Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[gearhog]

8 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Ehhh. You can take it as either. It was a statement meant only to convey the observation that you're obviously not on the pointy end of anything, and that likely informs your opinions about hyperbole / shorthand used to discuss war. I guess you found the statement shocking. It's purpose was to get hippies to out themselves. Moving on.

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.

Edited February 21 by gearhog

[Guest nsplayr]

I’m gonna lay the accusation @BashiChuni and @gearhog are Russian or otherwise trolls and should be given the heave-ho.

I’ve vigorously disagreed with probably every single dude here for 15+ years, including the mods, but I respect anyone here who’s AF or adjacent and wants to sport bitch & help solve the world’s problems.

These guys are not that. If you’re not Air Force, aviation or adjacent why are you here?

In my squadron bar you either have quals or a bro check or usually both. Go with quals or someone vouch for them or Mods, yall should boot these guys.

[gearhog]

2 minutes ago, nsplayr said:

I’m gonna lay the accusation @BashiChuni and @gearhog are Russian or otherwise trolls and should be given the heave-ho.

I’ve vigorously disagreed with probably every single dude here for 15+ years, including the mods, but I respect anyone here who’s AF or adjacent and wants to sport bitch & help solve the world’s problems.

These guys are not that. If you’re not Air Force, aviation or adjacent why are you here?

In my squadron bar you either have quals or a bro check or usually both. Go with quals or someone vouch for them or Mods, yall should boot these guys.

LMAO. Get some sleep, dude. You need it.

[Boomer6]

Bros and nsplayr, troll anti-virus is free.99.

1.)   Click the dropdown next to your display name in the top right of your browser

2.)   Select Ignored Users

3.)   Input the aforementioned troll’s name in the container such as gearhog, I mean torqued, or whatever grinder display name he’s using these days

4.)   Select the content you want to ignore

5.)   Click add user

6.)   Profit.

[Splash95]

After a few minutes of the most basic BO.net activity scrub:

“ive been trying to log into mypay for over a week. I need to work some math on my taxes and cant. i look forward to never needing this again. I've been on the fence about a Guard retirement right at 20. Stuff like this makes my choice clear.” – gearhog (fka torqued?), December 22, 2017

“all us mid level captains have seen the bullshit...we dropped when there was only one fighter per class, we had RPAs in our -38 drops, we were in the squadrons with the TAMI 21 guys and heard how they got screwed out of their fighters, [long looooong sentence/paragraph which pretty clearly shows quals]...” – BashiChuni, August 15, 2016

Obviously they've both been playing a long con since years before Putin invaded!

nsplayr, you look really ridiculous here.

[tac airlifter]

5 hours ago, ViperMan said:

 I don't have too much to say about "suspending elections", but I will say it's possibly, just possibly, a little bit disingenuous to think that the should hold "elections" while they're in a fight for the very existence of their country, when it's been under assault for the last decade..

It's tough to reply to anything in this thread.  You and others make good points & maybe we can have a good chat over whiskey sometime.

 

Regarding the elections thing I'll just add I don't agree with your take above mainly because it's the opposite position our nation has had historically and no one explained why the change. The Afghans & iraqis both held elections during the height of their wars for survival.  And we insisted because we knew the legitimacy of government directly correlates to the consent of the governed.  We preached it loud for years, and I still agree with it.

[Guest nsplayr]

1 hour ago, Splash95 said:

nsplayr, you look really ridiculous here.

I’m willing to be wrong, maybe they’re useful idiots rather than actual possibly-foreign trolls. That’s the best case!

The easiest way for them to make me look real stupid is to go with quals and/or have someone vouch for them.

Hasn’t happened yet unless you know them in real life & vouch for them. Do you?

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has them and they all stink, mine included.

But I am who I claim to be. Nothing more but nothing less. An actual Air Force officer & pilot who knows other folks here in real life and has (dumb) reasons to still be on BO.net shooting the shit with the bros.

