gearhog

You making that comment is one the least shocking things you could possibly have said. You did the meme. However, a Nav repeatedly demanding "Go with Quals!" is one of the most shocking and funny things I've read on BO.net lately. So that's it? Just you and nsplayr abandoning your positions in favor of feeble attempts to denigrate my "quals"? That's kinda sad.

LOL

Who typed this post, a nav or a fighter pilot? 😆

LOL. "Obviously not a fighter pilot". I'm not sure if that is intended as a compliment or an insult. Are you saying that because you think I'm not a fighter pilot, that you believe my position is automatically inferior? How does that logic work? So you were just "cavalier" with your words. Haha. 😂 When have I represented myself as a military officer? nsplayr thinks I may not be. How do you know they want to participate in this war if they're not a democracy? I thought this whole thing was about freedom and democracy, but suddenly it doesn't matter? Putin should be the one to bear the cost, but that's not exactly the way it's working out, is it? The Ukrainians are bearing a comparable cost, and we are bearing a financial cost. Consider the reality, not your fantasy. "The cost should be maintained...blah blah blah" Again, you're fantasizing and conveniently ignoring the other side of the coin. Fact of the matter is, what you believe should happen is not what is, in actuality, going to happen. So what are you going to do? Just idly bitch about it? Even if I agreed with you, what would it matter now. The war is going to come to an end and you're just going to have to sit there and be unhappy about it. "Should.." this and "Should..." that. You're pissing up a rope. "War is always an inextricable consequence of human existence." Bull fukn shit. It's always a choice. Just as it is a choice right now. And the US and Russia will choose to end it. Your argument is invalid. You claim I'm using "pro-war" as an insult, but immediately follow by stating you are "pro-war" and "that's ok." You may think that my attitude is met with derision, but my attitude appears to be the predominant one. I don't know what to tell you as to how to cope with that. There aren't enough Ukrainians to deliver defeat to Russia. It's just math. Are you advocating that the US attack Russia directly? You haven't explicitly stated that. Are you, as a fighter pilot, willing to send an new USArmy infantryman to stand beside the last Ukrainian on the front line? Yes or no? You do realize there is nothing stopping you from directly supporting Ukraine yourself. Instead, you're touting yourself as a noble fighter pilot keen on making others fight a war you believe is just. ...Just talk. One minute you're the hard-hearted military pragmatician claiming "war is just a part of life", and the next you and your bleeding heart are your wringing your hands over imagining that some poor souls will somehow suffer more should peace break out. Ridiculous. We can talk in circles about this for the next week. I'm game. But it is going to have absolutely nothing with what is going to happen in reality. Gird your loins.

I just corrected your technical error about the Ukrainian constitution. Why all bent out of shape over it? Are you angry I was correct? Interesting that you're the second liberal who has called himself a dumbass in this thread. Why would I need to argue with you? What does being a pilot have to do with having an perspective on Ukraine? I understand it's far more credible than any opinion of anyone who has never been at the primary flight controls of an aircraft, but it's not that important. Why do I have to be pro-war like yourself to be considered a patriotic American? Like Bashi, I don't have to go with shit, either. If you don't think I'm a USAF pilot, so what? Disregard everything I'm saying. I could not care any less. You're just going to have to live with you not knowing, and me not caring.

You're ashamed of your nation. Noted. Bye. I covered this earlier. "Article 19" is not part of the original Ukrainian constitution, but statutory law that abridged the original constitution in 2015, after the coup. You should spend more than 2 minutes on Google to understand what you're talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Ukraine Backpedal much? You clearly said we should we should shovel weapons into a war so a society could be fed into a wood chipper. That indicates a choice on our part to achieve a desired outcome. Either own it or admit it was a poor choice of words. This is a pro-war position at best, straight up evil at worst. Anytime a choice is made to cease hostilites... that's backing down? Are for or against minimizing bloodshed? Your language is ambiguous, but you most definitely don't care about anyone's bloodshed.

The Ukrainian constitution is nowhere in same category as the US Constitution. Our Constitution does not allow for the cancelling of elections, nor have we delayed/cancelled them for a war. Lincoln was re-elected during the Civil War and Roosevelt was re-elected during WW2. That's the way a democracy works. If there is a time an election should be held, one could argue it would be of upmost importance during a national crisis. One can equivocate and call it a "fledgling democracy just finding it's legs", but that'd be wrong. The only justification for cancelling elections is because you've failed your people, and you know they're not going to keep you in power. Just because your crappy piece of paper says you can do whatever doesn't mean you're a legitimate democratic government. Edit: It's not even in their constitution: The direct prohibition of elections during martial law comes from statutory law, not the Constitution itself. Article 19 of the Law of Ukraine "On the Legal Regime of Martial Law," first enacted on May 12, 2015, explicitly bans presidential, parliamentary, and local elections while martial law is in effect. This provision was enacted about 20 years after the Ukrainian constitution and after pro-Western coup took over the Ukrainian government. How convenient.

