panzersaurkrautwerfer

To steal a Leonard Cohen line, it's better than being blinded by the beauty of our weapons.
 
 
On the other hand in all but Somalia (which is really a question of "what government?" and above table Pakistan (basically they've opted to on the government-military side condone the strikes, while still doing public outrage) US drone operations are sanctioned by the legal governments of said states.  
 
I'm....not going to be insulting but the "bringing in front of a judge" aspect is about as reasonable as "simply waltzing in and arresting Hitler."  A raid isn't just a few guys hop on a helicopter, swoop in with search warrants in hand on a moment's notice.  The sort of raids I described earlier were largely possible because of how the urban operation restricted terrorist movements (the various checkpoints meant the terrorists had to live fairly close to their operational areas, heavy security simply meant that it was blatantly obvious where they lived etc etc).  In dealing with many of these targets:
 
1. Local government is complicit/too weak to effectively deal with the target
2. The window to do something about this guy is very narrow
3. The target is in a place much too risky to send in conventional forces without significant loss (or basically asking the question of if it's worth the risk to lose the lives of several soldiers, a few million dollars of hardware so we can go through the legal procedure to show that this guy who we have a small mountain of evidence showing what a bad, bad man he is is in fact a bad bad man that we want to put in jail).
 
Even beyond that looking at historical counter-insurgencies or counter terrorism operations, bringing someone to trial has rarely been the historical case outside of domestic situations, or cases in which the targeted individual either survived the raid somehow, or was apprehended in a way that prevented them from being able to fight back.  The difference now is drones have the endurance and sensor fidelity to loiter over possible target locations, and the sensor fidelity to do the sort of "kill" it used to take big burly men with lots of guns to do.
 
 
The French, Israelis, the UK and countless other countries have all practiced the same exact tactic of international assassinations against various threats.  We're not talking about something "new" we've just hit that point where targeting and shooter technology has combined to allow for the sort of operations that used to exist purely in fevered dreams.  
 
However in terms of "what I have done" uh, yeah sort of missing the point to a large degree.  As:
 
1. The targets are folks who belong to organizations that have historically targeted the west because allah said its righteous.
2. Folks who support an unstable Afghanistan were stoning remains the legitimate means of judicial punishment
3. Folks who believe jihad is the one true path and if they explode enough people allah will smile on their dreams
 
That's sort of making it a bit glib, but these folks are opposed to us not for yesterday's acts, but for a long lasting historical grievances and perceived slights (US TROOPS NEAR MECCA HARRAM!!!!!).  If it was not the US, then it'd be the oh wait they did the UK.  Well if it wasn't the US and the UK it'd be Franc...oh crap.  Okay they did them too.  Well if it wasn't the US, the UK, France, it'd be the Spani...well damnit.  Even in the event of total US departure from the middle east, they'd still be blowing up Americans because of our cultural assault on Islam, or because we did not pay the ransom to not blow us up because allah commands it.  It's not as simple as it seems.
 
It's also not something we can kill our way out of, but the blowing up folks who are dead set on killing Americans is sort of symptoms management for the disease.  We've however mistaken it for the cure which is really more than a small problem.  
 
 
Again, Steve addressed this pretty well.  You can hold the US accountable for:
 
1. The post invasion chaos.  There really wasn't a good plan for that.
2. Disbanding the Iraqi Army.  That created a lot of the low-level trigger puller type insurgents for the Sunni population.
 
The dead Iraqis bloating in the Tigris, the exploding Mosques, the "mentally handicapped children as bomb transportation" tactic, and the VBIEDs in markets is something the Iraqis can take the lion's share of blame for.  It's my fault if I fire you for no good reason.  Your fault if your anger causes you to rape and murder a few people.
 
 
And it's very arrogant to assume we break everything too though.  In a lot of ways it's handy to blame things on "The West" but the troubles of the middle east reach all the way back well past colonialism.  We give ourselves a lot of credit for the power to do both good and bad, and frankly, too much credit for either.  
 
That's really the powerless moment you feel in Iraq.  No matter what you say, what you do, how many times you point out that Shia are people too, there's Sunnis that believe they're pretty much satan worshippers and allah will only smile when all of them are dead.  The looting anything worth money regardless of community benefit is something no amount of "west" could fix, nor the corruption.  No amount of attempt to foster small business with loads or grants would help as long as it was simply seen as a way to scam the Americans (which made it darkly funny in a way, the small grants we gave were totally enough to set up a good shop, or make your current shop much bigger, but nooooo, we're going to buy expensive stuff that's going to get stolen by our jealous neighbor, and then cry to the Americans for more money).
 
 
If I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, doesn't mean I can't call you a murderer for shooting down Nancy Sinatra.  Further I'd like to think my experience on the ground sets a nice contrast.  I have yet to shoot anyone.  I did however open several schools, briefly restore power to a neighborhood before the generator was looted, provide key tracking of displaced persons, and while I was at it release some prisoners back to their families.  As much as the American way of war can bring devastation, we're very conscious of doing "good" even if it's the kind of "good" I mentioned that can turn out "terrible" once it's actually implemented.
 
Contrast this to the Russian army which can give locusts a run for it's money, if locusts could rape and install puppet governments.  That's actually rather another reason I strongly dislike the Russian military, it's like having another company that does what you do, only sans morality, decency, and gloats about how it gets away with a lack of either.  Which almost loops back onto the topic, it's why I hate the Russian "victory" day parades.  They're in effect celebrating the nightmare they brought through Eastern Europe, the Stalinist oppression of thousands of innocent people, and the systematic rape and looting of anything with a correctly sized set of holes, or that could fit on a train back to Moscow.  It's like if the US Army had a "Wounded Knee Victory Parade" or the Brits held a festival to celebrate the first use of the maxim gun on indigenous people.  Then pair it with being a celebration of a return to Russian militarism and it just honestly gets sort of sick in that regard.  

To steal a Leonard Cohen line, it's better than being blinded by the beauty of our weapons.
 
 
On the other hand in all but Somalia (which is really a question of "what government?" and above table Pakistan (basically they've opted to on the government-military side condone the strikes, while still doing public outrage) US drone operations are sanctioned by the legal governments of said states.  
 
I'm....not going to be insulting but the "bringing in front of a judge" aspect is about as reasonable as "simply waltzing in and arresting Hitler."  A raid isn't just a few guys hop on a helicopter, swoop in with search warrants in hand on a moment's notice.  The sort of raids I described earlier were largely possible because of how the urban operation restricted terrorist movements (the various checkpoints meant the terrorists had to live fairly close to their operational areas, heavy security simply meant that it was blatantly obvious where they lived etc etc).  In dealing with many of these targets:
 
1. Local government is complicit/too weak to effectively deal with the target
2. The window to do something about this guy is very narrow
3. The target is in a place much too risky to send in conventional forces without significant loss (or basically asking the question of if it's worth the risk to lose the lives of several soldiers, a few million dollars of hardware so we can go through the legal procedure to show that this guy who we have a small mountain of evidence showing what a bad, bad man he is is in fact a bad bad man that we want to put in jail).
 
Even beyond that looking at historical counter-insurgencies or counter terrorism operations, bringing someone to trial has rarely been the historical case outside of domestic situations, or cases in which the targeted individual either survived the raid somehow, or was apprehended in a way that prevented them from being able to fight back.  The difference now is drones have the endurance and sensor fidelity to loiter over possible target locations, and the sensor fidelity to do the sort of "kill" it used to take big burly men with lots of guns to do.
 
 
The French, Israelis, the UK and countless other countries have all practiced the same exact tactic of international assassinations against various threats.  We're not talking about something "new" we've just hit that point where targeting and shooter technology has combined to allow for the sort of operations that used to exist purely in fevered dreams.  
 
However in terms of "what I have done" uh, yeah sort of missing the point to a large degree.  As:
 
1. The targets are folks who belong to organizations that have historically targeted the west because allah said its righteous.
2. Folks who support an unstable Afghanistan were stoning remains the legitimate means of judicial punishment
3. Folks who believe jihad is the one true path and if they explode enough people allah will smile on their dreams
 
That's sort of making it a bit glib, but these folks are opposed to us not for yesterday's acts, but for a long lasting historical grievances and perceived slights (US TROOPS NEAR MECCA HARRAM!!!!!).  If it was not the US, then it'd be the oh wait they did the UK.  Well if it wasn't the US and the UK it'd be Franc...oh crap.  Okay they did them too.  Well if it wasn't the US, the UK, France, it'd be the Spani...well damnit.  Even in the event of total US departure from the middle east, they'd still be blowing up Americans because of our cultural assault on Islam, or because we did not pay the ransom to not blow us up because allah commands it.  It's not as simple as it seems.
 
