Lawman

Again as others have pointed out this is the cheapest form of spending we have ever had in regards to opposing Russian influence and attempts to hinder our efforts and interests and positively affect their own. If you were at all honest in your sudden alarm to the cost of these efforts (let alone wider foreign policy) Id encourage you to compare the ongoing costs of Atlantic Resolve deployments against the pitifully low cost of our efforts to aid Ukraine to date. It costs a little less than 2 billion in current costs just to rotate an Armor brigade or similar heavy element. That’s the direct cost, it doesn’t even begin to scratch the manpower negative we get on sustainment with those rotations. We only started doing that in direct response to Russian aggression in Crimea. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No the summation of the arguments he’s making is what is getting him called a stooge. This isn’t “I just want an honest open conversation about…” We can read the real intent his actions through the culmination of stated opinions and what conversations he attempts to advance and which ones deliberately avoided/ignored/bypassed. And while yes examples of historical conspiracy theorists turn out right the vast majority do not. You can’t point to media/social media bias in say hiding the Biden laptop stuff during the election, then turn around and use that as the justification for your belief that Bush did 9/11 or the moon landing didn’t happen and demand to be taken seriously with that. Go read the other thread, dude is seriously peddling crap from Twitter handles, or wild ramblings by Seymour Herch passing it off as part of this mountain of direct evidence that we are being lied to and the US simply has to be responsible. He’s not presenting this as a possible, he’s presenting it as a fact and telling the room we’re all too stupid to put the clues together. By the way if you want a laugh go to his Twitter loon’s page the latest stuff is tinfoil crazy like the US used an Earthquake gun on Turkey. Dude is in this thread repeatedly sharing nothing but examples and stories about dubious Ukrainian actions and downplaying real examples of Russian actions. I’ll remind you he’s the one that started the whole line topic on downplaying Russian involvement in MH17, then kept trying to minimize the realities of that exact situation when challenged on it. So what is his desired end state. Well it’s kinda the joke with the whole “I’m not racist, but” example. Make pleading statements when pressed on it about how you wants Russia to lose, but really he’s only interested in that we modify our support to an isolationist standpoint of delayed or no real tangible support to Ukraine. He and others keep implying this isn’t in our interests and we have no dog in it. We (the US and Allies) have to suddenly be hyper sensitive to some impossible purity standard in the actions/corruption/etc of a foreign state even when it’s interests directly along with our own interests. Establishing that standard we halt our current or future spending and stop delivering any kind of meaningful money or actions to support the Ukrainians. That’s exactly the outcome that aligns with Russian desires, hence why they spend the effort in influence campaigns like the ones mentioned in that Brookings Institute article. And I’ve seen plenty of with that kind of desired end-state at the heart of their efforts on Ukraine whatever their deeper motivation to it. A bunch seem to be the “can’t let the other team have a win” types (Tucker Carlsons types) who just adopt the opposite tact and support or don’t support war when it suits them. Some are the isolationist types that just don’t want us to play the foreign policy/influence game at all or the hard Dove types who just don’t support anybody in this situation but offer no solution other than wouldn’t it be great if we all loved each other… We saw this exact same type of thing with regards to preventing us from taking actions against Isis. “We can’t support the Kurds/Yazidi/Iraqi government because…..” “Isis isn’t hurting us” stuff like that. In that previous example all those arguments did was lengthened the time to actually do something about it and the size and damage of the conflict that was churning with or without us when it was clearly the right thing to anybody that was there fighting it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes tell us all about the dangers of the media and disinformation dangers… specifically ones regarding this and how it’s impossible that you are buying the wrong parties bullshit. https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/u-s-podcasters-spread-kremlin-narratives-on-nord-stream-sabotage/ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Obviously it was the same boat of guys that shot down Flight 800. Why don’t we get Gearpig to post some more Twitter handles with evidence of the grander conspiracy. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