Are they what they claim to be? What even is that? Pilots, enlisted, other AF, sister service, etc. This place is semi-anon at best and for a somewhat specific niche audience, it ain’t discord or twitter where millions of randos can just be whatever they wanna make up and claim wild shit…or at least it shouldn’t be.

It’s a legit accusation, and the best way to beat an accusation is to clearly and quickly refute the claim and offer evidence to the contrary. The worst way is to not answer the question and pop a bunch of verbal flares & chaff.

I’ll wait.

Edited February 21 by nsplayr

[Guest nsplayr]

29 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

It's tough to reply to anything in this thread.  You and others make good points & maybe we can have a good chat over whiskey sometime.

 

Regarding the elections thing I'll just add I don't agree with your take above mainly because it's the opposite position our nation has had historically and no one explained why the change. The Afghans & iraqis both held elections during the height of their wars for survival.  And we insisted because we knew the legitimacy of government directly correlates to the consent of the governed.  We preached it loud for years, and I still agree with it.

I think normally you want that, yea. It’s just real tough when you have a full mobilization, like 20% of your country is occupied and you don’t even have access to your citizens there, and the invading enemy still retains the ability to conduct air strikes and other long-range attacks all over the country.

To me, it’s telling that none of Zelensky’s political rivals want elections either - they want to win / end the war and then recover & rebuild on their own terms rather under a daily Russian military threat. Maybe he’s re-elected, maybe someone else wins, I truly have no idea and don’t have a dog in that fight. 

But the fastest way to guarantee elections happen in Ukraine is for Putin to order his guys to leave. Just start driving east and the rest will sort itself out.

Edited February 21 by nsplayr

[gearhog]

8 hours ago, nsplayr said:

I’m willing to be wrong, maybe they’re useful idiots rather than actual possibly-foreign trolls. That’s the best case!

The easiest way for them to make me look real stupid is to go with quals and/or have someone vouch for them.

Hasn’t happened yet unless you know them in real life & vouch for them. Do you?

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has them and they all stink, mine included.

But I am who I claim to be. Nothing more but nothing less. An actual Air Force officer & pilot who knows other folks here in real life and has (dumb) reasons to still be on BO.net shooting the shit with the bros.

Are they what they claim to be? What even is that? Pilots, enlisted, other AF, sister service, etc. This place is semi-anon at best and for a somewhat specific niche audience, it ain’t discord or twitter where millions of randos can just be whatever they wanna make up and claim wild shit…or at least it shouldn’t be.

It’s a legit accusation, and the best way to beat an accusation is to clearly and quickly refute the claim and offer evidence to the contrary. The worst way is to not answer the question and pop a bunch of verbal flares & chaff.

I’ll wait.

Allright allright, I'll give in. I can tell this is killing you. 😆 First, me having a different opinion than you isn't dangerous, malicious, or harmful. You being a Nav, or RPA guy, or whatever means little just has me being a pilot/military officer means little.

Here's the deal. When I got to my first assignment, one of the first guys I flew with was a guy named Rich Hauben, God rest his soul. We became friends and squadronmates. One of the first things we talked about was that he had worked very hard on building a website so that we when showed up to fly, all the information was there. PDF files of flight plans, mission worksheets, calculators, weather, etc. Super proud of it. It also had a forum he encouraged me to join. He experimented with some early waterfall type message boards that were successful, then he bought a site address at DynamicTruth.com, where he sold calling cards, cigarettes, and other stuff online. Made some decent money from what I remember. He hosted two forums on the server. One was "Military Aviation" and the other was "Socio-Political - The Michael Savage forum", of whom he was a fan. It was off the rails. Rich liked to show up to that forum and argue about controversial subjects. It was full of non-military liberals who hated the Michael Savage radio show. Rich posted under an alternate name and liked to get the liberals all worked up over controversial subjects. He'd talk about it often. That forum was absolutely wild. Anything went.

http://web.archive.org/web/20020602142642/http://www.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?user=baseops

https://web.archive.org/web/20040325141830/http://dynamictruth.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=9

For the most part, the non-military usernames stayed over in Socio-Political, and most all the flyers stated in Military Aviation except for Rich, me, and a few others. Then the streams started to cross. Some of the rabid liberals started coming over here and injecting their leftist garbage into this forum, getting us military fliers worked up. Rich tried to keep those intense political discussions at the other forum but it didn't work. It's a little fuzzy, but at some point I think he just deleted the entire socio-politcal/Michael Savage forum one day. He had gone over to the other side of the runway doing secret squirrel stuff by that time.

