MrDeath
Since: Aug, 2009
Mar 6th 2019 at 11:16:42 AM
•••
The discussion pages are for issues with the page itself; they're not for huge walls of text filled with nothing but armchair-general style "I would have done this so much better because I'm a tactical genius you guys" complaining.
Why was the defense of Republic City and the United Republic as a whole so disappointing and pathetic?
I’ve been thinking a lot about Legend of Korra and while watching Kuvira’s nationalistic speech as well the Earth Empire’s invasion of the United Republic, I cant help but find the defense of the United Republic and Republic City (the **capital city of the United Republic**) to be incredibly appalling and just stupidly pathetic. Let’s address the issues that I saw:
The United Forces however, are even more guilty of this. First off, they have home field advantage. why haven’t there been military airstrips and airfields established in the mountains surrounding Republic City? We know for damn sure that the United Forces has an Air Force component since when Unavattuu (sp?) conducted a Godzilla/Pacific Rim-like attack on Republic City, UF biplanes attempted to engage him from the air. There’s absolutely no excuse as to why President Raiko or General Iroh (I’m assuming that he’s the Avatar world’s equivalent to the US’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) doesn’t have planes and military/commandeered RCPD and/or civilian airships a la Sato Industries or Cabbage Corps in the skies acting in the defense of Republic City. Planes and airships could’ve easily acted at the very least within a surveillance or reconnaissance capacity. It sure would’ve been incredibly helpful to have planes that can shoot bullets and drop bombs onto the Earth Empire Army 10,000 feet in the air.
There’s an incredibly inadequate number of soldiers, sailors, Marines (does the UF have a Marine Corps component?), and airmen on the side of the United Forces. It’s so bad, it’s almost insulting. So you’re telling me that an *at best* **oversized battalion** is adequate enough to defend a city (which, let me remind you, is the **CAPITAL CITY OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC**) that has **MILLIONS** or residents who were just evacuated? Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. I don’t know who organized the defense of Republic City, but they need to lose some stars because they’re pretty shit at organizing the necessary number of troops needed to defend your nation’s capital. Running under this logic, I guess the 69th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard should now be solely responsible for defending all of New York City if a foreign power decides to invade the city.
Why aren’t there tens of thousands of troops standing by to defend their nation’s capital from an imperialistic foreign invader? There should’ve also been RCPD police officers who should’ve been put under orders to work along side with or even directly under the command of the military. Why aren’t there RC cops along side the troops or within the city acting as a last ditch defensive unit? They’re not military trained and don’t follow military doctrine, obviously, sure, but you’re telling me that President Raiko didn’t hand out orders to Lin and say “hey, so a fascist tyrannical imperialistic Empire has just invaded our country and are hours away from our capital and we need to borrow a few thousand of your police officers to act as an emergency military/civil defense unit ASAP”? Again, bullshit. At the very least, like I mentioned in my point above, there should’ve been a couple RCPD airships in the air providing intel and shit back to General Iroh and President Raiko. But screw it righf, we only need an oversized battalion to defend the nation’s capital amirite guys?
Also, why aren’t reservists or militias getting called up? There’s absolutely no way whoever’s running the entire military wouldn’t think to call upon reservists from all over the country to come and help defend Republic City. That should be one of the first things you do, not send an oversized battalion with no additional support to the battle. Speaking of which...
So...where are the trucks and other vehicles hauling supplies and additional troops and military equipment around? Where are the tanks standing by to blast fire balls or metal projectiles? Where are the artillery pieces? Where the hell is everything? Yeah, sure, we get like 28-35 pathetically outdated mech suits for each company (who are all weirdly standing around in Napoleonic-esque formations, but whatever), but that’s about as much Infantry support as the guys standing by (who I’m assuming are all infantry) are going to get. Fuck them right? Who needs armored, air, artillery, etc. support anyway right? Let’s make our lives harder. And speaking of artillery, so we can have naval artillery pieces that can shoot and amplify a fire bender’s fire bending but no, we can’t replicate that same concept onto a land-based field artillery system?
Why aren’t there several hundred howitzers way back behind the formation ready to fire off steel or fire towards the invading forces? Why aren’t tanks, APCs, etc. roaming around? Sure, we get like a squadron of battleships, but they’re not gonna do shit when they have buildings blocking their line of sight. And why are there only battleships? What happened to frigates, destroyers, cruisers, etc.?
So, like I said above, why weren’t airstrips or airfields established within the several mountains surrounding Republic City? At the very least, there should’ve been artillery units stationed within the mountains to harass the Earth Empire troops as they make their way to Republic City.
And why didn’t Republic City become basically Stalingrad? Earth Empire Troops did make their way into the city. Why weren’t United Forces troops forcibly making the incursion into Republic City a living hell for the EE soldiers? Every single street should’ve became a bloodbath with soldiers fighting it out in CQC conditions inside of stores, apartments, etc.
Right, so...you call [THAT ](https://goo.gl/images/mMEhGW)
“No Man’s Land”? Right, sure, and cows built the Empire State Building. [THIS](https://goo.gl/images/YNCGfK)
and [THIS](https://goo.gl/images/jpu2N7)
can be classified as proper No Man’s Land.
Further more, why didn’t troops dig foxholes and trenches, built up proper fortifications like temporary walls and barriers, set up miles of barbed wires, etc.? If that Colossus mech hadn’t showed up and this was a conventional battle between 2 opposing armies, then a proper No Man’s Land and proper defensive fortifications could’ve gone a LONG way in helping the United Forces out.
Honestly, you have to be honest with yourself, the defense of Republic City was incredibly poor at best, seeing as the United Forces appeared to be a rather strong and formidable military. I mean, fuck, they probably are right there with the Fire Nation when it comes to military capabilities and power projection. In Season 2, General Iroh was going to have a little “military exercise” down near the South Pole before Raiko ordered him to stop. When Kuvira was staging her forces outside of Zhaofu, Baatar Sr. asked Suyin if they should call Raiko and ask for the United Forces to come help out Zhaofu. Raiko also told Prince Wu that after his coronation, the United Forces would escort him back to Ba Sing Sae. Bumi also told tales of when he was in the United Forces and from the looks of it, he conducted operations outside of UR territory.
So you’re telling me that a strong and very capable military that’s from a very wealthy and technologically advanced nation that’s a hub for innovation and technology is able to project power outside of its region but it can’t muster enough forces to defend its capital city? Right, and I can fly.
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