quote:

Originally posted by Broadside:
You have also always had an isolationist streak in you. I remember when you shut the Board down for the day in remembrance on September 11, 2002. However you came out against the war in Afghanistan long before Trump decided to pull the plug.

How, pray tell, does shutting down this forum for 24 hours on the first anniversary of the murder of nearly 3000 Americans indicate that I am an isolationist? I fail to see any connection between these things. What I do remember is that a couple of members were telling me that shutting down the forum for a day means that "the terrorists win." Back then, people were throwing around that trite crap left and right. "If you (insert action), the terrorists win." It sounded damn silly back then, and thinking about it today, viewed through the prism of all that has transpired since, it sounds even more ridiculous. I pity any of those platitude parrots who actually believed this ridiculous shit. When you claim that the security of this nation is dependent upon one simple action taken by an individual, you trivialize the matter. The "...the terrorists win" stuff was and is an embarrassingly stupid thing to say.

The events of September 11, 2001 cold not be ignored. We could not behave on any subsequent day- including September 11, 2002- that it didn't happen, and that's what the "terrorists win" people were saying, whether or not they realized it. They wanted us to ignore that this nation was wounded on 9/11 and in their desire to appear strong (by forgetting what even then constituted history), they were forgetting all those innocent lives lost.

Shutting down the forum on that day was my way of honoring the dead, and I had a logo up on the closed board which said "In honor of the nearly three thousand innocent Americans who lost their lives on September 11, 2001." This had nothing to do with terrorists or anyone who hates this benevolent nation; it had to do with all those people and their families. Also included was a quote:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." - Lincoln's Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862

So, tell me how this makes me an isolationist. I recall that my remarks in this forum after 9/11 were on par with just about every man I encountered, both in this forum and in person, which indicated a strong desire to find the source of these attacks and stomp the ever-loving shit out of them.

quote:

What surprises is that you don’t see Russia as being just as much a threat as China.

The Chinese Communist Party sees its nation as being ascendant. They feel as if they have yet to have their day as a true superpower and it is apparent that everything they are doing on the world stage is part of an effort to bring this about.

The Russians, on the other hand, in their role as the lynchpin of the former Soviet Union, stood in nuclear opposition to the United States for decades, with the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction creating a stasis. And then, their empire collapsed. They know- though they would never admit it- that their time has passed.

The Chinese government appears to consist of genuinely insane people, far less reasonable than the Russians. If a nuclear war is in the future of this planet, it will be the Chinese who cause it.

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:

quote:

Originally posted by echidna:
Why everybody is treating this as a charity case which appeared on our doorstep out of the blue? It's not. We took the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal (complete with delivery vehicles like ICBMs, strategic bombers and cruise missiles) from Uhkraine in 1994 in exchange to guaranteing their sovereignty and territorial integrity. The other guarantors were Russia, UK and France. Russia is the one violating it. In fact, many of cruise missiles now being lobbed into apartment buildings and civilian infrastructure are from the stash of ~650 Ukraine turned over to Russia as part of that very agreement. And they are launched from formerly Ukrainian strategic bombers.

We walk away from our obligations now and the whole world will take notice that the only way for a non-NATO country to stay independent next to an aggressive neighbor is to get nukes ASAP.

Like him or not, Zelensky's personality and antics have nothing to do with the reasons the US is involved in that conflict.

And the United States promised The Soviet Union that if Germany was allowed to reunify, and the Soviet military withdrew to Russia, NATO would not move 1 inch to the East. Well they did move East, under Russian protest.

So here we are.

Yet Finland and Sweden joins NATO. And here we are

Are you saying that NATO hasn't moved east with it's alliances since Germany's reunification?

quote:

Originally posted by Broadside:
What surprises is that you don’t see Russia as being just as much a threat as China. I see China as a long term threat while I view Russia as an immediate threat. Russia has and continues to launch countless cyber attacks against the United States. Remember the Colonial Pipeline incident? They have meddled in U.S. elections not to support one party over another, but o create division in order to weaken the U.S. Russia is now as much as it has ever been a clear and present danger to the U.S.

The coffee is brewing so it is probably time to wake up and have a whiff. If you don't view China as a much larger short term threat than Russia you are turning a blind eye to the problem.

China launches far more cyber attacks than Russia at least in my industry (financial). Cyber attacks are getting much harder to successfully deploy FYI.