Shameful. Absolutely shameful. As a heavy Bubba the weapons lifts into Poland have been one of the highlights of my career. If not the highlight. I watched the live feeds of the Russians pouring across the border and next thing I knew I was in Poland. Watching pallets get moved off my planes onto trucks and knowing within the week it'd all be gone. Used to put a Russian into an early grave. - How many Ukrs were put in an early grave? It was an action that I can proudly share to any westerner. It was an action that put our country back into a well respected light with any European. - Why are you so keen to please Europeans? Maybe consider your grandkids. We've nearly dismantled one of our two biggest geopolitical enemies of the last 80 years without costing a single American life. - What about those "brothers in arms" you're so bothered about? Inconsistent. Spending a fraction of the snafu that was Afghanistan/Iraq. Boosting the American defense industry immensely both through our tax dollars being spent and through a massive influx of international sales. "- We saved money! We made lots of sales!" And now we're tossing it away? This war has been an Intel,strategy, and systems testing goldmine as well. A goldmine we're just going to walk away from. - "The war was a gold mine!" We're alienating ourselves from our closest allies. We're ceding soft power left and right all for what? A few billion in savings? - Not a few lines earlier, you were concerned about cost savings. Which is it? Inconsistent. Billions that were going to our own military industries. Check the stock market. LM, GD, etc. have all fallen 10% or more over the past month as a result while Rheinmetall, BAE, etc. are seeing 20% growth as Europe realizes they can't trust their oldest and strongest ally. -"Oh, no! The stock market! Our defense contractors are suffering! What a tragedy!" Can't wait to see how many more skilled workers we add to the unemployed list next to the other 10s of thousands who've been fired recently. - "Oh, no! The defense industrial complex is shrinking!" (so is the population of Ukraine) Don't even get me started on our brothers in arms that will die as a result. We've trained with many of those men and are abandoning them now for no reason. - But you're happy to have them conscripted to fight for all the financial reasons you listed above? How we as a nation have come to the point where materially supporting a war against an undeniable tyrant is a bad thing astounds me. Can you imagine if we had stopped the lend-lease act and told the UK "good luck with the war buddy?" This is the nation that stuck with Afghanistan and Iraq for decades despite the lack of progress, yet we can't stomach 3 years of monetary support? - You mean a tyrant that cancels elections and forcibly removes his citizens from the street and sends them to the front lines? We pitched in to help the UK because we believed in effort enough to make sacrifices of our own. No one here is doing that. Rant over. I'm off to go get drunk and pray that I don't have to explain to my grandkids one day why grandpa stopped helping. Why he stepped aside and let Russia walk across the fledgling democracy of Ukraine. - Imagine their pain when they realize the inheritance they receive from grandpa's investment portfolio wasn't what it could have been because we stopped funding the death of millions in foreign conflicts. O! The unbearable shame of it all.

Kash Confirmed. Reports of crowds scrambling to empty supermarket shelves of popcorn nationwide.

Weapons transfers to Ukraine are halted - Ukrainian MP Kostenko. The end is near. https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1892634846104608848

We don't need energy? False. Supply and demand. The more energy available on the global market affects price. China does need that energy. You're calling Ukraine a democracy. Explain to me how Ukraine is a democracy. What values are being abandoned? Meddling in foreign elections? Ensuring Ukrainians don't have a right to choose their fate? Debt spending to help overthrow foreign governments? Supplying weapons to enable the slaughter of soldiers and civilians on both sides? If everyone knows that, what exactly are you arguing? How many miles East or West the line will be drawn? You've just conceded Russia is going to retain some of Ukraine. Ukraine wasn't invited because they were never in charge of their own fate. The war goes the way the US goes. Maximal position? Huh? What does that mean? Do you really think any negotiated settlement would allow for the "waltzing" of Russia into Kiev? That makes zero sense. Let them fight. This is where I would agree with you. If it is, in fact, a fight between them... leave them to it. Let's completely disengage and see where the chips lie in a year. It is an undeniable fact that our leadership at the time had a hand in creating the conditions that led to this conflict and the death of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. Poor choices were made. We now have a chance to correct the mistakes and establish peace. https://x.com/ricwe123/status/1868662146122535098 How is it none of you Lindsey Graham neo-con pro-war advocates cheering for the killing of Russians will not acknowledge that it also necessitates the death of Ukrainians? If the Ukrainian cause is near and dear to your heart, why have you not made any voluntary sacrifices for it beyond posts on a message board? I don't believe you really care.

