Americans Perceive Their Political Opposites As Ready For Violence, Poll Shows | Talking Points Memo

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I think Marvin won the Academy Award for Cat Ballou?

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Yup…

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He was great in Point Blank. Underrated movie. Mel Gibson in Get Carter basically the same thing.

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Only with a bayonet attached. Issueing the fodder bullets served to give them the confidence to go over the top and close to stabbing range. The sgts and lieuts behind them with multiple round weapons also was rather motivational. Artillery and most especially machine guns ruled those battlefields. That the allies didn’t sit back and let the germans smash their heads against an inpenetrable wall was a crime against humanity, but the victors don’t prosecute their own.

PS. That war was won on economics. Germany was starving.

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Nope. The vast majority of rifle combat occurs between 100 and 200 yards. Anything farther is just wishful thinking without optical sights, an appropriate zero, and much practice.

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All wars are won (or lost) on economics and logistics.

ETA: We are literally taught that in officer school. As the saying goes: amateurs study tactics, pros study logistics.

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I always assumed that the Gore campaign believed–to its and our nation’s/world’s detriment–that both sides were playing by the same rules.

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I don’t speak Russian of course (if I did I’d be bragging about it), but those who do report that the Russian state radio is NOT backing trump and being cautiously courteous with their remarks about Biden. Putin sees no benefit in deliberately offending the man who will probably be president.

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or even worse, hit the barn from the inside.

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That should read economics or logistics or overwhelming force. Of course, logistics contributes to the application of overwhelming force, such as in both American-Iraq wars. But superior economics and logistics did not win the American-Vietnam war. The Germans did not lose WWI on the battlefield (unless you count von Kluck’s turn in 1914 which blew their opportunity to apply overwhelming force), and their logistics were improving as they straightened their lines in 1918, and figured out defense in depth years before the allies did (not sure they (we) ever did during that war). They sued for peace because the population was starving and the Kaiser was sitting uneasy on his throne. The economic blockade worked; Germany was never set up for a 4+ year war and would not have started one if they knew that was coming.

Regardless, IMO the single-action bolt rifle was largely a prop, until within bayonet range. Still better than a musket.

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Add to that the fucking TV networks who could not bring themselves to say, “The exit polls were dead accurate in measuring how people thought they had voted. If we allocate Pat Buchanan’s butterfly ballot votes in the same proportions as the adjacent counties, the exit polls are accurate to four significant digits.”

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Not trying to start an argument, but no. Overwhelming force is irrelevant without the logistics to put them into the right place at the right time. Excellent logistics without a supporting economy or overwhelming force to transport is ineffective.

The Vietnam war was not a conventional war. In asymmetrical wars, the rules are different. Nor did the US ever deploy overwhelming force in North Vietnam, instead opting to “increase the price of resistance” (a strategy that doesn’t even work with small children) by defending the wholly arbitrary “South” Vietnam. Historically Vietnam had been divided into three areas–when Ho got the French and Americans to treat it as two distinct areas, he guaranteed Vietnamese independence. Also, the Vietnamese had been fighting for independence (mostly from China) for more than 930 years. We weren’t going to bowl them over with helicopters and armored personnel carriers. FYI, Colonel Summers got it wrong.

The Germans lost because their railroad gage didn’t match the French gage (which was still the case the last time I was in France in 1999) and so their rolling stock had to be unloaded at the border and placed on horse-drawn wagons, which strictly limited the range and capacity of their support to ground forces.

The Germans had lost all of their allies and were going it alone against superior allied forces who had better logistics and stronger economies.

Not really. The bolt-action magazine-fed infantry rifle powered by smokeless powder was a huge step up from black powder muzzle loaders, trap door single shots, needle guns, and any other outdated small arms. Massed infantry rifle fire was still a thing in 1914. What had not been foreseen was the effectiveness and availability of platoon level machine guns, particularly against the same massed infantry tactics that had prevailed in the US Civil War. The Kar98 armed infantry squads basically existed to provide local security for the platoon GP machine guns, the MG08 and the upgraded MG08/15.

Less than a tenth of a percent of battlefield casualties were caused by bayonets. The major cause of battlefield casualties was (and is) artillery.

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I alluded above that overwhelming force is unlikely to happen without the logistics.

Yep. Vietnam (from our perspective; they describe it as “the american war”) was a colonial war. You don’t do one of those unless you’re willing to kill or imprison 25% of the locals, and do a couple weekly public salulatory executions. That’s what worked for the british empire for several centuries. BTW, after our successful overwhelming force removal of Saddam Hussein, what followed was another colonial war that we were unwilling to prosecute. We lost that one too. Colin Powell was right with his “pottery barn” statement, “if you break it, you bought it”. He usually spoke better than that, but I have to assume he tried to phrase his message in terms the white house could understand.

