MikeyD

Look back at each previous generation. Once people hit a 'certain age' the opinion gets expressed that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. The young think for one reason, the old for another. You can go back to Greek literature for examples. The hot-blooded youths  think the top-down system is corrupt, the oldster oligarchs think the nihilism rabble threaten stability at the base. Only the details change over time. Granted, sometimes things do indeed go to hell, but the pendulum appears to swings from one culprit to the other. Che Guevara had different motives from Francisco Franco, who had different motives from Pol Pot, who had different motives from Tojo who had different motives from Lenin. Regardless, the result was still things going to hell.

"More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did."
-Randall Munroe (xkcd)

Look back at each previous generation. Once people hit a 'certain age' the opinion gets expressed that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. The young think for one reason, the old for another. You can go back to Greek literature for examples. The hot-blooded youths  think the top-down system is corrupt, the oldster oligarchs think the nihilism rabble threaten stability at the base. Only the details change over time. Granted, sometimes things do indeed go to hell, but the pendulum appears to swings from one culprit to the other. Che Guevara had different motives from Francisco Franco, who had different motives from Pol Pot, who had different motives from Tojo who had different motives from Lenin. Regardless, the result was still things going to hell.

Look back at each previous generation. Once people hit a 'certain age' the opinion gets expressed that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. The young think for one reason, the old for another. You can go back to Greek literature for examples. The hot-blooded youths  think the top-down system is corrupt, the oldster oligarchs think the nihilism rabble threaten stability at the base. Only the details change over time. Granted, sometimes things do indeed go to hell, but the pendulum appears to swings from one culprit to the other. Che Guevara had different motives from Francisco Franco, who had different motives from Pol Pot, who had different motives from Tojo who had different motives from Lenin. Regardless, the result was still things going to hell.

Look back at each previous generation. Once people hit a 'certain age' the opinion gets expressed that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. The young think for one reason, the old for another. You can go back to Greek literature for examples. The hot-blooded youths  think the top-down system is corrupt, the oldster oligarchs think the nihilism rabble threaten stability at the base. Only the details change over time. Granted, sometimes things do indeed go to hell, but the pendulum appears to swings from one culprit to the other. Che Guevara had different motives from Francisco Franco, who had different motives from Pol Pot, who had different motives from Tojo who had different motives from Lenin. Regardless, the result was still things going to hell.

Look back at each previous generation. Once people hit a 'certain age' the opinion gets expressed that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. The young think for one reason, the old for another. You can go back to Greek literature for examples. The hot-blooded youths  think the top-down system is corrupt, the oldster oligarchs think the nihilism rabble threaten stability at the base. Only the details change over time. Granted, sometimes things do indeed go to hell, but the pendulum appears to swings from one culprit to the other. Che Guevara had different motives from Francisco Franco, who had different motives from Pol Pot, who had different motives from Tojo who had different motives from Lenin. Regardless, the result was still things going to hell.

Look back at each previous generation. Once people hit a 'certain age' the opinion gets expressed that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. The young think for one reason, the old for another. You can go back to Greek literature for examples. The hot-blooded youths  think the top-down system is corrupt, the oldster oligarchs think the nihilism rabble threaten stability at the base. Only the details change over time. Granted, sometimes things do indeed go to hell, but the pendulum appears to swings from one culprit to the other. Che Guevara had different motives from Francisco Franco, who had different motives from Pol Pot, who had different motives from Tojo who had different motives from Lenin. Regardless, the result was still things going to hell.

I recall discussing lessons learned from the Iraq war and I commented that nobody's going to un-invent the roadside IED. The 'great powers' have been facing the problem of cheap-vs-expensive asymmetric warfare for quite awhile

I recall discussing lessons learned from the Iraq war and I commented that nobody's going to un-invent the roadside IED. The 'great powers' have been facing the problem of cheap-vs-expensive asymmetric warfare for quite awhile

I recall discussing lessons learned from the Iraq war and I commented that nobody's going to un-invent the roadside IED. The 'great powers' have been facing the problem of cheap-vs-expensive asymmetric warfare for quite awhile

The game to do a Taiwan tactical sim in is Cold War. Its got M60A3 and its got Red tanks a generation behind those in CMBS. 

Please, guys, it's bad enough this thread has been dallying with conspiracy theories about how Russia invaded Ukraine because of Canada or something. I don't think it illuminates much about what's happening in Ukraine right now to theorize about how a conflict happening thousands of kilometers away - one which has been happening for decades longer than either Russia or Ukraine existed in their current incarnations - is actually all masterminded by Putin in order to... elect Trump?! I love political thrillers and spy stories too, but sometimes stuff around the world just happens, it doesn't all need to be connected to a sinister grand plan. For sure everything that happens everywhere in the world is connected in some way or another because that's the nature of human civilization, but that's a less interesting insight than I hope for given the expertise of people on this thread.

good lord, the conflation begins.  Where completely separate things are falsely tied together for some benefit to the person saying it.  Like 9-11 and saddam hussein.  
But on a more UKR centric point, related to the tactics post above.  It seems RU digs in and  fights for every meter of tree line and can generate plenty of ~untrained mobiks to man the dugouts.  UKR is RU attriting men, material, and vehicles at a high rate but just the slow grind of digging rats out of holes is soooooo slow.  A whole summer campaign season and they've moved ~15-20km at best.  The pace has picked up a little but really this whole thing is still looking like RU made a pretty good bet on their defenses.  
I am not calling it defeat or failure, but it does say this is gonna take a long time.  And over time anything can happen.  bad things or good things.

