gearhog

"The Ukrainians want to fight the Russians" "Ukraine bears no fault, no blame, no responsibility" 2014: https://www.cnn.com/2014/09/02/world/europe/ukraine-crisis/index.html

You can argue to world's end that the fault lies with Russia. A Russian could argue to world's end that the fault lies with NATO. If you only view the disagreement through your personal subjective lens of morality, there is no resolution. Your problem is you only know one definition of "fault". You believe it always has a moral or ethical connotation. "Fault" can be neutral, as in legal cases. It can imply liability independent of moral justification. Your perspective of the conflict is based purely upon subjective biases. You cannot comprehend the rationale for the invasion, therefore, the easiest way for your mind to cope with it is assigning it to "evil." That's how we always characterize our opponents when we cannot understand or don't want to explain the underlying reasons, causes, or conditions for their behavior. Your other problem is you seem to believe moral justification is one-sided. You'll spend the rest of the day here arguing that there are moral reasons to continue this conflict, but will never acknowledge there are moral reasons to cease the killing. Why? Because you're not directly affected by the consequences. The most serious sacrifices aren't yours, so that makes it incredibly easy for you to urge others to fight for your beliefs. You'll say the Ukrainians want to fight until the last man. That BS, and it's an unreasonable assumption. There are two ways to resolve a disagreement, especially a moral one: finding a compromise or application of force. As I said, you're quite happy for others to apply force so you don't have to make a compromise. But when it finally becomes undeniably apparent to you (well after everyone else) that Ukraine has less fuel in the tank than Russia, you'll realize that to continue the application of force in lieu of compromise, eventually, your pink body or that of someone you know will have to be on the front lines. You ignored the question earlier. I asked, "Are you willing to make the decision to send a young US Army infantryman to the front lines?"

Boats? Airplanes? Apples? You're introducing irrelevant concepts to support an unclear point. If the dog is at the edge of the yard snarling and you're standing opposite, if you're an adult with common sense, you know that if you approach it, it is going to attack. Not because it has a sense of moral responsibility, and not because it is a machine, but because you know that its nature, it's limited understanding of the world, training, and cause/effect conditioning will result in that dog's brain choosing an action. It is unable to justify its actions morally, but it does have agency. Apparently you have never owned a dog which somewhat explains your character. Dogs choose to behave and misbehave on a daily basis. They get in the garbage, they'll chew your sneakers, and they'll express regret. It's also inevitable that they'll do certain things depending on the conditions you create. Instead, say it's a man named Vlad is at the edge of the yard glaring at you and you're standing opposite. Instead of snarling, he says to you "If you approach me or point a weapon at me, I'm going to punch you in the face." You say, "But sir, you can't do that, because choosing to do that is morally unjustifiable." To which he says, "I will punch you in the fkng face." What a scumbag, a horrible man! It's unthinkable that he would choose a violent response. You have every right to approach him. So you do the thing he doesn't want you do to. He steps over the fence, breaks your nose. You're completely shocked. "This isn't Nam, this is bowling! There are rules!" He did the thing he said he was going to do! How could this have possibly happened? In this case of the dog, it communicated a threat, and acted on it. It did so without understanding moral justification, but the result was blameworthy, and also inevitable. In the case of the man, he communicated a threat, and acted on it. He did so without regard to moral justification, but the result was blameworthy, and still inevitable.

In every post, you try to use words out of context while apparently not knowing what they mean. Dogs do have an amount of ability to make choices and decisions about the way they behave and interact with their environment, thus: agency. When a dog attacks you, it still may have agency bu not justification. So you can blame the dog for doing something and understand why it did it. There is no contradiction there whatsoever. Don't you ever get tired of attempting a "gotcha!" only to have it fail?

No problem at all. Russia is an aggressor. Russia is wrong. I've said Russia sucks a hundred times in this thread. Search it. Beside the point. You're confusing the word "justified" with "inevitable". American Pitbulls are horrible disgusting animals. One could say they all deserve to die. I don't believe that. They exist and they suck. When you see one, you respect it's existence as you would any other dangerous creature. There's always a chance they run down the street and randomly attack you. Maybe they don't. But if you approach the edge of their yard, you're gonna get their hackles up. Make and hold eye contact with it. Show your teeth. Raise your hand to it. When it leaps over the fence and annihilates you, you'll cry and complain that it was bad doggie and shouldn't have happened. You can bitch all you want that attack wasn't justified, but you'd have to be a moron to not realize it was inevitable. I'm not old. I'm 48. I could outrun you. 😄 And again: I'm a stickler for accuracy. Choose the correct words. I'm not a pacifist, I'm more of a reluctant warrior. War is sometimes necessary, but I prefer to avoid it.

Whoa. Not a reason to despise all cops, but definitely a reason to hate these cops. Holy hell. https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1892666296413651160

LOLOLOLOLOL. OMG https://x.com/WarClandestine/status/1893016797118427203

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.

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.

"When President Trump posts that Zelensky is a dictator without elections, what are you thinking?" https://x.com/dbsmorocco/status/1892931593947251004

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

Be careful posting “wrong-think” if you happen to be passing through the land of our closest ally in the fight for freedom and democracy.

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.

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. 😄

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

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.