Mika

As someone who's been writing military science-fiction for years, and have many friends in or formerly in the military (some of which are authors themselves,) I have something to say about this: If all Yoshiyuki Tomino has to say with his art is that "war is bad," then he should stop making art, as he's only going to waste our time. Any fool with two brain cells to rub together knows that war is ugly, brutal and costly. That doesn't mean war is pointless and should never be fought no matter the circumstances. In fact, such a statement is worse than pointless, as lethal conflict is a common constant of human civilization - and, for that matter, a constant among the vast majority of life existing on Earth, even between bacteria. If all your story does is shout "this is bad!" it's a childish lament that leaves a tremendous amount of this constant of human existence unexamined. Who fights wars - the elites, like the ancient Greek Hoplites, or the knights of the middle ages, or the common men who volunteer, like in many modern nations? What do they fight for - for the ideals of their beloved nation, for honor and glory, or to save the women and children in the city that stands at their backs? What defines a good soldier? What defines a good leader? These questions are just as essential for us as they were for our forefathers, because the world is a tumultuous place full of evil people and great dangers and the time is coming, sooner than many may think, where wars between great powers will shake the foundations of the world and the lives of millions will hang in the balance. To explore questions like this, of such import to our souls, is one of the core reasons people tell stories to begin with. And our tools and machines have always been essential to the conduct of war and the defense of all we hold dear. Men have told stories of talking swords or "tsukumogami" for as long as swords have existed; long before we could even conceptualize a thinking machine might be made with science; we dreamt of them existing through magic or spirit. Tools are what first brought us out of the trees to stride the earth as its masters; in the tools we shape and wield with our own hands we make manifest our intent, our will, our spirit. In the modern age, the vastness of our creations sometimes makes it easy to forget, but the human element is still the entire point. I quote from page 71 of "Shattered Sword" by Johnathan Parshall and Anthony Tully: "The study of naval warfare (more than any other form of combat) holds the potential to completely subordinate the human element to the weapons themselves. Naval combat is conducted almost exclusively by means of machines – machines that are in many cases so huge and grand that they often seem to take on a life and personality of their own that transcend the tiny figures that inhabit them. Yet, in the final analysis, it is men who live in the ship, command and fight the ship, and often die in the ship. Their story, no matter how seemingly eclipsed by the great vessels they serve in, is still the fundamental story to be related.” Its only natural we should be entranced with the great machines of war that we build, as they're the final product of the genius and labors of an entire society; fashioned into an incredible tool that is nothing if not wielded by the hand of a skilled warrior devoted to his craft and his mission. I know of not a single mecha story that runs afoul of Parshall and Tully's warning as quoted above; everyone seems to understand the assignment. The ones that don't are the likes of Tomino, or his fellow anti-war traveler Miyazaki. I can't understand a man who thinks fighter planes are beautiful but has little more to say about war than "it's bad;" he refuses to see that the beautiful form of a fighter plane follows its function, and that there's a savage, primal beauty in that function, like the fury that animates a thunderstorm. Or the fury and purpose that animate its pilot, for that matter. Tomino seems to think that "nothing of substance is getting across." I disagree. I think the substance came across very well, and many in younger generations just think that substance is woefully lacking. There's a cutscene in the Knights of the Old Republic, between Carth Onasi and Canderous, where Carth expounds on the difference between "soldiers" and "warriors," defining warriors as those who fight for plunder and the glory of conquest, and soldiers as those who fight to protect their nation and peoples - usually from warriors. He made a great point, but Canderous wasn't entirely wrong. As any fighter pilot can tell you, you need more than noble motivations to sacrifice and serve to be truly excellent - to overcome your enemy in an aerial duel, you need that urge to "lean in" to the fight; that competitive drive - a part of you needs to love the fight. Many soldiers over the ages have spoken of this; as Robert E. Lee said "it's well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." It's that primal urge drawn straight from our deepest instincts; that thirst to compete and win, that gives soldiers the fire and fury to do their utmost in combat, to win the challenge, to defeat those who would plunder their temples, raze their cities and enslave their women and children. That is the truth of war, every bit as much as the death and boredom and bloodshed and terror. And if you can only tell one half of that truth, because the other half doesn't align with your political or personal views, then I don't give a god damn what you have to say about it, or about the works of storytellers who do.

Does the Pro-Pal set know how embedded Nazism is in Palestinianism itself? I suggest, for those who don't: check out Amin-al Husseini as a starting point.

For the first time, an IDF Merkava Mk. 4 has been lost to an FPV drone. Seen here, a Hezbollah FPV flies right into the anti-drone cage, which does nothing to prevent an ammunition cookoff, likely destroying the tank.

One of the most uncomfortable scenes in "Combat Obscura." A Marine points his pistol at Afghan kids on donkeys, screaming for the location of the Taliban. A chilling look at the fear and confusion on the ground in Helmand Province. 🇦🇫🪖

Has there *ever* been a policy as self-destroying as the one-child policy?

Ukraine has one of the darkest track records when it comes to Jews, and it goes back a long time. It didn’t start with the Holocaust. In the 1600s, during the Cossack uprisings under Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Jewish communities were wiped out one after the other. Tens of thousands were slaughtered. For Jews in Eastern Europe, these events became part of how they understood their place in the world. But it didn’t stop there. Late 1800s into the early 1900s, pogrom after pogrom. It was not in just one city, or just one moment. Repeated waves of violence. Looting, killings, entire towns terrorized. Estimates run between 30,000 and 100,000 Jews murdered in those years, with some historians putting it even higher. When something repeats like that across decades, it’s not random anymore, it’s a pattern. Then the Holocaust, and Ukraine became one of the main killing grounds. Around 1.5 million Jews were murdered there. It wasn’t in gas chambers for the most part, but face to face. Forests, pits, ravines. The “Holocaust by bullets.” The most known example is Babi Yar, where over 33,000 Jews were shot in two days. Two days. That scale is hard to even process. And it wasn’t done by only the Germans. There was widespread local collaboration. Auxiliary police, nationalist groups, civilians helping identify Jews, round them up, sometimes taking part themselves. That fact gets people uncomfortable, but leaving it out doesn’t change what happened. After the war, it didn’t disappear. Under Soviet rule it was pushed under the rug, but it stayed there. After independence, it shows up in different forms. Polls over the years have found a meaningful percentage of people still buying into the same old ideas about Jews and power, influence, money. You also have the continued honoring of figures like Stepan Bandera. For many Ukrainians he’s a nationalist hero. For Jews and Poles, his movement is tied to collaboration and mass violence. Add to that far-right groups that use symbols and rhetoric straight out of the neo-Nazi playbook. They aren't a majority, but they exist, and they’re not exactly hiding. Now to be fair, Ukraine today is not Nazi Germany. They elected Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish. There are laws against antisemitism. You’re not seeing mass violence against Jews in the streets. But that doesn’t mean the deeper issue is gone. Attitudes don’t just vanish because laws change. And when you zoom out, it’s not just history or fringe groups. Ukraine has consistently voted against Israel in the UN, including after October 7. You can argue politics, alignments, or legacy voting blocs, but it still shows where things tend to land in practice. I traveled through Europe a few years ago, went to about 9 countries. Different places, different people, no issues. The one place where we got yelled at and even ran after a few times was Ukraine. That’s one experience, not a dataset. But at a certain point, when the history is this long and the signals keep lining up, it stops feeling like coincidence.

“imagine Lebanon without Hezbollah”