Bolton never gets tired of losing proxy wars to Russia. Hopefully he’s running out of proxies to destroy.
Ukraine's population catering far worse than Russia's. Win, lose, or draw, Ukraine is looking at demographic collapse. They're already sending kids and elderly folk to the battle front. Is that something to celebrate? A worthy sacrificial lamb?
ignore is your friend, it cleans the thread up a lot for you and for those of us who have already reached that conclusion
Baloney. The west would rely on force multipliers, including superior technology, to defeat a weak and hapless army like Russia's. The U.S. did not win decisively in Iraq because they had more troops "in theatre" than Iraq--they won because they had better equipment, better-trained soldiers, smarter generals, and superior technology. We have jets that Russia cannot detect, unless they are lucky enough to get a visual on them. If they fly at night, they can go wherever they please and bomb whatever they like. What is Russia going to do about that, wise guy? We have better tanks and IFV's--Russia would be lucky to get the kill ratio down from 3300:1 in the Iraq War down to 100:1 in a direct conflict with the U.S. Our navy is a modern navy, and Russia's navy is stuck in the 1960's for the most part. Russia's navy wouldn't last a week against ours; they didn't last very long against a country without a navy, in case you didn't notice. Overall, Russia has struggled against a much smaller country that is using 40-50 year-old weapons. What will they do against a modern military, besides crap their pants and surrender?
Trump VP Pick Vance Says China Is the ‘Biggest Threat’ to US I've been saying that since the start of this thread. I'm not a Republican, but with Trump likely to be the next president at least we can finally end the farce in Ukraine and focus on something that actually matters to us. Vance is interesting in that in past interviews he's noted the challenge of China and wants to confront them politically and economically, but not militarily, which IMO is the deal approach. I just hope that unlike Trump he focuses his approach on how to improve ourselves rather than how to take down China, though not sure how much influence he'd have on Trump.
Not only is it productive to ignore him, it gets funny when everyone does and then he starts bombarding posts to try getting attention. Being a Russian shill/bot must be lonely work.
Russia invaded their homes, blew up a lot of their towns. The ones that are there are fighting for their existence. The women doing it on the frontlines are particularly badass because they could have fled without anyone faulting them for it. Lots of urbanites obviously wouldn’t do that even in desperate existential times, I bet many of the women we see had husbands and boyfriends already killed by the Russian invaders, maybe even children lost in one of the heinous missile attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Why is it so inconceivable to you, that some of your fellow Americans might dare harbor contrasting takes on this war than yours/the approved orthodox take? What's funny--what I've found particularly hilarious in this thread--is the inability of you, chem, and a few others in here to accept that there are other reasonable views and takes on this war, and y'all's pearl clothing aghast reaction to any such... Very entertaining.
It’s probably because the “anti-war” takes aren’t particularly reasonable given the context of Russian aggression here and that U.S troops aren’t in this conflict, and many of the talking points used are straight up Russian propaganda (often comically ridiculous takes). Of course creating such arguments and trying to prop up the advantageous side is the purpose of propaganda. Russia needs the U.S. to pull back support and to divide European support to conquer Ukraine. So it’s hardly surprising Russian agents are working OT trying to undermine governments that would continue defending Ukraine. That’s the job spies and intelligence officers are paid to do. With the internet, they get to leverage bots and the mentally ill who will go along for free.
There are certainly other reasonable takes on the war but the Pravda parrot doesn't supply them. Seemed like most of his sources were idiot YouTubers and dudes that had Putin avatars. Thread flows much more sanely when you skip over his silliness.
The casualty numbers for both sides are all over the place. Vegas and DD add perspective on that front, as well as Russian perspective, and Okee adds some solid non-bianary perspective. I'm sure things flow more smoothly when everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, but this isn't church. It's a message board, and when there's no balance or counter perspective, you're left with a circle jerk of propaganda porn. Feel free to ignore them, but it strikes as petty when you keep hitting their posts and not just dismissing them as bots, but trying to get everyone else to as well They post elsewhere on here, on other topics, especially DD, for whom you seem to harbor particular disdain. You'll do you anyway--just pointing out my reaction ( and would submit I'm probably not alone), and that there are some of us who appreciate the added perspective. Jmho/fwiw
Nobody is celebrating (although I am needling our FSB friend), just pointing out facts. Are you one of the Code Pink Republicans who see Putin as the victim here? Gonna give me some Chomsky lines like your girl MTG?
Seems less reasonable to dismiss any and all non-confoming, inconsistent with prevailing orthodoxy views, as unreasonable... ...unless i suppose, you're a neo-con war hawk, for whom war is the only virtue.
Nah. Just not particularly inspired by the war cause from a US perspective, for a non-NATO country, when we're dropping the ball on so many other fronts, such as the southern border, and most recently come to find, our secret service is a laughable caricature of the keystone cops (how else does the SS let a dark clothed shooter prop up on a white roof with a long rifle in broad day light, on one of less than 5 buildings to secure, within 150 yards of one of exactly 2 POTUS candies!?!?! Or it was a corrupt inside job.. ). Either way, we got way more to worry about at home, than to affirmatively seek to stifle any peace talks, while the purpoted beneficiary of our benevolence suffers an unnecessary obliteration of their population. And that is... Jmho/fwiw.
Not going down this road again with someone who only takes that position because of the person sitting in the oval office. Exact same circumstances - but YOUR GUY in the seat - and you're probably here waving your pom poms. If you got him off the record, your boy Marco is completely with me on all of this. And deep down you know that, but you've got to play nice with your MAGA friends. At least you spared me the Chomsky routine.
I'm not dismissing "any and all". I'm dismissing one obnoxiously uninformed Pravda parrot who spams the board with lies and crappy sources. Maybe he has gotten better but after the first several hundreds BS posts, I stopped reading.
Lastly, the whole point of this is making sure it stays there and doesn't leak to NATO borders. Because, as we clearly see here, he's not going to stop until he's moved the borders back to or close to 1991 status. He also wants nothing in the world more than to see the US and its system collapse. As for the border. A wall is about the dumbest solution. More border control officers, and substations and/or networks of substations, is the only solution. All of this backed up by drones, seismic sensors, etc. You know, 2024 stuff not 1024 stuff.
Disdain for Russian trolls probably stems from my decades of military service, much of which revolved around keeping Russia in it's place.
Yesterday in Freising Germany, I did a brewery tour with a couple of Finns. Mid 30's and obviously both had served, one was still in. Finns are pretty laid back but they were amazed that the US wasn't taking the opportunity to hammer the crap out of Russia via more/consistent Ukrainian support. Of course the Finns have a unique relationship with Russia. Also, we were kind of drunk by the time that conversation came up.