“Hey everybody I’m not buying the Russian narrative or trying to convince you to stop providing aid to a country aligned with our interests that is actively fighting them… oh but wait let’s talk about how bad the Ukrainians are again.” Jesus between this and you paddling the conspiracies theorist canoe about Nordstream it’s a wonder we don’t have a moderator run your IP address. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And no you adopt the “No true Scotsman” position to protect the fact you can’t openly say what you actually mean. And you’re in this thread and the one right above it spreading everything from doubts about Ukrainian purity to baseless conspiracy theory. So yeah you get called out for it whether you are a willing bot or just a useful idiot. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No see there it is right at the very end. Don’t do either… you won’t come out and just say what you mean which is walk away from supporting Ukraine and let Russia have its way. You overtly avoid saying that because you know it’s not convincing to the room that knows better. You can’t support that directly so you make noise about how Ukraine is somehow the real unrecognized bad actor or how awful we’ve been in the past so we (US/NATO/West) should just excuse the Russians as they pursue their own. Interests. We have to be paralyzed by some sort of made up guilt. A “western desire to continue” as you say is a cornerstone of wider the Russian IO campaign. The one inserted into our own society as a method to erode any efforts against them in foreign policy. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because you are deliberately trying to create parallels where none exist and continuing to support disinformation and present it as fact of some kind of wider hidden western desire to cause/continue this war. Narratives are not equal. You can acknowledge the existence of political or personal motivations to paint a picture without having to adopt the nonsense that somehow the Russian and Western narratives are leading to some sort of “truthful middle ground.” The Russian narratives are bold faced lies. “We didn’t invade Crimea those are separatists.” “We didn’t shoot down MH17 because our forces weren’t there it was Ukrainians.” “We are conducting this war to de-nazify the Ukrainian government.” There is a demonstrated history SPECIFIC to this conflict and you pointing to any past instances of western history is an attempt to distract from that or give them a buffer to continue it. If you think there is any kind of equivalency between western mass media and Russian you are clueless. Likewise if you can’t understand the nuance of providing support while accepting any Ukrainian’s skeletons in their closet as a lesser evil to emboldening/ignoring/rewarding a geo political foe for naked aggression against a democratic European country you are clueless. That’s not Slava Ukraine, that’s looking at a menu of either cold spaghetti or shit and knowing which one you should eat. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And as seen from Covid relief it largely doesn’t even need to be viable support to achieve the effect they want. That desire being wider societal influence and displacing our position as the sort of global center of gravity. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

When you had to trade funny QuickTime videos with a 3.5 or if you were rich a CD-R… and they went in the hard drive of the presentation computer to watch between power point classes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Again… you are carefully inserting the Russian narrative counter to exactly what I said or implied like you are here to bat for their team. The one that absolves them and their government from any kind of responsibility for the event. There is no question who was using operating that system that shot down MH17, and it wasn’t a bunch of Ukrainians so why are you attempting to imply it was in the same long winded speech about media and agendas. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So you can see a vast conspiracy by western aligned countries to just allow the US and by extension NATO to widen the risk of war, but you can’t play that a level higher where Russia would use that and an IO campaign to force NATO to deescalate its support of Ukraine? “Oh surely it had to be the Americans… they want to make billions off selling fallout shelters and iodine pills.” Couldn’t possibly be that months into a war going badly, Putin and his guys would sabotage one of a multitude of their own pipelines for their oil exports to create a narrative that uses existing sentiment and forces NATO to attempt to withdraw support to avoid the risk of widening the conflict. What would they possibly have to gain from such a move. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The DOD should be task-able as a logistical arm in humanitarian assistance, but this should be a State department and NGO fight. And even then on an available order of priority option. If available, sure but if tasked to the main DOD mission sorry go find another way. That’s not to say I have a ton of faith in them, but our mandate is foreign policy effect through what is essentially violence. That does not rebuild or progress anybody economically or socially. That is why we should act as the heavy lifting of assets and a small immediate security footprint, but the wider mission should be run by somebody else. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No I think you’re a “useful idiot” dude. Like cool you did some crap way back whenever then hell it was which got you buy in and now you’re just some disgruntled old conspiracy theorist bitching about this fight because of some military industrial complex Illuminati nonsense you’ve been convinced of. You’ve got no idea what the hell is going on and you’re jumping in an Internet forum to present some sort of “alternate to the government narrative” idea as to what’s “really happening.” Just go fishing or something. Find a hobby and stop trying to protect us from actually negatively impacting a geopolitical foe. Because the fact you glossed completely past what I typed about the complexity of operating a Buk ADA system or the fact we knew the reality that the little green men (the ones who were actually VDV and Spetz contract guys masquerading as rebels) were just angry Russian ethnics that happened to have top of the line Russian gear…. Cool you bought the bullshit Russian produced narrative. It’s not their fault…obviously NATO and Lockheed started this war for their own benefit just like the half dozen other times of Russia invade and attempting to annex a neighbor. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

“Transferred missiles to pro Russian….” F me dude. Really you think an SA-11/17 is something a group of rebel separatists not only have in working order but also have the training and wherewithal to be using effectively? Have you ever sat in one? This isn’t something a bunch of pissed off former compulsory conscripts and angry guys with AKs just YouTube directions for or play some warthunder and figure out. ADA is a job normally reserved to involving a team of at least a couple contract soldiers. Just some rando dude that with no help or anything…. Popped one missile with enough Pk to accidentally bring down a 777. Then it randomly moves from the Donbas because reasons and the Russians stop international investigators. Is this like when we pretend those dudes in kit with no patches we can easily identify are just “disgruntled separatists” and not what they clearly were to the adults in the room as they seized key terrain and nodes during the Crimea invasion? Again… you claim you aren’t sympathetic to giving the Russians the benefit of the doubt while you repeatedly dredge shit up on the Uke’s in this thread and others like some kind of foreboding warning to all of us. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

See there is a difference between “Viewing this from the Russian perspective” Vs “Being empathetic and even sympathetic to the Russian perspective (read propaganda).” If you believe there is any way Russia isn’t responsible for MH17 you either don’t have current access to a vault and the widely available materials on SIPR discussing it, or you’re just a loon buying their BS story about the Uke’s doing despite all the evidence to the contrary (both open source and not). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think you’re new wave rebranded isolationist BS is no less dangerous than the “it’ll all be ok” crowd that was laughingly dismissing Romney in the debates when he suggested Russia is our #1 geopolitical foe. I think your entire presence in this thread is to do little more than try to play at being some sort of omnipresent intellectual when really you don’t realize your misgivings being the guiding beacon of what we should do (cut them off and let’s see) is more likely to result in a wider conflict not head it off at the regional level it currently resides in. Your apologist sentiment/statements for former exploited Russian satellites recognizing the reality and running to NATO because never again being a great example of that. Oh how dare the Czechs and Poles or Latvians want to actually stay sovereign. What a god damned crime. They should recognize they have old ties to respect and be more Hungarian in their outlook. I would rather back Ukraine despite all their rotten apples in the cart than see yet another example of Russian aggression go unchecked and be successful in its results for their end goals. And you and others are flatly getting in the way of that with your “yeah but what if they attack our transport ship” bullshit from earlier. We tried isolationism or rather “that’s a Europe problem” before. The end result was us getting into wider conflicts both unprepared and more expensively than smaller sooner conflicts would have cost. That was the reason we changed our mindset the last 70 years. Turns out just having nukes and oceans between us and conflict isn’t enough. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Oh so now you can’t read English or understand my meaning. 1. You’re deliberately hiding behind some feigned concern for money or widening risk of war when reality is you’re afraid to just publicly state what you mean. You don’t think we should be supporting the Ukrainian government/military. You hide behind concerns or pretend to just be bringing up talking points for discussion. Your participation in this thread seems entirely built in trying to lessen the validity of the cause we are supporting or hollow out the value of the support others are calling for. 2. Now you want to play the bullshit “if you think we should help why don’t you go volunteer” card. Really you are recognizing you’ve had to show some of your hand and are losing ground on the argument that somehow you and I are both agreeing to limits. We’re not even in the same library much less the same page when my argument is make real effects that translate to dollars spent and Russian combat power eroded and you’re masking an argument in the belief we never should have been giving them this kind of serious assistance in the first place. Not to mention it’s completely silent to that huge apparatus of military power we keep moving making bold political noise to the Russians like Atlantic Resolve. I’ll let you take a guess what I’ll be doing with my brigade in the near future… 3. To be more succinct, stop dancing around and being a tool and just say what you mean. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

