Oh, certainly. But even if I was granted a lifespan that lasted to the end of the human race, I'm pretty sure I'd die still being amazed at it.Dynast Brass said:
Apple Removes Civil War Games From App Store
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NephilimNexus said:
because by all means it was a justified war, for the wrong causes but justified and legal nonetheless.Dynast Brass said:
I wonder if you compare the number of American deaths in the Civil war, which is fucking ridiculous because it's a CIVIL WAR to the death toll amongst the indian tribes I think you will lose this argument every step of the way, because in this modern day I see a whole lot of Americans, Black or White, and next to no Indians (talking about the tribal people who lived in the Northern American continent not the ones who work the ICT departement).
True. Although to be fair, it seems like the South was banking on the idea that Lincoln didn't have the spine to prosecute a long war. They were hoping to bloody the Union's nose enough early on to where the North would lose popular support and just kind of let them go on their own way.Dynast Brass said:
In that context, it does make a kind of sense. That sort of scenario has played out before in other wars and rebellions. But they severely underestimated Lincoln's resolve, and that of his administration, and the degree to which the populace at large would support his prosecution of the war.
Still though, planning your whole strategy around the hope that the bigger, more populated, more industrialized nation in the war will just kind of go home after bloody it a few times is not generally a recipe for success.
The Spanish Inquisition only actually executed about 3,000-5,000 people in the 350 years it was active. It did investigate around 120,000 or so, and that investigation did involve various kinds of torture and coercion. So still a pretty horrible thing, but it doesn't even come close to the Civil War.NephilimNexus said:
The Crusades, yeah, those were pretty bad. The estimates of the total death-toll of the crusades between 1095-1291 CE is generally considered somewhere between 1-3 million people. If we take the low-end estimates, the Civil War isn't actually *that* far off. If we go with the highest estimate of 3 million, or some other higher estimates floating around like 4 or 5 million, keep in mind that was during a 200 year conflict between dozens of European and Middle-Eastern powers. We killed (by most estimates) between 600,000-800,000 of our own people by ourselves in just four years. That's still a damned impressive showing for a single nation split in half.
The Mongols are absolutely the kings of this particular mountain of corpses. Something like 30-40 million dead in like 150 years. That's pretty staggering.
The Black Death and the Spanish Flu aren't really fair as comparisons though. Those were pandemics. Those are always going to put any sort of human death-toll to shame. Humans *wish* they could kill other humans with the efficiency and thoroughness of a properly up and rolling pandemic. Mother nature ain't no joke, and these diseases are damned good at what they do. Disease is the human race's one true natural predator.
Not trying to make any of these other things seem less horrible. But for a single country (that split to become the two warring ones), and for a war that only lasted 4 years, the Civil War was dang unprecedented. That's also why the Civil War is so interesting historically. It was really a taste of the butchering heading Europe's way in World War I. For a lot of the same reasons, outdated tactics being forced up against more modern technology by officers who were not able to adapt to the times.
"Still though, planning your whole strategy around the hope that the bigger, more populated, more industrialized nation in the war will just kind of go home after bloody it a few times is not generally a recipe for success."
Worked for the USA in the first place, didn't it (i.e. prolong the fight long enough, hope for outside interference)
Worked for the Vietcong (against France and the USA).
Arguably working for ISIS right now.
And last I checked the Taliban are still around.
Worked for the Spanish against the French.
And there's always the "what if" question: What if, after the 1st Battle of Bull Run, the confederates had marched on Washington? That might have been enough to spook the North.
What if Lee, and not Grant, had come up with the idea of leaving his supply lines behind and living off the land (the devastation of which was the death knell for the Southern States)?
What if they'd abandoned direct confrontation and gone for guerrilla warfare?
If it was such a lopsided matchup then why did it take 4 years, and cost so much life?
Worked for the USA in the first place, didn't it (i.e. prolong the fight long enough, hope for outside interference)
Worked for the Vietcong (against France and the USA).
Arguably working for ISIS right now.
And last I checked the Taliban are still around.
Worked for the Spanish against the French.
And there's always the "what if" question: What if, after the 1st Battle of Bull Run, the confederates had marched on Washington? That might have been enough to spook the North.
What if Lee, and not Grant, had come up with the idea of leaving his supply lines behind and living off the land (the devastation of which was the death knell for the Southern States)?
What if they'd abandoned direct confrontation and gone for guerrilla warfare?
If it was such a lopsided matchup then why did it take 4 years, and cost so much life?
Kindasorta with the US revolution. The difference being that the we were a distant set of colonies far across the ocean that would have been a massive pain in the ass to govern even if the brits had decided to committ to the long war needed to bring us back to heel. Depending on how things went, it very likely would have led to another big war with France as well since they were using it as an opportunity to jab England in the eye by helping us. Basically, the thought that the war just wasn't worth it to England was the general plan for victory, but it involved other factors than "Let's just kill a lot of them and hope they go home."Zamina Zangalewa said:
It totally worked for the Vietcong, ISIS and the Taliban, but once again those are foreign invaders having to spend a significant amount of money and logistics just to cross half the world to reach you in the first place. That adds a whole other element on top of the war that makes that particular strategy more reasonable. The fact that Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are kind of worthless economically are another factor. The South held a majority of the US's agriculture, and ports like Mobile, New Orleans and Vicksburg were extremely important, and valuable, cities. There was a vested economic interest in bringing them back into the Union as well.
The problem with Lee is that while he was a brilliant general in a defensive battle, one of the best in our country's history, he was terrible when it was his turn to go on the offense. If the Confederacy had just played defense, held the line and refused to engage in offensive battles against the North, then they probably could have bled them into suing for peace. A smaller, less well-equipped army can multiply their effectiveness with proper defensive fighting. But, Lee tried to go on the offensive, and that campaign was an abysmal failure, and that was that.
Oh, it wasn't necessarily that lopsided. The Union had a clear superiority in manpower and industry, sure, but the South did still have a not-insignificant army and a large stockpile of arms and ammunition. So, the inherent weaknesses of the South's lack of manpower and industrial capability took some time to show through. On top of that, the Civil War was a war of conquest, the whole point was to seize cities, towns, railways and ports and bring them back into the fold, and those can be long, slow affairs with a lot of sieges. It took six weeks of siege for the Union to capture Vicksburg, for example. The whole city just holed up and held the line to the point where the Union had to finally starve them out.
It was such a slaughter for two reasons.
1: The generals on both sides were using outdated, Napoleonic tactics against armies using more modern weapons. Breech-loading rifles were coming into use during the Civil War, so were Gatling guns. On top of that, cannons of the time were becoming larger, more accurate and able to fire more deadly projectiles. When you have people applying oldschool tactics to more advanced weapons it is almost always an absolute slaughter, and in a lot of cases the officers giving the orders don't even think to change their tactics until the slaughter has already happened (see also: World War I).
2: Medicine at the time was very primitive, especially on the Confederate side. The idea that sanitation and cleanliness can help to prevent disease was only just starting to catch on, and germ-theory wouldn't even come into being until the early 1900's. Surgeries, especially military surgeries, were often done without anesthesia (since the whole concept of anesthesia was still pretty new), and that kind of stress, pain and shock can kill you by itself in the right circumstances. Mostly though, it was disease. More soldiers in the Civil War died from disease than from the actual fighting. Even outside of military hospitals, communicable diseases like typhoid, smallpox, tuberculosis and such ran rampant through the camps (once again, because the idea that sanitation could prevent disease was still in its infancy).