Anyway, that's just some fun history of the forum.

As for me, I've been here since near the beginning. Over 25 year now, I guess. Thousands of screen names have came and went. Lots of good conversations here, info, help, but there is always sport-bitching, controversies, meltdowns, drama, guys wanting to meetup and fight, etc. It's been fun. Don't take it too seriously. Just words on a screen. Nothing more. I've been moderator. Administrator here for years and quit that. At that time I got a gig that required an SCI and I had thousands and thousands of posts here. I decided to delete "gearpig" from the server, not realizing it would completely remove the hundreds of threads I started here. Caused a bit of a problem. My bad. Sorry bout that. 😄

I am proud that I never banned anyone that I simply had a personal disagreement with or an opinion I didn't like - but it was tempting.

A year or so in pilot training. I spent 19 out of 22 years in the Herc. Did white jets for a while. Did all the quals, all the sq jobs, chief of SE, all that. Only wanted to fly but I was made deployed SQ/CC once. First deployment was Oct 2001. Last was 2018. A bunch in between. Started the airlines back 07, been a Captain for several years now. I paid over $160K in FICA, SS, and Medicare alone last year, not including all my property and business taxes, so that motivates me to share my opinions a little. I live on a large rural farm surrounded by family. We raise cattle, show horses, buy and sell tractors, etc. It's fun. I'm not Russian, and I'm not going to hurt you. You don't have to beg others to silence my free speech because you disagree. 😄

Edited February 21 by gearhog

[busdriver]

5 hours ago, nsplayr said:

But the fastest way to guarantee elections happen in Ukraine is for Putin to order his guys to leave. Just start driving east and the rest will sort itself out.

The vein of thought saying "America provoked this war and is at fault" crowd has a major case of main character syndrome.  They can't see any geopolitical actor other than the US having agency.  

Then they'll point to Mearsheimer, who agrees with the point above.  The weird part is that his own treatise (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) would point you to the opposite conclusion.  If objective 1 of any great power is to seek regional hegemony and prevent others from doing the same (method of assuring survival by preventing effective rivals), by his theory Russia was always going to become belligerent again as is seeks hegemony.

I guess a populist moment was always going to be based on emotion.  Probably the same before the rise of the progressive era.

[Stoker]

17 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

Zelensky won't let his people vote, so they're stuck with forced conscription into the wood chipper.  
 
I'm not pro-Putin or condoning his actions.  But explore this hypothetical with me: what if most Ukrainians would rather give ethnically Russian territory to the Russians than have their kids & grandkids die?  Do they have a right to advocate politically for that?  Zelenskyy says no. 

Doesn't Ukraine's constitution specifically disallows elections during a period of martial law? If Zelensky did a 180 and held elections today, the US right would immediately pivot and say they're illegitimate because they didn't include the more pro-Russian voters who used to reside in Crimea and the Donbass (who are mostly dead conscript/cannon fodder in the "separatist" armies at this point). And to be fair, how legitimate would elections be in the US if New York was occupied by the Canadians, California by Mexico, and Florida by the Cubans?

You talk as if the wood chipper is an option to avoid, but if you're a Ukrainian man your options aren't wood chipper / no wood chipper - they're Ukrainian army, Russian army, gulag. I know which one I'd pick.

[gearhog]

1 hour ago, busdriver said:

The vein of thought saying "America provoked this war and is at fault" crowd has a major case of main character syndrome.  They can't see any geopolitical actor other than the US having agency.  

