FLEA

Apparently Poland and some other East block states donated Ukraine some Mig-29s they still had inventory. This is going to get very interesting. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/28/ukrainian-pilots-arrive-in-poland-to-pick-up-donated-fighter-jets-00012560

The way I read it, it wasn't the pattern so much as they want you to be identifiable as a US service member (insignias, flags, etc...), which is obviously problematic for a whole host of issues.

Also noticed that the Ukrainian authorities are encouraging people to come wearing their home nations uniform which is not a very good idea.

The conscripts might be but professional soldiers are a different beast. Something I realized working in Korea is we tend to forget the pros and cons of conscription in the US. Not all conscripts will soldier. It's a numbers game. You pull thousands of them expecting only half to be useful. The other half are bullet sponges.

I will say this about Adam. I have personal knowledge that he was extraordinarily instrumental to the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies back in August and September. He has my respect for that.

One thing that will make all of us better Americans is when we face the reality that democracy (or a republic for that matter) is a heavily flawed and imperfect system. It is simply the best system human society has managed to imagine thus far and may be the best system realistically feasible without objective morality and universal happiness.

There are former US SOF dudes who were part of TF Pineapple who are in the Ukraine now doing the exact same thing (evacuating Americans, LPRs, and people who otherwise warrant evacuation). Not evacuating many Ukrainians I think though.

Just thinking about these talks but I honestly think Ukraine is in a good position now. Hopefully they don't agree to a cease fire without a dedicated pathway to peace. That would only stall time for Russia to fix it's supply chain issues and reconstitute their forward deployed forces. Ukraine needs to be clear that they are going to continue to erode the shit out of Russia's forward arm until they are withdrawn a safe distance from their population centers.

Delegations from UKR and RUS will talk on Monday. This is a good sign we might see an end similar to Georgia. UKR not prepared to surrender but I'm curious if they're ready to concede Donbas and Crimea as well as potentially territory in between both. For those of you curious at how close we are to a nuclear war with Russia, please get with your Intel shops. There is some historic rhythm to this that we've seen before and is very concerning.

The importance of the Ghost of Kyiv isnt to us but to the Ukranian people. Its a symbol of hope in a desperate time and despite how weak the veracity of the story is, its important for the people of Ukraine, if you support them, to keep it alive. The very idea of the Ghost of Kyiv is motivating its citizens to perform extraordinary merits that really outweigh the heroics of the Ghost of Kyiv is said to have accomplished.

All good points and I can see Ukraine coming out of this with a bit of spite for the west. In there darkest hour did we do enough to show them we are serious about our partnership? I dunno. I know stuff is probably going on behind the scenes too well never hear about though. Regarding Vice, I knew they were crazy mutha fuckers when they did their ISIS Mosul episode and I saw them standing near a grain tower we had bombed the shit out of that week. Area was swarming with ISIS.

I forgot to mention but I also think 8 Aug 2008 was also during the summer Olympic games. Just another eerie parallel.

I dunno. 9/11 happened because Al Queda reasonably believed the US would permenantly remove troops from the Holy land. This was actually our policy up to that point and they were really surprised when we actually turned it around into a war. Relations with Russia have been declining for a while. They temporarily boomed under Bush after 9/11 because Russia also had a strong stance against terrorism. Russia was the first country to call the US and offer aid after 9/11 and they were an important partner for early airspace and aeroporting access. However, Russia saw strong hypocrisy in how the US framed Russia's own counter terror campaigns in Chechnya. Prior to 9/11 though Russia was deeply offended by entry denial into NATO (yes look it up) and NATO intervention into Kosovo. One thing I find remarkable is how similar the pretense for this invasion is to the South Osettia conflict of 2008. This is taken directly from the Wikipedia page. "Following the election of Vladimir Putin in Russia in 2000 and a pro-Western change of power in Georgia in 2003, relations between Russia and Georgia began to deteriorate, reaching a full diplomatic crisis by April 2008..... Russia accused Georgia of 'aggression against South Ossetia',[46] and launched a full-scale land, air and sea invasion of Georgia on 8 August which Russia called a "peace enforcement" operation." Just replace Georgia with Ukraine and Ossetia with Donbas and you can see Putin's run this playbook before. Georgia ended after a few days also when Putin's forces began facing more resistance than anticipated but it took France to negotiate a peace fire. The sins that really tanked western/Russian relations following 9/11 were 1.) The US support for the colored revolutions, including a sitting US Presidents open and public support for Russia's colored revolution which was seen by Putin as open advocacy for his violent overthrow. As mentioned Putin had a history in the KGB and he is well aware of CIA operations to promote "regime change." Putin legitimately thought the Russian colored revolution was an attempt by the Obama presidency to institute new regime in Russia. 2.) President Obama referring to Russia as a "regional power." Russia has continuously lamented that the west does not take it seriously enough as a country despite it's position that the Cold War was a draw and Russia still sits on the world's largest arsenal of over 3000 nuclear weapons. Trump likely improved relations because he took Putin seriously, which is what Putin wanted. Trump treated him as am equal which many in the US saw as appeasement, especially following strong anti Russian sentiment in fallout of the Russian election tampering. In retrospect it's clear Russia probably did want to influence the election against Hilary, as it was under her direction as Sec of State that Obama's Russian policy fell apart. Furthermore, Russia probably saw election tampering as justified in light that he believed the US was seeking regime change through what he believed was CIA backed colored revolutions.

Thing is we know this and it's not a secret. He was enormously offended in 2014 when the Barrack Obama refered go Russia as a "regional power" and not a super power. As I mentioned earlier, Russia doesn't think they lost the Cold War. They believe it ended mutually and they are still on the same platform as the US. They become offended when Americans regard Gorbachev's approach as folding or surrender. Russians believe they made a great sacrifice to their own interests to end the Cold War for the benefit of others and they are unfairly labeled losers for it.

