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Lawman

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Posts posted by Lawman

  1. Quadrupled down on what? Pointing out that you're only able to identify propaganda when it doesn't come from you? I am genuinely interested in your position, if it can stand. But childishly repeating: "Russian Talking Points" ad nauseam doesn't give you any credibility. I'm not here to change anyone else's mind. I'm not here to be agreeable. I'm here to change my own mind. I have no idea your age or what stage of your career you're in, but I was there. If 10 years ago someone was telling me the same things I'm telling you, I'd have been highly defensive as well. And, for the same reasons I explained earlier. I read a lot, I observe a lot, and my perspective changes based on an accumulation of info that I process according to my values and morality. When I present my evolved opinion here on the matter that is critical of both sides, and not just one, I fully expect it to be attacked. I wouldn't be writing these long-winded posts if I didn't thoroughly enjoy your criticisms and finding holes in your logic. 
    If you're 100% unwilling to condemn propaganda on both sides instead of just one, I know you're not arguing in good faith. You calling me a "stooge" or a "shill" because I don't adopt YOUR talking points and propaganda is amusing because it's glaringly hypocritical to anyone with an ounce of integrity.
    Those Psyops guys that you'd like for me to speak with... what exactly is their job? Is it only to identify enemy propaganda and counter it with the truth? I've known plenty of PSYOPS guys. I've dropped pallets full of the "truth" in the form of leaflets over the skies of IRQ/AFG. I'm well aware of their job and if you claim to not know that our current government aims a little propaganda our way as well, or you know it and are not also critical of it, you're being dishonest.
    There's a thousand reasons to love the "my" country, but that doesn't mean I can't be critical of it in the instances it falls short of my expectations. And it is "mine" no less, and no more, than it is yours or anyone else's. If your defense is so delicate that you can't accept any criticism whatsoever, nor admit any fault, you are operating in bad faith and your character is maybe a little weak. I care about Russia about as little as one possibly could.
    I've never mentioned or written about "Tucker". Why are you trying to inject him into the conversation? Is this a left vs right thing for you? You'll spend a thousand words decrying something being "from the Internet", "from Russia", "from Twitter", "from Tucker"....but you'll never address the content itself.
    It's kinda like the rainbow hair people who scream into the camera when someone asks them a simple, logical question that defeats their position. I've been asking you specific detailed questions about your position and you ever-so consistently decline to approach them. Instead, you deflect with irrelevant nonsense about "Tucker", "Soros", "Nazis", "Illuminati," "Covid", etc. Interestingly, these are all leftist criticisms. Hmm.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside-a-russian-disinformation-campaign-in-ukraine-in-2014/2017/12/25/f55b0408-e71d-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html


    An example of the Russian backed BS perspective you’ve been repeating on this very site. Despite all the cited examples of exactly what was being done in the wake of that situation, you’ll probably still act like the Russians were giving us some insight into “what was really going on” while alluding that WAPO writing what I linked is part of some greater propaganda and protection effort by the liberal backed media or some other nonsense.


    Again, you’re clueless, and what’s worse your willful of it to achieve your political goal. Nobody is fighting you with Ukrainian disinformation, they are telling you you’re an adult sitting in the kiddie pool of “facts” trying to tell us all its unusually warm and that’s some sort of thing caused by our government while the rest of us try to warn you it’s actually just full of piss.


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  2. Moved from the Chinese thread.
    That's the question and the reason I posted it. Is it propaganda, or is it fact? It's a pro-Ukrainian message from a member of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It appears you're only able to identify propaganda when it contradicts your message. Are you so insecure in your messaging that you can't even allow yourself to acknowledge that propaganda exists on your own side, and is often even more far-fetched and ridiculous? The predicament being: If you do acknowledge it, I'm just going to give you more examples.
    https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1691105018215317504?s=20

    Holy crap you’ve like quadrupled down on this now like all the rest of us need to prove something you’ve repeatedly been shown.

    You are spouting off Russian Talking Points as your argument and linking to dubious Twitter/etc accounts (whoever’s they happen to be) with apparently no understanding of how social media intertwines with itself or how that very fact is abused for illicit means. I’d tell you go talk to some Psyops guys or just remember your SERE training on indoctrination and soft vs hard influence efforts, but you’re the smart one. It’s all the rest of us that are being duped.

