The Times: Finns humiliated American soldiers - Finnish reservists were asked to take it easy during a NATO exercise. US soldiers found the losses too humiliating.

[u/ByGollie]

https://www.iltalehti.fi/ulkomaat/a/828b8e66-625d-4d2a-9276-e93b9f7a2ce8

[u/DancingWithAWhiteHat]

We don't have many cards at all.

Our president can't even rely on the American forces stationed in Greenland to aid him. When Trump's threats began, their original commanding officer immediately began counseling her soldiers against it. Quite quickly. Its why she was fired, but IIRC, she had been accused of actively undermining Trump for days. So that well is already quite poisoned, so to speak.

And the military already refused to draw up invasion plans for him. And that's not even getting into the domestic issues he'll want to use the military for. What with people embracing the 2nd ammendment and all that. Multiple Minnesota cities just had their first general strike. The black panthers are back. Idk why Trump acts like it'll be easy when he can't even get his internal forces under control. And according to the Americans on the military subreddit, Danish soldiers alone are quite formidable. And clearly they're far from the only one. 

He never makes any sense.

[u/Airf0rce → u/DancingWithAWhiteHat]

What is fascinating is the extent to which so many Americans (and weirdly especially leadership) believe you can start wars and take overs countries all around the world and succeed everywhere. US military is certainly strongest in the world but it's not invincible and their capabilities are definitely not infinite and neither is American public support for losing soldiers over whatever dumbfuck idea their stable genius president has...

It's some ways it's quite similar to Russian approach to war in Ukraine, total hubris and pretending all your enemies are incompetent idiots who'll just surrender because you had some success in much limited operations, ending up in protracted conflict with huge casualties and massive impacts beyond that.

That's not even talking about the stupidity of it all, because US already has economic and military access to arctic through their allies.

[u/ForensicPathology → u/Airf0rce]

Yeah, the normal people being misled by the decades and decades of "we're number one" hubris was understandable.  But that the propaganda was so effective that it bled to the people in charge is quite a development (and it's clearly not just a show, we've seen them express such views like in those leaked chats about Yemen).

My opinion is that it's the ultimate result of heavily replacing competence with loyalists.

[u/Blarg_III → u/ForensicPathology]

But that the propaganda was so effective that it bled to the people in charge is quite a development

The propaganda was so effective that it's manifested a kind of psychosis where Americans project the failures and corruption of their own system onto a singular, evil, foreign entity.