![Tumblr user tsarina-anadyomene: it really is quite bad for your military to have an image of itself as a warrior class. what you really want is for your soldiers to think of themselves as boring professionals who will fill out a report form if someone gets a little too warrior ethos out there
Tumblr user gsot: [Screenshot of Bluesky user Ruth Baader-Meinhoff @sm-6.bluesky.social: the lesson of WWII is that aesthetic warrior cult societies get their shit rocked by school teachers and store clerks who'd much rather be doing anything else]
Tumblr user drmajalis: [Screenshot of Bluesky user William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social: one of the oldest running dialogues in history is "war is a massively complicated political, bureaucratic and logistical endeavour" vs. "fuck you pussy, war is when you're a fucking badass, oh shit I lost"]](https://thelemmy.club/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffeddit.org%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F8439f186-de0d-407e-b823-bb67541f4f7d.jpeg)
It depends on the objective of the war. Nation building is basically impossible. Killing the crap out of an enemy until they surrender is pretty effective historically. Killing the crap out of select targets while avoiding excessive civilian casualties is generally ineffective. WWII was a total war scenario, the US and USSR absolutely killed entire areas of German and Japanese towns.