    So no share away if that’s how you want to be identified, but those of us pointing you out as a stooge will be more than happy to remind the room how willing you are to drag a hostile powers IA campaign into a discussion to achieve whatever your ideological desire happens to be. You’re a shill because it aligns with your need to rage against the current system/admin just like Tucker was. Plain and simply.


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  3. Oh, really? What would those arguments be? List them. I could give you a dozen and you would simply say that they're all Russian disinformation and propaganda. It's an easy out. You're no different than anyone at MSNBC. Deliver the approved perspective while simultaneously shouting "MISINFORMATION! DISINFORMATION! MALINFORATION!" at everything contradictory. It's weak and transparent, but the funny thing is: you actually seem to believe it. It's the same projection we see from your side on nearly every issue. Accuse others of doing the very same thing you are.
    And when you say I "puff up and scream about the First Amendment", you seem to be mocking it.
    Honest question: Do you believe I should be restricted from saying the things I'm saying here because you've deemed them false propaganda and giving "aid and comfort to the enemy"?
    Lawman, as a gesture of good faith, allow me to disseminate some anti-Russian information from an official Ukrainian outlet to demonstrate that I'm not wholly opposed to promoting your side of the argument.
    https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1691105018215317504?s=20

    What a really long winded way of saying “I’m gonna post propaganda from Russia, because it supports my ideological desires, and fact checking would limit my argument too much for it to possibly be effective.” It’s also pretty clear you simply don’t understand or care about the impacts of sharing Russian social media propaganda across multiple sites and domains and how that effects its persistent presence in the general internet town square.

    It’s been pointed out to you the clear “truths” you’ve been spouting off on that are manufactured Russian disinformation campaigns or narratives. If you’re dumb enough to keep shouting about them please let everybody know you’ve turned into that crazy uncle that emails/Facebook messages chain crap they found on Reddit.


    Oh look… your posting from Twitter. What a wonderful place for you to find “facts.”


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  4. You have the basis for a decent argument to be made. But you ruin it with ridiculousness like this. You just fabricated a straw man from silliness that no one here has brought up... just so you can make a spectacle of yourself swatting down bullshit that you, yourself, created. It's dumb. It's childish.

    You’re not trying to argue some universal scientific truth that the Moon orbits the Earth which orbits the Sun.

    You are arguing for a change in foreign policy which would translate to aid and comfort of an enemy you “want to see fail,” and you are doing it with that enemies manufactured talking points and disinformation to built the moral righteousness of your argument. That’s why you’re being criticized for it.

    There are plenty of legitimate arguments to be made for any frustrations against this current admin or the way our system works in general. But your frustrations with tax policy or Covid or whatever perceived rights you view at risk, aren’t germane to what you’re being specifically called out for now.

    Even if you advocate for not participating in the Ukraine conflict, you can formulate an argument which doesn’t use Russian disinformation and propaganda literally put together, manufactured, manipulated, and amplified by them for their express desire to help their cause on the battlefield. And when you puff up and scream about your 1st amendment right to repeat that propaganda when it’s pointed out to you, or try some moral platitude of “both sides” in the way you are now, that just paints you as a stooge. You are literally carrying Russia’s water for them when you make your argument that way.


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  5. We should make them fight until the last Ukranian dies. They are not American, so their deaths mean nothing as long as it makes Russia look bad.

    Is this supposed to be some appeal to world peace where they wouldn’t be resisting the Russian invasion if they didn’t have western weapons?

    Because I’ve got news for you, like so many invaded peoples before they have a means and will to resist. They just do it a hell of a lot better with our stuff in hand.


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  6. Are you under the impression think tanks are centers of disinterested scholarship?

    No, but given the open source nature of this forum it is a far more trustworthy source than some guys YouTube video or Twitter research. At least looking across political alignments with the actual shown math format of their products you can formulate and evaluate the information.

    There are historical and active examples of the undeniable gains in disinformation campaigns turning into political effect and translating that into actual tangible battlefield capes. It’s the same reason we have Psyops as a domain within the Special Operations community.

    From a Russian cost analysis, Fomenting Anger and ignorance in vacuum chambers = political effects = no artillery shells for the Army they are fighting. It is the Information Age equivalent of Leaflet Drops or Tokyo Rose. You would have to be an idiot to ignore it both going on and who it’s targeting actively and passively when its obvious.


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  7. It’s (Ukrainian war)become a proxy war between the globalist left (not meant derogatorily) and the sovereignty focused populist right (again not derogatorily) in Western particularly American politics.

