I think all democracies are suspect. But we spent 18 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. That shows commitment, I think. Hell, that's twice as long as the Soviets.
Russia-Ukraine war has begun
- Thread starter TheOriginalHappyGoat
- Start date
We spent a long time there, but we didn't fight to win it. We only fought to stop certain elements. Hell, we've been in Japan and Germany since 1945. It took time to de-Nazify Germany and stamp out the militarists in Japan. And those countries were totally destroyed - their societies in ruins. Germany, in particular, went through a post-war period when people were starving.
As we found in those countries, if we stay and establish education systems that stop teaching militarism, we can be successful. We were on our way in Afghanistan and then pissed it all away. Iraq has actually been somewhat of a success, but it can go downhill very quickly if Iran decides to get the Shia riled up.
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We weren’t close in Afghanistan. The Taliban was always waiting just out of reach with terrain to their advantage and time on their side. history also proves there is no single hierarchy you can destroy/ subdue in Afghanistan, like mid-20th century Japan and Germany, that leads to total victory. flexible, mobile, determined with internal politics that are almost impossible to crack for an outsider.
sure, the US could have committed WW2-sized resources but why? Japan and Germany were existential threats. Afghanistan was part of our post 9/11 ME adventurism that we only got into because Russia got weak for 20 years. how many more trillion were we going to spend to get their kids reading US-approved school books? and you think integrating afghanistan into the West was going to be the same as Japan and West Germany? think about it...
iraq was the natural counter to Iran. at the time I thought it was a good idea to topple Saddam. more than anything we were sending a message to ME countries, Saudi Arabia included, that the price for supporting terrorist attacks on US citizens would be regime change. to date there have been no more 9/11s but the jury is still out on this one. now the US is trying to balance Turkey, Israel, and the Saudis against Iran and each other. Iraq was doing that job and we didn't even have to appease them. now Iraq can be someone else's for the taking.
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Huh? We got into Afghanistan because that is where Bin Laden planned 9/11, was being supported by the Taliban, and where Al-Queda was. It had nothing to do with Russian weakness or strength.
Yes we were. The Taliban was in the hills, not in the cities. Women were being educated and, given time, the Afghan military would have become reliable. Establishing a national identity would have done that. One thing we didn't do in Afghanistan is call out the corruption of the government. That was a fail.
Why would we have committed WW2 resources to pacifying Afghanistan? Do you remember 9/11, which was worse than Pearl Harbor? What a question..... "adventurism" - lmao. You want adventurism? Look at Chinese mining firms moving into Afghanistan. Who said anything about 'integrating' with the west? Your stawman arguments are ridiculous and you're just spouting leftist talking points.
i see zelensky is here again for more dough. give me the reader's digest version of this danc. are we just pissing money away as ukraine will never "win." at this point should he just cut a deal and change his name and move to miami beach? what's the end game of this
I don't know if Ukraine can actually win or not - throwing Russia completely out. Not unless they get an air force and/or Putin gets killed.
The US, imo, should be pushing for making Donbas and Crimea non-militarized zones, under control of Ukraine, with UN forces occupying those areas. This would give Russia the security it claims it needs and Ukraine gets to keep its national soveignty intact
Until then, we need to keep funding Ukraine because, if Russia does win, we'll be doing this all over again in 10 years. But, as Trump said, we need to insist that NATO countries step up their support of Ukraine.
The wild cards, to me, are Putin's hold on his dictatorship and whether or not Ukraine gets advanced weaponry, i.e. jets and longer-range artillery.
our ME wars happened while Russia was weak. Not a coincidence. With the Cold War over — or paused, as we now know — the US had capacity to play regional ME cop. It was a luxury of timing. We might have invaded Afghanistan either way after 9/11 but we wouldn’t have stayed if we had been in the middle of a Cold War at the time. Definitely wouldn’t have invaded Iraq and stayed.
