like 18 in the US lol was expecting that more so haha

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

It's the opposite. The pool of young people to pull from is smaller everyday.

In this regard, Russia has the advantage where they can just keep throwing more and more bodies into the war without major unrest. Luckily Wagner is gone, as they had the human wave then special forces combo down to a science, but the problem of Russia having exponentially more manpower at their disposal remains unless they begin drafting all Women between ages 18 - 60. Which will likely never happen.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/19/europe/ukraine-difficulties-in-military-recruitment-intl/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/europe/ukraine-war-army-women.html

[–] Kumabear 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I don’t agree that this is necessarily a weakness or that it’s overly strange.

While they might not be able to quite hit the peak fitness of someone in their 20’s and 30’s, you also gain a large amount of meaningful mental fortitude as you get older.

In short you have seen more shit and dealt with more shit. So generally you can bear more headship and pain before breaking, also probably less prone to discipline issues, and the older ones likely provide a good example to the rest.

In a war for the survival of your nation all able bodied people are needed. There are naturally more older people than there are younger ones.

[–] Yewb 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] JustUseMint 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It is for a service member.

[–] Yewb 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I mean if my country was getting attacked I would volunteer at any age.

[–] JustUseMint 7 points 10 months ago

I don't diasagree by any means. Just stating it's old to be a soldier.

[–] maness300 -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Eh. I'd look at why we're getting attacked, the likelihood of us winning, and what's at stake if we lose.

The unfortunate reality of war is that it's usually the smart people who flee while the simpletons stay behind and kill each other.

Yeah, my family (whose intelligence I hold in high regard) raised me saying "don't go off and die in a war." I'd imagine a lot of other intelligent families did the same.