Lawman

There’s also the intangible side of the cost argument. Full rage Conflicts are actually a culmination of late stage Foreign Policy. The fact we are living in the longest continuous period of human prosperity built largely on the western globalist system is proof of greater total success than simply counting up Korea, Vietnam, and GWOT and dismissing every action of foreign policy as folly. Same is true of the argument for dollar figures and limits to them on Ukrainian aid. Go look at the intelligence we got out of Israel during its proxy conflicts with our super power adversary. “Have Donut” just for example led directly to a massive shift in fighter tactics in the Navy and Air Force that had direct effect on the battlefield. Our electronic warfare programs which were foundational in our air playbook in GWI were tested and developed largely using those same regional conflicts and lessons preserved in the vault for an “on the day” event with the Soviet Bear. Same situation is happening right now in Ukraine. We validated billions of dollars in equipment investment just in HIMARs alone through its demonstrated performance it’s not just a guess now. We also learned a hell of a lot of “oh we better fix that right now” situations since we started supporting the Ukrainians in 2014. And when we are sending weapons largely at the end of their useful shelf life (example: M26 and ATACMs) what is the acceptable cost worth in number of exploitative efforts by the intel community? And how much deterrence in Russia and the wider sphere of everybody using their kit or the massive investment in our own by Allie’s do you think this conflict has bought? What’s a dollar figure on that? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well you either didn’t read the article, or you’ve completely reversed yourself to the point most of us have been making. That point being. that it’s far safer for all of us to see Russia culminate in depletion of its capability in Ukraine rather than get froggy and try for the Baltics next. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh we’ve been announcing plenty of things… https://mil.in.ua/en/news/delta-system-has-proven-its-compatibility-with-link-16/ https://mwi.westpoint.edu/patriot-missiles-nato-and-ukraine-tactical-weapons-with-strategic-impacts/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/09/ukraine-himars-rocket-artillery-russia/ The bigger point is a lot of people in our own country are disinterested in hearing it and buying into narratives that say Ukraine can’t win and we should just let the Russians have it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You know how the Russians bill their IADS construct as more the total sum of the whole vs the sum of its parts? Big telephone pole systems in the support zone acting as arsenal sinks to throw arrows at a wide array of data linked sensors in the battle and disruptions zones and from the ground achieve true airspace denial?…. Well ours do that too… it’s just NATO thought it out further in making sure the systems actually did it instead of just print it on a pamphlet to be later handed out by strippers at an arms bazaar. I don’t know what you guys are getting all excited about though, this is clearly all fake news spread by the western political arm of media disinformation. Remember the Ukrainians are wholesale losing this war… Vlad said so. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The government is the consensus of votes of the masses thereby granting it power to conduct its actions at the consent of its citizens. The fact it can jail/kill an individual doesn’t change that. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You’ve got it twisted into something it’s not. We don’t, “vote for a government to force” anything. The entire purpose of a representative constitutional democracy is that the consent of the governed provides the government with its mandate to action. We do that because simply having a vote over every decision whether small or big would be impossible both in theory and in practice. A representative democracy means send forward your desires in the form of your elected officials and let them come to consensus with all the other citizens reps who did same. You can aspire to the lofty goal of perfect utopian liberty but it’s not reality anymore than shouting “I should be allowed to drive as fast as I want” or “if I were truly free I could walk around nude next to this elementary school.” Those aren’t constitutionally enshrined rights being trampled by some authoritarian society, they are agreements by society through their representatives in the legislature that you can neither drive like you stole it or walk around with your dick out. Selective service is the same the stakes are just higher. As I said earlier if you disagree with that your option of conscription as an option to your government your options are either grass roots change through representative influence in congress or a popular uprising. Either way until one of those two occurs the selective service and draft have long been constitutionally upheld. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I always like that one “taxation is theft” guy 5 beers in on TDY…. Like bro… where do you think this Per Diem came from? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Story of this damn war apparently… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Which would seem weird if not for the fact it’s permitted under their law in time of Martial Law/War. That then opens up option 2 for popular referendum/revolution but the polling is showing something in the 70-80% of Ukrainians being against holding an election with a large portion of their population unable to participate. So that’s not likely to materialize either. The political pressure in Zelenskyy to hold an election and potentially change the course of the war effort isn’t coming from Ukraine. It’s coming from people on our side of the Atlantic choosing to use it as a justification to end funding they’ve called to end before any announcement was made. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No it means when somebody is screaming that Ukrainians don’t have the will to fight because of conscription it ignores the fact they like us have a representative democratic process. If conscription was so out of line with the will of the represented it would result in 1 of 2 options; vote out those reps in a referendum (again the ballot box) or have a revolution. Since none have occurred the portrayal as Ukrainians being unwilling to fight because people are being jailed or running away in refusal is misrepresenting the facts. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Your freedom and liberty to choose is at the ballot box. Same as it is for the Ukrainians. If you don’t want a draft than elect people to put it into law that you will never use one. We are and have been for several decades and “all volunteer force” just ignore things like stop loss or refusing to grant retirements and so forth. If the political sway is such that something as unpopular as a draft can happen without the immediate loss of those reps that enacted it surviving with their seat intact guess what, that’s consensus and by definition consent of the governed. We participate in a society of voices and opinions with general consensus being the path forward. Saying “you can’t make me fight” when we have laws stating yes we can which were enacted by elected representatives is no different than the liberal hissyfits of “he’s not my president” when Trump or Bush were elected. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It wasn’t “worth fighting for” against the Nazis by your standard. If it had been we wouldn’t have needed 2/3 of our military to be forced into uniform while the rest of our population was told no there won’t be a new model of Chevrolet this year, we’re making M5 tanks though if you’re interested in driving one. And while it’s a popular myth, most of the people that served in the wartime position of Vietnam weren’t draftees. Draftees were bulk used to maintain commitments abroad. Only a quarter ever went to South East Asia as a theatre, roughly a third of that number served in support capacities in places like Thailand on the periphery. Now I’ve got no doubt when actual Nazis started hitting our cities directly there would be a realization by plenty that something needed to be done and the time to act was now, but that’s far to late to build a military out of which is something a short range problem focused populace will never be capable of understanding. That’s why we started drafting people in 1940 before a single bomb was dropped on our soil. The powers that be were smart enough to read the tea leaves. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We had forced conscription in both world wars to meet the ever churning requirement for manpower. We also did deferments of people who wanted to serve but were judged to be to vital in position and told no they couldn’t serve. Nobody would argue about the righteousness of our cause in the Second World War, yet it took 2/3 of our military being drafted to meet the requirements of it. By the beginning of 1945 there was a real discussion at the White House/Chief of staff levels on how we were going to apportion and release vs not release the ETO troops. The decision was those that “done enough” could go, those that hadn’t would serve as the veterans and the units would be backfilled with new inductees because of the manpower requirements that taking and occupying Japan would have required. Remember this is after we fought for Saipan and started seeing the suicidal side of Japanese resolve. The points episode of BOBs barely scratched this topic, same as Flags of our Fathers talked about war fatigue in funding and a desire by many to make terms with the Japanese. Ukraine is not in a unique situation, it’s a reality of any nation caught in an existential struggle for its existence managing the total economic and manpower of its nation to grant it the means to continue the war. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You could eat off of their hanger floors. Does anybody know if they got a long term sustainment contract with Leonardo? I know the Spartans USASOC had were basically living in borrowed time because they wouldn’t allow on demand buys for upgrades and replacements. Italians wanted a long term gravy train or nada. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I mean there’s plenty to pick on with the Germans. Lord knows I’ve seen it since I was stationed there all of 4 years. Still they’ve become the easy button to sell people on the populism message of “we gotta take care of our own.” It’s an old bias that I was happy to see Trump call out (callous as his normal method) but it’s not effectively true anymore. They are starting to fix their long overdue stupidity. The first step in that was getting rid of Merkle who for the whole of the Trump admin just adopted the contrarian position along with people like Trudeau rather than actually worked to strengthen NATO. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No I don’t think spending billions on a military to deploy it to our border is a smart financial investment at all. The cost to outfit and equip the soldiers we send down there far outstrips the cost effectiveness of a body on the border. Now expanding an agency like CBP/Coast Guard/port control absolutely. Using the Army to be CBP or those other functions when I now cost the drain to regular unit readiness, lower enlistment rates, all the kit we issue in RFI, etc etc…hell no. There are far smarter ways to effectively work on the issue of the border and most of it involves law enforcement and thinks like going after employers, two things the military is wholly unsuited for. Unfortunately the Army (particularly the reserves/guard) have become a political easy button for it with no regard to long term cost. