They are taking “to the last Ukrainian” quite literally, huh.
why don’t presidents fight the war? why do they always send the poor?
We’d have a lot less wars if the ruling class had to participate directly that’s for sure.
Unfortunately the mortality rate among the brass is way lower than among the ranks. Was also the same in times when the ruling class was participating directly. And it didn’t exactly lessened the number of wars, in republican Rome it was even one of the reasons there were so many of them. They would just developed the warrior ethos again or sometheing like that.
What we need is more latrine disasters.
Unfortunately this hasn’t really been a thing since pre-feudal times. back then the leader would generally be the greatest warrior and on occasion conflict would be settled by a duel.
I remember during the beginning of the war people were praising Zelensky for being on the battlefield while Putin was sitting pretty in the Kremlin (their words not mine). Now that he’s not fighting himself I haven’t heard a peep of criticism on the same level of what they used against Putin. Very weird.
I’d wager his battlefield looked a lot like a Marvel battlefield
The one thing thr ancient greeks did right - let the rich fight their wars themselves.
i mean, slaves were used in war, just not mentioned.
spartan hoplites, and helots.
The spartans were scared shitless of arming their slaves.
Slaves were not really used in war until the early middle ages, because during war you need discipline and reliability in your troops. Slaves tend to fuck off. In the middle ages, islamic realms used warrior slaves, first the Ghulams, then the Mamluks, then the Janniseries. They were kept reliable by good treatment, a fostered elite culture of their formations and religious incentives. Always worked for a while, then the slave solders took over and cut the middle man.
In short: Slave soldiers. Not a good idea.
The spartans were scared shitless of arming their slaves.
If you mean helots they armed them all the time, helots served in every campaign as light infantry.
On the other hand, Spartans did wage war against their own slaves
They werent scared of it, because they literally did it?
Whats dangerous is taking all your military away on a campaign and leaving slaves that are ex-soldiers behind with the families of the leadership.
“president, can you start ignoring congress and send congresists to the frontlines?”
totally not a dictatorship
Don’t they already do PR at the battlefield?
This is literally like the last days of Nazi Germany. Sending everyone they have, old, young, combat ready or not, right into the meat grinder.
And yet quite a lot of Nazi leadership and party members seem to have survived and lived nicely afterwards, with cushy jobs in NATO