As strong as the US is it would have still been impossible to fight a Cold War with Russia ( add China now), topple two governments, prop up new ones, and keep the peace.
not a great situation for nation building if you control the cities and they control the countryside. the US-led/ backed Afghanistan military was never going to be seen as legitimate by the locals. when has that ever worked in the ME? nor was it ever going to have the ability to secure the country without the support of the tribes (see the countryside bit above). you are arguing something was going to happen that has literally never happened. besides, Afghanistan has barely ever been a country. the British, as they liked to do, drew some lines on a map and called it Afghanistan. it doesn't have the geography to function like a normal country. it's borders don't represent the people that live there. it also can't have an economy that links it together politically as it doesn't have enough of the required features (ports, arable land, navigable rivers, places for population centers to grows, good land for transportation, etc).
it can be tough for westerners to understand that immediate community outweighs loyalty to country by a wide margin in many parts of the world, and love of community can even oppose love of country.
china is taking advantage of an opportunity to employee some its people and build up some soft power in the region. they don't even care if they lose money. that alone wasn't worth us staying. china won't build meaningful military bases or fight wars there.
you actually described Afghanistan integrating with the west. partnering with us for security. introducing western Liberal (big L) education into their schools, unifying politically into a democracy. again, for Afghanistan to do any of those things it would have to integrate with the west and it can't for the many reasons listed above.
it's a pretty decadent American take to think the US can just bulldoze any foreign entity and build it back better than before. that thinking defies basic geopolitical principles.
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Russia, with UN security council veto power, would never allow UN troops in Ukraine. not under any circumstance. the US also wouldn't see it as a realistic solution.
but agree we save money, effort, lives by seeing this through now and not dealing with it later
Russia has lost 87% of troops it had prior to start of Ukraine war, according to US intelligence assessment
Russia has lost a staggering 87 percent of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks, a source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress told CNN.
I will preface this by saying that I don't know if I really believe anything that either side is saying about Ukraine and their or Russia's current outlook. That being said, from what I am reading, Ukraine isn't suffering so much from a lack of weapons as they are a lack of manpower.
They were hot to push on the Russians as the weapons were trickling in and they appear to have burned through quite a few of their fighting age men. A war of attrition is hard to win if you are the smaller power who is on the offensive. As soon as it became clear that the Ukrainians weren't going to be able to move the lines much, we should have encouraged them to dig in and have a "sitzkrieg" until they had the requisite men and material in place to make an effective punch at the Russian lines. Instead it appears they burned themselves out of manpower and have burned through material that was merely trickling in so that they could measure their gains in yards.
Did Zelensky just buy property in Florida? I don't know what to believe anymore and I see that one making the rounds. If he did, his going on TV to tell the American public to forego a whole bunch of things to only fund Ukraine's fight is a terrible look for him.
See I agree with this and that is why I believe that any future conflict we are willing to engage in should be a bunch more Gaza and a lot less Afghanistan. Particularly if that fight is in a place like the Middle East. Our job in Afghanistan should have been to get Bin Laden and kill as many Al Qaeda and Taliban as was possible until that goal was achieved. Then we should have left. We shouldn't have done jack shit for Iraq.
The fact of the matter is that they (a whole bunch of people fall under this) aren't like us (G7, NATO) and trying to build them into us is a fool's errand. If you have to go in you go in hard, if it isn't worth that death and destruction, then you shouldn't go in in the first place. Islamists under a brutal dictator who generally minds his business and keeps them in check is preferable to "Democratically" chosen terrorists.
That intelligence “estimate” is released right as congress begins debate on more money for Ukraine that the people providing that estimate favor.
Russia has lost 87% of troops it had prior to start of Ukraine war, according to US intelligence assessment
Russia has lost a staggering 87 percent of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks, a source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress told CNN.news.yahoo.com
I don’t believe any reports about Ukraine. And I certainly don’t believe Biden/ Blinken’s domino theory claims.
Sadly, if the Ukrainian war ended tomorrow, we’d spent billions rebuilding the place.
Russia should be the one that should be paying for the rebuild but you are correct it will fall upon us to do. Although, if we would seize Russian assets in the US that would more than pay for the loses the Ukrainians have lost in the war.
Along those lines, who will pay to rebuild Gaza? We had billions of dollars in Iranian sanctioned assets that we turned back because it was “their money.” That could have done the job.
There is about $10 billion available if we kill the Hamas leaders and seize their assets....
Ukraine war live: Putin accidentally reveals Russia’s losses in press conference
Vladimir Putin is holding his first major news conference in two years as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky heads to Brussels to discuss accession to the European Union
www.independent.co.uk
I think we've had this discussion before and I think I made the point that the Ukrainian fighting forces are older, on average, but have more sophisticated equipment, are motivated, and don't need a massive army to be effective IF they have air power.