You’re getting called out directly for your side-walking point attempting subterfuge to your intent because the Tucker Carlson “I’m just asking questions” BS is transparent to anybody paying attention. “There is a limit” ignores this was neither NATO nor Ukraines fight in escalating this to an actual military conflict nor is the continued presence of NATO and international aid “prolonging the conflict” somehow a bad thing. I’ll remind you when this started people were against the aid we’d sent before the conflict, much less the javelins and other immediate means we kicked forward to give them a chance. Had we simply admitted openly to the limits you and others are now saying we should respect or inferring we passed Ukraine would currently be a protectorate of the Russian federation and Zelenskyy would likely be facing a public show trial within Russia accusing him of a range of things from Nazism to crimes against humanity. It’s not costing NATO lives or it’s costing NATO to absorb this conflict is blindly ignorant to the volunteers that have gone across the border to aid or the work of all those nations who are absorbing the refugee crisis. Or the ongoing efforts of our own military with actions like Atlantic Resolve which exist entirely to respond to the last decade of Russian aggression. As to why we shouldn’t be openly stating the limits of our assistance in any way is that telegraphing where the finish line is to Russia right now is stupid. Our (US, NATO, Uke, etc) unified resolve is something to calculate in the Kremlin as same as their casualty figures or the presence of equipment on the battlefield. To say nothing of the wider message it sends to both our ally’s and opponents around the world that we are willing to back the non nuclear power in a territorial conflict. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Except we can simply go back over the history of your participation with this conversation and infer exactly what you’re trying to sideward advance of the point you want to make. You’ve reminded us about government debt, inferred the Ukrainian government is somehow uniquely dishonest, advanced the idea that somehow our aid packages could be targeted in the open seas, questioned whether our actions would widen the conflict… Look just come out and say you don’t think we should be supporting Ukraine in this. At least that would be intellectually honest. Zelenskyy and his supporters are going to advocate to get every piece of aid and advantage available. Somewhere right now is a guy arguing we should give them TLAMs and B1s if we look hard enough as absurd as that idea is. That’s their job… ask for the moon and get a good ways too it. But don’t sit here and pretend mine or others acknowledgement that those are politically driven arguments for the point of getting some aid as saying we all think that we should now be questioning the expense of any aid to them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The fun part of a Nikki Haley campaign will be watching all the gymnastics from the “you have to vote for a woman of color” crowd who treated that as the only qualification that mattered. Suddenly they’ll be supporting old white guy because “well yeah… but not that one, she doesn’t count.” Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

No I’m saying you inserted an article which builds on a Bullshit premise as to why it’s necessary to “prove our support” with a modern fighter so that the Ukrainians can support their armor in the field. Now why you did that is your own reasons, but it’s absolutely BS to say we are somehow halfhearted in our support for Ukraine this many billions of dollars and months into the fight. Given that we are now facing calls to limit the amount of dollars we can give from within our own countries it’s more important than ever to achieve the maximum dollar value for the assistance we are given and dismiss bullshit like that article for what it is. If somebody is trying imply the Uke’s haven’t received aid in achieving or even achieved some form of air superiority with the equipment on hand (to include the very best ground based systems we own) than please explain why the Russian Air isn’t running around their country wholesale the way we would be in the same place. Why are we see them deliberately choosing to adopt toss bombing in salvos to achieve little in actual accurate effects and expend all the effort and ordnance for a sortie that does little to effect the ground. Surely if air superiority didn’t favor the ground and survivability isn’t in question they wouldn’t adopt such tactics right? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I can’t wait for them to validate that thing because it’s one of the potential game changer toys we keep playing with in Warfighters. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What’s the lead time to establish a trained Viper pilot. What if I give you every 3rd guy is a former Mig29 or other high performance aircraft pilot. Ok now let’s compare that with the time to train a system operator in any air defense system… They are taking rounds against their infrastructure now. Yes we can give these guys access to the NATO stock of 4th Gen aircraft but acting like just having high performance aircraft is “how we achieve air dominance” is ignorant whether you are reading about it in a rag like Telegraph or saying it as anyone that has been to the Party wearing a US uniform. If the argument was they need X because they’ve expended their hole stocks of Y that would be a different argument. They aren’t making that argument. They are trying to pretend we haven’t given anything that solves the problem and the tanks will somehow be exposed to some massive losses from air power the Russians have yet to demonstrate any capability at doing. Viper or something similar is a very small part in that massive mechanism we wield to achieve Air Superiority and dominance our way (from the Air primarily). Pretending they have all or some of the other facets of what makes that achievable and the missing link here is us giving them Vipers/Mirages/Tornados/god damned spitfires is ignorant at best. And the other issue with that article is it alluding to the idea that the Uke’s haven’t created a storm of problems for the current Russian air threat both with the systems they had on hand and the ones we are giving them. Acting like the thing that Russian air has been waiting on is the presence of modern NATO armor to get off its ass and be part of this fight is ignorant of all the burning bent hulks of what used to be a Fullback/Frogfoot/etc littering Ukraine over the last few months. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We’ve sent million of dollars worth of air defense systems ranging from PAC3 to Geperd to MANPADS like Stinger. “Oh no we won’t give them Vipers” seems like a statement of ignorance considering their military model doesn’t attempt to achieve Air Superiority through air platforms. Haven’t done anything to give them Air Dominance… tell that to Russian Fullback, Hokum, and Frogfoot drivers. I’m sure the reason we are seeing the Russians resort to massed drone and cruise missile bombardment or lobbing pods full of rockets at high angle Blind has nothing to do with the danger of exposing their manned platforms to the battlefield. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk