Numbers don't lie, but liars use numbers...
Dillan Stone
Our illustrious President attempts to point out that America did more damage in the wall so far than any other nation. There's only two problems with that:
1) Per capita, we're the weakest nation, as his numbers clearly show.
2) And Spain has done more vs. PEACE, when you consider both Italy and France. Oops.
Point #2 really is just a fun aside, though.
Still, the explanation he ascribes to these numbers is full of fallacy:
We are strong, sayeth the Dover - PEACE ganging up on us moreso than, say, Canada or the UK, proveth it.
The problem is, half the countries in PEACE are made of nations which don't like the IRL USA much. If you're an Iranian or Indonesian, and you have the choice of any of five nations to attack, and one of them is the USA, then the identity of the other four don't matter. In fact, if it wasn't for the MPPs that would kick in, they'd invade the US in a heartbeat - for them, it would be better than pr0n.
For the more pragmatic rationale - we got more damage done against us because it TOOK more damage to put our forces down. Strategic application of force. But note that PEACE decided to push out the US before it really even BEGAN trying to push out Sweden or Spain. In Spain's case, it's because they're the hardest to defeat perhaps - but in Sweden's, it's probably a diplomatic divide and conquer gambit that failed, combined with the principle that Sweden is the "least evil" member of ATLANTIS, from the perspective of PEACE (in particular, the European members thereof)
The more worrying sign, however, is the average-damage-per-battle. To me, this proves that Americans, moreso than other nations PER CAPITA (meaning without respect to population) were willing to fight bare-handed. Or, more cynically, were either unable or unwilling to buy a weapon but wanted to fight anyway. Pick your poison.
The only thing Benn's numbers really prove is, if we are going to leverage our population and productivity effectively, we have to have a saner way to get weapons into the hands of our soldiers. We are an entire nation of mostly wall-punchers, because of GM greed and government incompetence.
That sai😛
If we press the war now, we could still "win" - I don't know how decimated PEACE's economies are, but if theirs fails completely before ours fails completely, we win by default. The reverse, incidently, is also true - if our economy freefalls and ANY PEACE nation hasn't, then we will probably see PEACE taking over some ATLANTIC land - although probably not on American soil (despite severe temptations on their part, no doubt), since that is the ONE thing PEACE could do to make us actually hate them as much as they hate us. (And tactically speaking, they've been the Robert E. Lee to our George McClellan.)
I believe the better strategy is to choose between:
1) A negotiated peace. If freeing Switzerland was the point, then make that a non-negotiable. Particularly now that PEACE has pushed back as far as they dare, meaning that the threat of simultaneous invasion would actually work again.
2) A cease-fire and massive rearming. We know they can't effectively cross the Atlantic without MPPs kicking in bigtime. Just make sure that when the second offensive in the war starts, we actually have both the weapons to fight that war, and the discipline not to USE all of those weapons in the first battle.
Comments
interesting view point
I don't understand why there is so much fighting between the president and USWP. Either one is jealous(afraid) of the other or both are corrupt and trying to draw attention away from themselves.
Iam speechless. This is an excellent artical. I beleive that Been is trying to rally support and bring things together so that we can either win this war or end it and that is why the attempt with the numbers and to be honest the numbers dont really matter anyway because it just depends on who is looking at them as to what they are going to see. In other words, your going to see what you want to see. I agree with the direction you are taking on the economy very much and the fact that we need to do some serious planning and changing in government. Business in this country does stink of greed to some degree but, if you look at the markets of other countries we are not allone in that and prolly never will be. The government is the problem that we can fix in this.
"In fact, if it wasn't for the MPPs that would kick in, they'd invade the US in a heartbeat - for them, it would be better than pr0n."
Woah, attacking countries without MPPs? Since when did they think of that!
"The more worrying sign, however, is the average-damage-per-battle."
See: Average strength. http://www.erepublik.com/en/rankings/countries/4/9
Your standpoint says that because we
@strategy #1: Peace has been in discussion for awhile. PEACE is slightly hypocritical, though, because they continuously attack while during talks negotiations. We've been trying to free Switzerland this entire time. Have you not seen the resistance wars that have sprung up?
@stategy #2: Discipline is something that simply cannot exist in our military. If it were, then we would have no leaks like we've been having. We would have perfect soldier turnout and participation. We would have a better work force. When citizens obtain weaponry, they use it asap, no matter what their orders are (granted, a lot of soldiers don't do this and have been trained not to). Weaponry is something that the US is going to have to focus on greatly in the future, along with iron. That is something that, if I were to become the president next month hypothetically, I would work on.
Good viewpoint.
"The more worrying sign, however, is the average-damage-per-battle. To me, this proves that Americans, moreso than other nations PER CAPITA (meaning without respect to population) were willing to fight bare-handed. Or, more cynically, were either unable or unwilling to buy a weapon but wanted to fight anyway. Pick your poison."
OR maybe America is where all the new people go. Which is why our population is so high and damage is so low.
^ Average strength, in a nutshell. Higher strength'd citizens actually do exponentially, not linearly, more damage. They understand that higher wellness & better trivia translates to more damage, unlike newfaces.
Weapons should be sent out before attacks that we wish to use them on. People can submit requests with the forms just as they've been doing. Then they can get the weapons when the military is ready for them to use them. It would be a lot easier to manage by battle than by soldier.
Too bad we don't have eNukes. That would solve everything.
Dillan,
What you are failing to recognize is that PEACE has had the opportunity to be involved in more wars than the US, and therefore has higher strength levels in their population. This has allowed them to do higher damage per soldier. They also utilize far more super-soldiers than we do, which also accounts for the difference in damage.
Granted, we need a better process for getting weapons to our soldiers. Our entire population should not be using meager Q1 weapons, especially the higher ranked/strength soldiers, as it greatly reduces our damage per battle. This is something that needs to be worked out, and I believe that we need state-run weapons companies to stockpile weapons for our soldiers in battle.
@dubi: It was shown recently on the forums that Q1 is the most economical weapon choice in the current market conditions, by quite a margin. With our overwhelming population, while it's nice to have a few true tanks pumping out Q5 damage, we CAN zerg-rush. If we have affordable weapons.
@Benn: I'm glad to hear that you're planning to do something about the weaponry situation. With the UK now fighting a defensive war in Belgium (yay for bugged rules for war yet again, admins. 🙁 ), we're going to have to have some way to put American muscle on the field. While we would have been better off not going to war at all, now we have an ally who is paying the price for our collective folly.