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Don’t worry, the debt resets to O after the EMPs go off. It’s a feature of the plan. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Look at the post directly above this one. Like I said treating this like we are throwing money and telling our people to eat shoe leather while the Euros enjoy vacations, wine, and siestas is disingenuous to the reality of what spending they’ve done. The US growth has outpaced the EU substantially since the last decade and the housing crises/recession passed. Without England in it we outpace the EU by double in GDP. They still produced tens of billions of dollars for Ukrainian funding/aid as well as investment in military infrastructure largely purchased directly from us which is good both economically and in terms of commonality in a future fight. It’s easy to just pick on Germany as the punching bag example of how not to invest in a military for the last 30+ years. Even they went up a couple billion in the span of a year while their total government spending went down almost 8-10% (depends on source of exchange rates) because of the economic slowdown down in their own country, that’s a pretty massive change for them with the stated goal to continue cranking up. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Europe has spent a combined 91 billion in monetary aid to Ukraine and while short of the 2% mark Germany pushed its military budget up a couple billion (largest increase in a half century) in a single year in the midst of 3 straight quarters of a recession. France cranked in its largest increase in decades, Poland is spending nearly 4% of its GDP and outfitting its self with our latest stuff (economic gain to us). These are just a few examples of what is and has been a wider immediate wake up call to reality for them. It’s disingenuous to imply we are going it alone here. So what exactly is the threshold Europe has to meet for us to be allowed to get off the bench? Because the EU has roughly half the GDP combined we do and they aren’t simply letting us come to their rescue. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Populist driven policy of “let the people on the other side of the ocean deal with it” has led us to the more expensive and consuming outcome of two world wars. It’s even easier to dehumanize and detach from it when some are freely buying Russian talking points. Nobody is saying abandon the border for the sake of Ukraine in this argument. Nobody is saying send troops to Ukraine and fight directly, in fact that’s what we are all attempting to keep at arms length letting them play this out a phase line early. What we are saying is that in this new Cold War/slow collapse of the global supply chain we sit diametrically apposed to a party made up primarily of Russia/China. One of those two major opponents to us coming out on top in this is happily feeding its military capacity into a wood chipper whole sale. We would be idiots to stop paying to put gas in it when comparing the costs of other COAs. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

A regiment of 4th Guards Division was recently seen training with T-62s. Let that sink in for people that don’t understand, that is the Russian Army’s most prolific Armor formation. They are the guys that are based to protect Moscow that had the best equipment. They got chewed to hell fighting along the fight to Sumy. The loss situation is such that they can’t replace their losses and maintain the front. That would be like us having a bunch of Eagle/Viper squadrons lose their aircraft and then get handed F4/5s to regen with because the modern airframes were needed elsewhere. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah lord knows the way to show you are about to lose a war is to successfully conduct a wet gap crossing. You’re reading trash media claiming to have any idea what’s going on and saying we (the west) need to abandon Ukraine because of their “historic ties to Russia.” What point do you have to make other than to be a relief to all of the sane you aren’t in charge of anything? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What did you get tired of reading RT? Nobody in here has called for US troops in Ukraine. What we have done is call out your isolationist BS and parroting of Russian talking points to justify just leaving Ukraine in the wind like it will stop there. The entire mission of Foreign Internal Defense was to build combat capability by partner nations so we could avoid needing larger troop deployments later. What we’ve been doing the past 2 years has accomplished that in Ukraine. Continue mission. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You are literally parroting what will be China’s excuse to invade Taiwan in a discussion about deterrence and wider foreign policy like it’s a good reason to reward annexation by force. Ukraine has “historic ties,” yeah so do the Czech’s. Maybe read a book some time on what the conditions of those historic ties and why they came running into NATO to avoid going back to them. “Eastern Bloc Governments,” wow. Those are NATO partners. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Why so we can wait to hear you call to abandon all those next series countries because of their “historic ties to Russia.” Seriously… the dumbest point you’ve tried to make on here. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk