Yeah so why didn't you try out for menudo?

Menudo? Is that some weird band or something? Because my last experience with menudo was when I ate it down in Mexico, and believe me, eating soup made from a cow's stomach is not a pleasant experience.

YOU DONT KNOW MENUDO? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?

I mean seriously, it's not like they were overrated or anything.

It's not so much that pure socialism or communism can't work, it's that it kind of sucks.

Oh also acronyms are not any more cryptic than if he had spelled out the words. Half the time the acronym makes more sense than the alternative.

Brilliant criticism of socialism right here. I wish I had that much depth when I criticized theories and economic systems.

Mystic0, It seems like there is no use arguing. I'd throw in my two cents and support you because you are right, but it seems that no matter how much we'd try and show him that socialism/communism fails, we just will get a response... "Oh..I'm talking about a different socialism." or "Oh, you must be referring to STALINIST communism".

My very simplified reason for disproving Communism. It's based on "If the world was perfect...*blah*". That's your fundamental flaw there. The world is not perfect. People won't work to "benefit other workers". People act in their own self-interest (whether it be for capital gain, or just psychic benefits) and you are pretty ignorant if you think it's not true.

Which is interesting, because Mystic supports a system identical to communism, except that he assumes people, without government involvement, will help other people in need. Privatize all of it so that they can help eachother, he says.

By "outdated" I assume you mean the same "outdated" Russian SAMs that shot down an F117 in the Balkans.



I'd say comparable. Possibly near even with the Russian Army these days, minus the years of combat experience from Chechnya that the latter possesses, also I'm not sure but I don't think China has conscription.

Technologically speaking, they may not have uber stealth fighters, but they do have:

Bullpup Assault Rifles
Their own MBT, complete with a laser to knock out enemy optics.
ASAT Capability

They really aren't all that far behind the former Soviet Union.

I've always been glad that the Cold War wasn't about national anthems.

Then the Soviets would have won hard, so hard that the U.S would have literally been detached from the crust of the Earth and disappeared deep into the cosmos for eternity.

That wouldn't have been nice.

Luckily there's no more Soviet Union but the anthem still lives on.

You mean the F-117 that many operatives in the Russian intel circles claim was shot down because a mole informed the the AA about a stealth, and that after peppering the sky they brought down 1 of 6 aircraft, right? Yeah, the same F-117 who's wreckage was fast-tracked to Moscow, China, Iran, and India? Yeah, that one? What about it? Do you really want to go into the F-117, a 1st gen stealth aircraft and try to say that the B-2 is anywhere near it on a stealth-tech level, let alone the F-22, F-23, F-32, and F-35? If you want to continue this, please, look up cellphone technology, and radar detection technology, and then come back.


Ok, here's where I tell you that "comparable" to the Russian military is not the same as "comparable" to the U.S. military. The U.S. military currently has people in reserve forces that have more time in combat than U.S. soldiers in WWII. The Russians get the luxury to "cheat" in Chechnya, they don't worry about international responses to NBC warfare, the current Russian grunt vs. the current U.S. grunt are not comparable. The average Russian grunt is still a conscript, and the average U.S. grunt is a volunteer force that has the most money behind them to throw at any single type of military infantry training. Pitting the average U.S. soldier against the average U.K. soldier will no longer be fair in about 5-7 years, you really expect the average Eastern Bloc soldier to hold any ground here? We're not even beginning on tech available to the average foot solider, just training. Bullpup rifles are not a winning tool. They are not ambidextrous. A soldier required to fire from a "goofy"/"left-handed"/"cock-handed" position would eat a mouthful of hot brass. That is a piss-poor example to bring up. Lasers. Oooo, oh no, lasers. You need to read about late 70's-early 80's cold war tech to understand why "pilot blinding lasers" are not something that makes or breaks a military. Seriously, you're not bringing anything fight-worthy to the table. I could argue in favor of the Chinese better than anyone I've seen on this board so far.

the chinese made themselves a bullpup rifle that fires low caliber/high velocity rounds and has no burst mode on its fire selector.

hmm yes I see what they use it for.

Roach: the P90 is forward-ejecting and it has an ambidextrous fire selector. There are a lot of better reasons the bullpup rifle isn't an automatic winner. It's basically the Java of the firearms world.

That Chinese rifle is designed to mow down unarmed civilians.

Sorry, Jon`C, I should have said "that bullpup" instead of "bullpups in general."

