Shit excuse. It takes more effort not to march in unison.
It’s also something that is taught in UK army, since the collapsing bridge incident.
Wild first point but we’ll ignore it.
What is the collapsing bridge incident?
I think this is what they are referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge.
TL;DR: The bridge collapsed because soldiers marching on it created force they hadn’t anticipated, soldiers breaking step supposedly don’t have as much of an impact.
It’s common knowledge that soldiers don’t walk in unison on bridges. It dates back to 1831.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge
Same thing happened in France twenty years later:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge
It also postponed the opening of a bridge in London by two years in 2000:
London Bridge falling down, falling down, falling down?
deleted by creator
These soldiers spend their days doing important work to defend our nation.
The U.S. military has done nothing to defend their “nation” for over 100 years. They ONLY defend the corporate oligarchs’ ability to steal resources and use slave labor in third world countries.
Lmao yet Ukraine still stands thanks to American intelligence and military apparatus.
I’m not even an American but this kindergarten sentiment in Lemmy is so exhausting.
Are you suggesting that kindergarten political thought is somehow less valid? You must hate children!
It’s possible that you’re overestimating the US contribution
And then promptly fucked right out of peace negotiations immediately after signing the resources deal. Fits perfectly well with
They ONLY defend the corporate oligarchs’ ability to steal resources and use slave labor in third world countries.
Yeah you get a lot of these ‘moral purity absolutists’ with all the nuance of an edgy teen. Some of them, or course, are edgy teens, but 100 years is a super odd choice even so. You’d think by the time they were 13 they’d have heard of at least one war that came pretty close to defense against a malign hegemonic power with ambitions of global domination…
It really reminds me how I felt when I was an edgy 16-year old but luckily for me social media wasn’t really a thing yet so it didn’t bother anyone.
Must have forgotten that Ukraine became a US state, these edgy kids
Lmao yet Ukraine still stands thanks to American intelligence and military apparatus.
Which they provide exactly as long as they profit exponentially from it. Dont pretend like the US would provide foreign aid out of generosity.
I am of the mindset that a good thing done for selfish reasons is still ultimately a good thing done.
Me too, but that still doesnt contradict the comment above drmoose’s
I never said it did, I’m just offering perspective.
Looking at the conflicts they have been explictly or covertly involved in, it does seem like they are attempting to create a hegemony. That’s not to say that some good doesn’t get done along the way but it is more of a byproduct than the intent.
But… Ukraine falling to Russia would strengthen the US’s military (and cultural) hegemony over the western world. If this truly was the rationale behind the US’s involvement in Ukraine, everything we’ve done thus far would make absolutely zero sense. Strengthening Ukraine and spurring investment into the home-grown EU defense industry only serves to weaken our position as the lynchpin of NATO. A better justification for US involvement in Ukraine is that this is a great opportunity to starve Russia’s economy by forcing them into conflicts they cannot economically support (which was much the same strategy that lead to the collapse of the soviet union).
It’s also a great opportunity for Russia to starve the US economy by getting them involved in conflicts it cannot economically support. And the US is far more overextended due to other conflicts.
You might have a point if the US were fighting in Ukraine, but… we’re not? We’re advising the Ukraine army, sharing intelligence we’d be gathering anyways and giving AFU a bunch of export weapon systems we found by rummaging around in the pentagon’s couch cushions. This has been a spectacular opportunity for the US because it costs us almost nothing, yet what used to be considered our biggest opponent is teetering on the brink of cultural and economic collapse. Seriously, even if Kiev were to fall tomorrow NATO would be no-contest the victor. Nobody cares about the bear any more.
You might have a point if the US were fighting in Ukraine, but… we’re not?
Yes, we’re just sacrificing their lives for the realpolitic of weakening Russia, which is also bad.
we found by rummaging around in the pentagon’s couch cushions… it costs us almost nothing
Lmao, y’all actually believe this shit.