It's also not something we can kill our way out of, but the blowing up folks who are dead set on killing Americans is sort of symptoms management for the disease.  We've however mistaken it for the cure which is really more than a small problem.  
 
 
Again, Steve addressed this pretty well.  You can hold the US accountable for:
 
1. The post invasion chaos.  There really wasn't a good plan for that.
2. Disbanding the Iraqi Army.  That created a lot of the low-level trigger puller type insurgents for the Sunni population.
 
The dead Iraqis bloating in the Tigris, the exploding Mosques, the "mentally handicapped children as bomb transportation" tactic, and the VBIEDs in markets is something the Iraqis can take the lion's share of blame for.  It's my fault if I fire you for no good reason.  Your fault if your anger causes you to rape and murder a few people.
 
 
And it's very arrogant to assume we break everything too though.  In a lot of ways it's handy to blame things on "The West" but the troubles of the middle east reach all the way back well past colonialism.  We give ourselves a lot of credit for the power to do both good and bad, and frankly, too much credit for either.  
 
That's really the powerless moment you feel in Iraq.  No matter what you say, what you do, how many times you point out that Shia are people too, there's Sunnis that believe they're pretty much satan worshippers and allah will only smile when all of them are dead.  The looting anything worth money regardless of community benefit is something no amount of "west" could fix, nor the corruption.  No amount of attempt to foster small business with loads or grants would help as long as it was simply seen as a way to scam the Americans (which made it darkly funny in a way, the small grants we gave were totally enough to set up a good shop, or make your current shop much bigger, but nooooo, we're going to buy expensive stuff that's going to get stolen by our jealous neighbor, and then cry to the Americans for more money).
 
 
If I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, doesn't mean I can't call you a murderer for shooting down Nancy Sinatra.  Further I'd like to think my experience on the ground sets a nice contrast.  I have yet to shoot anyone.  I did however open several schools, briefly restore power to a neighborhood before the generator was looted, provide key tracking of displaced persons, and while I was at it release some prisoners back to their families.  As much as the American way of war can bring devastation, we're very conscious of doing "good" even if it's the kind of "good" I mentioned that can turn out "terrible" once it's actually implemented.
 
Contrast this to the Russian army which can give locusts a run for it's money, if locusts could rape and install puppet governments.  That's actually rather another reason I strongly dislike the Russian military, it's like having another company that does what you do, only sans morality, decency, and gloats about how it gets away with a lack of either.  Which almost loops back onto the topic, it's why I hate the Russian "victory" day parades.  They're in effect celebrating the nightmare they brought through Eastern Europe, the Stalinist oppression of thousands of innocent people, and the systematic rape and looting of anything with a correctly sized set of holes, or that could fit on a train back to Moscow.  It's like if the US Army had a "Wounded Knee Victory Parade" or the Brits held a festival to celebrate the first use of the maxim gun on indigenous people.  Then pair it with being a celebration of a return to Russian militarism and it just honestly gets sort of sick in that regard.  

There is an idealized view of our past for sure.  
 
Either way not entirely trusting one's government, even when you're working for it is hardly a bad idea.  It's not even in the sense that the government is out to get anyone, or is malicious, just that it's a big organization with most people trying to do some shade of the "right thing" some people doing the wrong things, and then some people counting down the years until they can retire while shoving the paperwork they're supposed to be doing into a very large file cabinet and forgetting about it.  
 
I guess that's my experience at least.  It's rare anyone means to do ill, but often once an action has worked through the various agencies and the like it can become something quite nasty.  Lots of roads to hell paved with great intentions.  

There is an idealized view of our past for sure.  
 
Either way not entirely trusting one's government, even when you're working for it is hardly a bad idea.  It's not even in the sense that the government is out to get anyone, or is malicious, just that it's a big organization with most people trying to do some shade of the "right thing" some people doing the wrong things, and then some people counting down the years until they can retire while shoving the paperwork they're supposed to be doing into a very large file cabinet and forgetting about it.  
 
I guess that's my experience at least.  It's rare anyone means to do ill, but often once an action has worked through the various agencies and the like it can become something quite nasty.  Lots of roads to hell paved with great intentions.  

Dunno.  Would we have batted an eye at killing some of the various Allied nationals that did work on behalf of the Axis?  There's plenty of German-American or Japanese-American folks who either found themselves stuck, or willingly answered the motherland's call, and were cut down without significant hesitation.  Where it gets fuzzy is the question of how legitimate some of these targets are at all in the  modern spectrum of non-conventional warfare.  Most of the very dead American targets unambiguous aided and abetted, or were in the active employ of organizations engaged in military conflict with the US government.  It's a far cry from making craters out of folks who simply disagree with US policy in the abstract.
 
The real debate should be a matter of targeting in terms of collateral damage (value of target vs damage inflicted to the populace) or national sovereignty in the cases of nations that at least above table, give no special permission for drones to operate in their air space (of course, finding a government in some of these places would be difficult).
 
But in terms of the intended targets?  They're folks who'd declared an intent to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can with fairly little discrimination.  That's pretty much hostile intent enough for me to sleep easily when that individual is made into meatpaste (but have some moral reservations when he's meatpasted with the family next door, if the intended target is just some low level dude).
 
 
The western system works for the west because it evolved and grew as western ideals and the like evolved.  It's a system designed for our way of thinking and our way of life.  Thusly it's good for Yankee imperialists, sneering British colonialists, and the French (no prefix required, name is sufficient to imply what I was getting at), but a poor fit for sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and somesuch.  They need a culturally well adapted system of government, and through colonialism, they lost some of that growth, and our continued attempts to make them more like us, we're doing them a disservice.  
 
In terms of the chaos of Iraq, I've said it before but it was coming regardless of who started it.  Centuries of Sunni-Shia conflict, and decades of Sunni minority rule were going to boil over someday (see Syria for a reversal of roles in terms of Shia minority rule over a Sunni majority, with a very similar history of oppression and mass killings).  If it was not the US invasion, it'd have been the fighting between Saddam's sons in 2024 after the old man kicked the bucket, the Arab Spring, or any number of crises.  It's arrogance to assume that the west is powerful enough to change the 3rd World for the good because it's the west, just as much as it is to assign blame for all the problems of the present to western whatever.  
 
I simply advocate we keep our meddling limited to our own interests in a low threat sense (if we do not like your way of doing things, we do not have to do business, vs invasions), the military involvement to breaches of the peace/international law (invading neighbors, or for reals actual genocide sort of beaches of the peace)  and a broad support of human rights (we don't care HOW you rule, just as long as you don't fill your jails or ditches with your opponents).
 
 
I'm there too.  It just happens the russian government is well supported on the internet/military forums which tends to cast me in a more hostile light.  I wouldn't care what it did though so long as it did it within its own borders, and laid off on the nuclear bullying of poor Denmark though.  That doesn't mean I wouldn't make fun of Putin on ponies, just I'd recognize it's someone else's country, and if they dig that well, then it's sort of hilarious but whatever man.  

Dunno.  Would we have batted an eye at killing some of the various Allied nationals that did work on behalf of the Axis?  There's plenty of German-American or Japanese-American folks who either found themselves stuck, or willingly answered the motherland's call, and were cut down without significant hesitation.  Where it gets fuzzy is the question of how legitimate some of these targets are at all in the  modern spectrum of non-conventional warfare.  Most of the very dead American targets unambiguous aided and abetted, or were in the active employ of organizations engaged in military conflict with the US government.  It's a far cry from making craters out of folks who simply disagree with US policy in the abstract.
 
The real debate should be a matter of targeting in terms of collateral damage (value of target vs damage inflicted to the populace) or national sovereignty in the cases of nations that at least above table, give no special permission for drones to operate in their air space (of course, finding a government in some of these places would be difficult).
 
But in terms of the intended targets?  They're folks who'd declared an intent to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can with fairly little discrimination.  That's pretty much hostile intent enough for me to sleep easily when that individual is made into meatpaste (but have some moral reservations when he's meatpasted with the family next door, if the intended target is just some low level dude).
 