Then they'll point to Mearsheimer, who agrees with the point above.  The weird part is that his own treatise (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) would point you to the opposite conclusion.  If objective 1 of any great power is to seek regional hegemony and prevent others from doing the same (method of assuring survival by preventing effective rivals), by his theory Russia was always going to become belligerent again as is seeks hegemony.

I guess a populist moment was always going to be based on emotion.  Probably the same before the rise of the progressive era.

The problem with your hegemony arguments is you are viewing it through a single biased perspective.

The issue is reciprocal hegemony, meaning that even when you frame both sides as opposites, they still reflect one another's motivations and dynamics. Both the US and Russia claim their actions/expansions are defensive. Both justify them with mirrored ideological narratives. Each identifies the other as the aggressor. It's a vicious cycle that will drain prosperity from all parties involved over a very long period of time. In the end, one side or the other maybe be the ultimate victor, but it'll be Phyrric.

It's the same playbook repeated over and over and over. I've seen it over my entire adult life and it took me a while realize the pattern. "The whole nation is bad. They're a threat. They're not a democracy. We're going to free the population." Meanwhile, they say "They're the threat, they're meddling in our domestic affairs, they're the invaders." Round and round we go. Money gets spent, lives are lost, etc.

But it doesn't always go like that. There are plenty of examples of rivalries being settled through diplomacy. Most conflicts between near-peer nations reach a point of negotiated settlement - where we are now. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. There are plenty of ways to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship through technology, economics, and energy (as I went into earlier) Thank God the Cold War never went full hot between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. We never had to directly engage the Soviet Union, but we intensely competed, and they just got tired. It was ultimately de-escalated when Reagan and Gorbachev signed arms agreements. I don't know how old you are, but we did nuclear drills in elementary school.  What a relief when cooler heads prevailed, there was peace, and we ultimately prospered.

This whole "kill em all!" caveman mentality ensures the cycle will never be broken. The thought pattern you're having now is the same one that billions of people have been stuck in during every conflict in human history. I'd encourage you to conduct a private thought experiment with yourself and step out of that mental trap. It's enlightening.

“War is young men dying and old men talking”

― Somebody.

 

Edited February 21 by gearhog

[Clark Griswold]

Post conflict ops being discussed, longish read but worth it

https://www.twz.com/air/this-is-what-a-peacekeeping-air-policing-mission-over-ukraine-could-look-like

Don’t see how this could happen without heavy US participation, Op Northern / Southern Watch 2

 

[ViperMan]

9 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

It's tough to reply to anything in this thread.  You and others make good points & maybe we can have a good chat over whiskey sometime.

Regarding the elections thing I'll just add I don't agree with your take above mainly because it's the opposite position our nation has had historically and no one explained why the change. The Afghans & iraqis both held elections during the height of their wars for survival.  And we insisted because we knew the legitimacy of government directly correlates to the consent of the governed.  We preached it loud for years, and I still agree with it.

I'm not expressing an opinion that elections shouldn't ever be held. I'm expressing incredulity at the prospect of conducting a proper election under true, wartime conditions.

How do you suggest the 90% of displaced residents in any given bombed-out apartment building get to participate? Where even are they? Could they hope to participate? How would you ensure rampant fraud isn't injected by some sort of, you know, hostile counter-intelligence force? In short, all I'm saying is that the drum-beating about how Ukraine isn't a democracy because they're not holding elections right now is nakedly cynical. And that's coming from someone who is pretty cynical. Especially considering most of the "democratic advocacy" is coming from people who don't bat an eye about the legitimacy of Russian "elections."

[gearhog]

1 hour ago, ViperMan said:

I'm not expressing an opinion that elections shouldn't ever be held. I'm expressing incredulity at the prospect of conducting a proper election under true, wartime conditions.

How do you suggest the 90% of displaced residents in any given bombed-out apartment building get to participate? Where even are they? Could they hope to participate? How would you ensure rampant fraud isn't injected by some sort of, you know, hostile counter-intelligence force? In short, all I'm saying is that the drum-beating about how Ukraine isn't a democracy because they're not holding elections right now is nakedly cynical. And that's coming from someone who is pretty cynical. Especially considering most of the "democratic advocacy" is coming from people who don't bat an eye about the legitimacy of Russian "elections."