(That said, the P90 has about the same amount of R&D $$ as all recent Chinese designs combined.)

Actually if you look at the history of modern capitalism, you'll see that in the late 19th century there were many efforts around the Western World for workers to organize and in some cases even have a revolution (see revolutions of 1848 for example). But the Capitalist class appeased the workers and systematically divided them to make it so they wouldn't be a threat to capital. (I don't know what about this you could possibly disagree with, but if you do, just let me know and we can work that out)



Well of course, the Capitalist has a much higher amount of wealth and thus it will relativley be different in terms of their relation. But the point is that most of what the worker is actually producing, he has no say whatsoever over it. And the point of socialism is to have the means of production be in the hands of the worker. And there are many different ways this can be done of course.



Yes, worker owned businesses are often just as efficient as capital owned businesses. I'm going to find that article I mentioned earlier in a source other than JSTOR for you.



It's not like all workers do the exact same thing in terms of management. They would still elect people to do certain tasks (in management that is). You wouldn't have 20 people doing the job of 1 person, just doesn't make sense that way.



You don't need wealth to own the means of production in a socialist society as that relation of ownership in the workplace is radically different than in a capitalist society.



Leninism and Stalinism are a very specific branch of Marxism, as is Maoism, etc. There are many different forms of socialism and you can't criticize them all based on the shortcomings of one of them. That's what's called a logical fallacy.



Wow, you have this quite wrong. It's not based on the world being perfect, but the world being in a state of an unjust economic system where a better one could soon replace it. Nothing about communism says that everything people do will be alturistic or Utopian. As a matter of fact there was a current in socialism before Marx called Utopian Socialism, which he criticized and replaced with what many call Scientific Socialism.

You are pretty ignorant about socialism and I suggest you be more specific in your criticism.

Who cares if they aren't all that far behind the former Soviet Union if our Reserve and Guard components could kick the *** of most of their standing forces.

What I'm arguing is that if they have any sense at all they will not fight a conventional war. Hence, we would get our **** owned. I believe we may win eventually, but it would be far from sure. If we had any sense at all we wouldn't try to fight them conventionally either. But we know how that goes.

However, if China wants to fight a conventional land war, more power to them. Well, more kills to me, rather. All the bullpup assault rifles in the world won't save them from the US Military.

This entire discussion is dependent upon the type of conflict that would be engaged in. With ANY notional war discussion, you have to establish that before you can even begin to plan.

I thought we were talking about a conventional land war, since at the start we said that we aren't referring to a nuclear conflict. What other war have you been talking about?

I do realize that there are also other types of warfare. But generally whenever we have these discussions, we're talking conventional warfare.

Yes but it has sure seemed to me, that people were making generalizations like "ZOMG CHINA WOULD WIN NO BATTLE INFINITY".

It would be foolish in any war to assume that your opponent would never win any battles, I can definitely agree with that. But still, in a conventional war, US wins hands down in the end.

The only reason the United States could possibly lose any type of war is because the American people have scruples. If the Americans decided it were acceptable to eliminate the Iraqi people entirely they would accomplish the objective in a matter of days with conventional arms.

That said, China could probably wipe out at least one carrier group. The Chinese have surfaced a submarine right next to a carrier just last year, and the Navy claimed they didn't see it coming. The truth, of course, is that admiral locklear wanted a bigger budget.

Not that I'm implying that the Chinese are as conniving and backstabbing as the Japanese but history will decide.

Gold, if even half of what you've said about your teacher is true, he's a complete idiot and your time will be wasted trying to argue with him, and you should just sit in the back of the class and make snide comments instead.

True enough.

All I'm trying to say is that the current Chinese Army will be able to kick a noticeable amount of our *** in just about any conflict with them. They can knock out satellites in orbit, the only thing they REALLY lack are aircraft carriers.

Also, for the record, I hate bullpups. I was using it to help point out that that they have moved well beyond "cheap outdated Russian copy" phase that everyone we've gone against, post WW2, has been in.

There's a lot of unknowns since they haven't really seen combat since Korea and I'd personally rather err on the side of caution when facing someone who clearly is not one of the third world half-militias we've been fighting for half a century.

Yes, they can knock sats out of orbit. That's not a good thing. For anyone, not even China. Thank whatever deities are listening that they decided lasers to blind spy birds was better than creating a fine layer of debris around the Earth. And considering the U.S. has, what, 11 aircraft carriers, and the rest of the world has somewhere around 12 or 13 total, I'd say that's a fairly large thing to not have in your arsenal.