And yet they accomplished a rather effective blitzkrieg in 1940 with horse drawn wagons. I expect they knew of the gauge diffence before they planned the 1914 campaign. Von Kluck’s turn, again, or perhaps they had a master plan that demanded everything go perfectly.

Mmm, I think the kaiser feared his own head was near removal by his own people.

I said above it was a step up from the musket, but that does not make it good or effective. It’s best use in a picket is to fire a shot to signal that something’s wrong, here.

Historically Vietnam had been divided into three areas–when Ho got the French and Americans to treat it as two distinct areas, he guaranteed Vietnamese independence.

ETA: no argument with this.

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I completely agree with this.

Taking the time to pre-stock when you know you’re going to attack can paper over a number of fundamental problems.

Again, not looking to start an argument, but as a former practicing professional in this area, I have to say you are wrong. Infantry with rifles can hold ground that no other branch can. Nor does one start an urban battle without rifle-armed infantry.

If the rifle sucked, we’d just give people radios and call for artillery and air support.

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Absolutely agreed, with today’s army. Today’s infantry can do things that would give WW1 and WW2 commanders wet dreams. Plus, even in WW2 you don’t send armor into urban environments without infantry support, and not many other places either.

But I’m still saying, the WW1 bolt action rifle, even with a magazine feed, just wasn’t a very effective weapon.

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I think it’s really a matter of training and experience more than anything. I qualified on the Lee-Enfield .303 bolt action rifle while in the Australian cadet corps at the end of the '60s and my dad had owned one prior to that when we lived in the States, so I basically scored the needed points with the first clip. If you knew what you were doing, you could take someone out at well over 100 yards if they showed just a little of themselves, and it packed quite a punch.

Admittedly, the rate of fire was slower than the U.S. Garand, but the Enfield was a weapon that entered service in 1895, served in both WWI and WWII and they were still teaching us how to use it in the late '60s and early '70s. In fact, there are still some being carried by soldiers in some Commonwealth nations to this day.

A .303 or its equivalents wouldn’t stop a tank, and in the hands of conscripts and raw recruits the multi-shot weapons that came later such as the Garand and later the M-16 and AK47 proved more useful, but you don’t keep a weapon in service for over 100 years if it’s the failure you seem to think it was. Bolt action rifles have taken a pretty large number of lives over time, were rugged and hard to screw up. They’ve served us well…

(ETA: the bolt action U.S. rifle that preceded the Garand was the Springfield, which served through WWI and was still being phased out at the start of WWII. Even after the Garand entered service, the Springfield was retained as a sniper rifle through WWII and into the '70s because of its excellent range and accuracy. It was judged to be a very effective tool for the jobs it was assigned throughout its lifecycle…)

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No disagreement here, I’ve fired bolt action rifles at a range. My point is that in 1914-18, sending unarmored men over the top into barbed wire and machine guns and dialed in artillery; well, they were woefully underequipped until they got within grenade and stabbing range. Yes, I’m sure they they fired shots too. But once you got into the enemy trenches you most certainly didn’t want to get out of them (going over the top again).

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Yeah, in part, but all else being equal, Germany could have stood pat on Belgium and Northern France: the central problem of moving them would remain. Remember, WWI was so horrifying because defense was easy and offense was hard; once that balance changes, offense suddenly rules the day.

The French secret weapon? Tanks. Teeny, tiny precious little tanks that purred along at about 5 mph, but tanks, doing tank things that the Germans couldn’t effectively counteract: machineguns made no difference, neither did barbed wire. The tanks just kept coming, and so did the poilus walking behind them.

And the Americans. The French not only had tanks, but a powerful ally with loads of money, steel, and young men, giving their military the upper hand: even well-fed, Germany simply didn’t have the means to stop this new offense. Remember, the call for an Armistice was to keep the Allies off German soil–an implicit acknowledgement that Germany had no other way to stop them.

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Fair enough - I read your initial comment as a criticism of the tool, but it looks like you were aiming the comment at the tactics in which they were employed and as someone who had an uncle who was at Gallipoli, lost a leg on the Somme and lived out the rest of his life on crutches, the way the European nations fought WWI was criminal from start to almost the finish. Once the British started to get the tank right the madness came to an end, but the generals on both sides who thought they were still fighting the Colonial wars of their youth killed millions. Those same weapons, in the hands of both Germans and Allies, worked just fine throughout WWII, when used appropriately.

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