Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[nsplayr]

So neither of y’all are legit huh?

Edited yesterday at 03:24 AM by nsplayr

[Lawman]

So neither of y’all are legit huh?

I mean one of his personalities claims to be a mustang Captain….

But when has anybody given much credence to the words/noises coming out of an O-3 as informed, so the rampant stupidity actually checks on that one.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[gearhog]

53 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Well I can see how a two-sentence statement can be fodder for your backpedal comment, but I'll add a little more context since you're obviously not a fighter pilot. I mean them both. There. I'm owning it. It was, in part, a cavalier response to the devil-may-care attitude some of you show, by regurgitating Russian talking points while representing yourselves as US military officers.

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.

53 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Yes, we should funnel weapons into this war so the people who are defending themselves can continue to do so. No, it doesn't matter iF tHEy're nOt a dEMoCraCY. Putin along with his criminal army should be the ones who bear the brunt of the cost. That cost should be maintained at a high enough level to continue taking a toll until he cries uncle - which he eventually will - that much should be obvious to anyone who has paid attention to just how well his military has fared in this conflict. Maximizing Russian bloodshed to enable that end, should be our explicit goal, as that is the only way this war will justly end.

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.

53 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

I'll let me be the judge of what I do and don't care about, but to get to the crux of your provocation, yes, I have accepted that war is two things - wrong in an absolute sense, and two, part of human nature. I'm sorry that human kind has decided that some shit is worth killing people over - but that's not a decision I get to make. It's part of the reality I inhabit. And I know you're using "pro-war" as an insult, but if you are in the military, and you can't have seen being pro war at some point or another, than I don't even know what to think about that. Maximizing the bloodshed of those who are in the wrong, and who simultaneously have the full capacity and responsibility for ending the war is the fastest, and most moral way to resolve it. The only reason Putin won't, is because he wants to save face, and now sees an opportunity. And on that topic - our lack of unanimity and moral clarity on that point helps enable Putin. That is why attitudes like yours are met with such derision.

The part of this whole thing I find most incredulous is that you think that by terminating support for Ukraine, bloodshed is going to end for those people. That's inexcusably naive. The only thing you're going to get is a reprieve from seeing it on the news. In fact, the cost of the war will still be fully borne out. That's the unfortunate part. You'll get to turn the lights out, click your brain off, take an internet victory lap, and pretend everything's hunky dory.

"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.

 

Edited yesterday at 03:45 AM by gearhog

[gearhog]

41 minutes ago, nsplayr said:

So neither of y’all are legit huh?

Who typed this post, a nav or a fighter pilot?
😆

Edited yesterday at 03:40 AM by gearhog

[nsplayr]

12 minutes ago, gearhog said:

Who typed this post, a nav or a fighter pilot?
😆

 Nav and an RPA pilot tyvm, I’ll say it again, you’re welcome for my service 🇺🇸

Go with quals or a bro check who will vouch for you - I have both. If you have neither, at least in my squadron, you’d get kicked outta the bar 🤷‍♂️

Edited yesterday at 03:51 AM by nsplayr

[gearhog]

Just now, nsplayr said:

 Nav and an RPA limit tyvm, I’ll say it again, you’re welcome for my service 🇺🇸

Go with quals or a bro check who will vouch for you - I have both.

LOL

[ViperMan]

13 minutes ago, gearhog said:

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?

Ehhh. You can take it as either. It was a statement meant only to convey the observation that you're obviously not on the pointy end of anything, and that likely informs your opinions about hyperbole / shorthand used to discuss war. I guess you found the statement shocking. It's purpose was to get hippies to out themselves. Moving on.

[gearhog]

8 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Ehhh. You can take it as either. It was a statement meant only to convey the observation that you're obviously not on the pointy end of anything, and that likely informs your opinions about hyperbole / shorthand used to discuss war. I guess you found the statement shocking. It's purpose was to get hippies to out themselves. Moving on.