The US spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on the military, more than the next nine countries in the world combined. Every government program designed to actually help people gets cut to feed more money into the war machine. It’s no wonder we have “military equipment between our couch cushions,” because military equipment is what virtually all our tax money goes towards, when it’s the reason we can’t have things like free healthcare or higher education. Notice how we never seem to find money between our couch cushions for those things?
what used to be considered our biggest opponent
Did it? Who considered the Russian Federation a bigger opponent than the PRC?
is teetering on the brink of cultural and economic collapse
Looked in a mirror lately? The US just elected Trump, in part because people think he represents an alternative to the disastrous establishment policies that pour endless money into pointless foreign wars, and to an economy that is working for fewer and fewer people. Seems like “on the brink of cultural collapse” describes the US to a T.
But moreover, the whole American Empire is falling apart around us. Every year, more and more countries that are just as significant as Ukraine are choosing to make deals with China, to start trading and cooperating with them instead of us. Because the US is trying to rule the world through force and intimidation, while China is manufacturing consumer goods and building hospitals and infrastructure for developing and middle-income countries - the things we won’t even build domestically. Who would want to side with us when you can look at our domestic situation and see that it’s declining and awful? If that’s the best we can provide our own citizens, then what could we offer to other countries?
If I were an “accelerationist,” like people sometimes baselessly accuse me of, I would 100% support spending more on the military and getting involved in these stupid unwinnable conflicts all over the world, dumping endless amounts of money towards any situation we can use bombs and not sparing a penny for actually making anyone’s life better, because those self-destructive policies will ensure the downfall of the US more than anything else could. The problem with that being, the US is likely to start WWIII in that scenario, the more clear it becomes that the military is literally the only tool that we could possibly use to maintain hegemony, since it’s the only thing we spend money on.
Oh boy. Only have time for a top three, so in no particular order:
Who considered the Russian Federation a bigger opponent than the PRC?
… Literally everyone. China was aligned as a ‘follower’ of the Russian Federation’s geopolitical lead prior to russia’s utter stomping in Ukraine. Was it incorrect? Well, obviously. But the image of the great russian bear was the specter keeping the western world up at night.
Looked in a mirror lately? The US just elected Trump
A blatant whatabboutism but just to address it: The US will be fine (diminished geopolitcally no doubt, but still in a powerful position) after this all gets sorted out internally. We survived the last trump admin, we’ll come through this one too. This just isn’t the fall of the roman empire like oh so many people are claiming, politically it just doesn’t even resemble it.
building hospitals and infrastructure for developing and middle-income countries - the things we won’t even build domestically.
I… what? We opened half a dozen hospitals in my state alone last year. Additionally, you know the US has been the world’s largest source of charity and investment in developing nations for decades, right? Look you’re repeating lines from some seriously anti-china propaganda here and it’s a little weird. You know about trump canceling USAID and why that’s bad, right?
There’s lots of things to criticize the US on (and it’s something I do all the time, lets be clear) but you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
(Okay, honorable mention because I just can't with this shit:)
when it’s the reason we can’t have things like free healthcare or higher education.
The reason we don’t have healthcare is fascism, not “military spending taking all the money”. We could 100% have free uni and healthcare without reducing a cent to the pentagon’s budget. In many states we even have (limited) free healthcare, entirely funded by state budgets. You’re just repeating bullshit right-wing talking points like they’re objective truth, but with a lefty spin on them.
They can dEfEnD oUr NaTiOn against brown peasants, but can’t march in step because they apparent forget how to do so after basic training? Shit, it’s been over 20 years since my military service and I’m 100% sure I could still manage to march in step
It’s been over 20 years since I was in marching band and I could absolutely do it. But not play a woodwind. That takes practice…
Same, but whacking stuff with a stick is generally easier
I can play a woodwind just as well as these guys were marching.
Even the most drunk idiots at any of our small villages folk festivals can do that for hours, without any training. It’s not hard ffs.
I was only in JROTC 20+ years ago and I’m pretty sure I can march in step.
Sounds like it was too loud to hear the cadence by the reviewing stand. I don’t think it was an ability jssue or an apathy issue.
Even then you’d expect them to be able to march in step with each other even if they can’t hear some cadence.
