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Step by step walk the thousand mile road |
Jesus Christ those are some lucky Russkies. Nice is overrated "It's every freedom-loving individual's duty to lie to the government." Airsoftguy, June 29, 2018 | |||
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Shaman |
Russia won't launch a nuke. Poland is just itching to turn Moscow into a big glass parking lot first. They're looking for payback. And to see just how many russians they can fertilize the fields with. Russia can't even take Kiev. They losing 1000 men for every kilometer they try to defend.  He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. | |||
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Member |
P220 said it better than I could. But I would mention they don’t have to “launch a nuke” to be dangerous. They can give one to any number of states that could supply it to any number of other groups. You really think the nation of Russia would do nothing if we supplied and enabled their enemies to burn Moscow? On another note, have you been impacted by Russia somehow? I’m curious where the hate comes from; hate to the point of irrational speech. | |||
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| Shaman |
I grew up with the Russians as the enemy and they still are. *You know what, never mind.* Let Moscow burn. Fuck the Rooskies. Quit rooting for Russia just because of Hunter Biden. He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. | |||
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| Member |
What makes you think I’m “rooting for Russia?” Because I asked if you’d been impacted from them? I’ll take your answer as “no.” Regardless of what could have been after the Cold War ended, they are definitely our enemy now. We’ve killed too many Russians and they will be an enemy for a generation. But fighting them isn’t in our national interest, so I don’t think we should do things leading to that outcome (things like encouraging Ukraine to burn their capitol). It’s dangerous and stupid to provoke a nuclear armed nation. | |||
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| Shaman |
I won't dignify your question. Let them send Muscovites to fight. And let Moscow burn. Finland is looking at F35s now. Had a pair in there. Oh and Russia flies drones and missiles into Kiev. Specifically targeting civilians. Moscow needs a bigger taste of the war. Even Belarus knows not to get tangled up. He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. | |||
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Frangas non Flectes |
Emotional slavering. Not a whit of thought, just sheer hate. Your signature line is in very stark contrast to what you’re spouting above it. ______________________________________________ Carthago delenda est | |||
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| Member |
Welcome to the age of lies | |||
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| Member |
A bigger taste of the war? How much have you personally donated to the Ukraine war effort? I doubt you need this due to your many generous prior donations, but here's a link just in case: Donate to Ukraine’s Defenders It's an official Ukraine government site so don't worry about it being a scam. Maybe post your donation amount(s). I'm sure that will encourage more like minded folks to do the same.This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bytes, | |||
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| The Ice Cream Man |
I do think the biggest thing the Western analysis seems to be missing, is accounting for Russian prejudice. I’ve seen articles claiming how they’re trying to force Russia to start using…. I think the Soviet term was “Great Russians,” so that people who count will be aware of the casualty rates. Being a citizen of Russia, doesn’t make you “Russian.” I’m not sure exactly how the distinction is made - maybe they can tell by speech patterns - but Russia loves mass casualties as a way to purge the non-desirables. Telling the important crowd that the peasants are being killed off, will make many of them happy. (The closest analogue I can think of, is how many South Americans view the Indigenous.) Russia killed off 40% of the population of Kazakhstan. Mostly directly, but many were also killed off by marching them into NAZI guns, with little to no training and equipment. Putin is clearly doing this in Ukraine, and given the housing costs in St. P and Moscow, I’m sure he will start resettling Russians in the parts of Russia he depopulates. | |||
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| Member |
That's a great point with wider foreign policy implications; we see those casualty numbers and think "unsustainable, the population will revolt" but from their perspective cleaning out the Caucus is desirable. Even when more ethnic Russians begin dying, we don't appreciate the hopelessness of being a Russian peasant. I often thought during the GWOT our strategies were crafted for a different enemy than who we fought; we never really grasped the devoted Muslim mind and consequently passed their most valuable targets while killing their least valued. | |||
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| Shaman |
Hey, kindly fuck off. He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. | |||
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| Shaman |
I've sponsored 2 Ukrainians I personally know. You too can kindly go fuck yourself. He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. | |||
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| Peace through superior firepower  |
Enough | |||
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| Frangas non Flectes |
Us not truly understanding the mindset of the locals, and then taking our experiences with one group and applying them to the next conflict that's comprised of an entirely different cast of characters is a theme that keeps popping up over and over again when I start really digging into our history of war. This is a good example of that. We think we know what's best for a region based entirely on our own values and morals. To be sure, there are some universal human absolutes, but the question is to what degree are those shared with the people we condemn? I'm not one of those "all cultures are equal" people - I think there's plenty of abhorrent ideas that are considered norms in other places, but for me, it keeps coming back to "what business is this of ours?" Really? All the arguments for us being involved keep coming back to how wrong this war is and how evil Putin is but again, how is this our problem? I'm yet to really hear a great argument for our involvement; just emotional pleas, condemnations, and hearty rhetoric. If we're going to fan this into a bigger conflict, I want to understand exactly what this is buying us besides the idea that we're destroying our biggest geopolitical rival, and that truly remains to be seen. This shit is going to kick off into something big right around the time my son is old enough to be drafted and I will be God damned if I'm going to let him go to the next big meatgrinder because of old enmities and power-brokering games for the insider trading elites running our oligarchy. ______________________________________________ Carthago delenda est | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money  |