 
The western system works for the west because it evolved and grew as western ideals and the like evolved.  It's a system designed for our way of thinking and our way of life.  Thusly it's good for Yankee imperialists, sneering British colonialists, and the French (no prefix required, name is sufficient to imply what I was getting at), but a poor fit for sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and somesuch.  They need a culturally well adapted system of government, and through colonialism, they lost some of that growth, and our continued attempts to make them more like us, we're doing them a disservice.  
 
In terms of the chaos of Iraq, I've said it before but it was coming regardless of who started it.  Centuries of Sunni-Shia conflict, and decades of Sunni minority rule were going to boil over someday (see Syria for a reversal of roles in terms of Shia minority rule over a Sunni majority, with a very similar history of oppression and mass killings).  If it was not the US invasion, it'd have been the fighting between Saddam's sons in 2024 after the old man kicked the bucket, the Arab Spring, or any number of crises.  It's arrogance to assume that the west is powerful enough to change the 3rd World for the good because it's the west, just as much as it is to assign blame for all the problems of the present to western whatever.  
 
I simply advocate we keep our meddling limited to our own interests in a low threat sense (if we do not like your way of doing things, we do not have to do business, vs invasions), the military involvement to breaches of the peace/international law (invading neighbors, or for reals actual genocide sort of beaches of the peace)  and a broad support of human rights (we don't care HOW you rule, just as long as you don't fill your jails or ditches with your opponents).
 
 
I'm there too.  It just happens the russian government is well supported on the internet/military forums which tends to cast me in a more hostile light.  I wouldn't care what it did though so long as it did it within its own borders, and laid off on the nuclear bullying of poor Denmark though.  That doesn't mean I wouldn't make fun of Putin on ponies, just I'd recognize it's someone else's country, and if they dig that well, then it's sort of hilarious but whatever man.  

If we're going by the reputation I've acquired, all Russians are worse than Hitler, and even an ounce of Russian blood should condemn you to being eaten by a starved and enraged Micheal Moore.  
 
If I'm done being sarcastic:
 
It's really two different flavors of annoyed.  Here's the quick rundown:
 
 
1. Collectively the west is stupid for believing in "nation building."  I hold nations/nation-states are things that must grow organically.  When we go in and try to impose what works for the west on a society, it almost always will fail simply because it's a foreign influence.  When we go into a country and try to restore order the parties we usually work with are not the proverbial founding fathers we think we're working with, it's the folks who see us as a means to an end.  Sometimes that's an okay end, we've really found someone who wants to make crapistan a better place, and we've got the money to do that, but a lot of time it's marginal powers who see us as a way to bypass the major players, or folks just looking to scam as many millions as they can in reconstruction projects.
 
If Iraq 2003 really was a problem, I'd have simply done an Army level raid.  We announce we're going in, we're going to break everything worth breaking, destroy sites we view as a threat, blow up the crossed sabers monument in Baghdad to show we can do whatever we want, and we're going to leave and let Saddam deal with the mess.  And we're leaving crates of AKs and RPG-7s in select locations as parting gifts.  We firmly establish why we're going in, why we'll come back to burn the village down again, and then leave the country alone.
 
This open ended commitment to make a country work better because somehow by being 'merica just does not work.  The post World War Two occupations succeeded not because of us, but because we were able to enable the folks who were willing to comply with our standards (no more Hitler, no more big military, no more goosestepping!) with resources, but effectively the Germans and the Japanese rebuilt their countries because they wanted to rebuild them, and recognized they if they did not play nicely they'd get bombed all over again.
 
It's not the most polite way to go about it, but looking at the "progress" the billions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan it bears questioning if we're just better off focusing on stopping folks from doing things they shouldn't do, and letting nations build themselves (and offering voluntary incentives, if you're willing to turn over Saddam's head on a platter, we'll  chip in a few billion to refurb that oil refinery you really need working again).
 
My frustration with Iraqis came from the fact they kept indulging in very self destructive choices for short term gain.  In the wider view it makes sense as given Iraq from the 1980's on, anything long term rarely panned out, but grabbing the money and running was highly successful in the short term.   But in terms of rebuilding, it meant you'd at risk and expense install a generator to provide power for the local community, and then six hours later it's been stripped down to pieces and is being sent up to Turkey to be sold as scrap as the pennies on the hundreds of dollars of investment in the generator is worth more to someone than having reliable electricity.  And then the local community basically just sitting and watching it happen because maybe they can steal the wires the guy didn't take and sell those!
 
George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" is strongly illustrative of the feelings of being in Iraq, in terms of having all the power to murder the heck out of everything, but being ultimately unable to change the behavior of the locals, or address the underlying problems in their community.
 
And onto shooting Russians:
 
2. Prior to the Ukrainian mess, I did not especially have positive impressions of Russia, but I held them on par with the French in many ways.  Fiercely proud, very capable of doing things I found silly, and easily offended when I made fun of said silly things.  On the other hand while I found things like their treatment of homosexuals offensive, or their belligerent posturing to be bothersome, it was still done well within their own space, and it did not strongly intersect with the rest of the world at large.  I even referred to them as "ultra-Ukraine" on a few occasions as a way of explaining how the US viewed Russia on a whole, something marginally related to our foreign policy, with fairly minimal trade or cultural links.  Basically something to be occasionally mocked for hating gay people, while at the same time, their president acted in a way that'd be considered flamboyant in some parts of San Francisco, but not much else.
 
The crossing into the Ukraine was a line for me, because its very much your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins. Russia can do whatever it wants to itself, but by god invading the Ukraine because it decides it isn't especially in favor of a government that increasingly is not representative of the national will (which then shoots down a bunch of folks in the street) is well beyond what is within the "right" of Russia to do.  Then toss in the unambiguous lies and denials, and the whole polite men pile of feces, and it's enough to turn "lol Russia" to "please go find a spike to sit and spin on" levels of distaste.  And it's a shameful pattern of behavior reaching back through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yalta, Poland, Latvia, Finland, etc, etc, etc.  If Russia was content to play by civilized rules, and use economic/diplomatic channels to express its distaste, that's fine.  That's its right to not do business with folks it disagrees with.  That's its right to not engage with a new government.  And even if the Ukraine had been oppressing Russians, going before the UN and making the case for it would be a logical next step.
 
But nope!  It's time for polite men, invasions, and then trying to provoke a war with the Ukraine.  
 
All of which gets to the point where needless to say, I have a very low opinion of the Russian government, its supporters, and its policies.
 
re: Kettler
 
Look, yeah pointing out that some of his stuff is nuts is a bit of stating the barn is red.  But what does it accomplish?  We all know he's a bit off his rocker, but occasionally he posts something interesting, or at least on topic.  You don't have to read or respond to him, I don't read everything he writes obviously, but generally he's politely a bit nuts.  If you don't like what he writes, ignore it, if you're like me and at least skim it, respond to the stuff that's more or less on topic if you'd like, but you're no worse the wear for him chugging along and Kettlering it up.  Posting that he's a bit nutter doesn't make him less nutter, and we've all agreed tanks in space and the USN-Alien-Vampire war is loony.  Do we need to talk about it more than that.? 
 
Addendum:

 
 
I think everyone at age 19 is a little dumb.  It's one reason now than I'm older I'm glad the younger population does not vote (or throws the vote effectively away).  Looking back on college I can see a lot of head against wall level stupid beliefs in both my peers of the day, and myself from all ends of the political spectrum.  

Dunno.  Would we have batted an eye at killing some of the various Allied nationals that did work on behalf of the Axis?  There's plenty of German-American or Japanese-American folks who either found themselves stuck, or willingly answered the motherland's call, and were cut down without significant hesitation.  Where it gets fuzzy is the question of how legitimate some of these targets are at all in the  modern spectrum of non-conventional warfare.  Most of the very dead American targets unambiguous aided and abetted, or were in the active employ of organizations engaged in military conflict with the US government.  It's a far cry from making craters out of folks who simply disagree with US policy in the abstract.
 
The real debate should be a matter of targeting in terms of collateral damage (value of target vs damage inflicted to the populace) or national sovereignty in the cases of nations that at least above table, give no special permission for drones to operate in their air space (of course, finding a government in some of these places would be difficult).
 