    I think both things are true at once but which do you prioritize?

    I suspect we need to call it (supporting counter offensive Ukrainian operations) but not quit supporting the Ukrainian state.
    They’ve taken back about 100 sq miles of territory at an unsustainable loss rate against the Russians so far, the Ukrainians know this hence the anecdotal stories like the above conscription bribery ones.
    I’m not for ever recognizing that territory as Russian and not for treating Russia in a antebellum manner until Putin is gone but it seems to me that we are approaching the point of negative returns if we push, encourage, support and resource continued Ukrainian offensive ops to reclaim territory.
    Free Ukraine has to be long term viable and I think the cost in blood and treasure to retake more territory probably works against that.


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    Access to the Sea of Azov and the Kirch straight bridge are really the make/break on this offensive. If they can do both and effectively cut off access to Crimea they set themselves up very well for a negotiated settlement where they walk away with gains that would otherwise need to be purchased through force of arms.

    Laying siege to a city like Sevastopol would take a lot of resources and time and sap it from other fronts. Worse, fighting in a city like Sevastopol would generate a lot of unsustainable casualties both in personnel and vital equipment (IFVs etc). It also never looks good to onlookers and that’s the support base. City battles being measured in months, I doubt they would make that play when the open field war of position/logistic lines is an option.


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  8. *Im too smart to be manipulated*


    Immediately makes comments on a Russian backed narrative of how the US/NATO broke a promise and that’s why their actions bear justification. (Not their deliberate attempts to cross into NATO airspace lately).

    Posts earlier about the Maiden Revolution implying it was a US backed Coup. (First advanced via RT and Sputnik and still present in circles on social media)

    Makes comments on the other threads about illegal sale of western munitions and corruption. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-62983444.amp
    congrats, you’re being duped.

    Finds every open source example (because I doubt you’ve been on SIPR in a decade) of such examples highlighting their origins and advancement on social medie by Russian state actors and cyber brigades as “swallowing the mainstream media narrative.”


    Yeah dude you’re too smart to be used. You see through the giant Soros group media Cabal of information and understand how we can’t be supporting Nazi weapons manufacturers designing a Covid strain to target ethnic Russians…


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  9. You mean the ones you claim I'm receiving from the Kremlin's GRU US Veteran Mind Control Program? Give me a sec. I've got poor 5G reception in my secret Russian agent hideout.
    ...
    Oh yeah, they want me to ask you specifically about your claim that the Russians "pulled up" to the NATO border. Wanna expand on that? Putin himself wants to know how many "Poor Dead Grunts" you're willing to sacrifice to fight an imaginary threat that you also believe can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Hold, getting another signal. Xi Xinping wants to know if you're current on your boosters.

    You’re not a Russian operative, you’re a useful idiot. Don’t try to oversell your worth.

    Understanding the difference would be key in knowing how you’re being abused.

    Remember your self proclaimed “I’m willing to listen,” but really no you aren’t. You’re the same old exploitable population of disinformation and disenfranchised persons they’ve always targeted. In the 60s it was the counter culture movements. In the later decades the racial social movements. Now outside influences don’t really care about end goal as much as distraction. But you’re “too smart” for something like that. I mean those guys at CSIS or other such places, they are just part of the Illuminati machine. Thank god some random guy who saw some shit in Iraq is here to break it all down for us.


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  10. Wait…so you’re telling me that the government “leaders” messed up?  Never could have guessed that.  As for people getting fired…are you serious Clark?

    It’s not so much government as bureaucracies interwoven paths of authorizations when the current environment is outside the status quo. The military exists to accomplish mission as a challenge. Regular government exists to accomplish day to day normality. Somewhere in the middle of that is these shit shows we keep dealing with.

    At the operator level of incident everybody is ready, because verbal orders can get stuff done. Step up to a HADR and suddenly as somebody else alluded to, letter agencies and people in positions which hold titles have to be involved so they can be seen as orchestrating the events.

    What we don’t ever see is those same orchestrating asshats involved when things go south. This being a great example of a whole lot of people at the O5 and below level told to sit on their thumbs to keep them warm, but a state government woefully out of its depth.


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  11. Is Hawaii using the ANG out there to haul people or aid? It seems like they have a refugee and recovery situation on their hands but pictures don’t show much iron.
    Anyone in the islands hearing any scuttlebutt?