Like I said in another comment, I think it’s just more likely they did the bare minimum because they absolutely didn’t give a fuck about being performing monkeys for King Trump
You need some kind of cue to keep in step. If you can see the other guys feet, that helps, but often tinted you can’t. The sound of yourself matching helps, but without some occasional cadence, or other governing factor, the speed of the match tends to change in a collective sort of way. My BMT platoon would get faster as we marched, unless the DI shouted at us occasionally.
That may be; but how many of those people just didn’t fucking care because of the dress and deportment of leadship?
I mean personally I think that’s more likely to be the real reason – they mostly looked they just didn’t give a flying fuck and didn’t want to be there.
I just find these justifications of “well they’re busy defending our nation so they don’t learn marching” idiotic
Go to a concert and you might hear people clapping along to a song. All they have to do is meet their hands at the proper time, at speed. Some people are a half second off, and they don’t have to maintain distance, stave off boredom, or consider their stride. Humans kinda suck without practice
One of the ships I was posted had to have the entire crew practice marching before a parade for freedom of the city. But we had come off of deployment not long ago.
I find the parade itself more than idiotic. It’s anti-American and counter to our very principles.
Fuck how they marched. You can have your comments but holy shit it pisses me off that you’re focusing on how they marched instead of on the abject evil forcing them to do it in the first place.
I just think it’s odd that they’re not wearing class A’s or even B’s
When I was in 20+ years ago they didn’t even want us stopping for gas off-post in our BDU’s on the way home from work
Wearing white parade gloves in that uniform also just looks weird
I thought that was weird, too. I wonder why?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Last time they did a parade was back in '91 after the first Gulf War, they wore a combat uniform then as well but also wearing their LBE
But that was just after the ending of actual major combat operation, so it wasn’t entirely out of place to wear the desert uniforms that were worn for that particular theater of operation
I’m not sure why they chose combat uniforms for Trump’s parade, maybe Trump requested them or it was a bargaining olive branch to the troops from the brass to try to keep participation high since dress uniforms are much less comfortable to wear in parades and require more effort on the part of the soldiers to prep
I know we always did our best to avoid those kinds of events that required them
My assumption was to try and make the troops look more menacing as a message to places like LA, really hoping for an NK dear leader style ass kissing but just got to hear the squeaking of a Sherman instead.
I would bet money that this was a protest of their own. They didn’t want to be shown as North Koreans and be used as a tool like that. I appreciate what they did.
“Defend our nation” by starting wars to keep rich people rich?
no sometimes they start wars to get rich people richer
but for reals its not the soldiers starting wars its the higher ups and the people who make weapons who start wars
It’s crazy that the people involved for the most noble (to them) reasons are the ones most likely to be pulling triggers and/or getting killed, while the ones starting the war for evil reasons typically come out ahead as long as they are willing to ignore the mountain of bodies in their wake. (cue narrator)
Or as a wise man once said:
Why don’t presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor? Why don’t presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor? Why do they always send the poor? Why do they always send the poor?
the bottom line is money nobody gives a fuck
Unfortunately I think you are correct.
it is what Serj says in SOAD’s song Boom!
great music video for that btw
It is soldiers who willingly join that organization, knowing the same or more as we know. So they are as morally bancrupt as their leadership
Unironically yes. You don’t get to be the center of the universe without showing up on the periphery to kick someone else’s nuts in from time to time.
This is a false dichotomy, as though you can either be productive or learn to march. Obviously you could do both.
Broadly speaking, yeah. We send every member of the US Army through “Basic Training” even though 95% of them will never actually fire a gun or climb over a fence or jog ten miles in the rain for the rest of their careers.
Parade March is a thing we don’t bother to drill into units (except specifically tasked “Parade Units” that exist to do little circus acts for the high command’s amusement). But we could do it instead of the GI Joe training for the private class janitorial staff if we felt like it.
The bigger picture is that the US Military is a fountain of economic waste, social abuse, and pointless bloodshed in the name of machismo. Trump’s parade is just the cherry on a seven layer cake of squandered national wealth.
But it’s the thing liberals will fixate on, because we can’t ever actually say “The Pentagon sucks ass and makes the world an objectively worse place to live in”. It always has to be about this one Great Man Of History doing things wrong in a way his hypothetical liberal alternative would not.