But in terms of the intended targets?  They're folks who'd declared an intent to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can with fairly little discrimination.  That's pretty much hostile intent enough for me to sleep easily when that individual is made into meatpaste (but have some moral reservations when he's meatpasted with the family next door, if the intended target is just some low level dude).
 
 
The western system works for the west because it evolved and grew as western ideals and the like evolved.  It's a system designed for our way of thinking and our way of life.  Thusly it's good for Yankee imperialists, sneering British colonialists, and the French (no prefix required, name is sufficient to imply what I was getting at), but a poor fit for sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and somesuch.  They need a culturally well adapted system of government, and through colonialism, they lost some of that growth, and our continued attempts to make them more like us, we're doing them a disservice.  
 
In terms of the chaos of Iraq, I've said it before but it was coming regardless of who started it.  Centuries of Sunni-Shia conflict, and decades of Sunni minority rule were going to boil over someday (see Syria for a reversal of roles in terms of Shia minority rule over a Sunni majority, with a very similar history of oppression and mass killings).  If it was not the US invasion, it'd have been the fighting between Saddam's sons in 2024 after the old man kicked the bucket, the Arab Spring, or any number of crises.  It's arrogance to assume that the west is powerful enough to change the 3rd World for the good because it's the west, just as much as it is to assign blame for all the problems of the present to western whatever.  
 
I simply advocate we keep our meddling limited to our own interests in a low threat sense (if we do not like your way of doing things, we do not have to do business, vs invasions), the military involvement to breaches of the peace/international law (invading neighbors, or for reals actual genocide sort of beaches of the peace)  and a broad support of human rights (we don't care HOW you rule, just as long as you don't fill your jails or ditches with your opponents).
 
 
I'm there too.  It just happens the russian government is well supported on the internet/military forums which tends to cast me in a more hostile light.  I wouldn't care what it did though so long as it did it within its own borders, and laid off on the nuclear bullying of poor Denmark though.  That doesn't mean I wouldn't make fun of Putin on ponies, just I'd recognize it's someone else's country, and if they dig that well, then it's sort of hilarious but whatever man.  

Dunno.  Would we have batted an eye at killing some of the various Allied nationals that did work on behalf of the Axis?  There's plenty of German-American or Japanese-American folks who either found themselves stuck, or willingly answered the motherland's call, and were cut down without significant hesitation.  Where it gets fuzzy is the question of how legitimate some of these targets are at all in the  modern spectrum of non-conventional warfare.  Most of the very dead American targets unambiguous aided and abetted, or were in the active employ of organizations engaged in military conflict with the US government.  It's a far cry from making craters out of folks who simply disagree with US policy in the abstract.
 
The real debate should be a matter of targeting in terms of collateral damage (value of target vs damage inflicted to the populace) or national sovereignty in the cases of nations that at least above table, give no special permission for drones to operate in their air space (of course, finding a government in some of these places would be difficult).
 
But in terms of the intended targets?  They're folks who'd declared an intent to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can with fairly little discrimination.  That's pretty much hostile intent enough for me to sleep easily when that individual is made into meatpaste (but have some moral reservations when he's meatpasted with the family next door, if the intended target is just some low level dude).
 
 
The western system works for the west because it evolved and grew as western ideals and the like evolved.  It's a system designed for our way of thinking and our way of life.  Thusly it's good for Yankee imperialists, sneering British colonialists, and the French (no prefix required, name is sufficient to imply what I was getting at), but a poor fit for sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and somesuch.  They need a culturally well adapted system of government, and through colonialism, they lost some of that growth, and our continued attempts to make them more like us, we're doing them a disservice.  
 
In terms of the chaos of Iraq, I've said it before but it was coming regardless of who started it.  Centuries of Sunni-Shia conflict, and decades of Sunni minority rule were going to boil over someday (see Syria for a reversal of roles in terms of Shia minority rule over a Sunni majority, with a very similar history of oppression and mass killings).  If it was not the US invasion, it'd have been the fighting between Saddam's sons in 2024 after the old man kicked the bucket, the Arab Spring, or any number of crises.  It's arrogance to assume that the west is powerful enough to change the 3rd World for the good because it's the west, just as much as it is to assign blame for all the problems of the present to western whatever.  
 
I simply advocate we keep our meddling limited to our own interests in a low threat sense (if we do not like your way of doing things, we do not have to do business, vs invasions), the military involvement to breaches of the peace/international law (invading neighbors, or for reals actual genocide sort of beaches of the peace)  and a broad support of human rights (we don't care HOW you rule, just as long as you don't fill your jails or ditches with your opponents).
 
 
I'm there too.  It just happens the russian government is well supported on the internet/military forums which tends to cast me in a more hostile light.  I wouldn't care what it did though so long as it did it within its own borders, and laid off on the nuclear bullying of poor Denmark though.  That doesn't mean I wouldn't make fun of Putin on ponies, just I'd recognize it's someone else's country, and if they dig that well, then it's sort of hilarious but whatever man.  

If we're going by the reputation I've acquired, all Russians are worse than Hitler, and even an ounce of Russian blood should condemn you to being eaten by a starved and enraged Micheal Moore.  
 
If I'm done being sarcastic:
 
It's really two different flavors of annoyed.  Here's the quick rundown:
 
 
1. Collectively the west is stupid for believing in "nation building."  I hold nations/nation-states are things that must grow organically.  When we go in and try to impose what works for the west on a society, it almost always will fail simply because it's a foreign influence.  When we go into a country and try to restore order the parties we usually work with are not the proverbial founding fathers we think we're working with, it's the folks who see us as a means to an end.  Sometimes that's an okay end, we've really found someone who wants to make crapistan a better place, and we've got the money to do that, but a lot of time it's marginal powers who see us as a way to bypass the major players, or folks just looking to scam as many millions as they can in reconstruction projects.
 
If Iraq 2003 really was a problem, I'd have simply done an Army level raid.  We announce we're going in, we're going to break everything worth breaking, destroy sites we view as a threat, blow up the crossed sabers monument in Baghdad to show we can do whatever we want, and we're going to leave and let Saddam deal with the mess.  And we're leaving crates of AKs and RPG-7s in select locations as parting gifts.  We firmly establish why we're going in, why we'll come back to burn the village down again, and then leave the country alone.
 
This open ended commitment to make a country work better because somehow by being 'merica just does not work.  The post World War Two occupations succeeded not because of us, but because we were able to enable the folks who were willing to comply with our standards (no more Hitler, no more big military, no more goosestepping!) with resources, but effectively the Germans and the Japanese rebuilt their countries because they wanted to rebuild them, and recognized they if they did not play nicely they'd get bombed all over again.
 
It's not the most polite way to go about it, but looking at the "progress" the billions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan it bears questioning if we're just better off focusing on stopping folks from doing things they shouldn't do, and letting nations build themselves (and offering voluntary incentives, if you're willing to turn over Saddam's head on a platter, we'll  chip in a few billion to refurb that oil refinery you really need working again).
 
My frustration with Iraqis came from the fact they kept indulging in very self destructive choices for short term gain.  In the wider view it makes sense as given Iraq from the 1980's on, anything long term rarely panned out, but grabbing the money and running was highly successful in the short term.   But in terms of rebuilding, it meant you'd at risk and expense install a generator to provide power for the local community, and then six hours later it's been stripped down to pieces and is being sent up to Turkey to be sold as scrap as the pennies on the hundreds of dollars of investment in the generator is worth more to someone than having reliable electricity.  And then the local community basically just sitting and watching it happen because maybe they can steal the wires the guy didn't take and sell those!
 
George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" is strongly illustrative of the feelings of being in Iraq, in terms of having all the power to murder the heck out of everything, but being ultimately unable to change the behavior of the locals, or address the underlying problems in their community.
 
And onto shooting Russians:
 
2. Prior to the Ukrainian mess, I did not especially have positive impressions of Russia, but I held them on par with the French in many ways.  Fiercely proud, very capable of doing things I found silly, and easily offended when I made fun of said silly things.  On the other hand while I found things like their treatment of homosexuals offensive, or their belligerent posturing to be bothersome, it was still done well within their own space, and it did not strongly intersect with the rest of the world at large.  I even referred to them as "ultra-Ukraine" on a few occasions as a way of explaining how the US viewed Russia on a whole, something marginally related to our foreign policy, with fairly minimal trade or cultural links.  Basically something to be occasionally mocked for hating gay people, while at the same time, their president acted in a way that'd be considered flamboyant in some parts of San Francisco, but not much else.
 