I'll tell you hwat though, I've got mad respects for this President Zelensky. This dude has been fighting like hell on every front to keep his country free. I mean, every diplomatic, economic, information and now military fronts. Dude stays in Kyiv, makes phone calls to world leaders all night, puts out statements, condemns Russia at every turn, then drives a truck into the center of Kyiv and hands out rifles to every man and woman that can hold one. It's the middle of the fucking night right now and he's on Twitter live streaming known Russian advancing positions to his people. Dude doesn't fucking sleep. I know propaganda is real and I'm not certain how much fighting he is actually doing from a combat standpoint, but from a simple being there and making sure shit happens standpoint this dude is leaps and bounds ahead of the fucko that fled Kabul last year. Its amazing how much one charismatic leader can motivate people to stand their ground for their values when they are willing to do the same. Wonder how many of our politicians in Washington could attest to that.

If al-Baghdadi taught me anything it's that a man can survive a hellfire 2, 3, 4, 9 times and come back to haunt you.

Even then, I'm skeptical of the Su-27 shooting down a Su-35 video.

Just said noone will truly understand his goals or what cost he is willing to pay for them but himself. That said, everything you said is a loss for us, not a win. Personally I prefer a world where conflict is deescalating. Restarting the Cold War isn't my idea of a strategic victory. It could be Putin's though. As someone else mentioned his entire world of security was built around the Soviet KGB. He may be looking at the world and saying "you know what, the Cold War sucked but we were better off then than we are now." Putin has a lot of grievances, including being continually treated as a minor power despite sitting on the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. It's easy for me to see that he recognizes the SU had way more political power than Russia does in it's current form. That why negotiating on the INF was a bust. Putin likely wants to develop out his nuclear arms because they give him platform.

Ah yes.... Speaking of the genius behind the Russian reset.

Putin is smart though. And this is where people keep fucking up foreign politics because they want to believe their rivals are stupid and don't know what's good for them. Russia doesn't have the same interests as we do and they don't even have the same interests we think they have. Only Russia knows what Russian interest are. When you refer to another government as stupid, or crazy, or sociopathic you are basically shutting off any possibility of a diplomatic solution because you can't conduct diplomacy with someone who is irrational. Diplomacy didn't fail because Putin is irrational, it failed because western powers failed to understand some or all of Russia's interests. I would not count Russia as a pariah state until they are cut off from Swift and other major economic isolation mechanisms. But as of right now dozens of European and western markets are poised to buy a shit ton of oil and gas from Russia this week. Heres the thing about these limited economic sanctions.... They go away or become leasing meaningful over time. When you sanction, say, bank accounts to Russians sitting foreign minister, how effective is that sanction in 4 years when that dude retires and a new foreign minister replaces him? All the leverage it applied was lost. We know, and it is taught in security cooperation, that sanctions are less effective on Russia than say Iran or North Korea. Lots of reasons for that but they generally hit softer there. So in order to make an impact we need to ensure those sanctions are sharp and fast. I wouldn't place the blame purely on Biden, I think Europe largely slept on this too, and in actuality I think the US made a good move to air blast the Ukraine troop build up for the last few months. This did two things. 1.) It removed any implications that the US or the west was going to be taken by surprise like what happened in Afghanistan. 2.) It placed the onus on Europe to rally effort to turn this. They have more trade tied in Russia than we do and more of a capability to make an effect than we do. That said, Joe's diplomacy efforts were laughable at best. He wouldn't entertain what Russia said it's security interest were and instead wanted to entertain our security interest with offers like renegotiating the INF, something Russia really doesn't feel strongly about but we do. My diplomacy hopes were fully saddled in France and the UK but they were not able to close either. Great comments by Macron recently though reminding Russia we have nuclear weapons as well. All and all, whether or not this conflict was avoidable is hard to predict. The US Russian relationship took a massive hit during Obama's presidency. (Remember the disastrous Russian reset campaign? Or Obama publicly supporting Russia's colored revolution to overthrow Putin, something Putin was convinced the CIA was backing) I think of anything Trump came in with fresh ideas that were unconventional, and for the most part those ideas got headway. Biden's election though was a return to conventional foreign policy which could also be synonymous with Biden foreign policy. It wasn't working before so not sure why Biden thought it would work now.

This may be the most elegant way I've seen this put.

This is excellent advice. I didn't even know about this program until I talked with a university veterans affairs department recently. You can use this, then still transfer your GI bill benefits to your wife or kids.

I... I dont even know how to respond to this. This is.... so many levels of stupid man.... I'm just going to recommend a book to you. Please check out Super Power by Ian Bremmer. Here's the Amazon link for you in case you don't know how to navigate an online book store. https://www.amazon.com/Superpower-Three-Choices-Americas-World/dp/0143109707 Edit: I like.... seriously can't grasp your train of thought here? HTF do you think I'm far left. FFS I've only ever voted Republican so I would be a terrible leftist thinker if that was true. Maybe you're just incapable of understanding not everyone thinks in one of two political paradigms? I mean hell dude, as a conservative even you should be bright enough to recognize that MOST Europeans are SIGNIFICANTLY more left than the American political average. That's like high school European studies 101. But aside that, my post reflects views that are commonly promoted in the Defense Security Cooperation community and taught at the university, as well as views taught within NATO's own training schools.

Because the US wants NATO to be the lead on this, and they are. So everything is being watched closely but by a multi-national force, not by a US exclusive force. We have contributing forces there but it is largely NATO, and national missions of the European border states that are undertaking the labor at the moment, which is what we want. We don't want to frame this as US vs. Russia. This has to be framed as Russia vs. the world.