I'm still disgusted. Such talk is incredibly incompetent. A 50,000 word rebuttal instantly formed in my mind on the subject of moral character, but I'm gonna set that aside for now because I hesitate to dignify the above. Instead, I want to approach this from a different, less controversial angle. A few ideas. Here are some basic concepts: Obviously, we are at a critical moment in history. The more we find out about our financial system, the more we realize it's afflicted with various cancers. I think we'd all like to see the United States continue to be the greatest country on Earth. The only way we can achieve that is through prosperity and excising the tumors (bad policies) that are holding us back. Prosperity requires technology, resources, and a capacity to produce. We're also embarking on a period of potential technological advancements that will fundamentally change our world. There's a race on for that technology. Problem 1: The race for that technology requires economic investment. Who has the capacity to challenge our ability to invest in it? Look at this chart and think about how we choose who is and isn't on our team. Who do we cooperate and not cooperate with? Who is already on our team? Who do we spend money on bringing into the fold or relegating to the other side? Problem 2: The energy required run our existing economy is massive. The technology coming from AI, quantum computing, chip manufacturing, and downstream techs require incredible amounts of additional energy. You can't have unlimited growth in a world of finite resources. Thus, competition. Where do we find that energy? We need it now, not however many years into the future it takes to build nuke plants. Where does it lie? Problem 3: Who poses an existential threat to the US? First, what makes the US the US? I'd say a way of life based upon the principles of the Constitution. To find out who our enemy is, ask which countries operate in ways that are the most far removed from the way we want to live. Isn't the most glaring answer to that question China? We don't want anything to do with that system of government. Do we want to live in an Islamic Caliphate, either? We're even watching Europe devolve a collection of leftist governments. The real threats to you and I should be calculated and sorted as: Economic power + Access to energy + System of government disparity. Russia has little economic power, but has massive energy reserves. Their system of government sucks, Putin sucks, but it is not nearly as shitty as others with greater economic power. Put Ukrainians, Russians, Europeans, Americans in room together. You'd have a very difficult time sorting who's who on the basis of the things they value. Russia's energy is going to flow somewhere. Do you think it's just going to stay in the ground? Say Russia collapses. What are we going to do, occupy Russia to deny China's access to energy when they share a border? We are driving Russia into the arms of China, with or without Putin. War destroys prosperity. A nation will gravitate towards relationships that give them prosperity. The most logical approach is to create a security agreement where we stand to gain prosperity from the ability to purchase energy while they stand to gain prosperity from selling it. Why do we want to make China more prosperous? There is a time and place for conflict. But for 20 years I was directly involved in wars that were fought, but never decisively won. Our country experienced a near-exponential increase in debt while our leadership saw a near-exponential increase in wealth while on a government paycheck, all while people here still believe it's all been a net-benefit for our citizens. That's a pretty impressive jedi mind trick. Negotiate an end to the conflict. Start from scratch. Create a comprehensive security agreement that guarantees mutual economic benefits and access to energy while denying China the ability to become and even greater threat.

This is the most honest/understandable representation of the pro-war side of the argument: Cheering for the feeding of an entire society into the wood chipper. https://x.com/ricwe123/status/1630672196510138377

If you’ve paid attention to the facts instead of your feelings, there have been signposts since the beginning indicating the direction this is headed. As I said, you can oppose the reality of what’s happening with fantasies of complete Russian withdrawal/collapse, but you’ll only be upset/embarrassed when it never happens. The outcome is dictated by logic, not your notion of right/wrong.

You really need to decide if your are for or against personal attacks. If you bitch about it then engage in name calling, it makes you looks like a hypocrite. You can wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills first. It doesn't matter what you think is correct. You really think Crimea is going back to Ukraine? Delusional. LOL You've gotta be drunk. Unintelligible. "Gear cards" and asterisks? You're just asking random pointless nonsense questions. Do you even have a point here? You mean like Cold Stone Austin Steve? Did you intend to say "Trump wins more if Putin wins less?" You should read what you write before you click the submit reply button. Or at least edit your mistakes. I've seen these symptoms before. You might be having a Baseops meltdown.