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.

Edited yesterday at 04:07 AM by gearhog

[nsplayr]

I’m gonna lay the accusation @BashiChuni and @gearhog are Russian or otherwise trolls and should be given the heave-ho.

I’ve vigorously disagreed with probably every single dude here for 15+ years, including the mods, but I respect anyone here who’s AF or adjacent and wants to sport bitch & help solve the world’s problems.

These guys are not that. If you’re not Air Force, aviation or adjacent why are you here?

In my squadron bar you either have quals or a bro check or usually both. Go with quals or someone vouch for them or Mods, yall should boot these guys.

[gearhog]

2 minutes ago, nsplayr said:

I’m gonna lay the accusation @BashiChuni and @gearhog are Russian or otherwise trolls and should be given the heave-ho.

I’ve vigorously disagreed with probably every single dude here for 15+ years, including the mods, but I respect anyone here who’s AF or adjacent and wants to sport bitch & help solve the world’s problems.

These guys are not that. If you’re not Air Force, aviation or adjacent why are you here?

In my squadron bar you either have quals or a bro check or usually both. Go with quals or someone vouch for them or Mods, yall should boot these guys.

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

[Boomer6]

Bros and nsplayr, troll anti-virus is free.99.

1.)   Click the dropdown next to your display name in the top right of your browser

2.)   Select Ignored Users

3.)   Input the aforementioned troll’s name in the container such as gearhog, I mean torqued, or whatever grinder display name he’s using these days

4.)   Select the content you want to ignore

5.)   Click add user

6.)   Profit.

[Splash95]

After a few minutes of the most basic BO.net activity scrub:

“ive been trying to log into mypay for over a week. I need to work some math on my taxes and cant. i look forward to never needing this again. I've been on the fence about a Guard retirement right at 20. Stuff like this makes my choice clear.” – gearhog (fka torqued?), December 22, 2017

“all us mid level captains have seen the bullshit...we dropped when there was only one fighter per class, we had RPAs in our -38 drops, we were in the squadrons with the TAMI 21 guys and heard how they got screwed out of their fighters, [long looooong sentence/paragraph which pretty clearly shows quals]...” – BashiChuni, August 15, 2016

Obviously they've both been playing a long con since years before Putin invaded!

nsplayr, you look really ridiculous here.

[tac airlifter]

5 hours ago, ViperMan said:

 I don't have too much to say about "suspending elections", but I will say it's possibly, just possibly, a little bit disingenuous to think that the should hold "elections" while they're in a fight for the very existence of their country, when it's been under assault for the last decade..

It's tough to reply to anything in this thread.  You and others make good points & maybe we can have a good chat over whiskey sometime.

 

Regarding the elections thing I'll just add I don't agree with your take above mainly because it's the opposite position our nation has had historically and no one explained why the change. The Afghans & iraqis both held elections during the height of their wars for survival.  And we insisted because we knew the legitimacy of government directly correlates to the consent of the governed.  We preached it loud for years, and I still agree with it.

[nsplayr]

1 hour ago, Splash95 said:

nsplayr, you look really ridiculous here.

I’m willing to be wrong, maybe they’re useful idiots rather than actual possibly-foreign trolls. That’s the best case!

The easiest way for them to make me look real stupid is to go with quals and/or have someone vouch for them.

Hasn’t happened yet unless you know them in real life & vouch for them. Do you?

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has them and they all stink, mine included.

But I am who I claim to be. Nothing more but nothing less. An actual Air Force officer & pilot who knows other folks here in real life and has (dumb) reasons to still be on BO.net shooting the shit with the bros.

Are they what they claim to be? What even is that? Pilots, enlisted, other AF, sister service, etc. This place is semi-anon at best and for a somewhat specific niche audience, it ain’t discord or twitter where millions of randos can just be whatever they wanna make up and claim wild shit…or at least it shouldn’t be.

It’s a legit accusation, and the best way to beat an accusation is to clearly and quickly refute the claim and offer evidence to the contrary. The worst way is to not answer the question and pop a bunch of verbal flares & chaff.

I’ll wait.

Edited yesterday at 07:07 AM by nsplayr

[nsplayr]

29 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

It's tough to reply to anything in this thread.  You and others make good points & maybe we can have a good chat over whiskey sometime.

 

Regarding the elections thing I'll just add I don't agree with your take above mainly because it's the opposite position our nation has had historically and no one explained why the change. The Afghans & iraqis both held elections during the height of their wars for survival.  And we insisted because we knew the legitimacy of government directly correlates to the consent of the governed.  We preached it loud for years, and I still agree with it.

I think normally you want that, yea. It’s just real tough when you have a full mobilization, like 20% of your country is occupied and you don’t even have access to your citizens there, and the invading enemy still retains the ability to conduct air strikes and other long-range attacks all over the country.

To me, it’s telling that none of Zelensky’s political rivals want elections either - they want to win / end the war and then recover & rebuild on their own terms rather under a daily Russian military threat. Maybe he’s re-elected, maybe someone else wins, I truly have no idea and don’t have a dog in that fight. 

But the fastest way to guarantee elections happen in Ukraine is for Putin to order his guys to leave. Just start driving east and the rest will sort itself out.

Edited yesterday at 07:06 AM by nsplayr

[gearhog]

8 hours ago, nsplayr said:

I’m willing to be wrong, maybe they’re useful idiots rather than actual possibly-foreign trolls. That’s the best case!

The easiest way for them to make me look real stupid is to go with quals and/or have someone vouch for them.

Hasn’t happened yet unless you know them in real life & vouch for them. Do you?

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has them and they all stink, mine included.

But I am who I claim to be. Nothing more but nothing less. An actual Air Force officer & pilot who knows other folks here in real life and has (dumb) reasons to still be on BO.net shooting the shit with the bros.

Are they what they claim to be? What even is that? Pilots, enlisted, other AF, sister service, etc. This place is semi-anon at best and for a somewhat specific niche audience, it ain’t discord or twitter where millions of randos can just be whatever they wanna make up and claim wild shit…or at least it shouldn’t be.

It’s a legit accusation, and the best way to beat an accusation is to clearly and quickly refute the claim and offer evidence to the contrary. The worst way is to not answer the question and pop a bunch of verbal flares & chaff.

I’ll wait.

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. 😄

Edited yesterday at 03:01 PM by gearhog

[busdriver]

5 hours ago, nsplayr said:

But the fastest way to guarantee elections happen in Ukraine is for Putin to order his guys to leave. Just start driving east and the rest will sort itself out.

The vein of thought saying "America provoked this war and is at fault" crowd has a major case of main character syndrome.  They can't see any geopolitical actor other than the US having agency.  

Then they'll point to Mearsheimer, who agrees with the point above.  The weird part is that his own treatise (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) would point you to the opposite conclusion.  If objective 1 of any great power is to seek regional hegemony and prevent others from doing the same (method of assuring survival by preventing effective rivals), by his theory Russia was always going to become belligerent again as is seeks hegemony.

I guess a populist moment was always going to be based on emotion.  Probably the same before the rise of the progressive era.

[Stoker]

17 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

Zelensky won't let his people vote, so they're stuck with forced conscription into the wood chipper.  
 
I'm not pro-Putin or condoning his actions.  But explore this hypothetical with me: what if most Ukrainians would rather give ethnically Russian territory to the Russians than have their kids & grandkids die?  Do they have a right to advocate politically for that?  Zelenskyy says no. 

Doesn't Ukraine's constitution specifically disallows elections during a period of martial law? If Zelensky did a 180 and held elections today, the US right would immediately pivot and say they're illegitimate because they didn't include the more pro-Russian voters who used to reside in Crimea and the Donbass (who are mostly dead conscript/cannon fodder in the "separatist" armies at this point). And to be fair, how legitimate would elections be in the US if New York was occupied by the Canadians, California by Mexico, and Florida by the Cubans?

You talk as if the wood chipper is an option to avoid, but if you're a Ukrainian man your options aren't wood chipper / no wood chipper - they're Ukrainian army, Russian army, gulag. I know which one I'd pick.

[gearhog]

1 hour ago, busdriver said:

The vein of thought saying "America provoked this war and is at fault" crowd has a major case of main character syndrome.  They can't see any geopolitical actor other than the US having agency.  

Then they'll point to Mearsheimer, who agrees with the point above.  The weird part is that his own treatise (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) would point you to the opposite conclusion.  If objective 1 of any great power is to seek regional hegemony and prevent others from doing the same (method of assuring survival by preventing effective rivals), by his theory Russia was always going to become belligerent again as is seeks hegemony.

I guess a populist moment was always going to be based on emotion.  Probably the same before the rise of the progressive era.

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.

 

Edited yesterday at 02:40 PM by gearhog

[Clark Griswold]

Post conflict ops being discussed, longish read but worth it

https://www.twz.com/air/this-is-what-a-peacekeeping-air-policing-mission-over-ukraine-could-look-like

Don’t see how this could happen without heavy US participation, Op Northern / Southern Watch 2

 

[ViperMan]

9 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

It's tough to reply to anything in this thread.  You and others make good points & maybe we can have a good chat over whiskey sometime.

Regarding the elections thing I'll just add I don't agree with your take above mainly because it's the opposite position our nation has had historically and no one explained why the change. The Afghans & iraqis both held elections during the height of their wars for survival.  And we insisted because we knew the legitimacy of government directly correlates to the consent of the governed.  We preached it loud for years, and I still agree with it.

I'm not expressing an opinion that elections shouldn't ever be held. I'm expressing incredulity at the prospect of conducting a proper election under true, wartime conditions.

How do you suggest the 90% of displaced residents in any given bombed-out apartment building get to participate? Where even are they? Could they hope to participate? How would you ensure rampant fraud isn't injected by some sort of, you know, hostile counter-intelligence force? In short, all I'm saying is that the drum-beating about how Ukraine isn't a democracy because they're not holding elections right now is nakedly cynical. And that's coming from someone who is pretty cynical. Especially considering most of the "democratic advocacy" is coming from people who don't bat an eye about the legitimacy of Russian "elections."

[gearhog]

1 hour ago, ViperMan said:

I'm not expressing an opinion that elections shouldn't ever be held. I'm expressing incredulity at the prospect of conducting a proper election under true, wartime conditions.

How do you suggest the 90% of displaced residents in any given bombed-out apartment building get to participate? Where even are they? Could they hope to participate? How would you ensure rampant fraud isn't injected by some sort of, you know, hostile counter-intelligence force? In short, all I'm saying is that the drum-beating about how Ukraine isn't a democracy because they're not holding elections right now is nakedly cynical. And that's coming from someone who is pretty cynical. Especially considering most of the "democratic advocacy" is coming from people who don't bat an eye about the legitimacy of Russian "elections."

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

 

Edited yesterday at 05:32 PM by gearhog

[gearhog]

"When President Trump posts that Zelensky is a dictator without elections, what are you thinking?"

https://x.com/dbsmorocco/status/1892931593947251004

[Day Man]

54 minutes ago, gearhog said:

Watch how easy it is for me to completely invalidate your argument:

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/soldier-voting-act-1942-absentee-ballots

Quote

A mere 28,000 service members, out of nearly four million men and women in uniform in 1942, voted in the election.

almost like they were busy doing other things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[gearhog]

5 minutes ago, Day Man said:

almost like they were busy doing other things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

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.

Edited yesterday at 06:28 PM by gearhog