The crossing into the Ukraine was a line for me, because its very much your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins. Russia can do whatever it wants to itself, but by god invading the Ukraine because it decides it isn't especially in favor of a government that increasingly is not representative of the national will (which then shoots down a bunch of folks in the street) is well beyond what is within the "right" of Russia to do.  Then toss in the unambiguous lies and denials, and the whole polite men pile of feces, and it's enough to turn "lol Russia" to "please go find a spike to sit and spin on" levels of distaste.  And it's a shameful pattern of behavior reaching back through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yalta, Poland, Latvia, Finland, etc, etc, etc.  If Russia was content to play by civilized rules, and use economic/diplomatic channels to express its distaste, that's fine.  That's its right to not do business with folks it disagrees with.  That's its right to not engage with a new government.  And even if the Ukraine had been oppressing Russians, going before the UN and making the case for it would be a logical next step.
 
But nope!  It's time for polite men, invasions, and then trying to provoke a war with the Ukraine.  
 
All of which gets to the point where needless to say, I have a very low opinion of the Russian government, its supporters, and its policies.
 
re: Kettler
 
Look, yeah pointing out that some of his stuff is nuts is a bit of stating the barn is red.  But what does it accomplish?  We all know he's a bit off his rocker, but occasionally he posts something interesting, or at least on topic.  You don't have to read or respond to him, I don't read everything he writes obviously, but generally he's politely a bit nuts.  If you don't like what he writes, ignore it, if you're like me and at least skim it, respond to the stuff that's more or less on topic if you'd like, but you're no worse the wear for him chugging along and Kettlering it up.  Posting that he's a bit nutter doesn't make him less nutter, and we've all agreed tanks in space and the USN-Alien-Vampire war is loony.  Do we need to talk about it more than that.? 
 
Addendum:

 
 
I think everyone at age 19 is a little dumb.  It's one reason now than I'm older I'm glad the younger population does not vote (or throws the vote effectively away).  Looking back on college I can see a lot of head against wall level stupid beliefs in both my peers of the day, and myself from all ends of the political spectrum.  

If we're going by the reputation I've acquired, all Russians are worse than Hitler, and even an ounce of Russian blood should condemn you to being eaten by a starved and enraged Micheal Moore.  
 
If I'm done being sarcastic:
 
It's really two different flavors of annoyed.  Here's the quick rundown:
 
 
1. Collectively the west is stupid for believing in "nation building."  I hold nations/nation-states are things that must grow organically.  When we go in and try to impose what works for the west on a society, it almost always will fail simply because it's a foreign influence.  When we go into a country and try to restore order the parties we usually work with are not the proverbial founding fathers we think we're working with, it's the folks who see us as a means to an end.  Sometimes that's an okay end, we've really found someone who wants to make crapistan a better place, and we've got the money to do that, but a lot of time it's marginal powers who see us as a way to bypass the major players, or folks just looking to scam as many millions as they can in reconstruction projects.
 
If Iraq 2003 really was a problem, I'd have simply done an Army level raid.  We announce we're going in, we're going to break everything worth breaking, destroy sites we view as a threat, blow up the crossed sabers monument in Baghdad to show we can do whatever we want, and we're going to leave and let Saddam deal with the mess.  And we're leaving crates of AKs and RPG-7s in select locations as parting gifts.  We firmly establish why we're going in, why we'll come back to burn the village down again, and then leave the country alone.
 
This open ended commitment to make a country work better because somehow by being 'merica just does not work.  The post World War Two occupations succeeded not because of us, but because we were able to enable the folks who were willing to comply with our standards (no more Hitler, no more big military, no more goosestepping!) with resources, but effectively the Germans and the Japanese rebuilt their countries because they wanted to rebuild them, and recognized they if they did not play nicely they'd get bombed all over again.
 
It's not the most polite way to go about it, but looking at the "progress" the billions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan it bears questioning if we're just better off focusing on stopping folks from doing things they shouldn't do, and letting nations build themselves (and offering voluntary incentives, if you're willing to turn over Saddam's head on a platter, we'll  chip in a few billion to refurb that oil refinery you really need working again).
 
My frustration with Iraqis came from the fact they kept indulging in very self destructive choices for short term gain.  In the wider view it makes sense as given Iraq from the 1980's on, anything long term rarely panned out, but grabbing the money and running was highly successful in the short term.   But in terms of rebuilding, it meant you'd at risk and expense install a generator to provide power for the local community, and then six hours later it's been stripped down to pieces and is being sent up to Turkey to be sold as scrap as the pennies on the hundreds of dollars of investment in the generator is worth more to someone than having reliable electricity.  And then the local community basically just sitting and watching it happen because maybe they can steal the wires the guy didn't take and sell those!
 
George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" is strongly illustrative of the feelings of being in Iraq, in terms of having all the power to murder the heck out of everything, but being ultimately unable to change the behavior of the locals, or address the underlying problems in their community.
 
And onto shooting Russians:
 
2. Prior to the Ukrainian mess, I did not especially have positive impressions of Russia, but I held them on par with the French in many ways.  Fiercely proud, very capable of doing things I found silly, and easily offended when I made fun of said silly things.  On the other hand while I found things like their treatment of homosexuals offensive, or their belligerent posturing to be bothersome, it was still done well within their own space, and it did not strongly intersect with the rest of the world at large.  I even referred to them as "ultra-Ukraine" on a few occasions as a way of explaining how the US viewed Russia on a whole, something marginally related to our foreign policy, with fairly minimal trade or cultural links.  Basically something to be occasionally mocked for hating gay people, while at the same time, their president acted in a way that'd be considered flamboyant in some parts of San Francisco, but not much else.
 
The crossing into the Ukraine was a line for me, because its very much your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins. Russia can do whatever it wants to itself, but by god invading the Ukraine because it decides it isn't especially in favor of a government that increasingly is not representative of the national will (which then shoots down a bunch of folks in the street) is well beyond what is within the "right" of Russia to do.  Then toss in the unambiguous lies and denials, and the whole polite men pile of feces, and it's enough to turn "lol Russia" to "please go find a spike to sit and spin on" levels of distaste.  And it's a shameful pattern of behavior reaching back through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yalta, Poland, Latvia, Finland, etc, etc, etc.  If Russia was content to play by civilized rules, and use economic/diplomatic channels to express its distaste, that's fine.  That's its right to not do business with folks it disagrees with.  That's its right to not engage with a new government.  And even if the Ukraine had been oppressing Russians, going before the UN and making the case for it would be a logical next step.
 
But nope!  It's time for polite men, invasions, and then trying to provoke a war with the Ukraine.  
 
All of which gets to the point where needless to say, I have a very low opinion of the Russian government, its supporters, and its policies.
 
re: Kettler
 
Look, yeah pointing out that some of his stuff is nuts is a bit of stating the barn is red.  But what does it accomplish?  We all know he's a bit off his rocker, but occasionally he posts something interesting, or at least on topic.  You don't have to read or respond to him, I don't read everything he writes obviously, but generally he's politely a bit nuts.  If you don't like what he writes, ignore it, if you're like me and at least skim it, respond to the stuff that's more or less on topic if you'd like, but you're no worse the wear for him chugging along and Kettlering it up.  Posting that he's a bit nutter doesn't make him less nutter, and we've all agreed tanks in space and the USN-Alien-Vampire war is loony.  Do we need to talk about it more than that.? 
 
Addendum:

 
 
I think everyone at age 19 is a little dumb.  It's one reason now than I'm older I'm glad the younger population does not vote (or throws the vote effectively away).  Looking back on college I can see a lot of head against wall level stupid beliefs in both my peers of the day, and myself from all ends of the political spectrum.  

Dunno.  Would we have batted an eye at killing some of the various Allied nationals that did work on behalf of the Axis?  There's plenty of German-American or Japanese-American folks who either found themselves stuck, or willingly answered the motherland's call, and were cut down without significant hesitation.  Where it gets fuzzy is the question of how legitimate some of these targets are at all in the  modern spectrum of non-conventional warfare.  Most of the very dead American targets unambiguous aided and abetted, or were in the active employ of organizations engaged in military conflict with the US government.  It's a far cry from making craters out of folks who simply disagree with US policy in the abstract.
 