    25th CAB had to fight to get what paltry contribution they ended up with into the ordeal.

    Hawaii after action should be interesting if they ever make the chains of communication public because heads will roll. You had an entire Army CAB at the behests of the division commander literally lay it all at the disposal to the mission and they finally asked for a couple helicopters to pull Bambi bucket missions.


    People in state leadership potions should be fired.


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  12. Weak. Quitter.

    Oh please we all wait anxiously for you to throw some more Tucker talking points and RT expressed narratives about Covid and Ukraine please. Tell us why Ukraine is really all the fault of the US, and how Covid vaccines will make us all sterile or some other stupidity. We desperately need more of that here.


    [mention=1535]Helodude[/mention] to the point way back about China and the combined impacts of their economic model’s in sustainability combined with the demographic nightmare, this guy is a little more Doom and Gloom than everybody analyzing the situation, but it’s a very succinct collection of the problems they are facing.



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  13. In yet another article about the rampant corruption in the Ukrainian military, the New York Times says the losses on the Ukr side top 150,000. I wonder what the real number is.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/world/europe/ukraine-fires-recruitment-chiefs.html

    Hey everybody, the crew of people insisting they are interested in the “middle ground” approach are here to remind of a bunch of reasons we should stop helping the Ukrainians.

    But remember they want Russia to fail. We just have to wait until we find the flawless pure allied entity to do it for us, because until then we can’t allow our resources to be used for that purpose.


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  14. Are you autistic? It should be apparent by now that I’ve formed a hypothesis about your character and I would like for you to prove it by openly saying something dumb. It’s amazing that you would continue to do just that. Zero self-awareness.
     
    Thanks for the reply. I’ll give you a full response later today and yet another opportunity to, once again, denigrate the service of not me, but other fellow vets. 

    In what world would anybody care about the opinion of a guy who is now trading off his years and experiences of service as currency in order to shill Russian troll farm talking points on a forum full of professional, former, and prospective military aviators.

    You aren’t continuously challenging the narrative or whatever high minded foolishness you think you’re doing. By making open statements like we backed a Coup you are repeating a Russian approved government backed disinformation campaign while shouting about “doing your own research” or some other nonsense. Those claims literally came out of the GRU playbook starting on RT and Sputnik. And for those that think this isn’t an active move on the chess board by the Russians (but also others) and you don’t have access to the “deep throat intel narrative” well here is open source reporting as such https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-kremlin-targets-veterans

    Again thank you for rowing the boat, but you may as well go throw your medals over onto the White House lawn in frustration because you are being used, and not by the people you claim we need to stop and examine.


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  15. So is Russia a:
    A) major geopolitical threat to the United States
    B) paper tiger suffereing tremendous losses at the hands of a smaller country next door
    Choose one.
    Grab some popcorn. Let's watch Russia pull up to the NATO border in this time lapse video.
    https://twitter.com/Sprinter99800/status/1687012096246943744?s=20

    Look we can simply step over to you and others repeated attempts to pass off Russian talking points as viable discussion and then claim “the middle ground,” to your approach.

    I could really care less if you or the bitter old veterans club experienced real or imagined encounters over there. If you were so afllicted personally by the impact of what you saw first hand, go get some help for it. Don’t pass off your experience as some sort of ruling none of it was worth it, plenty of us who were there or saw worse would have a different opinion that you aren’t speaking to. I was physically in Iraq in the last 5 years. And I and others are physically on the line any future fight against Russia which looks less and less likely every day since we (as a unified block of western nations) allowed and reinforced in Ukraine the means to effectively defend its self. Can you say the same?

    And yes listening to you shout the names of the fallen as some sort of reinforcement to back away from helping Ukraine when it completely aligns with our foreign policy and security interests is little more than cheerleading a cause on the backs of the dead. You aren’t doing it to somehow honor that memory. And all the while you peddle their (Russia’s) Reddit quality justifications to why they aren’t the aggressor making you a stooge to a Russian Disinformation campaign built to do exactly that.


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  16. Classy. I specifically remember Matt because after the deployment, his family had written my crew a very nice letter. Turns out his brother, now General Mark "Buzz" August, was my first instructor when I arrived at my first operational unit. One of, if not the, best C-130 pilots I've ever flown with. Someone I always admired and considered a friend.
    I realize the life of that  "poor dead grunt"  holds no importance in the mind of a strategic thinking stone-hearted killer like yourself, but as I plainly stated before, the threshold for conflict should be higher than it is to prevent the loss of life like his. But please, continue. The more you talk, the more you reveal.

