I’m thinking about how it shows off how useless and destructive ground warfare is due to advances in anti tank and drone tech. Also the advantages of information. Having access to the US’s satellites alone makes a world of difference. The javelins and the stingers are great, but I’d say the bigger weapon has been google maps. Iraq and Afghanistan were lessons of the perils of occupation. A lesson I think Putin showed early on he took note of and showed his cards that his goals were a lighter puppet regime mission. Iraq actually gave a false impression that you could still topple a government with tanks and bombs. In 2022 though if you have access to what Ukraine does via the West… good luck even getting to that point.
"Bush's" initial military adventure into Afghanistan was absolutely not a failure in any way, shape or form. We totally dismantled the fighting capability and financial means of Al-Queda as an organization.
Bush didn't fail, they just didn't have an exit strategy or a sustainability one.......and we are out of both Iraq and Afganastan, never intending to occupy them anyway. DD
Mostly true. However, the Bush administration made some major mistakes of not giving the ground commanders what they wanted at certain times and constantly insisting the Afghans (Northern Alliance) spear the attacks. Delaying a battle because the media got wind of our planned attack and snapped some pics of our operators being one example...They were too risk averse considering these were actually the guys behind the 9/11 attacks. Too many of them were allowed to slip into Pakistan.
Why so many ugh tastic Bushisms... Powell repeatedly told them, "You break it, you own it." Quit slapping individual details with "Mission Accomplished" and own the 20 year shitpiles we are still dealing with to this day.
@Buck Turgidson and @dobro1229, you're both right and I was being flip. And maybe Russia thought they could quickly topple the official government like we had. But they should know like we should have known that toppling the government is only the prelude. If they were hoping to install a friendlier government there that would refuse to join NATO and be a vassal state to Russia, our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan should have discouraged the idea. They'd spend the next decade fighting insurgents and trying to stand up a government that refuses to stand up on its own. Maybe that's naive of me; I know Putin is a smart enough guy so maybe he sees things I can't begin to imagine. But, at the moment I'm looking vindicated by the morass he's gotten himself into.
https://accountability.gop/ukraine-quotes/ ETA: Not as many Republicans as a lot of Democrats seem to think, but they are typically outspoken, get lots of media attention and are aligned with MAGA.
A lot of those "Kurds" are actually Assyrian women that are gleefully blowing off the heads of Muslim men that have repeatedly attempted to commit genocide on the Assyrian culture and rape every woman and child in the entire region. The Muslims will not speak of it in the region because they are ashamed that woman are better shots than they are, and every bit as brutal. Revenge is a nasty game......... Assyrian women are cutting off the genitals of Muslim men and feeding them to their farm animals.
I think in a perfect world Putin was hoping to have.....well... to be blunt.... what he was able to do with Trump here in the US but with Ukraine, but instead having an easier way to control Ukraine's parliament and pass Putin friendly laws and policy like he had with Yanukovych. I don't think Putin ever really wanted violent regime change, and mass death as option A, and he's only doing what he's doing out of desperation, and because he's butthurt that Ukrainians don't share his worldview of wanting to return to Soviet glory, and certainly appear to be smitten with the West. Even though this is option C though for Putin I do think he was cocky enough to believe he could topple the government Saddam style, but I don't think he cared anymore about how hard it would be to control Ukraine because this was option C or even D, and only done out of desperation. His arrogance is also a key factor here. He thinks he's got more cards to play than W had with Iraq... especially with propaganda, no elections to worry about, and brutality. If there's one major flaw with the Autocrat tyrant model of governing its that sooner or later that dictator is going to think he's different than anyone else. He's going to assume he's learned from Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar and will succeed where they ultimately failed. And they'll ALWAYS bring the empire down with them. Why the right is so desperate to move to an autocratic form of governance is beyond me.
Haven't followed much, but is the tide turning against Ukraine? Seems like they've been retreating more often now. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/31/whats-next-for-ukraine-after-russias-donbas-offensive I guess one can consider war as phases (like quarters in a bball game), but I don't think time is on Ukraine's side. If these embargos last longer with fuel driven inflation extending into winter, talk becomes cheaper while everything else verges at the brink of riots.
It's how they have to fight. Anyone that thought Ukraine was going to "hold the line" in their trenches WWI style was nuts. They are vastly outnumbered and can't afford to have large numbers of their troops encircled and either overrun or have to surrender. They have to fight a guerilla war and launch counterattacks in the soft parts of the Russian front. They have to constantly move the front line to keep Russian forces moving as much as possible so they can easily ambush their convoys with drones, artillery, ATGMs, and machine guns on the roads and not have to attack entrenched positons. It also uses up more resources for the Russians and requires more maintenance for their tanks and heavy vehicles. That's why the Russians are having to bring in T-62 tanks which are ancient and obsolete. All Ukraine can do is make it hurt as much as possible for Russia.
I think there's a timetable for all of this. Gas sanctions and embargoes aren't realistic or effective in the long term, and Europe stands to be crippled the most in its duration. Moreover, once this all gets normalized and "social media fatigue" sets in, global sympathy will slowly melt away as the economy continues to erode from price shocks in gas and food. I can see now why US and the West upped the arms shipments but their best use of them might've been before the direct invasion (bit of a chicken/egg thing right there). So yeah, a continuous shift in driving back Russians might've been more ideal, but if the Russians are slowly getting their **** together and solidifying the south eastern offensive, then quagmire and Viet/Afghani style asymmetric warfare is the last thing they'd ideally want.
Zelensky Will Be Tried As War Criminal if Russia Captures Him senior lawmaker in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic said on Wednesday that the Russia-backed region intends to try Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky as a war criminal. Speaking to Russia's state news agency Tass, Yelena Shishkina said the DPR would bring charges against the lawmakers who had led Ukraine since 2014, when Russia's President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea. These include Zelensky, former acting president Oleksandr Turchynov and former president Petro Poroshenko, she said. "Perpetrators of military crimes are not just those who hold weapons in their hands and pull the trigger. Those are also generals, who issue orders, and presidents, too," said Shishkina, who chairs the DPR parliament's committee on criminal and administrative legislation. She accused the three of putting their signatures "under orders to send neo-Nazis to Donbas to kill civilians here."
Which illustrates how evil Russia and Putin are at this point. Zelensky is a legit hero and champion for Democracy.
The Ukraine will lose the East unless they get longer range artillery to knock out Russian artillery.......Russia is using Arty to devestate and inch forward.... DD
Russians are inching forward at a great cost to both Russia and Ukraine. The question is who will run out of resources first, Russian hardware or Ukrainian soldiers.
