alt Hacker NewsIn chapter 11 of All Quiet on the Western Front Paul and his unit find an abandoned food cache in the middle of no mans land. Instead of secreting away the food back to their lines where they will have to share it, they decide to just cook and eat it right then and there. But a spotter plane from the allies sees the smoke and then begins shelling their position. Cue a terrifying, if hilarious, scene where the soldiers try and cook pancakes as shells explode around them. Paul, as the last to leave, takes his pancakes on a plate and dashes out, timing his escape between bursts, and just barely making it back to the German trenches. Its a rare comic scene in an otherwise horrific and very real look at WW1.
The scene in the book is just so familiar to the lines in Ukraine these days, nearly a hundred years later. Instead of spotter planes near the dawn of aviation, we have satellites and drones (similarly quite new in the role). Instead of just shells and fuzing experts, we have FPV drones and much more sophisticated shells. Instead of buddies from the same towns all huddled together in cold muddy holes, we have deracinated units spread far and wide in laying in fear of thermal imaging. This results in a no mans land again, but a dozen kilometers wide instead of a few hundred meters wide, and somehow more psychologically damaging.
My point is that absent any tech that will miraculously be invented and deployed widely in the new few weeks, the Iran war, if it should be a ground one, is going to be just like Ukraine is today, which is somehow a worse version of trench warfare.
Even casual Victoria II players know that WW1 is essentially the final boss of the game. And the 'lesson' of Vicky II is essentialy: Do not fight WW1, it ruins Everything.
To be clear: The US is choosing to fight a worse version of WW1 without even a stated (or likely even known) condition of victory. We're about to send many thousands boys to suffer and die for not 'literally nothing', but actually literally nothing.
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I'm not sure it will last long once we see a few videos of drone kill of US soldiers on /r/dronecombat
Ukraine must defend itself against an authoritarian Russia where nobody can publicly complain about what's happening.
This is not the case in the US, unless they go full dictatorship.
It’s difficult to imagine something more psychologically damaging than WWI trenches. Where can we read more about this?
> if it should be a ground one, is going to be just like Ukraine is today
I do not think this is correct. The problem in Ukraine is that anti-air defenses control the skies, so the only accurate long range fires are expensive missiles in short supply.
This seems to not be a problem in Iran. US forces can fly relatively cheap bomb trucks anywhere and drop ordinance on anything. Stealth aircraft and NATO doctrine apparently work.
I'm not advocating for a ground invasion, but there's no reason to believe it would go the way of Ukraine.
> Cue a terrifying, if hilarious, scene where the soldiers try and cook pancakes as shells explode around them.
In the 1974 movie The Four Musketeers, Athos needs to find a private place in which to impart some information to d'Artagnan. The musketeers are currently deployed battling some French rebels.
The solution he finds is to place a bet with another soldier that he and his friends will have breakfast inside a fortress that is being bombarded by the rebels. We see a similar comedy scene of five people attempting to cook and eat a meal while under attack. (Athos also struggles to get his information across, since the constant attacks understandably pull a lot of attention.)
> To be clear: The US is choosing to fight a worse version of WW1
The mental gymnastics required to be this specific and wrong and still believe this nonsense is truly incredible.
Trump already said he was just going to bomb all their infrastructure so the economy of the country couldn't function if they didn't negotiate and then it's just going to be a mass refugee crisis. It would be a mass refugee crisis anyway with a protracted ground invasion, but more Americans would die, so Trump is choosing to get it over with the easy way for America at least if they won't negotiate.
IMHO, This is pretty much the strategy the Khans used in the 13th century when they encountered arrogant Islamist Sultans emboldened with the bravery of their faith who refused to capitulate. They killed all the islamic people in Baghdad and then proceeded to fill all their canals and burn all their books. This decisively ended the Islamic golden age and Europe was able to survive after a very difficult 14th century where it would probably have been easily crushed by Islamists from the East had the Khans not set them back at least a few centuries. Truly one of the big turning points in World History.
Oh yeah, we can't do this to Russia because they have nukes, but the Ukrainians are trying to do it piecemeal.
This just came up yesterday in the sauna with a bunch of dudes. Everything feels unique and special, but we're just repeating history again. Nothing about this situation is actually unique. Change a few names, a few numbers like the year or GPS coords, but most everything today is just history repeating itself.
Don't let capitalism convince us to do bad stuff cuz it makes us feel like the moment is special. It isn't. There is a tomorrow. It will be yesterday soon enough.
Well, no, the goal is very clear - try to somehow make reps not lose next election and take focus away from PDF files