Ah, ok, here I was thinking that Iraq's military was in the top ten military forces in the world just before the Gulf War, having state-of-the-art Russian and French weapons. And the Chinese still do rely on cheap russian knock-offs. That MBT you linked to is based off the T-72/80 platform. Most of their navy is Russian-made, as well as a large amount of small-arms. Their aircraft are starting to lean towards other sources, but China is still very much a hand-me-down Russian military.

Note how Gold abandoned the thread.

See, here's the thing about China. Sure, they have a 4.5 million man standing Army (last time I checked), but they can't manufacture enough weapons for the whole Army (Read: They're too poor). So what ends up happening is that Officers and NCO's end up with the weapons and the lower enlisted ranks end up with whatever is left over. So it turns out to be a situation like the Russian's had at Stalingrad.

Another thing, We would decimate them in a ground war. On top of our Soldier's having better training, our Field Artillery is the best in the world. The Multi Launch Rocket System's that the US Field Artillery employ's can hit targets well within the range of 40-50 kilometers.
So basically, they'd be vaporized before they could even reach our ground troops.
We have 155mm Self Propelled Howitzers, Paladins (Of which the US Army has 950), that can put a 155mm round right on top of single person, with accuracy to within 1 meter, from well within 10 kilometers.

You've got AC-130 Spectre Gunships with a 105mm Howitzer, a 40mm (basically a grenade launcher) cannon and two 20mm vulcan cannons.
Spectre and Spooky varients of the AC-130 are some pretty deadly pieces of equipment. On top of that, they have IR vision capability which allows them to fire on targets in the dead of night.

You've also got AH-64 Apache's, OH-58 Kiowa Warrior's, F-16's, F-14's, B-1's, B-2's, B-52's, and soon the new JSF.

Plus our Armored Cavalry Corps is unmatched in the world.



Thats just for Ground to Ground and Air to Ground.
There's no way they could match our Air Force (As much as I hate those ****ers ;P)

All in all, We definately have a better military than China and there's no way in hell they'd beat us in a ground war.

But, Would russia give them the weapons to round it out?

Not if we threaten Russia

Not to mention that Russia doesn't have the quantity to round it out in their entire arsenal now that their economy has been so poor since the end of the Cold War.

Eh, It's getting better.
Give em another decade and they might be back on their feet.
(But without shoes)

Russia won the battle of Stalingrad.

The Chinese are trained with horses and assault rifles if we nuclear bomb them. They may have a chance.

Well it does make sense though, considering the electromagnetic pulse that would be released from a nuke. This would affect a lot of things. So yes, horses would be a choice of transportation.

You can't think of it as CHINA vs AMERICA. Think of the allies China would have and the USA too. Also think of the number of military units, money, and how well trained the soldiers are. As I see in the this page on wikipedia, America sure seems best supplied. The US has the most carriers, destroyers, submarines, nuclear submarines, and cruisers than anybody else. The US has a strong navy. Yeah, China and Russia may have a lot of fighter jets, but doesn't compare to our numbers and also how much updated ours may be versus theirs. The US's Air Forces and Navy forces are pretty strong. Don't forget, our ground forces are strong too. As 82nd said we do have better weapons and field tactics. Mainly because our armed forces are the most funded military force in the world.

Why do you hate the air force 82nd?

Out right conventional war between super powers is a thing of the past. If any country is major country is penetrated by a major land offensive, the war will go nuclear. And if it does, well, this planet is pretty much over. I guess it's kind of nice that everyone is so scared of each other that they won't risk open war. Nuclear weapons probably saved a lot of lives in the cold war.

Because deployment for most zoomies involves little zooming and more sitting in air conditioned boxes. Much *****ing will be heard about the air conditioning being on too high.

Deployment for us involves little sitting in air conditioned boxes and more bull****. Much *****ing will be heard about getting ****ed with by your CSM because you don't have your magazine pouches on the proper side of your kit. God (or whatever) save you if you are left handed. There is no hope if you are using non issued gear.

Semper Bull****us.

Zoom Zoom Zoom!

Yes, this.


Also, they don't do much Stateside, either.

Your OPINION is WRONG.

It seems like the Air Force is a much better choice to me.

There was a test between different countries armies, how they would do in a combat situation, and the US army wasn't even in the top 10. Wanna know why? The US army was too depending on their technology, for example, they would wait for a helicopter when the others started walking.