The real debate should be a matter of targeting in terms of collateral damage (value of target vs damage inflicted to the populace) or national sovereignty in the cases of nations that at least above table, give no special permission for drones to operate in their air space (of course, finding a government in some of these places would be difficult).
 
But in terms of the intended targets?  They're folks who'd declared an intent to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can with fairly little discrimination.  That's pretty much hostile intent enough for me to sleep easily when that individual is made into meatpaste (but have some moral reservations when he's meatpasted with the family next door, if the intended target is just some low level dude).
 
 
The western system works for the west because it evolved and grew as western ideals and the like evolved.  It's a system designed for our way of thinking and our way of life.  Thusly it's good for Yankee imperialists, sneering British colonialists, and the French (no prefix required, name is sufficient to imply what I was getting at), but a poor fit for sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and somesuch.  They need a culturally well adapted system of government, and through colonialism, they lost some of that growth, and our continued attempts to make them more like us, we're doing them a disservice.  
 
In terms of the chaos of Iraq, I've said it before but it was coming regardless of who started it.  Centuries of Sunni-Shia conflict, and decades of Sunni minority rule were going to boil over someday (see Syria for a reversal of roles in terms of Shia minority rule over a Sunni majority, with a very similar history of oppression and mass killings).  If it was not the US invasion, it'd have been the fighting between Saddam's sons in 2024 after the old man kicked the bucket, the Arab Spring, or any number of crises.  It's arrogance to assume that the west is powerful enough to change the 3rd World for the good because it's the west, just as much as it is to assign blame for all the problems of the present to western whatever.  
 
I simply advocate we keep our meddling limited to our own interests in a low threat sense (if we do not like your way of doing things, we do not have to do business, vs invasions), the military involvement to breaches of the peace/international law (invading neighbors, or for reals actual genocide sort of beaches of the peace)  and a broad support of human rights (we don't care HOW you rule, just as long as you don't fill your jails or ditches with your opponents).
 
 
I'm there too.  It just happens the russian government is well supported on the internet/military forums which tends to cast me in a more hostile light.  I wouldn't care what it did though so long as it did it within its own borders, and laid off on the nuclear bullying of poor Denmark though.  That doesn't mean I wouldn't make fun of Putin on ponies, just I'd recognize it's someone else's country, and if they dig that well, then it's sort of hilarious but whatever man.  

Pretty much.  I can accept you wrote an article about tanks on mar/moon/whatever or believe the USN got in a fight with aliens.  That's something I think is loco but that's your bag.  Most of your posts on here are a bit out there but they're at least somewhat grounded in what's discussed on the board.  I can accept the out there though because I'm either not forced to read it, or it might be topical and worth talking about.
 
Either way though reacting to folks bringing in the more Art Bell parts of your beliefs is not going to help anything because it'll just encourage them to do it more.  So please do calm down and stick to the more interesting stuff discussed here.  It'll be best for all parties. 
 
Re: 105 MM
 
Again it was not optimal, but the lack of efficiency at long range is often cited by Soviet Power Supreme fanboys as an example of how NATO would have sat weeping powerless before STRONG MEN OF SOVIET MIGHT RODE ASTRIDE COMRADE TANK while ignoring historically, on the offensive especially given similar sensor capability the defender still tended to inflict heavier losses regardless of armor/weapon imbalance (see the fairly strong performance of Allied armor in the west against German armor when on the defense for a pretty good historical example).  Longer engagement ranges would be preferred as that best leverages the sensor gap between west and east, and gives the western unit more time to shift battle positions to receive the next wave.  But I still feel it is incorrect to simply state the 105 MM was useless against Russian armor without a very big * and some footnotes to clarify it wasn't good where we wanted it to be good, but would still murder comrade tankist at closer ranges.
 
The 105 was not perfect, or even really good at all post 1972 or so, but it was suboptimal vs totally useless.  
 
Re: "Just War"
 
Afghanistan is pretty cut and dry, UN approved high fives all around, following some pretty unambiguous casus belli.  Here's where Stagler consumes so many hats from his high horse after my textual resounding body blows of great strength he becomes known as "The defeated pig dog horse rider hat eater"
 
I do not support the fact we went to war in Iraqi in the first place.  I did support it when it kicked off because I was an idiot 19 year old and I believed the case that got pitched to the UN.  I was already in ROTC when it kicked off, but darn it didn't I believe there was a world that needed bombing sometime.
 
I think many of the posters on here were equally dumb, jingoistic and willing to believe war fixed things when they were that age, or they're dishonest enough about it now to pretend they wouldn't have lept on the warwagon willingly themselves had roles been reversed.  
 
As I continued in my college education it became apparent that a lot of the reasons to go to war were wrong (for a variety of reasons outside this discussion).  At that point I believed we had a need to do whatever we could do to restore Iraq to some level of normalcy, and counter the people who were sawing heads off because allah told them it was a swell thing to do to murder his creations for an imperfect understanding of him.  So I came to believe going to war was wrong, but finishing it was right.
 
Having gone to Iraq twice, and leaving just a few steps above Kurtz in my feelings towards the locals, my opinions are somewhat interestingly colored.  At the same time it's noteworthy that the Iraq war 2004-2010 was fought at great expense to give the Iraqis the government they voted for, the infrastructure they needed, and the security they wanted.  And on departing in 2010 broadly speaking that had occurred, although the fact the Shia leadership decided Iran knew best in running a country rather dismantled it in short order.
 
Kosovo's objection has more to do with who's friends with who.  The behavior of the Serbian military pretty much 1993-1999 is on the road to terrible, and we're ready to remember the agony of sad that the Serbs went through during the bombing, but not the well filled ditches the Serbs left from Croatia, through Bosnia, and beyond.  All the Serbs had to do is stop shooting civilians, and there wouldn't have been much of a leg to stand on.
 
As the case is the region is a lot more stable today, and there's a marked downtick in violence.  And Kosovo isn't a US territory so there you go.  
 
This runs a pretty good contrast where Russia's current military acts have been to carve off choice parts of its neighbors, or trying to kill its way out of an insurgency in Chechnya.  Granted Chechnya is nominally Russian and honestly while I can object to the methods, whatever get your hands all bloody life goes on elsewhere but where I object is when we start finding Russian troops where they do not belong, and there's a long history of that in the last hundred years resulting in significant swaths of Eastern Europe getting a one way ticket to rapey-steal anything worth stealing-install the resident pet stalinist as leader town.  
 
While there's a history of western military adventurism, in the last few decades its been the White Man's Burden madness, or the silliness with pretending somehow putting Americans/Brits/French people on the ground will return the region to stability (with some imperfect success).  Russians show up, it's generally to take anything that isn't nailed down, and failing that, take what the things are nailed to.
 
 
 It's pretty standard Russologic.  Your country did a bad thing/something we did not like, which means our thing of equal or often more dubious morality is okay!  Rather than addressing the topic at hand it's pretty classic misdirection because bluntly if we're going to talk about Russian/Soviet actions, it's going to be a pretty lopsided fight in favor of anyone who doesn't find red especially fabulous.  Effectively he wants the discussion to migrate to a medium in which he can talk a lot about Iraq, or the like, while avoiding talking about the fact the Russians are currently facilitating an entirely illegal war in the hopes of carving off parts of a country they already more or less stole land from, or the fact that when the west shows up, hungry people come looking for food and comfort, but when Russia shows up, they send their daughters, and more attractive livestock as far away as they can.

Pretty much.  I can accept you wrote an article about tanks on mar/moon/whatever or believe the USN got in a fight with aliens.  That's something I think is loco but that's your bag.  Most of your posts on here are a bit out there but they're at least somewhat grounded in what's discussed on the board.  I can accept the out there though because I'm either not forced to read it, or it might be topical and worth talking about.
 
Either way though reacting to folks bringing in the more Art Bell parts of your beliefs is not going to help anything because it'll just encourage them to do it more.  So please do calm down and stick to the more interesting stuff discussed here.  It'll be best for all parties. 
 