I think it's reasonable to conclude that the line "We do not support Taiwan independence" was purchased illegally by a foreign adversary from a fifth column here in the US.

US State Department position on Taiwan Before & After

Stop whining. You're behaving like someone's jaded ex-girlfriend keeping a list of all their grievances. Those are all verifiable statements of fact. Just because you keep begging me to repeat myself doesn't mean I'm going to do it. You can't always get what you want. However, I will give you some new and original thoughts for you to bitch about: I can continue to write lengthy posts about what I think is right or correct. It doesn't matter now. There's a time for putting those ideas an opinions out in the public space to influence the planning process. It's over. It was over when Trump was elected. We're now in the implementation phase. Whatever your feelings and emotions are, they're worthless. You're going to have to live with whatever is decided for you. It should be apparent by now is at least attempting to deliver on campaign promises. Ending the war in Ukraine was a big one. He's ego-driven and I think he's motivated to fulfill those promises not always because the orders/actions themselves are the right thing to do, but because he knows just doing what he said he was going to do garners him an enormous amount of credibility and support. Perhaps not from you, but ...shrug. So, he said he was going to end it and he feels he must deliver on it. He mentions it in nearly every major press briefing. He also expresses regret for the "millions of soldiers" dying in the conflict. The problem here is he made a promise without conditions, and he seems to have taken direct military engagement off the table. This shifts the negotiating power-position somewhat toward Russia. Putin has made no promises and continues to demonstrate he'll fight it out on the battlefield indefinitely. Putin knows he can use this leverage to get Trump to make some concessions. Neither are going to capitulate fully. The most probable outcome is no NATO for Ukraine, Russia gets to keep Crimea and a significant portion of the land it fought over, and some easing of sanctions. We get to cease dumping billions of taxpayer dollars into this mess and get security guarantees from Russia that it won't invade Europe, pursue BRICs and other economic threats. Russia wasn't going to invade Europe anyway, but we can wave it around as if is a big win for us. Is it not reasonable to assume that Trump will continue the war without giving Russia a significant amount of its asks. Happy? You're just gonna have to prepare yourself to transition from pissing and moaning about what I believe should happen to pissing and moaning about what has actually happened. It's out of our hands.

First, calm down. You're getting emotional again. There is no good reason to type in all caps. Ever. Second, you've whined about me writing too much, yet you seem to not have read any of it. For three years now, I've written quite a bit on what I believe should and should not be done in this conflict. In an earlier post today, I even spoon fed you the steps to searching this thread for what I've written on the subject. Why should I be obligated to rehash what I've already said multiple times just because you're too lazy or too ill-equipped to read a few pages back? I can give you several examples of you using personal attacks recently, but it's only a problem when you're accusing someone else? That's both hypocrisy and projection. Remember: You referred to yourself as a dumbass. I have never called you any such thing. I think there's a good chance your opinion of yourself is lower than my opinion of you, thus the overcompensation and anger. I am not to blame for your low self-confidence.

I don't consider that a proper apology or admission of a mistake. But, I am happy to let the record show that you called yourself a dumbass, not me. What is the alternative to letting Russia keep it? Asking super nicely for them to give it up? Making demands? Or are you personally volunteering to join the fight to take it? I think it's more likely that your are volunteering someone else to fight to get it back. The right thing to do is not continue to push others to their death over rural Ukraine real estate you really care nothing about. As for the rest of your post... your Asperger's is showing.

I'll agree. It shouldn't have taken until a few hours ago to open up 625 million acres to energy drilling. I would like to have seen that on day 1. Trump has fallen short of my expectations with regard to timing, but the job is still getting done. https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1890539295343055120

Correct. The calculus in attacking a NATO member country vs a non-member country is not the same. Trump was absolutely wrong when he said it would take one day. I knew that was BS. How many promises did he deliver on day 1? I was disappointed that it took several days for some of his EOs. There are still things he hasn't done. There has been no announcements of additional Ukr funding since day 1, however. Although that's a partial fulfillment of the promise, it's not full delivery. If he never delivers on the promise to end the war, I will have a problem with that. If it takes 6 months, I will have a problem with that. If it takes until the end of next week to come to an agreement, I'll be happy to concede to you that it took one month instead of one day.

What was that promise you're referencing?

Taking an NVG checkride around a busy airport with that much cultural lighting seems odd to me.