War in Ukraine

Limiting myself to Western sources, I am supremely confident that the take that “Russia is getting its ass kicked” is spectacularly wrong.

 

Perhaps not either or, but one has been funded, and the other has received less than lip service, while the priorities are clearly reversed of what they ought to be.

 

Before reading the article, including the Ukrainian sources he cited, you first googled the author to find dirt.

If the standard for reliability is an unblemished record I’m guessing you should have been ignored a week after … when did you join THFSG ?

 

If it's so damn cheap, then let's INVEST IT in our own border security.

....and btw, our obligation is to our NATO allies...not Joe Biden's corrupt family business host, that merely expressed an interest in joining NATO.

Instead we treat Texas like it's a terrorist State, and Ukraine like it's a state of our union.

 

The cost has been horrific for the Ukrainians. It can’t be measured in dollars.

 

Arguably we did. Biden, Blinken and Austin let the cat out of the bag, early, when they pointed to long-standing plans to depose Putin and dismember Russia. And for no other reason than that we cannot brook competition in the world.

 

No, it’s very expensive. No point in trying to fool ourselves there. The question is, then, is it worth it? I think it is for several reasons I’ve previously expressed. If saving money in the long run is a higher priority, then the best way to do that is to shorten the war by becoming more — not wholly — involved. That means more risk, of course. The example I’ve repeatedly brought up is using air and naval forces to enforce freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. Successful historical examples include Atlantic operations in the months before we entered WW2 and operations to break Iran’s oil blockade of the Gulf States during the late 1980s. Relatively low risk with high payoff for Ukraine and NATO.

 

What a moron! It would take me less than five minutes to put this arrogant idiot in his place. I would start by asking him how much money we spend on national defense (answer: $877B/yr). And then ask him why we spend that money on national defense--what are our two top concerns as far as other countries (Canada and Mexico? or China and Russia?). What percent of one year's defense budget have we spent supporting Ukraine? Answer: about 13%, according to his $115 billion number. (Really, the question should be, how much have we spent on defense the last 33 years, since Russia's last economic collapse? Probably $15-20 trillion. Ukraine support represents less than 1% of that.) How much has that small ($115B) spending caused Russia's military to be degraded? Answer: about 50%. Which money has been better spent, the 99% on weapons systems bought over the last 33 years that will likely never be used in anger before they become obsolete, or the 1% on support for a country that is actually destroying one of our adversaries while defending itself?

Then I would remind him that when we supported Afghanistan against the Soviets, helping to cause the USSR to collapse, we saved trillions of dollars in defense spending (in 2023 equivalent dollars) over the next decade. His opposition to spending $115 billion on Ukraine is actually an opposition to saving trillions of dollars over the next decade (or, put another way, support for wasting trillions of dollars over the next decade). Then I would certainly remind him that Ukraine is doing well in the war, and actually excelling when it comes to destroying Russian military equipment (not too mention killing Russian troops). And they are doing it with 40-year-old U.S. technology! It's not like we are sending them our latest technology right off the assembly line. The outcome of the war is unknown at this time. We only know that freedom in Ukraine will cease to exist if we stop supporting them. And a dangerous dictator will be given control over the world's breadbasket, and he will threaten to starve hundreds of millions of people worldwide unless they toe the Russian line. Where will the world get its food, if Russia withholds it? From Missouri's farms, as the Mississippi River dries up every year? I think not.

Josh Hawley is what happens when an ignoramus is elected to high office based on his looks and arrogance, as opposed to wisdom and intelligence. He should probably flank himself with MTG doing the Idiocracy Dance and Boebert "fondling" him when he speaks. Truth? From a short-sighted and dimwitted point of view, maybe.

 

We’re sending our older weapons to Ukraine because our newer weapons don’t work …

F-35 Stealth Fighter Only Mission Capable About Half The Time, Government Report Finds | ZeroHedge

 

Meanwhile, you miss the big picture by a country mile.