    No see we can count the total number and frequency of those missions.

    We can quantify in the long term the cost of that particular conflict in and amongst the world wide collection of historical conflicts. Same was we can do it with ammunition expended, with lives lost wearing other uniforms/flags/civilian clothes, etc. And when we are all done debating whether the cost of a particular venture was justified at the time and you can appeal to the memory of so and so, we can also step out of your anecdotal experience to others for comparison. You can get in a car and drive down what used to be Route Irish today and be safer than you would in a lot of neighborhoods in Detroit/Cleveland/DFW/Baltimore/etc. and while you’re factoring in the human cost of seeing coffins and such, why don’t you go ask somebody who had to SSE a “Rape Room” or other such regime/tool of both the state and the follow on fighters in Iraq. Try and quantify the frustration and risk/reward math from the guys that went and solved the ISIS problem after seeing a Yazidi village literally put to the sword for however many years we watched and did nothing overhead from ISR feeds. See if people on that side of the discussion feel the same apathy toward conflict.

    That doesn’t minimize the specific cost to family X for the loss of person Y or prevent those people from mourning that loss. Any family touched by death feels that it’s not specific to military service. But it’s laughable to hear you bring up their stories as a warning to the risk of lives in a conflict which hasn’t happened going on 2 years now. This “We’re gonna start WWIII” argument is far older than this conflict. Some around here are old enough to remember it in the actual Cold War. And to make that argument while simultaneously implying that me and a whole lot of others we would be somehow safer from such impending doom if we stopped current efforts of non direct combat opposition to a major geopolitical foe and let them pull up to a NATO border. I’m sure this time they’ll pull out…


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  17. That's the second time today you've made a feeble attempt to diminish my service just to prop up your opinion in an internet debate. Lots of people here served in GWOT for a "hot minute" and have their own opinions derived from experience. Scoffing at anyone's service probably isn't giving you the credibility you think it does. It may even be giving others an insight into your character that you may not want exposed.

    You saw dead men loaded on the back of your plane.

    Oh my god what a unique position to find yourself in. Nobody else who has done such could possibly call you out for your apologetic doublespeak of “let’s avoid conflict” and paint the current one as if we were filling coffins and draping them with US Flags. All while parroting Russian propaganda and talking points to invalidate any positions we have to support the current regime over there. You wanna classify the Maiden revolutions as some sort of US orchestrated overthrow of an elected government is a gross misrepresentation of our actions or the decade+ of that ousted governments actions that led to protests, casualties, and their parliamentary vote. And it’s nothing if not an often repeated piece of Russians disinformation widely put out to somehow justify their military backed invasion of the Donbas and Crimea.

    Thank you for rowing the boat from whichever position in the canoe you did, but you are far from unique in this room. And I doubt your attempt to feature some poor dead grunt as a reason to adopt strategic foreign policy positions is anything more than the same Cindy Sheehan kind of crap she was doing when her chosen political flavor wasn’t in higher office.


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  18. What you're consistently engaging in is a logical fallacy called Hypothesis Contrary to Fact or Speculative Fallacy. To say that if you were the Supreme Allied Commander, you would have done things differently in WWII and less lives would have been lost is an impossible claim to support. To say that not funding and compelling Ukraine to fight Russia would result in a greater tragedy is equally silly. This conflict didn't being in 2022 as you would like to frame it. I'm sure you've seen the posts here regarding the events in 2014. Do your own research. The Russian/Ukraine economic package was a threat to the West, so the Ukrainian government was overthrown and replaced with this one. This is about wealth, power, and influence, not an existential threat to the US, or even the West.
    The difference in our positions is I can assess the facts of the present actual situation and say that the actions and decisions have resulted in provable undesirable outcomes. Your position is based purely on speculation and belief of what might have been if we failed to pay Ukrainian leadership to send its citizens to the slaughter. So when you bring up that one time you did your Hero mission to Poland, don't forget those low-cost lives you're protecting.
    And you go on to claim that "we" are not losing any lives. Who is "we"? US citizens? NATO member citizens? Our allies the Ukrainians? Last I checked, there are significant losses on both sides. I've asked this before and haven't gotten much in the way of an answer. Why do you tout the relatively low cost of war but fail to mention the tens of thousands of Ukrainians being force fed into the meat grinder for your benefit? I'd think you'd garner more respect if you openly advocated for fighting your own battles. To brag that some other poor sucker did so you don't have to seems in bad taste.
     

