For pure numbers killed, i think russia wins. For efficiency per body dropped... When was the last time the Americans fully, like, won a war? Because it wasnt in my or my parents' lifetime.

And they got their asses handed to them pretty badly by guys who didnt all have shoes a couple times since their last win.

I mean, it's not like we see our intellectual best come from the military. Most of them become fucking pigs and abusers.

Unless you're trans

Russia hasn't got a death count near the US.
The US has lost everything after WW2, and there they played a small role despite the Hollywood fantasy depictions.
(I forgot the heroic victory against Grenada)

Or the humanitarian missions delivering food or supplies sometimes. Most of the time it's sit around and look threatening enough that trade is protected. That's not really a defense, it's ultimately a tool protecting American capital and propping up a failing system, just saying that most of the expense doesn't go to murdering brown people.

Most of the time it’s sit around and look threatening enough that trade is protected.

What? where would that be?

And in no way that is protecting trade the biggest part of their horrible activities.
Unless it's drug trade like cocaine in the contra scandal or heroin from Afghanistan.

russia hasn't

Oh im counting deaths on voth sides.

Well they actually fought the nazis

The americans did too! They just, y'know, put their leadershio in charge of everything post-war.

Surprising number of people come out as trans in the military. The fucking Airforce has a shocking number of them. It's a very strange place that has a curious way of cracking your egg, despite what would seem to be a host of disincentives.

Might have something to do with the way the military has become a magnet for the technically savvy and experimental, because they've got such enormous stockpiles of hardware and (ahem) armies of people needed to engineer and maintain it all. The military is overflowing with broke smart people, stashed all over the mechanics bays and flight decks and logistics offices of its sprawling bureaucracy.

Or the humanitarian missions delivering food or supplies sometimes.

Former Green Beret Recounts Horrors at ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ Aid Sites

We played this game in Afghanistan and Iraq as well. Not to mention Haiti, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, ... the list goes on. Great book on it that came out recently - The Fort Bragg Cartel - which initially revolved around US military officers trafficking Afghani heroin sold by the Northern Alliance back to the States under the cover of aid convoys and relief efforts. But it goes down a rabbit hole of cut-out organizations and black ops networks employed by the US for all sorts of sabotage, spying, and assassination work.

Most famously, there was the fake CIA vaccination campaign that was used to hunt Osama bin Laden, and poisoned millions of people against the idea of western medical aid workers as benevolent agents.

most of the expense doesn’t go to murdering brown people

At its heart, every one of these campaigns is intended to facilitate the murder of foreign adversaries (most commonly, brown people - try not to dig too deeply into why). Whatever kindness they provide is only to facilitate some act of terror in the near or distant future.

He never pulled a trigger.

He joined the SS in 1932 and was tasked with event security for political rallies which routinely became violent. And then he rose through the ranks of an organization dedicated to covert violence very quickly. So, I wouldn't bank on that.

They only entered when it was certain the Soviets would win and get all of Europe.
The allieds together only fought about 15% of the nazis, the rest was on the eastern front.
They were there to save their nazi friends, help them escape or fight the Soviets.
And yes the americans, vultures as they are, surely put their people in charge.
And those people were nazis, fully rehabilitated .

My point is that he killed, whether he was holding a gun or a pen; he caused people to die on purpose. He is a mudderer. I don't give a shit if he ever pulled a trigger, and deserved much worse than the hanging he got. As do his modern counterparts.

Watching Total Forgiveness on dropout right now, this is very apropos lol

he caused people to die on purpose. He is a mudderer.

We can definitely talk about Social Murder as a phenomenon.

But I think it's a bit too cutesy by half to assert a man climbed his way up the ranks of the SS in the middle of an insurrection in order to lead its mass extermination division managed it without ever getting his hands dirty.

I don’t give a shit if he ever pulled a trigger

I think we're going to see folks who come out of the ICE recruitment of the Trump Two era who will also rise through the ranks and become mass murderers. I think we've already got guys like that - Ron DeSantis famously oversaw torture at Guantanamo Bay as attendant legal counsel - in positions of power.

They'll all be able to look you in the face with dead fucking eyes and say "Prove I did anything wrong". And I think quite a few liberals will nod and shrug and say "I guess the Rule of Law says we can't do anything now that all the folks who could contradict this claim are in an unmarked grave".

This is the wedge that lets these creeps crawl into power to begin with. Willful ignorance of the crimes of this country only serve to give sociopaths a ladder to climb.

Military recruiting continues to trend down in the U.S. but one area of growth against that was legal immigrants and children of illegal immigrants.

I’d wager we’ll have a lot fewer of those folks to recruit in the coming years.

And im saying they should all be voted for. And if they're vile enough, like desantis, any family who didnt disown tbem should be voted for.

Yeah, but when you enlist do you get to pick?

I mean, there have been at least a few instances of humanitarian missions that actually help, even if there has to be some sort of military justification for it like "building goodwill" or having it combined with some joint military readiness exercise with the host nation. There was that Haiti earthquake in 2021 (and 2010), the relief supplies to Mozambique following the cyclone, Haiti again with Hurricane Matthew in 2016, the Nepal earthquake, that typhoon in the Philippines in 2013, a cyclone in Bangladesh, the Indian Ocean tsunami back in 2004, plus Operations Support Hope, Restore Hope, or Provide Comfort for Rwanda, Somalia, or the Kurds in Iraq+Turkey. I'm not sure you could count Operation Pacific Angel, though it's arguably more helpful in that it's building capacity instead of just giving direct aid, and Operation Christmas Drop seems almost silly I guess (even though sometimes it's medical supplies instead of toys). It's hard to paint those efforts as ultimately about killing people (it's possible though, I might just be ignorant).

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of nasty shit too, whether it's destabilizing OPEC member nations or their relations to drive down oil prices or just fucking up Afghanistan with no good plan and no real reason, it's not like I'd consider it a positive force overall even in a macro geopolitical sense, let alone the stupid unsanctioned bullshit its smaller factions take part in (and the CIA, as always, can just fuck right off), I just wouldn't characterize "every one" of the campaigns to be about murder.