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I think my main stance was pretty consistent throughout: mandates for civilians = bad mandates for military = shut up and color But for debrief purposes: Knowing what we know now about efficacy, should it have been mandated? No. Do I think it was a horrible reckless medical experimentation campaign that subjected service members to huge risk? Also no. Virtually everyone I know got the first two jabs, and I know zero vaccine injured people. Did I take any boosters? Also no. I caught covid within 9 months of my 2 shots, reference the efficacy point above. Last thing I’ll say is: a big frustration for me in this thread has been that you guys project every gripe you have with the government covid regime on a handful of us slightly dissenting voices, who actually agree with you on most of the big picture issues here. I also think the government seized on a crisis to try and take as much power as possible. I also think suppression of the lab leak was bullshit. I also think fauci has perjured himself numerous times and probably belongs in jail. I also think the lockdowns accomplished nothing and were a huge detriment to the economy and people’s mental health. I just think there’s an argument to be made for military mandates (in general), a lot of the objections were based on pretty weak BS, and the shot was never very risky. Still happy to debate those.

In the end, Ukraine will likely have to either give up some territory or at least agree to not fight for their remaining claims (likely Crimea). That can only happen after both Ukraine and Putin decide the cost of further fighting isn't worth it. As we have seen, Putin isn't afraid to have people die for him. He might reconsider if further fighting is likely to reduce Russia's/his power. That might happen if Ukraine can keep inflicting losses at a high rate for the foreseeable future.

But see that’s the thing, we are getting accelerated modernization through support of Ukraine, the media sphere talking points just don’t support the space required to have that conversation. ATACM and Bradley are being given to Ukraine under that financial dollar amount. That’s not to build the Ukrainians new equipment, we are divesting M2A2/3s that are still serviceable but near the end of life cycle and funding accelerated replacement of those stocks with A4s. 1st CAV will be the first unit to field A4s in an Armored Brigade Combat team about 2 years ahead of the original timeline for it, they are set to fall in on them returning from the EUCOM rotation they are on. Similarly ATACM isn’t being built to replace, the money funds PRISM. Upgrades are absolutely happening, and at the cost of equipment and ordnance we were going to have to pay to DRMO. And while we can sit in an arbitration of negotiated peace, the people selling the inevitable collapse of Ukraine are ignoring a lot of reality on the battlefield. The Ukrainians now possess and are permitted to use weapons to shape the Corps and Division deep areas, which they didn’t have in hand during their summer offensive. If you’re going to conduct offensive ground operations and you don’t have an Air Force with established air superiority conducting interdiction that’s going to be a necessary capability (the other big problem being engineering). They just started pushing the Russians north of Vovchansk for example they are well north of the River which was their defensive line. They can do that because they can shape the deep fight in a way they weren’t allowed too. Everybody screaming last summer about how come they don’t advance like us were largely ignoring or ignorant of that being something we would need to do if we were in their place. The artillery they did have last year was being used in direct support of their FLOT, which while effective at limiting casualties makes for slow movement to take the field from the opposing force because they can just feed in the strategic reserve. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If it's a boom operator, it's all one and the same.

So now it’s blood AND/OR treasure now. But nobody ever wants to talk about time. I think in our lack of a LSCO in recent times we’ve forgiven that those wars are thought of in spans of years. Iraq was an anomaly. What were general staffs doing in April-July of 1945… figuring out what they wanted to do in 1946, because there was never an assumption the end of a conflict was just around the bend. For less than 10% of the annual DOD budget because 811 billion per year is 80 billion annually in a 2.5 year of which ~60% of it went directly into building out our own stateside infrastructure and purchasing new stocks in exchange for old DRMO ones necessary to conduct LSCO in the evidence of expansionist policies from both our major opponents… we managed to: -Contribute to Russia losing something along the lines of 20% of its tactical Air power… -Destroy 60-70% of its Gen III+ MBTs and later armored vehicles (4th guards was training with T62s last summer)… -Neutralize every warship that would able to contest us or influence NATO territory with Calibr from the Black Sea or Baltic since that’s who they largely augmented with… -field test a butt load of emergent tech and methods rather than learn them the hard way… At the rate we are going between attrition in this war and NATO members moving to develop a real military across the continent we won’t need a 2 theatre military, because Russia won’t have one left to field offensively. This is the lowest return on investment in the history of our military spending. And in the meantime we demonstrate to the Chinese who are watching “no you can’t just invade and hold while we lose our attention span on your annexation of a neighbor.” Yeah that’s a win worth far more than maybe a dozen more B21s 6 years from now provided somebody doesn’t reappropriate that money for other things because we forget great powers type war is still a real thing out there like we did through the 90s and early 00s. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not trying to dogpile you. This point keeps coming up, not just by you. This seems to be following along with Mearsheimer's analysis of how "we" got to this point. What this line of thinking omits is a strong defense of the counter factual. Said another way, I think the idea that if NATO had not continued to grow post cold war, that Russa would not have done any of the stuff they've done in past 20 years is silly. Putin considers the collapse of the Soviet Union the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century. Fundamentally, this line of thought is a serious case of main character syndrome. All of that analysis contains the implicit assumption that all foreign affairs are essentially reactions to western (USA) action. No one else has agency. Which is completely at odds with one of his own key realism points; namely that all states will seek regional hegemony in order to secure their survival. Russia has always been an expansionist empire. They don't have defensible borders.

I pissed on Mike Cahill's Boom Operator sticker at the Bird in Hand, multiple times. I saw that sticker all over the world. Never even met the dude. I also got trashed on snake bites there, more times than I can remember.

Let's make sure to give the Russians back Finland, the Baltics, and Poland as well. They'll be turning over Kaliningrad in the exchange, of course... unless historical land claims only work one way? The US will be handing Texas and California back to Mexico, obviously, and the Kosovars need to get used to being massacred by Serbs on a daily basis. Historical ownership is the key to sovereignty, the will of the people be damned. /s