    Yes it’s impossible to examine historical actions by Russia and ponder whether or not Ukrainian citizens would be “better off” had we (the west) simply cut off any aid or attempt to neuter Russia in response to THEIR naked aggression.

    No we couldn’t possibly look at the last decade+ of bad decisions with regards to treating them either apologetically when they invaded countries, or seeking ways to back away from any real effective resistance to their actions in Europe/Syria/Etc. maybe make a conscious decision that just going the way we’ve been going has done nothing to head off further aggressions (backing away during Georgia, Crimea, etc).

    But there would have been no human cost yo simply letting them invade. And Atlantic Resolve would just go away. Some guy that was in GWOT for a hot minute on the internet told us all so. We’ve adopted the “middle ground” position you’ve been demanding yet you and others want to portray such as open military warfare. What we are doing right now is nothing of the sort.


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  19. LOL. As soon as I posted, I predicted you would armchair General the decisions of those actually living at the time. Of course you would have invaded earlier after consulting your WWII history books. So ridiculous.
    Your third paragraph isn't written clearly. I know you're being critical, but it doesn't make any sense to me. Sorry.
    EDIT: I think I may have deciphered some of it. I think you're saying the deaths of all of our people in Iraq was worth it because it avoided a larger conflict later on. Perhaps one where all that yellow cake was processed into nuclear weapons that Sadaam would have used to destroy the world. Also, we're preventing a wider conflict by funding a war that's weakening Russia faster than it's weakening Ukraine as evidenced by Russia's near collapse since this argument was made 2 years ago. We're avoiding escalation and improving our influence around the globe. Sort of like arguing your last COVID episode would have been "so much worse" if you hadn't gotten your shot or the Afghanistan surge prevented over a dozen 9/11s. Hard to argue against that.
    You make some great points.
     

    The lesson from hindsight isn’t “well if they’d just” as an appeal to how much smarter we are, it’s to go “that was stupid, they ignored warnings x/y/z,” and then learn and apply it to present situations.

    Rewarding naked Russian aggression by simply sitting over here and “seeing to our own problems” or whatever BS excuse is offered would be the opposite of that. In <2 years we have gone from posturing NATO to repel a viable conventional military threat from the Suwalki gap, to watching that threat absorb 100-125k casualties, loose 1/3 of its conventional attack helicopters, somewhere between 1500-2500 front line armored vehicles (its pulling BTR-50s out of storage for Christ sake), and empty munition stocks that would be necessary for any engagement with NATO. And it cost us how many lives exactly? But sure we could just see to our own problems and nobody would have died for sure. Nothing would have been gained, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be deploying (again) this year to Poland.

    And by doing so despite you and others pretending it doesn’t, the Chinese are evaluating a war stock of weapons they get to watch underperform embarrassingly in Ukraine. Now take those same weapons and put yourself in executing the largest amphibious operation since D Day but really, except over 4 times the distance without any of the logistics.


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  20. That's a straw man argument. No one said or pretended there's been a time without any human conflict.
    You seem to be saying any conflict is acceptable because that's simply how the sausage gets made. Don't you see the irony in prefacing that with calling any other position "bold faced ignorance brought from a position of insulated relaxation"? I gotta give you credit, however. That's the strangest insult I've ever been given here, and many attempts have been made. You seem to be an astute student of history. Maybe review what you're calling an autocratic land-grab to avoid any appearances of ignorance or irony.
    I'm sure most of us here have seen the (if I may substitute) "freedom and democracy" getting made. One of my many memories is Capt Matt August. Three helos landed behind our Herc one night in Baghdad. His buddies carried him up the ramp and placed him into the HR container. The sight of 12-15 Army dudes, all arms around someone else's shoulders, crying standing there with my crew and I,while a Chaplain shouted his impromptu memorial service and prayers above the noise of the GTC (APU) is a memory I won't forget. I'm sure It didn't seem like a "little brush fire" to those who knew him and I would be hesitant to dismiss it as such.
    I just spent a day at the new WWII museum in New Orleans last Saturday. Absolutely fanastic. Highly recommended. It was good to be reminded how much resistance there was to enter the war until the pre-conditions crossed a relatively high threshold. And it when they did, it was a monumental effort of which the entire country was behind, designed to achieve a quick and decisive victory.
    I'm not a peacenik against all war. My contention is our current pre-conditions and thresholds for engaging, or continuing to engage, in foreign conflicts are often too low or for the wrong reasons, not that there shouldn't be any conflict.

