FLEA

I think there is a valid argument that if someone joins the armed forces of a foreign military the US is at war with, they forfeit their rights to citizenship. I don't think you can have a reasonable expectation that Benedict Arnold could ride into battle in his German battle tank in Trier and we can't do shit about it. However we are still debating whether its even reasonable to be "at war" with an "idea" (war on terrorism), hence classifying that dude as a combatant gets really tricky. The reality is, up until the 21st century no one seriously regarded terrorist as military problems outside of the force protection concerns. They were law enforcement problems and terrorist were regarded as criminals, not combatants. However when we set out to dismantle al Queda there was a realization that there isn't enough federal power in law enforcement to do that. I blame Bush and Obama for this quagmire. Obama's obsession with RPA's though is particularly interesting to me because there are a lot of parallels to that and JFK's obsession with US Army SF. I wonder if the MQ-9 schoolhouse one day is going to be named the "Barrack Obama Remotely Piloted Aircraft School."

Hey man, I was in the MQ-9 community when this went down. I'm familiar with the process and I don't have any heartburn over al-Awlaki dieing. It was a POTUS level decision. Whether or not he was a combatant wasn't important. The only question was whether it was right for the US to intentionally target a US citizen on foreign soil. That said, no I don't trust that community to uphold the moral standard at every moment. Are they professional? Often times yes. They also have a lot of bad apples. I won't put them on a glass pedestal. (Talking more about the supported units here, and not the MQ-9 operators themselves, who also have bad apples btw, but a different variety.) My only point to the comment above was there is certainly a lot of grey area to interpret that strike and whether it was moral/ethical or not. Do we consider the "militias" in Portland armed combatants? If one of those militia members takes a plane to France, can I execute him now? We opened a basket of worms with that one.

Super cool. I did not know that. The OPCON sounds murky though. Like they have their own OPCON but lend themselves to UN, EU or NATO. Going to have to ask around about this.

Its certainly a grey area. I like that you point out if this dude was carrying an AK in Syria when a 2 ship of A-10s rolled in, fuck him, he's a traitor. But its a bit different when you go to a country we aren't even recognized as having a presence in, surveil him for months while he isn't actually engaged in any fighting, and eventually decide your presidency is just easier if he goes away. I've heard a rumor that the first pilot that was asked to take the strike stepped out of the seat and they tried to article 15 him for disobeying a lawful order. It was dropped later on.

Havent heard that. I'll have to look into it.

Your critiques on his part policy seem to fall in line to a media agenda to paint them as irrational and misguided. Your an officer dude, you have to be able to read between the lines on some of this stuff and realise POTUS doesn't make those decisions in a vacuum and media has no way of knowing what the environment around those decisions are. People bring him researched options and he makes choices. Usually the people that bring him choices are informed and briefed by career employees and not appointees. There is a circle in Washington that has been discussing the same shit for years. It's a mix of federal employees, academics and senior uniformed members. I can name a dozen reasons why all of your policy critiques were GREAT ideas although I don't personally agree with 100% of them. So before you discount the country for anti-intellectualism I'd suggest you review your own geopolitical playbook and figure out why some of these things could have been a good step for the country because you automatically assume the items you listed were "bad things". I think the current POTUS has the best geo-political strategy we've seen since Bush #1 up to the point he ended the Cold War. Leagues better than Clinton, Bush #2 and Obama. Why? Because Trump recognizes there are capacity limits for our foreign influence and being the only world super power, especially one bogged down for 20 years by a counter terrorism quagmire, doesn't give you carte blanche to effect the world any way you want. I got other news for you too man, foreign policy is America first. That is the basis of Western sovereignty and is nearly universally agreed upon by ethicist and academics who discuss the role and purpose of a state. Every country's government acts in their own interest. If you think Germany, the Kurds, South Korea or any of these other partnerships we broke glass on think we are "friends" you are full of it. They are going to stab us in the back the moment our interest misalign. Trump's vision is quite simple. America's best bet at influencing foreign politics is by being a stalwart example of domestic statecraft for other countries to model. Focus on ourselves first, and our virtue and prosperity will become attractive enough for other countries to model. But if you want to go adventuring all over the third world to build partnerships, my question is, who's going to pay for it? You complain about rising deficit but then half your post levies complaints that we aren't spending enough. Speaking of economic ironies, you bemoan the fact that jobs are stagnant and trending to a service economy but also bemoan withdrawal from environmental protection agreements and a trade war with China. Can you not see that these things are interconnected? A business only does one of two things. It either provides goods, or it provides a service. If we aren't providing goods, we have to provide a service. The US is trending to a service economy because it is too expensive to setup industrial manufacturing here, hence no goods. One reason that it is expensive is because of strict EPA laws that mandate companies have to front cost for compliance and how their waste is handled. For a while we were able to float on certain tech sectors because China didn't have the technological know how to upstart this on their own. But since we decided to allow 20 years of industrial espionage in an effort to preserve "a good relationship" we have now lost that edge as well. Bro, the world isn't sunshine and roses. You can have your EPA laws and warm fuzzies with China, but don't wake up pissed you are working at Starbucks at 35 then. You made a choice. But I think what annoys me about your post most of all is your use of the term progress. Because you don't recognize when you say that you mean progress by YOUR standard. What you don't realise man, is this all comes down to values, and in general Americans have the same values but they tend to order them differently. So when you say "progress" you have belittled every single person who doesn't order values the same as you do. You don't think conservatives love the environment? Bro have you been to a Cabellas? However, a some conservatives are making the concious decision that people having means to put food on the plate is a higher value than protecting a climate that we honestly have little understanding of how it's change will impact global sustainability. Some people are making a concious choice that economic prosperity is the most important thing to get control of first and then interest can be taken in foreign influence, the environment, etc....