It's important to remember when looking at the timing that Putin had decided to take this step sometime before April of 2021...which is when the Biden administration began telling allies it was coming. They weren't saying 'if' at that point, they were saying 'when' and they had it down almost to the date (they were talking about the effect of the Olympics on Putin's process already).
What had happened by April of that year? Merkel and the Christian Democrats were out, Navalny had been arrested in concert with increased repression in Russia, the US had announced it was going to go ahead with the Afghanistan pullout and of course there had just been an attempted coup in the United States. 
The why of the invasion was obviously an revanchist political obsession. The what went wrong of the invasion was obviously the result of a world class intelligence and military miscalculation. The when? Pretty clearly Putin looked at what he was seeing and imagined that there wasn't going to be a better time to take the chance. 

I am sure there's still lots of GOPers that want gov't to work and would be willing to negotiate and find common ground.  Sadly, working w dems (the great satan) will be used against any GOPer in a primary.  They would be castigated as a RINO and a weakling and a collaborationist by some extremist usurper candidate.  Our compromise form of gov't has been destroyed by the radical right.  Except that the radical right is now the GOP base.
Note that during last Bush admin, many dems crossed party lines many times on votes.  But doing this under Obama for GOPers became almost non-existent, despite obama bending over backwards to try to make bipartisan deals.  When he couldn't find anyone to work with, he just did executive orders to try to get things done.

You seem inordinately keen to blame the Democratic Party for the results of the Republican's internal disarray. Why is that?

Hah! A million years (it seems) sitting in front of the computer all day and I never knew about CTRL-mouse wheel. 😁

Actually , this was the MAGA last ditch demand. Cut aid for Ukraine, thus providing aid and comfort for Russia. It’s a terrible political stunt forcing those who support the fight for freedom and democracy to PUBLICLY abandon their support, on the record. In order not to be the subject of a huge wave of advertisements screaming that Democrats chose Ukraine over America. 
 
However, cesmonkey is correct. And the Pentagon has already stated that it will protect ongoing *military* aid to Ukraine in the event of a shut down. So for the moment, this despicable stunt plays more to the right wing *extremist* minority of voters and to Putin favor. However, it is only good for 45 days. Which is practically an eye blink. Then we go through these self-inflicted undermining divisive comfort and aid to Russia circuses (and China - who sees Ukraine=Taiwan). Please note: I say comfort and aid to Russia because it is, whether or not the MAGA Congressional reps intend that or not. I suspect not all of them mean for that to happen. Or they just don’t care. Either way, just as we watch carefully for dissent and signs of exploitable cracks in Russia (and China ) - so definitely do they.

That's an interesting opinion on what's going on.  Except that we're spending nearly 800 BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR on our military.  OMG we're going broke because we used ~5% of our already spent money to actually try to do something, militarily, that will help the world be a better place.   What cumulative effect on our country??  This is just utter horses-t.  If we had just stood by & let Putin win in UKR would he then decide to not try to poison all the world's democracies?  Would he not use fossil fuels to extort europe every time he wanted to?  This is tankie nonsense.
We have mountains of gear gathering dust and that's a huge portion of what we've sent.
And just because I am on a rant on this:  How about we turn this around by saying "those that want to freeze the conflict haven't given any thought to the cumulative effect on the world of pulling Putin's *** out of the fire".  Gawd this makes my blood boil.  

We're still in danger, as the old saying goes, of 'planning to fight the last war' (this war, in the future, being the last war). Insights we take away from this conflict are valuable but will those lessons be applicable to unimagined future war X versus opponent Y in country Z? 6-ish years ago there was a (perplexing) push, in some quarters, to have the US invade Venezuela(!), a country a third larger than Ukraine with a population of 30 million, two mountain ranges and a large portion covered in triple canopy rainforest. It would be difficult to imagine how Ukraine war 'lessons learned' would apply to such a conflict.

We're still in danger, as the old saying goes, of 'planning to fight the last war' (this war, in the future, being the last war). Insights we take away from this conflict are valuable but will those lessons be applicable to unimagined future war X versus opponent Y in country Z? 6-ish years ago there was a (perplexing) push, in some quarters, to have the US invade Venezuela(!), a country a third larger than Ukraine with a population of 30 million, two mountain ranges and a large portion covered in triple canopy rainforest. It would be difficult to imagine how Ukraine war 'lessons learned' would apply to such a conflict.

We're still in danger, as the old saying goes, of 'planning to fight the last war' (this war, in the future, being the last war). Insights we take away from this conflict are valuable but will those lessons be applicable to unimagined future war X versus opponent Y in country Z? 6-ish years ago there was a (perplexing) push, in some quarters, to have the US invade Venezuela(!), a country a third larger than Ukraine with a population of 30 million, two mountain ranges and a large portion covered in triple canopy rainforest. It would be difficult to imagine how Ukraine war 'lessons learned' would apply to such a conflict.

We're still in danger, as the old saying goes, of 'planning to fight the last war' (this war, in the future, being the last war). Insights we take away from this conflict are valuable but will those lessons be applicable to unimagined future war X versus opponent Y in country Z? 6-ish years ago there was a (perplexing) push, in some quarters, to have the US invade Venezuela(!), a country a third larger than Ukraine with a population of 30 million, two mountain ranges and a large portion covered in triple canopy rainforest. It would be difficult to imagine how Ukraine war 'lessons learned' would apply to such a conflict.

The threatened government shutdown is a hostage situation where the hostage takers don't have a clue what their backmail demands actually are. Its a performative farce. If the House is going to put on an annual pantomime they should be obliged to dress up as Punch.

The threatened government shutdown is a hostage situation where the hostage takers don't have a clue what their backmail demands actually are. Its a performative farce. If the House is going to put on an annual pantomime they should be obliged to dress up as Punch.