Re: 105 MM
 
Again it was not optimal, but the lack of efficiency at long range is often cited by Soviet Power Supreme fanboys as an example of how NATO would have sat weeping powerless before STRONG MEN OF SOVIET MIGHT RODE ASTRIDE COMRADE TANK while ignoring historically, on the offensive especially given similar sensor capability the defender still tended to inflict heavier losses regardless of armor/weapon imbalance (see the fairly strong performance of Allied armor in the west against German armor when on the defense for a pretty good historical example).  Longer engagement ranges would be preferred as that best leverages the sensor gap between west and east, and gives the western unit more time to shift battle positions to receive the next wave.  But I still feel it is incorrect to simply state the 105 MM was useless against Russian armor without a very big * and some footnotes to clarify it wasn't good where we wanted it to be good, but would still murder comrade tankist at closer ranges.
 
The 105 was not perfect, or even really good at all post 1972 or so, but it was suboptimal vs totally useless.  
 
Re: "Just War"
 
Afghanistan is pretty cut and dry, UN approved high fives all around, following some pretty unambiguous casus belli.  Here's where Stagler consumes so many hats from his high horse after my textual resounding body blows of great strength he becomes known as "The defeated pig dog horse rider hat eater"
 
I do not support the fact we went to war in Iraqi in the first place.  I did support it when it kicked off because I was an idiot 19 year old and I believed the case that got pitched to the UN.  I was already in ROTC when it kicked off, but darn it didn't I believe there was a world that needed bombing sometime.
 
I think many of the posters on here were equally dumb, jingoistic and willing to believe war fixed things when they were that age, or they're dishonest enough about it now to pretend they wouldn't have lept on the warwagon willingly themselves had roles been reversed.  
 
As I continued in my college education it became apparent that a lot of the reasons to go to war were wrong (for a variety of reasons outside this discussion).  At that point I believed we had a need to do whatever we could do to restore Iraq to some level of normalcy, and counter the people who were sawing heads off because allah told them it was a swell thing to do to murder his creations for an imperfect understanding of him.  So I came to believe going to war was wrong, but finishing it was right.
 
Having gone to Iraq twice, and leaving just a few steps above Kurtz in my feelings towards the locals, my opinions are somewhat interestingly colored.  At the same time it's noteworthy that the Iraq war 2004-2010 was fought at great expense to give the Iraqis the government they voted for, the infrastructure they needed, and the security they wanted.  And on departing in 2010 broadly speaking that had occurred, although the fact the Shia leadership decided Iran knew best in running a country rather dismantled it in short order.
 
Kosovo's objection has more to do with who's friends with who.  The behavior of the Serbian military pretty much 1993-1999 is on the road to terrible, and we're ready to remember the agony of sad that the Serbs went through during the bombing, but not the well filled ditches the Serbs left from Croatia, through Bosnia, and beyond.  All the Serbs had to do is stop shooting civilians, and there wouldn't have been much of a leg to stand on.
 
As the case is the region is a lot more stable today, and there's a marked downtick in violence.  And Kosovo isn't a US territory so there you go.  
 
This runs a pretty good contrast where Russia's current military acts have been to carve off choice parts of its neighbors, or trying to kill its way out of an insurgency in Chechnya.  Granted Chechnya is nominally Russian and honestly while I can object to the methods, whatever get your hands all bloody life goes on elsewhere but where I object is when we start finding Russian troops where they do not belong, and there's a long history of that in the last hundred years resulting in significant swaths of Eastern Europe getting a one way ticket to rapey-steal anything worth stealing-install the resident pet stalinist as leader town.  
 
While there's a history of western military adventurism, in the last few decades its been the White Man's Burden madness, or the silliness with pretending somehow putting Americans/Brits/French people on the ground will return the region to stability (with some imperfect success).  Russians show up, it's generally to take anything that isn't nailed down, and failing that, take what the things are nailed to.
 
 
 It's pretty standard Russologic.  Your country did a bad thing/something we did not like, which means our thing of equal or often more dubious morality is okay!  Rather than addressing the topic at hand it's pretty classic misdirection because bluntly if we're going to talk about Russian/Soviet actions, it's going to be a pretty lopsided fight in favor of anyone who doesn't find red especially fabulous.  Effectively he wants the discussion to migrate to a medium in which he can talk a lot about Iraq, or the like, while avoiding talking about the fact the Russians are currently facilitating an entirely illegal war in the hopes of carving off parts of a country they already more or less stole land from, or the fact that when the west shows up, hungry people come looking for food and comfort, but when Russia shows up, they send their daughters, and more attractive livestock as far away as they can.

Pretty much.  I can accept you wrote an article about tanks on mar/moon/whatever or believe the USN got in a fight with aliens.  That's something I think is loco but that's your bag.  Most of your posts on here are a bit out there but they're at least somewhat grounded in what's discussed on the board.  I can accept the out there though because I'm either not forced to read it, or it might be topical and worth talking about.
 
Either way though reacting to folks bringing in the more Art Bell parts of your beliefs is not going to help anything because it'll just encourage them to do it more.  So please do calm down and stick to the more interesting stuff discussed here.  It'll be best for all parties. 
 
Re: 105 MM
 
Again it was not optimal, but the lack of efficiency at long range is often cited by Soviet Power Supreme fanboys as an example of how NATO would have sat weeping powerless before STRONG MEN OF SOVIET MIGHT RODE ASTRIDE COMRADE TANK while ignoring historically, on the offensive especially given similar sensor capability the defender still tended to inflict heavier losses regardless of armor/weapon imbalance (see the fairly strong performance of Allied armor in the west against German armor when on the defense for a pretty good historical example).  Longer engagement ranges would be preferred as that best leverages the sensor gap between west and east, and gives the western unit more time to shift battle positions to receive the next wave.  But I still feel it is incorrect to simply state the 105 MM was useless against Russian armor without a very big * and some footnotes to clarify it wasn't good where we wanted it to be good, but would still murder comrade tankist at closer ranges.
 
The 105 was not perfect, or even really good at all post 1972 or so, but it was suboptimal vs totally useless.  
 
Re: "Just War"
 
Afghanistan is pretty cut and dry, UN approved high fives all around, following some pretty unambiguous casus belli.  Here's where Stagler consumes so many hats from his high horse after my textual resounding body blows of great strength he becomes known as "The defeated pig dog horse rider hat eater"
 
I do not support the fact we went to war in Iraqi in the first place.  I did support it when it kicked off because I was an idiot 19 year old and I believed the case that got pitched to the UN.  I was already in ROTC when it kicked off, but darn it didn't I believe there was a world that needed bombing sometime.
 
I think many of the posters on here were equally dumb, jingoistic and willing to believe war fixed things when they were that age, or they're dishonest enough about it now to pretend they wouldn't have lept on the warwagon willingly themselves had roles been reversed.  
 
As I continued in my college education it became apparent that a lot of the reasons to go to war were wrong (for a variety of reasons outside this discussion).  At that point I believed we had a need to do whatever we could do to restore Iraq to some level of normalcy, and counter the people who were sawing heads off because allah told them it was a swell thing to do to murder his creations for an imperfect understanding of him.  So I came to believe going to war was wrong, but finishing it was right.
 
Having gone to Iraq twice, and leaving just a few steps above Kurtz in my feelings towards the locals, my opinions are somewhat interestingly colored.  At the same time it's noteworthy that the Iraq war 2004-2010 was fought at great expense to give the Iraqis the government they voted for, the infrastructure they needed, and the security they wanted.  And on departing in 2010 broadly speaking that had occurred, although the fact the Shia leadership decided Iran knew best in running a country rather dismantled it in short order.
 
Kosovo's objection has more to do with who's friends with who.  The behavior of the Serbian military pretty much 1993-1999 is on the road to terrible, and we're ready to remember the agony of sad that the Serbs went through during the bombing, but not the well filled ditches the Serbs left from Croatia, through Bosnia, and beyond.  All the Serbs had to do is stop shooting civilians, and there wouldn't have been much of a leg to stand on.
 
As the case is the region is a lot more stable today, and there's a marked downtick in violence.  And Kosovo isn't a US territory so there you go.  
 
This runs a pretty good contrast where Russia's current military acts have been to carve off choice parts of its neighbors, or trying to kill its way out of an insurgency in Chechnya.  Granted Chechnya is nominally Russian and honestly while I can object to the methods, whatever get your hands all bloody life goes on elsewhere but where I object is when we start finding Russian troops where they do not belong, and there's a long history of that in the last hundred years resulting in significant swaths of Eastern Europe getting a one way ticket to rapey-steal anything worth stealing-install the resident pet stalinist as leader town.  
 