    Had the world military powers of the time done the right thing and refused Hitler the Sudetenland, he would have lacked much of the necessary military industrial strength necessary to fight wars.

    Had they then when given a second bite at the apple actually gone to war as they said they would instead of executing 6mo of, “the phony war,” they’d have engaged a German Army depleted in strength and sapped with casualties and logistical shortcomings, instead they waited and allowed them to consolidate and engage on their terms.

    They did that because of a populist belief they could/should avoid conflict and aggression at the cost of “those people over there” who aren’t in our foreign interests. In the end that commitment to inaction left them with no choice but to fight an eventually far more bloody/costly war. So when you bring up that one time you pulled a Hero mission up your ramp you are attempting to do the same, particularly when you make some appeal on one hand to maintaining influence and avoiding conflict, and pretend with the other that we aren’t doing exactly that successfully in places like the Ukraine. And it also serves as a bold warning to a Chinese government trying to figure out how to divert from its home front population problems. A war in your own terms is not nearly the attractive idea when it looks like you will lose badly.


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  21. Sorta makes you wonder if there's any middle ground between being isolationist and being continuously engaged in foreign conflicts for 20 plus years.

    We’ve been “continuously engaged” in conflicts since the end of the 2nd World War.

    To pretend that conflict is or hasn’t been an ever present part of human existence the entire time it’s been around is just bold faced ignorance bought from a position of insulated relaxation of not having to see the sausage get made. Somehow those little brush fire wars didn’t devolve into the end of civilization or industrialized warfare on a global scale.

    Again, the person I’m responding to has repeatedly over and over suggested that it’s not our place or responsibility to do anything about an autocratic land-grab via direct open conflict in Europe. Peace in our time so to speak. Yeah we’ve seen how that plays out before.


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  22. Yeap.  We're watching history being written.  "This is how WW3 started and such".   I tell people to read history to learn from it.  They laugh and say it will never happen again.  Lol silly humans.      I cant believe how many ignorant people we have on this planet.  Its like, somehow we're different than the humans in the past.. News Flash!! THEY ALSO SAID IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN TO THEM.  I dont think I've ever typed in all caps.
    Get ready man...
    I  really hope I am wrong and belong in a looney bin..I just cant hide what I'm seeing on a daily basis.
     
    America that I loved died on Sept, 11, 2001.  

    Yes, being isolationist in our foreign policy and allowing autocrats to take what they want is exactly how you prevent a World War…


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  23. Bwahahahaa! They ran out of money, mudda-fugging-ing idiots. This checks with Cannon getting a bunch of reservists to come out and then realizing they didn’t have the funding.

    That’s happened to the Army every year it’s offered.

    They budget for about 1/3 the available population in the hopes of forcing guys to commit early and not wait until they are in a combat zone to file for it.


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  24. What at [mention=2836]Lawman[/mention] man said
    The other thing I see is how many of these monster in ground effect platforms could you have?  I see a reborn R3Y platform as being more affordable to procure and deploy in numbers, able to do more missions and service more island FARPs during a high intensity conflict more often than a huge in ground effect platform(s).
    Historical photo, seaplane and submarine refueling:
    1515539416976.jpg
    Posted this to stir the pot on what the CONOP would be for short, medium and long range operations for a seaplane.
    The Air Force develops the aircraft, Navy the resupply submarine or semi submersible base ships and the USMC develops the mobile ramps, docks and bridging equipment that can support amphibious operations.

    I feel like there is a real lesson to be learned from the cartel drone subs out there.

    Expendable resupply vehicle that would force somebody to burn a lot of effort to find it or use it to build a wider intel picture. That seems like the perfect way to augment resupply of guys doing their best impression of the coast watchers where airdrop or other methods might show too much of your hand. But before somebody goes over the top with capabilities this like so many other things doesn’t need to be overbuilt. Stay with something that isn’t intended for the hard threat mission like the SDV, just something that will boat it’s way to your friendlies without shouting to the world a trail of breadcrumbs.

    Maybe something small enough it could be hand rolled off the back of a small amphibious ramp equipped logistics platform… dropped far enough from an island chain to swim without giving away their position or to just stash its self and wait.


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