Beyond the cyber attacks let's take something really simple like Chinese pharmaceutical exports. In all seriousness, what do you think the result would be if the CCP shut those exports off today? I'll give you a hint, people in the US would start dying very quickly. China would be hurt economically but that would pale in comparison to the harm they would inflict on us. Keep in mind the CCP could do that today,

Another larger example would be 5G networks. 5G does much more than allow a fast browsing experience on your phone. Many sectors of our economy currently use 5G or are currently deploying 5G instead of old style hard wired networks. 5G is growing rapidly FYI. Huawei (CCP) is not only a major distributor of 5g network hardware but also hardware components that make up the hardware of all companies in that sector. Is there a back door into the hardware and/or it's components? In my opinion there certainly is and back doors are very hard if not impossible to root out at the binary component level. Being a major supplier of world wide networks is what I would call a Cyber attack in the extreme.

Have you heard about China buying up a lot of farmland? A fairly large portion of their purchases are in Montana where we have many nuclear missile launch sites. Put them in close proximity to sensitive military installations and a high probability of having an eye into both the cell phone and wireless networks seems like an imminent threat. Let's hope our military has an effective counter to this problem.

There are many threats that China poses but lastly I will bring up the CCP influence in Latin America. China has outpaced US investment in Central and South America. In short, the CCP has a much larger influence in the western hemisphere than Russia. That seems like a problem to me and it's growing. Think of the fun everyone would have if the CCP chose to militarize a Brazilian sea port.

The Russian threat appears to be minimal compared to the threat China poses. Ukraine has zero strategic value where as China is a serious and very large threat today and not something looming on the horizon. The Russian threat is minimal at most. If I am hiking and I come across crouching cougar, I treat it as an imminent threat. China is a crouching cougar.

An interesting take here:

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu...-of-the-ukraine-war/

^^^Interesting, AND Factually Accurate!

The US stripped the Ukrainians of all their defensive / offensive weapons in 1994 and in the ensuing 29 years did absolutely nothing to re-establish their defenses? With Russia on their border? Based on some kind of a promise by the US / NATO to protect them for eternity without basing a large contingent of military assets in country that had that capability? After watching the US bail on Vietnam 20 years earlier?
Were the Ukrainians really that trusting? And stupid?

quote:

Originally posted by lbsid:
An interesting take here:

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu...-of-the-ukraine-war/

Best analysis on Ukraine I have seen. Thanks for posting.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
The fact that “President” Zelenskyy has made any opposition party to his own party illegal tells you everything you need to know about this guy.

quote:

And disbanded all alternative Ukraine media.

Yep. He's antithetical to our values.
We have contributed enough to his wife's expensive French shopping trips too.

He's neck deep in an unprovoked, brutal, criminal war for the survival of his country. I'll cut him some slack.

Hell, we threw Japs in prison camps. That was pretty antithetical to our values as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
Hell, we threw Japs in prison camps. That was pretty antithetical to our values as well.

Moral relativism, and through the prism of 80 years of societal change, no less. Cute.

For the past year most of the training that my unit has focused on has been critical infrastructure assessments and inspections. Along with rebuilding operations and humanitarian operations.

As I was perusing the internet, I ran across this article that contained this tidbit:

J.P. Morgan, the nation's largest bank, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the eye on attracting private capital for a new investment fund to rebuild Ukraine's infrastructure that has been destroyed in its war with Russia.

J.P. Morgan bankers spent most of last week meeting with Zelenskyy and his senior staff where they discussed the creation of a fund seeded with $20 billion to $30 billion in private capital, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Other ideas discussed with the Ukrainian president were the creation of a bank administered by Wall Street firms that would make investments in oil refineries, roads, bridges and other pieces of economic infrastructure destroyed in Vladimir Putin's year-long campaign to annex the country and rebuild the old Soviet Union, these people add.


I wonder if this will turn into another Iraq/Afghanistan in terms of all the PMC's, Defense Contractors and US Army Corp of Engineers jobs that will be available.

^^^^

Well, terrific. And when Russians stumble across a board meeting in a burned out stable then here we go; "Stand up buckle up shuffle to the door..."

For those wishing for more intervention over there, remember, these are the people who would be "in charge" of it.



Sure you don't want to think it over some more?