I think our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proved a smaller force can be very effective. I realize Russia isn't Afghanistan, but Russia got their ass kicked in Afghanistan, too.
Bottom line is, we need to stop holding back and give Ukraine the good stuff.
I heard Zelensky say that their GDP grew 5% last year. Pretty impressive, considering all their resources are going towards the war reb. I also saw that they are trying to lure high-tech firms there - that might be a pretty hard sell.
The US should insist Europe rebuild Ukraine.
Wow, 300,000...... that's a little less than the US lost in all of WWII.Ukraine war live: Putin accidentally reveals Russia’s losses in press conference
Vladimir Putin is holding his first major news conference in two years as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky heads to Brussels to discuss accession to the European Union
There were some “rogue” questions that got thruUkraine war live: Putin accidentally reveals Russia’s losses in press conference
Vladimir Putin is holding his first major news conference in two years as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky heads to Brussels to discuss accession to the European Union
I don’t know if it’s been confirmed but there is a report from Russian sources that the Russians have used CS gas in combat.
There were videos of UK using gas masks several months ago. I've never saw any official confirmation but it was being discussed a fair amount.
he’s just sayin…
www.foxnews.com
Putin promises 'problems' for Finland after it was 'dragged into NATO' | Fox News
Russian leader promises 'problems' with Finland amid Ukraine war
We can help Ukraine win, or continue to face this crap until it leads to a nuclear exchange.he’s just sayin…
Putin promises 'problems' for Finland after it was 'dragged into NATO' | Fox News
Russian leader promises 'problems' with Finland amid Ukraine war
agreed. I think at this point we're somewhat naively working to set Ukraine up for a some kind of favorable settlement, though VICTORY will be and has to be the rallying cry. I get that. Ukraine most likely cannot reclaim all its lost territory and it likely will not be able re-establish itself after the war as country Russia wouldn't invade again if it leaned too far to the West. Russia likely won't have the control of Ukraine it sought at the outset but it will have kept it out of NATO and will have more levers to pull there than before the war.
I don't think a nuclear exchange is at all likely, even if Russia somehow begins losing badly. You could say Putin may lose his job and life if he fails in Ukraine, but he would certainly die and his regime would be obliterated if he were to use nuclear weapons. he's brutal, not insane.
I think nothing is off the table if Russia attempts at an attack on a NATO country. I said a 'nuclear exchange' - I didn't say who would start it.
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd look up their losses in Afghanistan before they pulled out. I don't think it was anywhere near these numbers.
US had 407,000 in WW2 ...... The Orcs will have 350,000 before Christmas as things are going.
According to the wiki, total Soviet causalities were about 70K.
I am curious what you would call two wars against Georgia resulting in Abkhezia and South Ossetia moving into the Russian sphere, the annexation of Crimea followed by another war to annex parts/all of 4 more Ukrainian oblasts. If multiple wars over decades seizing multiple areas isn't domino theory, what name do you have for it?
Zelensky reveals plan to mobilise 500,0000 more soldiers & vows to beat Putin
UKRAINIAN President Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed dramatic plans to mobilise 500,000 more troops to fight against Russia. At a rare end-of-year address, the defiant leader admitted it has been a …
www.the-sun.com
1 million drones in 2024. That is 2,740 HOT "welcome to Ukraine" greetings PER DAY for the invaders, airmailed from a safe distance. I love this type of welcome for the orcs.
Consider two, classified either 200 or 300 per greeting drone, that is 1,000,100 Casualties for the orcs. I know this is basic math, but I love that type of welcoming party.
Consider two, classified either 200 or 300 per greeting drone, that is 1,000,100 Casualties for the orcs. I know this is basic math, but I love that type of welcoming party.
Zelensky reveals plan to mobilise 500,0000 more soldiers & vows to beat Putin
UKRAINIAN President Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed dramatic plans to mobilise 500,000 more troops to fight against Russia. At a rare end-of-year address, the defiant leader admitted it has been a …
Where is he getting them from?
All indications are now that the Russians absorbed the Ukrainian "offensive" and are now slowly rolling forward again. The Ukrainians won't win a meat grinder war, they don't have as much meat.
Their best bet now is to stabilize the lines and then go all "Palestinian" in the Russian occupied territories and Russia proper.