Watch how easy it is for me to completely invalidate your argument:

1864: On election day, Lincoln prevailed handily, winning 212 of 233 total electoral votes. Contributing to his victory were the predominantly Republican votes of Union soldiers, many of whom had been allowed to cast ballots in the field or else had been furloughed to vote in their home districts.

https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1864

1944: During World War II, more than 16 million Americans served in uniform. Approximately 11.5 million men and women served overseas, and the remainder often served thousands of miles away from their homes even when stationed within the United States. To ensure that these service members continued to be represented in their government, Congress passed bills in 1942 and 1944 intended to guarantee that American soldiers could vote in wartime elections for federal offices. Although the bills fell short of their ambitious goal, the 1944 bill permitted millions of soldiers to cast absentee ballots in the federal election that year.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/soldier-voting-act-1942-absentee-ballots

 

Edited February 21 by gearhog

[gearhog]

"When President Trump posts that Zelensky is a dictator without elections, what are you thinking?"

https://x.com/dbsmorocco/status/1892931593947251004

[Day Man]

54 minutes ago, gearhog said:

Watch how easy it is for me to completely invalidate your argument:

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/soldier-voting-act-1942-absentee-ballots

Quote

A mere 28,000 service members, out of nearly four million men and women in uniform in 1942, voted in the election.

almost like they were busy doing other things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[gearhog]

5 minutes ago, Day Man said:

almost like they were busy doing other things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

So you are saying the election was invalid and/or shouldn't have been held? Should those 28K not have been allowed to vote? What's your point here? Are you the world's first WWII election denier? 😀

An election was held during "true, wartime conditions". That's what a real democracy does. And it's not impossible.

Edited February 21 by gearhog

[ViperMan]

1 hour ago, gearhog said:

Watch how easy it is for me to completely invalidate your argument:

1864: On election day, Lincoln prevailed handily, winning 212 of 233 total electoral votes. Contributing to his victory were the predominantly Republican votes of Union soldiers, many of whom had been allowed to cast ballots in the field or else had been furloughed to vote in their home districts.

https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1864

1944: During World War II, more than 16 million Americans served in uniform. Approximately 11.5 million men and women served overseas, and the remainder often served thousands of miles away from their homes even when stationed within the United States. To ensure that these service members continued to be represented in their government, Congress passed bills in 1942 and 1944 intended to guarantee that American soldiers could vote in wartime elections for federal offices. Although the bills fell short of their ambitious goal, the 1944 bill permitted millions of soldiers to cast absentee ballots in the federal election that year.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/soldier-voting-act-1942-absentee-ballots

Yeah. Gosh. A Civil war example. Digging deep.

And whoa, a WW2 example wherein 0.7% of the serving soldiers were able to vote. That's 7/10 ths of 1 percent. That's a small number because you seem confused.

Nice examples. You added logs to my fire, not yours. Appreciate it.

29 minutes ago, gearhog said:

So you are saying the election was invalid and/or shouldn't have been held? Should those 28K not have been allowed to vote? What's your point here? Are you the world's first WWII election denier? 😀

An election was held during "true, wartime conditions". That's what a real democracy does. And it's not impossible.

That's clearly not what he was saying. And you're obviously being intentionally obtuse and provocative. Anyway, I'm done with this part of the argument.

[gearhog]

3 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Yeah. Gosh. A Civil war example. Digging deep.

And whoa, a WW2 example wherein 0.7% of the serving soldiers were able to vote. That's 7/10 ths of 1 percent. That's a small number because you seem confused.

Nice examples. You added logs to my fire, not yours. Appreciate it.

That's clearly not what he was saying. And you're obviously being intentionally obtuse and provocative. Anyway, I'm done with this part of the argument.