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
The Chinese government appears to consist of genuinely insane people, far less reasonable than the Russians. If a nuclear war is in the future of this planet, it will be the Chinese who cause it.

This deserves to be repeated. While I support slightly more support for Ukraine than you do Para (still not near as much as the current administration) you could not be more correct than you have been with this statement. China is our BIGGEST enemy! They are our number 1 through 10 enemies. China is without question the biggest threat that the world has known in my lifetime at least. China doesn’t believe in freedom, or human rights, or not turning their country into a sewer, or intellectual property, or the right to exist as an individual. Russia is wrong, and Putin’s actions have been evil, probably constituting war crimes that should result in his execution. But make no mistake China is still the biggest threat to planet Earth and they are a far bigger threat to world peace than Russia.

The Chinese Communist Party consists of the most devoted, committed, true believer Marxist-Leninists the world has ever seen. The Russians always have had this undertone of cynicism about their communist system, but the CCP- they are genuine fanatics. They are truly dangerous.

The Chinese have been eyeing at world domination for over two millennia. They play the long game, and their latest and current leadership are more dangerous than ever before. These fuckers are pure evil. Putin got nothing on the Chinese.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I am well past the point of being tired of you begging for assistance and armaments. I am tired of the sickening adulation being paid to you, with some comparing you to Winston Churchill, which is preposterous. I am tired of low-information people taking up the cause of your nation's struggle merely because the incessant propaganda being puked out by the news media has convinced them that the most important thing that has ever happened in all of human history is the conflict which now rages in your country. This is barely an exaggeration. People who have succumbed to the propaganda have become insane with your cause.

The United States of America is the most benevolent nation the world has yet seen, and may end up holding this distinction for the remainder of human existence. The government of this nation has funneled billions upon billions of dollars to your country. We have provided material aid in the form of weapons which we ourselves now find in short supply, at a time when we ourselves face great danger.

The American people now hear stories of the waste and corruption by officials and businessmen in your country- stories of lavish spending on luxury goods, and all done with the money of American taxpayers.

You cause is a lost one, President Zelenskyy. When all is said and done, at least a portion of your country will end up being annexed by Russia and though I am not a political expert or a military strategist, it seems to me that there is no way that the Ukraine can prevail in this war.

We have done all we can for you, though I have no doubt that the drain on American resources on your nation's behalf will continue unabated.

I am sick of the ridiculous hero worship for you, and for the war propaganda calculated to make the world feel guilty that we have not given you everything we have. No decent person wishes to see the people of a nation suffer and children frightened to go to sleep at night. War is the greatest obscenity man has created- a horrible, terrible thing which defies all attempts to describe it. War is also a perpetual part of the human race. We shall never divest ourselves of conflict; it is impossible for us to do so.

Some will read this and declare me to be hopelessly callous and, perhaps, a Russian sympathizer, but neither is true. It comes down to the fact that we cannot save you. You must win or lose on your own and I would be quite surprised if it turns out to be the former.

Stop standing before adoring crowds and trying to shame us into continuing to give you more, more, more. I am sick to death of seeing your face and of having the outcome of a regional conflict made out to be vital to the security and interests of the United States. Please go away.

Perhaps, one of the best editorials you EVER printed/wrote!
Nice job, Para.

Support of Ukraine up to this point has been a lost cause. Nearly all of the armament we've sent has ended up scrapped either by Russian strikes before it reaches the frontline or at black market booths to raise cash for corrupt Ukrainian officials. Russian MOD figures currently show Ukrainian equipment losses at nearly 100% of the tallied total of international donations over the last year. Why are we supporting a regime that condoned Nazi membership in its ranks? "But if we don't support Ukraine then China will be more likely to strike Taiwan", nonsense... China knows our weapons stockpiles are nearly depleted which is why it took nearly a week to find an air-to-air missile to shoot down a balloon. What kind of message does that send... The United States, a great "superpower", is so upside down on aid commitments to a corrupt and ineffective puppet government in Eastern Europe that it can't protect itself from a hot air balloon....?

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
He's neck deep in an unprovoked, brutal, criminal war for the survival of his country. I'll cut him some slack.

Hell, we threw Japs in prison camps. That was pretty antithetical to our values as well.

Wow. You actually wrote that?

This corrupt little shit had actually started trying to ban and imprison his opposition before the war but he seized on that opportunity of it being an “emergency” to make it happen.