This is why our Founding Fathers wanted the new nation to avoid foreign entanglements. " It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world. " - George Washington Farewell Address to the People of the United States | Monday, September 19, 1796 "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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| Member |
Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion Is a Two-Edged Sword https://www.theamericanconserv...s-a-two-edged-sword/ Ukraine, like any belligerent nation that finds itself heavily dependent on external forces, is waging two wars: the actual, corporeal war against Russia, and the information war to court, consolidate, and deepen Western support. The second is just as important as the first, as there can be no viable Ukrainian war effort without a program of sustained Western succor. These two poles have an uneasy relationship, with imperatives of diplomatic and political courtship all too often grinding against the rigors of cold military logic. To see these dynamics at work, one needs only to turn their gaze to the war-torn Donbas region, where the Zelensky government has been loath to withdraw from besieged cities out of concern that the optics of large Ukrainian retreats would dampen Western political enthusiasm. Kiev is, in this sense, fighting on two fronts, and the net-sum of Ukrainian decision-making must be seen through this dialectic of having to pursue optimal military policies while keeping Western audiences committed and engaged over the long haul. Ukraine’s shock decision not to double down on its defenses in Donbas amid Russian advances but, instead, to launch an incursion in August through the northwest into Russia’s neighboring Kursk region should be understood as a brainchild of that strangely dualistic strategic mindset. And the Kursk incursion has yielded precisely its intended effect, at least on the information front. The heroic drama of a small, beleaguered nation daring to take the fight to its larger foe was received in the West with the kind of appetite one might expect. The incursion is “bold, brilliant, beautiful,” said Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). It is also “devastating for the Putin regime,” according to Sweden’s recently resigned foreign minister, and has made nonsense out of Russia’s supposed red lines. This litany of soothing effusions has little to do with the much grimmer reality of what is happening on the ground in Kursk and elsewhere along the lines of contact in Ukraine, but it is part and parcel of a war that was, since its inception, partitioned between two economies: the narratives being skillfully, one deigns to say beautifully, crafted for Western audiences, and the actual conduct of the war. The Zelensky government enjoys a total monopoly in the former market, but, as more invested observers tacitly acknowledge, commands an alarmingly small and ever dwindling share in the latter. There is, to be sure, a way in which the Kursk venture reflects a fundamentally sound judgment on the part of Ukrainian officials about the course of the war. It is as powerful a recognition as any that Ukraine cannot win the war of attrition Russia has prosecuted since the end of 2022. Its sense of breakneck urgency, felt keenly enough by Ukrainian officials to warrant such a gamble, puts the final nail in the coffin of ill-conceived theories that Kiev can cobble together something approximating a victory by pursuing a defensive strategy into 2025. The Kursk offensive was, apparently, an attempt to end the war on Ukraine’s terms by cutting a swathe through a sparsely populated and even less well-guarded southwestern region of Russia, swiftly capturing land that can be used as a bargaining chip to be traded for Russian-occupied territories in eastern and southeastern Ukraine. The exchange would be lubricated by sheer shock value, with the Kremlin, reeling from the humiliation visited upon it and wracked by a sense of sudden vulnerability, tripping over itself to initiate ceasefire talks. Voilà tout. But the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) failed to penetrate deep into the Kursk region within the crucial first 48–72 hours that constituted their window of surprise. Their northward thrust stopped well short of the local Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, the seizure of which would have presented the Kremlin with a serious dilemma; the Ukrainians also spent longer than they could afford capturing the strategically situated border town of Sudzha. Russia, meanwhile, did not play into Ukraine’s hands by redeploying a significant chunk of its Donbas forces to Kursk, but has instead saturated the area with a groundswell of fresh recruits, many of whom may not have participated in the war at all if not for Ukraine’s incursion. These deployments, combined with Russian quantitative advantages in firepower, prevented the AFU from significantly expanding its zone of control in Kursk beyond its initial gains in mid-August. Yet a land trade scheme along the lines envisioned by Oleksandr Syrskyi, the AFU’s commander-in-chief, runs into a more fundamental problem. The lands to be exchanged are not of comparable value, not just because Russia’s military presence in Ukraine dwarfs the AFU’s Kursk foray by several orders of magnitude, but because Ukraine, unlike Russia, lacks the long-term capacity to occupy the foreign territory it controls. Why would the Russians scurry into peace talks on Kyiv’s terms just to repatriate a strip of land they believe, not without strong cause, they can eventually claw back without offering any concessions to Ukraine? There is evidence that Vladimir Putin’s favorability has dropped somewhat since the incursion, but the domestic mood in Russia is nowhere near a tipping point and not even close to a situation wherein Putin may feel pressured to explore diplomatic offramps. One must likewise consider that this newfound domestic discontent, subtle as it is, likely emanates not just from dovish types but also from a decidedly hawkish contingent that blames the