If the Cardassians could viably fight the Federation, how did the Klingons walk all over them?

If the Cardassians could viably fight the Federation, how did the Klingons walk all over them?

Guile.

Cloaking devices and a willingness to suffer, what would be for the Federation, obscene casualties.

Much like how the Soviets gutted the Heer and won WW2 for everyone else, the Klinks had no compunctions about shoveling millions into combat while completely ignoring their casualty rates.

Because the Federation are pussiesz

>Cloaking devices and a willingness to suffer, what would be for the Federation, obscene casualties.
This.

Or in other words, they didn't "walk all over them" at all. They managed to painstakingly scrape out gains only at tremendous cost. Hardly a one-sided victory. But in the Klingon culture, that only makes it all the more glorious.

Obviously, it's because they misplaced all their helmets

It's perhaps also worth noting that when the Klingons went after the Cardassians, the Cardassians were coming off some unfavourable fights with the Federation.

Cardassia had only been out of their two-decade war with the Federation for something like four years when the Klingons invaded. They had recently suffered a total upheaval of their government structure, continually insisted on confronting the Maquis with overwhelming military response, and there were some indications that the occupation of Bajor was in fact how the Cardassians handled pretty much every world except Prime in their empire, but even if that weren't the case the situation on Prime itself indicated such a massive militarization of their society and infrastructure that it must have meant billions of personnel obliged to non-war functions.

Fundamentally, Kurn and other Klingons were 'right' to criticize Gowron: he was an opportunist, just one far more committed to the traditional, martial ways of handling said opportunities than the Duras twins. The invasion of the Cardassian Union was as much a situation of perfect timing as it was any particular tactical or strategic ability of the Klingon Empire.

Also remember that the obsidian order had been gutted by the failed attempt to destroy the founders and the civilians were getting rather uppity. The union was in political turmoil and there was a rebellion that instated civilian government. Cardassia was in awful shape at the time.

Cloaking Devices.

Also, Klingons are more murdery than the Federation.

>They managed to painstakingly scrape out gains only at tremendous cost. Hardly a one-sided victory. But in the Klingon culture, that only makes it all the more glorious.

Reminder that a Klingon bar mitvah involved getting a half dozen dudes to taze you.

It was a border war/series of skirmishes.

Neither side ever planned to invade/conquer the other.

They could still hurt each other via colony world massacres or a lost starship here or there, but it was never total war, or anything close to it (though the Cardassians were more committed than the Federation).

The Klingons went straight for the throat with an all-out initial cloaked attack on the Cardassian Empire's core planets/systems.

It's because the federation has morals. It's like the U.S. in little shit hole countries. Frankly the only reason they can keep fighting is because the burgers don't do all they *theoretically* could. If they just carpet bombed and blasted with impunity rather than going in with boots there would be didly the locals could do about it. Then there is Russia. They don't give a shit. They are perfectly happy to shell civilians for hours with heavy artillery and call in airstrikes indiscriminately. It's horrible. It gets results. Klingons are like Ruskies, they don't give a shit. Fuck morals, we here to win. That's why they could win against the Cardassians where the federation just floundered.

Look at the characters. The vets we see from the federation cardassian war moan about how they hate having to have ever killed someone. Obrian talked about how he accidentally killed someone because he didn't realize the phaser was set on a high setting and it haunts him. You think there would ever be a Klingon vet like that?

Sounds like it was a good day to die user.

For the same reason we see the Klingons wipe out the Federation in the Mirror universe and in other alternate reality scenarios: the Klingons, for all their other flaws, are really, really good at war. They can pull some Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Zhukov stuff the Federation simply can't counter.

These threads always have a weird feeling because they only exist so OP can screencap them later as proof that the mods are idiots.

>he didn't realize the phaser was set on a high setting and it haunts him.
That is a really awful combination of incompetence and whinging.

This is bullshit, the Coalition, specifically the amerifats, have killed plenty of civilians in their air campaign against Daish. They killed over a hundred civilians in an airstrike in Mosul a few weeks back.

Not to mention drones striking things like weddings to hit one or two AQ operatives in a group of dozens of people.

And here's /pol/ to argue about real-world politics in a modbaiting thread on Veeky Forums

>That is a really awful combination of incompetence

It was a heat of the moment thing, and it wasn't his phaser.

>"The only people left alive were in an outlying district of the settlement. I was sent there with a squad to reinforce them. Cardassians were advancing on us, moving through the streets, destroying, killing. I was with a group of women and children when two Cardassian soldiers burst in. I stunned one of them. The other jumped me. We struggled. One of the women threw me a phaser, and I fired. The phaser was set at maximum. The man just incinerated, there before my eyes. I'd never killed anything before. When I was a kid, I'd worry about swatting a mosquito. It's not you I hate, Cardassian. I hate what I became because of you."

>the U.S. keeps the moral high ground in its wars with tiny countries

LOL

/pol/'s a shithole, but you're right. Veeky Forums already has enough bullshit and I shouldn't contribute to it.

For the same reason why the US haven't won every single middle eastern war they've fought while Serbia was able to successfully resist Jihadists. The Federation is unwilling to simply annihilate their enemies regardless of the collateral damage done to enemy citizens.

An actual Federation/Cardassian war with the Federation prioritizing victory over friendliness would involve Cardassia Prime getting Genesis Torpedoed as the opening move.