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aq8knyus
Joined: 28 Jul 2010
Location: London
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 Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:55 am Post subject: |
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| Hokie21 wrote: |
| aq8knyus wrote: |
| Steelrails wrote: |
| aq8knyus wrote: |
| Quote: |
| The French are world renowned for being surrender monkeys, so what you're saying is that Korean soldiers are at a similar level. God help us then! |
Until the capture of Paris in 1814 by allied forces, Paris had not been captured by a foreign military in nearly 400 years.
Compare that to the US where they have only just this month managed 200 years without their capital falling to a foreign army. |
A minor quibble, and one I borrow from Shelby Foote. Foote mentions how in the movie Patton,Patton says "We Americans have never lost a war" and Foote says thats an odd thing for him to say considering Patton's great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy,and theycertainly lost. Likewise, the capital of Richmond was captured 149 years and a few months ago. |
You are quite right, I completely forgot about the CSA. |
So if we're counting the CSA vs the Union I guess we might as well start counting all those French Wars of Religion.... |
I don't think that would be the same thing as there wasn't a breakaway state, they were fighting over who got to control France.
It would be like the English Civil war where one side held one part of the country and the other side held another part, but neither was a breakaway state and both claimed to be the legitimate rulers of the country. Although I suppose you could argue that Brittany counts, but I would disagree.
In anycase the point still stands that the French far from being surrender monkeys were able to defend their capital for 400 years and were one of the worlds premier military powers for centuries. They were also the reason Yorktown was won, so they deserve a least some gratitude. |
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aq8knyus
Joined: 28 Jul 2010
Location: London
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 7:02 am Post subject: Re: third soldier kills himself - 820 since 2004! |
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| sml7285 wrote: |
| aq8knyus wrote: |
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Of course they don't want to be there. But trust me, the new guys work their asses off. They all have their differing reasons, but none new guy in his right mind slacks off. Seriously.
Even in the US Army, the lowest rank that someone can be before they're trusted to not screw up all the time is Specialist, a rank that takes around two years to achieve.
A professional army won't work because of the size of the Nork Army. Even a group of hardened US SF or Delta members wouldn't be able to fight back in a 10 to 1 or 100 to 1 battle. |
I of course defer to your greater knowledge on the subject and personal experience. However, mandatory military service puts a huge strain on Korean society of which suicides are just the tip of the iceberg. A new balance needs to be struck.
Even with the current system the standing army of the North vastly outnumbers the ROK. The standing army itself is only the frontline of a huge 3 million + army that would be mobilized in the event of war.
The role of the conscript forces is to withstand the initial onslaught and give time for full mobilization to take place. Therefore wouldn't it be better to have a force half the size, but fully professional with proper rates of pay and decent conditions? A smaller force that was made up of soldiers with years of training and the morale of a world class military would be of inifintely greater utility than a large mass of depressed 20 year olds, many of which would have had less than 12 months training anyway. |
The army is currently divided into three distinct groups. The first is the easiest to explain. They're the ones in the rear. The logistics guys who make sure that everything is running and that the combat arms guys continue to get their supplies and food in war and in peace.
The second is the most well known - the former 1st Army, located in the North Eastern part of Korea. This is the place that no parent wants their kid to go. It's known colloquially as "GOP". It's up in the mountains, takes forever to get to and snows like crazy. However, being up in the mountains, it's actually safer. The mountains are wide enough that artillery is not really an option, rough enough that the enemy would be stupid to cross and pretty much soldiers are there just in case. In fact, with exception to soldiers on the very front lines (who only stand guard for 21 months) the soldiers in the Northeast train a ton and exist as the response teams in time of war.
The third are the ones in the North Western part of Korea. They are the guys who are completely ******* if war breaks out. They train just enough and frequently to be able to maneuver during war, but they are pretty much cannonfodder. Pretty much the soldiers standing between the Norks and Seoul are to fight until reinforcements can come.
The truth is that not all soldiers are created equal, even among conscripted soldiers. And trust me. The fear of death is one heck of a motivator. Winter 2012 till Spring 2013.... the atmosphere in the region I was in was no joke. We legitimately thought a war was going to break out. Our base had high priority radar and if a war broke out, our base would've been one of the first shot by the Norks. Morale wasn't high to begin and things only got worse, but as the tensions rose, stuff came together. Cohesion happened. Honestly, the fear of death kept everyone on their toes and things on base never ran better (though everyone looked like death and smelled like ****)
And honestly, no one wants to be a soldier. Seriously. The people who are good conscripted soldiers always get out because they are the ones who actually have options out in society. The ones who stay in are the dregs of society and are dumb as ****. Sending boy scouts would be better than having a professional only army. |
Thank you for a very informative post and I don't disagree that when it counts the ROK forces will be up to the task.
Although I think you are a little too dismissive of the benefits of a professional military. Of course on current standards of pay and conditions nobody would want to become a soldier, but that is why savings made from reducing the size of the force would have to be pumped into making it a viable career path even for enlisted men.
You can see from the rash of women joining the military officer corps that with the right rewards a force just over half of the size of the current one could be built.
Also thanks to a severe population decline in the near future the ROK forces are going to have shrink anyway. |
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sml7285
Joined: 26 Apr 2012
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:37 pm Post subject: Re: third soldier kills himself - 820 since 2004! |
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| aq8knyus wrote: |
Thank you for a very informative post and I don't disagree that when it counts the ROK forces will be up to the task.
Although I think you are a little too dismissive of the benefits of a professional military. Of course on current standards of pay and conditions nobody would want to become a soldier, but that is why savings made from reducing the size of the force would have to be pumped into making it a viable career path even for enlisted men.
You can see from the rash of women joining the military officer corps that with the right rewards a force just over half of the size of the current one could be built.
Also thanks to a severe population decline in the near future the ROK forces are going to have shrink anyway. |
We'll agree to disagree. I just remember a time in the States (pre 9/11) when the only people I knew who joined the military were convicts and high school dropouts. |
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Smithington
Joined: 14 Dec 2011
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| Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:42 pm Post subject: |
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| cabeza wrote: |
| Lucas wrote: |
The French are world renowned for being surrender monkeys |
No that's just lazy, ignorant Americanized thinking. It was funny on the Simpsons. But it's a line that gets spouted by people who usually know next to nothing about French history, particularly WWI where they lost almost 5% of their population in fighting. 1.3million soldiers dead. What a bunch of pussies. |
Agreed. One should not be getting their history lessons from Bart Simpson. And let's not forget about that Napoleon fella. He and his were a difficult lot to put down. And in WW1 virtually all of the fighting on the Western front took place in France. And yet you never hear them boo hooing about it. True, they had their ass handed to them in the early years of WWII, but who didn't? Britain was just lucky Panzers couldn't swim, otherwise they would have likely suffered France's fate. Geography can be a bitch and/or a blessing. Americans, living thousands of miles from Germany, shouldn't be looking down on countries living directly next door to Hitler when the tanks started rolling. At least France had the guts to declare war on Germany at a time when the Wehrmacht was heading East - away from France. And after the war they developed nuclear weapons to ensure that they would never be walked over again.
This whole 'surrender monkey' nonsense is tripe written by Fox News pundits to disparage France for opposing the war in Iraq. France was 100% correct in its stance on the war. America would be in much better condition today (economically, morally and in terms of international prestige) if it had taken a page out of the "surrender monkey" playbook and simply said 'no' to a war of choice. |
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