Kremlin for, in their view, not prosecuting the war vigorously enough. Indeed, as reflected by a wave of recent mass firings and resignations of top officials, including Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, it is the Zelenskyy government that now finds itself in an even more difficult position. The AFU controls a pocket inside Russia that they know cannot be held over the long term, and the present effort to do so is already costing Ukraine closer to home. Even as the Russians slowly bleed the AFU in Kursk, they advance with uncharacteristic briskness in parts of the Donbas region. They appear to be well on their way to seizing the key city of Pokrovsk, and with it, effacing one of Ukraine’s last major vectors of resistance in Donbass and setting Russia up for large-scale offensives in other theaters. The Zelensky government cannot simply pack up and leave Kursk, well-advised as that would be, out of deference to the same logic that impelled this venture: one of Ukraine’s principal goals is managing Western perceptions, and it would not be possible to present a retreat under these circumstances as anything other than a failure. The Kursk incursion proceeded from the correct assumption that Ukraine is running out of time to end this conflict on advantageous terms, but this strategically muddled attempt to force a negotiated settlement through maneuver warfare has only bolstered Russia’s prosecution of an attrition war that, as both sides know, Ukraine cannot win. There is now a clear sense of strategic urgency in Kiev, but there are no signs yet that this nascent sentiment is on a path to crystallizing into what Ukraine and its Western backers need the most: a clear-headed, practical framework for drawing the curtains on a ruinous war in which there are no winners, but one that poses real and growing risks for U.S. interests and fabric of European security. _________________________ "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." Mark Twain | |||
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| The Ice Cream Man |
Yes. A fair amount of the reason for our involvement is probably DC’s money laundering operations in Ukraine/Putin probably wasn’t paying as much/The Saudis or Xi funded it. (I don’t think a sane person can look at DC’s actions, and believe that they actually support the Republic.) A second part is that I suspect it’s cheaper to give Ukraine a bunch of 50+ year old weapons than to decommission them, and it’s a live action laboratory where the major powers can learn about drone warfare, for the cost of antiquated hardware, dead Ukrainians and dead Russian peasants. HOWEVER, a totalitarian lunatic with a burgeoning cult of personality is also seeking control of more of the world’s energy and food supply, adjacent to some very good, and very defiant allies, and has been making noise about taking over a strategically important nation, with a growing population, which we are trying to be friends with. (Kazakhstan) | |||
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| Frangas non Flectes |
I keep hearing this argument and I don't believe it, for one, because I've seen the pictures the Ukrainians have posted in the r/nightvision subreddit bragging about an entire unit receiving PVS31A's with 2022 production stamps and their SOF guys getting GPNVG18's. That's our current issue top-grade stuff, not 50 year old tech. We are sending them new stuff. Also, just for the sake of argument, let's say it's more expensive on paper to decommission the stuff we're sending over there. I think that's a smarter use of the money, honestly, than buying us into a war on the other side of the planet. I would love to see the data that actually backs this assertion up and even then, I would be strongly suspicious of it because our government who lies to us about everything is going to suddenly just tell us the straight skinny on this? Doubtful at best. This nonsense of us killing off our biggest enemy for less than it would cost us to cut the stuff up and with no American lives lost is more of the same thinking that's always been a problem for us when we get involved in foreign affairs: We're only looking at now, not ten years down the road, twenty, fifty or even more. Oh, sure, when it's all over and Ukraine is a smoking hole, US companies are going to make bank on the contracts to rebuild it, but how much of that won't be taxpayer augmented remains to be seen. As long as our corrupt politicians can jockey their entangled interests in there, I guess it doesn't matter. Russia has a long history, and whatever one thinks of their leader, he seems to have a good grasp on it. I think Putin thinks in a broader scale of time than we tend to. In Europe, a hundred miles is a very long way. In America, a hundred years is a very long time. We are buying into a war here that will likely continue for a very long time. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan... all ventures that were fervently justified to the American people over and over, and what did any of these do for us? What did we learn from these that we're applying to Ukraine and Russia? From where I'm sitting, it doesn't look like a hell of a lot, honestly. We'll be involved in another fifteen or twenty year conflagration with another superpower, but hey, we got in for cheap! If it doesn't last that long, it will be because nukes get used. I don't need to go down that line of thought because the implications should be obvious. What is this buying us in the long run? You can't guarantee the future, and our track record with this stuff is, well... abysmal. As for the live-action laboratory and drone warfare and all that shit, the average Reddit, X, and Telegram junkie who has doped out the good feeds and channels is learning everything you listed because they're posting pictures and videos of all of it. I'd be curious what value our top brass is getting out of our hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and material deposit that the average internet-savvy modern man doesn't know, or can't find. It can't be a hell of a lot.
This is still not our fucking problem. You guys can miss me with this "we should feel bad for and protect good people" stuff because we simply don't have our affairs enough in order here to go be everyone's hero and fix everyone else's problems. If that sounds callous, it's because it is. ______________________________________________ Carthago delenda est | |||
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| His diet consists of black coffee, and sarcasm.  |
There are no good guys and bad guys in this war. There are only bad guys and worse guys, and a blurry line between them. | |||
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