Our nation held democratic elections during some of the most extreme wartime conditions in history, when you said it couldn't/shouldn't be done. And, you're willing to diminish their importance because they don't align with your on position on a conflict halfway around the globe that you're not fighting. An election isn't just about deployed servicemembers voting. There were approx 135,000,000 citizens at home. The US decided it was consistent with our democratic ideals to allow it's citizens to vote for the direction they wanted their nation to take during a conflict we were directly involved in. It's no wonder you're done with the argument because it just doesn't pass the logic test. Abandoning a bad take is a good move and I commend you for it.

You should considering abandoning the entire issue. I don't pick battles that I'm not going to win. It's clear where this is headed and you're just going to keep stamping your feet as reality continues to depart from your fantasy? Why? It's like arguing the Cowboys should have won the Superbowl every year. Uh.. ok? Talk about it all you like. It just ain't happening.

I can see reality is aligning with my desire for the money I earned to no longer fund a vicious war where both sides are dying at incredibly high rates. As you can tell, I'm immensely satisfied that seems to be what is occurring. You can spend the next 20 pages that I'm wrong about the above. Won't change a thing. You will be dissatisfied with the results. I'll be glad its over.

[blueingreen]

6 hours ago, busdriver said:

Then they'll point to Mearsheimer, who agrees with the point above.  The weird part is that his own treatise (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) would point you to the opposite conclusion.  If objective 1 of any great power is to seek regional hegemony and prevent others from doing the same (method of assuring survival by preventing effective rivals), by his theory Russia was always going to become belligerent again as is seeks hegemony.

It's good to see someone mentioning Mearsheimer. It's amazing how many people essentially paraphrase his work without realizing it. I would argue that Mearsheimer is still following the internal logic of realist theory when he partially blames the West for the war in Ukraine. You're correct when you say that Great Powers seek regional hegemony. The key here is that Russia used to have far more regional hegemony and control over Ukraine and other states. Since the fall of the USSR, Russia has watched former satellite states become NATO allies, which is a serious threat to regional hegemony from the Russian perspective. People can argue that these former Soviet states have the right to self-determination and are free to seek to join whatever military alliance they please (which I agree with), but realism doesn't cast judgement or opine on those matters. It's just a descriptive + predictive framework. Mearsheimer is simply saying that the West should have expected Russia to act belligerently when NATO began expanding beyond their traditional sphere of influence, and that Ukraine would likely be the last straw. He was right about that and predicted it over a decade ago.

[busdriver]

8 minutes ago, blueingreen said:

Mearsheimer is simply saying that the West should have expected Russia to act belligerently when NATO began expanding beyond their traditional sphere of influence, and that Ukraine would likely be the last straw. He was right about that and predicted it over a decade ago.

My point is that anything less than a vasal state in Ukraine would have always been more than Russia could tolerate.  NATO expansion is irrelevant.

[disgruntledemployee]

Or maybe Putin can read too and used it as rationale to invade.  "Look, this book predicted it, I'm invading.

As for the energy argument, I think the world market would prefer Ukraine maintain control over its energy, not Russia.  Yeah, China prefers Russia.  Also, anyone that thinks more energy reduces prices hasn't paid attention to supply controls used by Oil Companies/OPEC.  Remember when Obama released strat reserves just to see oil companies hold it or sell it?

PS. Russia started the invasion, they fired the 1st shot.  All the excuses played out don't justify it and giving them consideration for all those excuses makes them appear more justified. When Russia says a reason, say bullshit.  Which is why many of us BODNers call bullshit to any Russian justification.

[BashiChuni]

So no one wants to address the CIA memo from 2008 predicting this? I guess Bill Burns must have been a Russian troll when he wrote it. 
 

nsplayer you still jerking off to your (NAV) quals? Wanna address the actual argument or just play high school “bro card” games?

 

thats what I thought. Typical liberal who wants to censor points of view counter to yours. 

Edited February 21 by BashiChuni

[raimius]

38 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

So no one wants to address the CIA memo from 2008 predicting this? I guess Bill Burns must have been a Russian troll when he wrote it. 

That the some in the CIA predicted Russia's actions does not justify Russia's actions.