Nsplayr, I hear what your saying man and consent that there is a degree of immeasurable "political" favor we get from NATO partners via our commitment, like the fact that they buy our weapons, however, those favors have been waning. Bush's article 5 use was controversial but was a last ditch attempt to save the purpose of the alliance in a post cold war era by redefining it as an international force to combat terrorism in the 21st century. Sounded like some awesome rainbow six shit until reality kicked in and we realised we can't even all define who a terrorist is. Let's also look at some of the shortcomings of NATO. Another lesson from the WW's, one more persistent than those we learned in WW2, is that webs of alliances can quickly accelerate a regional conflict to a global conflict. Now as long as NATO maintains a unified purpose we are all CAVOK, but what happen when Greece and Turkey start shooting at each other and one of them declares article 5 first? This is why bringing on more member states was a huge mistake. It made the ability to nail down a singular purpose near impossible. How do you get 30 states to agree on who the bad guy is?

Really you can pull the whole army out at a minimum. The general US doctrine anymore requires Airpower to hold the line until the Army can be ready for phase 3 ops. "If" air superiority is achieved, AF can hold the line indefinitely while logisticians figure the Army out. Your JOPESters can tell you to the day every day you will recieve new assets in theater by priority.

If you look at 3-Holer's picture I think the smaller ship got lifted onto the shoreline on the right side of the image.

So this is tricky right, because the above article is talking about who is funding NATO as a political entity, which has its own budget, staffs and policy divisions but very little warfighting matieriel. When Trump and others criticize NATO participation spending they are talking mainly about the funding going to maintaining a country's own standing armies because NATO itself has VERY little military power. In fact the ONLY air power units I know of under NATO operational control are AWACS and now a few Globalhawks. So the expectation for NATO to work is that its member states are contributing a sizable standing army to the collective. Germany can give its whole GDP to NATO but it wouldnt change the fact that NATO can't fight a war because NATO doesn't have forces. The agreement is the member nations provide OPCON of their forces to NATO once war kicks off. If you don't have forces to provide, you aren't really contributing to the alliance.

Holy hell, I presume that circular inlet of water in the after shot is the crater. I would say that maybe at least the biggest saving Grace to this is it happened in an industrial coastal area and not a commercial/residential area. Still sucks some people lost their lives though. I feel like someone is going to hang for this.

That meme wins the fucking day.

That's a good way of putting it and I hadn't thought about the known standard. I just find it hard to hang out hat on pedestal when our emperical data shows we don't really grossly out perform the civil sector in anyone area and often underperform in many others. Class A mishaps for one. Some years we do better, others worse, yes I understand we undertake more risk than civil sector but a lot of our mishaps are basic shit, not tactical. Anyway, I'm just being jaded. We do have some phenomenal aviators in the AF. I'm just annoyed at how good aviation skills is consistently put on the back burner in the AF.

I've watched 2000 #ers go through roofs in Syria and ive never seen a blast this massive. If looks like the MOAB drop a few years ago. I can't immagine what would cause an explosion that enormous!?!?!

Hahaha. But who knows, maybe I was serious.....

Kanye West put his name in the poll. Shit at this rate I'll probably vote for him.

We shouldn't take any alliance for granted. "States dont have Friends, only interest." - Queen Elizabeth I Our alliance with Germany and much of NATO was only beneficial so long as it was convenient. At this point that's run out. I don't think we need to do away with NATO all together, but I do believe the US needs to take a backseat as the primary leader in the alliance and take on a much reduced role, until NATO can define a primary mission that is equally as important to us as it is to the rest of Europe. That said, I do have an emotional appeal that detracts me from NATO as well. So I will share some of my thoughts from living and working in Europe, an assignment I thought I would love, and largely did, but I felt opened my eyes to some realities I hadn't considered before. 1.) Our government has a preference for European allies and I think we need to recognize the elephant in the room, that there might be some undertone of racial preference in this. I've noticed my democrat friends vehemently defending European values right now have a really hard time swallowing that one. 2.) We need to break this slightly racist and ethnocentric ideal that we are a "Western European" valued nation. I've been more and more annoyed by the continuous attempt to identify American values and civilization as Western European values and civilization. We've been divorced from European governance for 250 years. We've been geographically independent for over 400. White Americans will be a minority (albeit the largest one) in 20 years. At what point do we recognize that we are a North American nation of mixed race, ethnicity, cultures and religions, with our own unique set of values built specifically to rid us of European influence? Its time we fucking identify as that be a proud American, fuck yeah, and stop pretending we are some "off-brand" European knock-off nation. Seriously though, we need to stop this idea that we should adopt more European forms of governance and culture. The whole purpose of our inception was to break away from that. 3.) Lets look at how many wars the US fought that can be attributed to European influence. Revolution.... hahaha War of 1812 or War of European Colony dick measuring contest? Civil War? Want to talk about Great Britain's role in establishing slavery as the primary economic means in the colonies? They certainly don't. Took us 88 years to undo what they spend 150 years fostering and instilling into the fabric of their economy. Spanish-American War? Spanish Colonial dominance of Cuba and Mexico.... WW1 and WW2..... yeah........ Vietnam? French dun fucked up. Iraq? Britain dun fucked up. Africa? The worst parts fucked by France and the Dutch. Afghanistan? Colonial East Empire Company adventurism. Syria? Seriously.... why is the British royal family still allowed to exist? But of course, lets put ourselves in an Alliance where the incendiary fuck up of any one of 30 nations could draw us into another prolonged and bloody fuck gaggle. To capstone all that, I love Europe and many people in Europe. I had a great time there. But I think it is in America's best interest to end its infatuation with Europe as the keystone seat of world power. We are the keystone seat of world power now and we need to own that. We don't owe Europe anything and they don't owe us anything either. We should remain cordial and diplomatic with them and there is plenty of room to continue good work in Europe, but not by bolstering most of our country's defense resources on country's that should be figuring that out for themselves. We should continue to foster and grow our relationships with those partner countries but more at the intimate level like we do with many of our SE Asian allies and less at the global strategic level. There is a place for a US/NATO relationship but its not the one we have now.

Pretty decent analysis of NATO's quickly waning importance.

I loved it because of how convenient it was having Seoul to lilipad across all of Asia. It's so cheap to get to Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Bali, Guam, Okinawa, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mongolia..... The leave policy while I was there was you could be anywhere in PACOM and not be on leave as long as you made it back by your next duty day. Took 4 day passes all over and had the time of my life. Was super fortunate to work with some first gen Korean Americans who got me out of the SED and to some of the better restaurants as well. Food in Korea is phenomenal if you can be just a little bit adventurous!

Not neccessarily true. First off, I do not like Trump. I think he is an adhorent human being, and I can't bring myself to cast a vote for him. But as a conservative, I totally understand why people people voted for him. He didn't hijack anything, he was chosen by the people because they liked his platform/policy. While other Republicans were definitely more moral candidates, Trump was the one that stayed on course. The Republican party did shift but not the way you think it did. It suffered a succession of concessions to the left for several generations and Trump offered a return to a center of the party's doctrine that many people just saw as common sense. In a way, only an inexperienced politician could have pulled this off because the other candidates were so concerned with what their speech may sound like if it offended someone they continually adjusted their platform away from conservative values. Trump didn't give a crap, and in return he won a primary that everyone thought was impossible. But we (Democrats and Republicans alike) have to stop pretending that we care about a candidates morality for President. That was probably important in a Victorian America where religious protestentism was still extraordinarily widespread but the modern view has shifted from one of cooperation to one where people believe the very survival of their values depends on the candidate elected and flawed candidates are a neccessary evil to ensure that survival.

Do be honest it's a complete mistake AFRICOM is not in AFRICA. For one that communicates something to our partners there but #2 is that it shows a lack of commitment to Africa which is a SERIOUS mistake on the US part. If you look at the conditions, Africa is about to have an economic explosion in the next century or so. They are suitably primed for it on many fronts and we are losing our soft power there to China which is going to be disasterous for us.

I think we all need to remember from the last election that polling is heavily flawed and doesn't reflect the actual outcome of the election.

The concept of moving forces from Germany has been around since at least 2011 so I'm not surprised.

You lose track of time. It 0110 past curfew and you're 6 Moscow Mules in at G2's. You try to walk back to your apartment without getting caught but make a mistake detour to EFES kebab for some sleep snacks. As you step out, in front of you is town patrol, walking your direction. You look left, you look right, and in a side alley there is Songton Sally. "Honey... Honey.... Come here....." You have the aircraft:

So lets first take a step back and ask ourselves as Americans "why do I care if Putin annexes parts of Europe?" The point I was making in the above post to Prozac is largely, anymore, we don't. We don't have as strong an interest in Europe's defense anymore. There was a strong belief in the 1950s that Western Europe was the last bastion of free democracy in the old world and an overwhelming dominance by social marxism would threaten free economy capitalist ideals. Since then, the strongest free market economies have actually moved to Asia, Europe has become increasingly more left, and China seeks a seat of global influence where as Putin only seeks a seat of regional influence. But don't ask me, ask your NATO partners who are buying energy and weapons from the country they believe is going to come knocking their gate down.