Yep. We coaxed the USSR into collapsing by spending itself onto ruin.

Afghanistan played a notable roll.

The lesson learned isn't "hey, let's do that again!"

We may as well fight Germany and Japan if that were any kind of metric.
Alas, tis the Chinese who took notes, and applied them.

...and they have coaxed and are coaxing us into spending ourselves, into post Soviet style abject ruination.

And Ukrsine will play but a minor roll in that .

 

As I understand it, Russia entered Afghanistan at the behest of its government. We just invaded. It’s what we do. Turns out that anything we do can be justified as “acting in our interests.”

 

I'm afraid it is you who are missing the big picture by a lot more than a country mile. You are focused on the small picture of $115 billion spent on support for Ukraine the last 18 months, and oblivious to the big picture of $20 trillion on defense spending in the last 3+ decades.

First of all, it's "role" not "roll". Afghanistan was not a dinner roll any more than JFK was a pastry. Ukrsine is not going to roll over for Russia, and neither is Ukraine.

Umm, you do know that Russia is currently a dictatorship with a goal of world domination, don't you? Their War in Ukraine is certainly a manifestation of that concept.

The "metric" is not "something was successful once upon a time, therefore let's do it again for no reason." That would be stupid.

Germany and Japan are currently peaceful democracies. There is no need to invade them. They've learned their lesson about world domination. Russia has not.

Attempting to take over another country to expand your possessions is theft. The U.S., as the world's largest economy and most successful country, has an interest in preventing countries from making hostile takeovers of other countries. It makes the world a more violent place, and shows that a bold country without qualms about killing large numbers of people can eventually take over the world. We have to support our allies. Ukraine's global agricultural exports, if nothing else, makes it worthy of support. (If they are not able to feed the rest of the world, starvation will create a thousand Osama bin Ladens trying to kill Americans.)

Russia is not a peaceful democracy. They are a war-mongering dictatorship with one of the world's largest armies, and nuclear weapons. They are dangerous, and their leadership really hates the U.S. And, again, they invaded a neighboring country for the purpose of conquest, on their way to rebuilding the Soviet Union. Stopping Russia from succeeding is a worthwhile goal. We spend a huge amount of money defending the U.S. and our interests from Russia. Ukraine is now one of our interests, partly for humanitarian reasons, partly for agricultural exports, but mainly for the fact that they are fighting our adversary.

China knows that we are spending a hundred times more on weapons that we will probably never use (and China will likely steal anyway through hacking and espionage) than we are spending in Ukraine. China also knows that if Russia can be defeated in a proxy war with our 40-year-old weapons and such a small amount of our money, then they are in big trouble if they start something and wind up in a hot war with us and our latest weapons.

Wake up and smell the coffee.

 

We are almost in the red for artillery rounds. They are going through around 10,000 or so a week and we can only produce about 8,000 a month. Hence, why we are sending the DPCIM rounds, which may or may not be against the law due to their dud rates. We have been sending them MLRS that are pretty new. We have an issue with our defense industry's capacity to replenish these stocks and it is starting to get bad,

Whether they like it or not, Ukraine is probably going to have to cut a deal. The Russian army has been gutted for a generation. Unless our industrial defense policy changes, we cannot continue this level of support. This is not sustainable. It's not what people want to hear but it is where we are at.

 

If Russia’s army has been gutted for a generation, then that doesn’t sound like a country you’d have to cut a deal with.

 

Then feel free to go and try and push a entrenched force out of defensive positions across a very big axis. We'll be waiting here to hear how it works out for you. I'd recommend packing at least a lunch.

 

Now you’re getting it. Except that your assessment of Russia’s losses reads like a parody.

 

Finger pointers and screamers like Hawley never offer forward thinking, thoughtful solutions. Their interest is getting people to quote their screams and fear porn.

 

Posts like this is why I question whether posting here is even worth the effort. I always enjoy having someone that has never smelled cordite telling me what is actually happening in a war.