Parade March is a thing we don’t bother to drill into units (except specifically tasked “Parade Units” that exist to do little circus acts for the high command’s amusement).
That is not accurate.
https://youtu.be/aeFltEjzR2Y?t=1212
Soldiers utilize D&C every day, by and large. Even when running. Its how soldiers are moved, as a group, from point A to point B.
No, you can NOT learn to march like they do in North Korea or China and have any time left in your day to do an actual job or even train to fight. That crap takes time.
Um… That is nothing like the pageantry they put on on North Korea and China.
I guess no, they cant learn to goose step, that quickly, because US troops dont goose step when marching.
That video is just some guys walking in sync (on my tax dollar). Have you seen an NK parade?
You can. And they do.
It’s very important for soldiers to focus on doing “important work to defend our nation” (murdering brown kids) and that they’re “productive at their jobs” (bombing hospitals)
I came here for this but found people already pointing it out.
DeFeNdInG as seen by everyone else: going to places 5k km away and murdering every living thing there.
VeTeRaNs as seen by everyone else: steroid micro-penis assholes murdering women & children
The bravest and most honorable men in our nation are doing the hard, honest work of fucking all those military wives while their chud husbands are deployed abroad.
Trump just needs to up his dictator game and threaten everyone involved, especially the leadership, with jail time or dishonorable discharge if they don’t shape up and goose-step properly.
When has the US military defended the nation? I got the impression that they’re mostly used for invading foreign countries for financial gain, cf Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Guatemala, Korea.
Yeah. That’s kind of America’s whole thing. Making money. Exploiting everything. Americans are the Ferengi.
Defending America = defending capitalism = doing whatever they can to make American, capitalist companies more profitable.
I don’t hate capitalism. Don’t get me wrong, but I generally don’t like capitalists.
Capitalists are what makes capitalism capitalism. How can you hate one without the other?
No one is immune to propaganda
The same way I don’t hate Christianity but most Christians drive me up a wall.
The concepts can be good, valid and even the best option in some cases, but the way it’s weilded can be dramatically different based on the person wielding it.
You are comparing apples and oranges with your explanation.
Religion and belief are two separate things.
Christians drive you up a wall because of their beliefs not because of their religion.
This is not the same as hating capitalists but not capitalism.
Not saying you’re wrong in general but we didn’t invade Kuwait.
Fair, taking it off the list. It just comes up naturally when I list the horrible things the US has done bc of the highway of death. Still an example of the US military not defending the US, but definitely not an invasion of Kuwait. Thanks for the correction, I was sloppy!
This is what Americans call “defending the nation”; making war in other countries than their own, believing themselves to be the world police.
I think America has only ever been attacked… Twice… In all of history (Pearl Harbour and 9/11), and both times the defense was pretty piss poor.
America was attacked hundreds of times. The native people lost.
I’m not sure either of these events can even be counted as an attack. Pearl Harbour is roughly 3800km from the mainland. It’s basically an overseas territory. An attack there is like saying the Falkland War was an attack on the UK.
And 9/11 was a terrorist attack, not a war. While it was a big attack, it was still only carried out by a handful of non-state-actors. That’s quite a different thing than an actual military attack by a country.
Afaik, the last war on US soil was the civil war.
Hawaii was not a state for almost 2 decades after pearl harbor, so yeah.
The original white house was burned to the ground by British/Canadian troops in 1814.
Not to mention about 100 different American Indian Wars, though some of those were more slaughter than war.
Invasion is the defense.
My volunteer fire department was able to march in sync in parades despite having enjoyed a few adult beverages beforehand. What the Army did had to be deliberate.
Russians be like “they can’t march, maybe they can’t even clean a toilet bowl with their fork or fuck and tortue a child, we totally win”
If they dislike Trump so much, they had like, you know, all their tanks there and stuff, they should have just removed him from office.
They were mostly like WW2 tanks from what I saw. I’m sure their weapons systems were dismantled or decommissioned
Those tanks were museum pieces.
I think it was probably in protest. However they can, I guess.
On a fucking Saturday too. They wanted to be with their loved one probably.
I woulda filed a chit for gastro or something.
gotta stroke shitler’s ego.