While there's a history of western military adventurism, in the last few decades its been the White Man's Burden madness, or the silliness with pretending somehow putting Americans/Brits/French people on the ground will return the region to stability (with some imperfect success).  Russians show up, it's generally to take anything that isn't nailed down, and failing that, take what the things are nailed to.
 
 
 It's pretty standard Russologic.  Your country did a bad thing/something we did not like, which means our thing of equal or often more dubious morality is okay!  Rather than addressing the topic at hand it's pretty classic misdirection because bluntly if we're going to talk about Russian/Soviet actions, it's going to be a pretty lopsided fight in favor of anyone who doesn't find red especially fabulous.  Effectively he wants the discussion to migrate to a medium in which he can talk a lot about Iraq, or the like, while avoiding talking about the fact the Russians are currently facilitating an entirely illegal war in the hopes of carving off parts of a country they already more or less stole land from, or the fact that when the west shows up, hungry people come looking for food and comfort, but when Russia shows up, they send their daughters, and more attractive livestock as far away as they can.

So, with some sort of tortured logic, that makes it alright for Russia to violate Ukraine's sovereignty? 

Perhaps comrade Buk is feeling some regret over some business with the Dutch.  

Well yeah, because it's schadenfreude, the best kind of freude*!
 
Tractor comments aside, this is exactly what I believe, all sniping aside:
 
 
On having many Armatas:
 
Russia is not in the best economic shape, and this economic situation has strongly influenced historical weapons procurement.  Additionally the "newer" (i.e., the M1 Abrams vs M60, rather than the M1A1 vs M1A2) the platform, the more dramatic the friction in getting it fully operational.  Russia/the USSR's historical performance in fielding new equipment also indicates it is not at all immune to this sort of friction.
 
From this I feel it is likely we will see one or both of the following:
 
1. New vehicle production will never reach full allocation.  Some units will receive some or all of their allocation, but the Armata and friends will remain a sort of land MI-28, behind schedule and vastly outnumbered by the platforms it "replaced" in service.
 
2. Technical issues will result in vehicles that are different than what has been promised.  Afganit attacks gingers and needs to be replaced with Arena-M.  The forces exerted by the new weapon on the unmanned turret cause breakdowns and a smaller propellant charge is required.  Turret automation is so brilliantly successful that the gunner's position is simply omitted in production model vehicles.  
 
In terms of the vehicle:
 
I am so amazingly unsold on the unmanned turret.  I can see the "why," I just don't think its worth the trade-offs it offers.
 
In all honestly we have to really:
 
1. Wait until closer to 2017 to definitively say if it's going to be on-time.  The Russians did do a lot of the R&D in the dark, so progress out of sight and mind is possible..  This doesn't mean we have to believe all the super tank supreme rumors that come out, it simply means it's hard to measure progress beyond what is claimed, which is usually bloated propaganda (danke Russia Today)  which presents a skewed perspective of the "progress."  
 
On the other hand, it looks like there's a few pretty big glitches to work out, and some of the components are unfinished/very immature.  And the Russian economic situation is not getting much better.  There's about equal reasons to doubt, as to believe.
 
2. Have Armatas in service somewhere for a while.  If the internet is full of Russian professional soldiers screaming about how bad the new platforms are, how they're junk, and have been replaced by BMP-1s assembled from scrap, then we can for sure say they're terribad.  If they perform fairly well, then we can say they are something worth paying attention to.
 
The issues during the parade to me, simply are a reality check to anyone who mistakes "going to the parade!" for being close to ready for prime time military service.  All new systems have issues, both technical and integration.  This is to be expected.  Just some of the assertions of how ready it is, and how we're on the verge of armatasm needed to come back to earth. 
 
*As voted in 2011's "Best of Big German Words" magazine 

M136 is the successor to the LAW.  One shot and she's done, there's no alternate varieties of rockets to load.  The more AT4 type rockets you put in a unit, the more launchers you're giving to your dudes vs more ammunition.
 
Re: Carl G
 
It hasn't come to much as far as I can tell.  The M136 remains the "bear mace" weapon for dealing with tanks and armor, and its about as good as any other rocket for that purpose.  As far as busting bunkers and the like, the pressing need just sort of went away.  Between aviation, other ground systems (truck mounted TOWs, Javelins, MK-19s, tanks etc) and the shifting nature of both the war on terror conflicts (away from going block to block, cave to cave) the role is more or less filled "well enough." 

If I was Russia today, you'd realize this would turn into "French Canadian Nazis admit desire to kill all Anglo-Canadians, desire for alliance with Russians: Intent to murder only stifled by distance and "Polite Men/Airsofters/Canadian Defense League M1A2 SEP v2s manned by Texas-Canadans"

As much as I am a part of the military-industrial complex:

 
 
I've always liked Eisenhower.  And I feel his speech on the dangers of the military-industrial complex to be both meaningful, and very important to preservation of our way of life.  We cannot trade our future to the iron mongers.  There's a time and place for defense, and a powerful military is important to that future, but it must support the culture, rather than consume it.
 
And looking at Russian priorities, it's clear which route they've chosen, and certainly not to the betterment of their children's future.  Russian cultural contribution to the world needs to be more than AKs, T-72s, Russia Today, etc.  Its future needs to be more than isolation for marginal goals.  It could very well claim a spot in the sun if only it was a member of the global community, rather than expecting the world to revolve around it.
 
 
As much as I joke about it, it's actually something that makes me more than a little mad.  There's plenty of NATO countries that underwrite their own social welfare and discretionary spending using money that has been promised to collective defense, who will then turn around and expect 24-7 on call military support at all echelons because they're scared/need to go beat up former colonies.  
 
If the defense burden was better shared, perhaps the US could get away with a smaller military, and more schools, public works, etc.  But as the case is, most of NATO will sit around looking down their noses at American militarism while fully expecting American dollars to replace withheld Euros, American boots to replace military forces downsized to appease short sighted populaces, and American blood to be shed for their freedom and liberty all over again.
 
The point of NATO was to keep Europe collectively safe.  Not have America ensure the security of Western Europe, and shoulder the defense burden for the free world.  

Pretty much.  Which gets to the heart of why this discussion is amusing.  The west shouldn't tell Russia what to do inside Russia.  Russia should be allowed to intervene wherever Russian ethnic populations are, regardless of borders.  The west is being provocative by military exercises that often have nothing.to.do.with.Russia, but hey, here's a full Russian run-up to starting a nuclear war with literally every country on the earth.  Everyone is an American puppet, including countries that frequently clash loudly, and decisively on nearly every American policy.   Russia is surrounded by enemies, but it has also invaded, raped, and pillaged its way across all of said enemies several times in the last two decades.  Russia objects to NATO expansion in the face of a treaty that never existed, but violates real treaties it signed because don't tell me what to do.
 
It's like if everyone treats you like you're an untrustworthy a-hole, you should start asking questions about if you're acting like an untrustworthy a-hole.  If no one is your friend, the question isn't "how did the people I not like turn the whole world against me?!?!?!" it's "what have we done to so sour our world image?" 
 
You cannot simply blame everything on "the west" or "America," as much as Russia Today tells you it isn't your fault. Russia dug its own hole, and holds a parade to celebrate how deep it has dug said hole.  More than tanks, more than missiles, if Russia simply stopped treating the rest of the world like it was something to push around (and honestly without the muscle to do much of the pushing in the first place), it'd be a lot more secure.
 
But no.  We'll keep getting garbage about the Russian right to shoot Ukrainians for being closet Nazis, how America should move Alaska father back (or give it back to Russia) and stop being so threatening with arming Inuit, and Denmark will be reminded how irradiated it could be in lieu of actual foreign policy.
 
Anyway.  I think the Armata pretty much looks as good as any Soviet/Russian military first rollout, and I expect it to perform accordingly. 

Not going to lie, I did laugh out loud at the last post at several times. 

As much as I am a part of the military-industrial complex:

 
 
I've always liked Eisenhower.  And I feel his speech on the dangers of the military-industrial complex to be both meaningful, and very important to preservation of our way of life.  We cannot trade our future to the iron mongers.  There's a time and place for defense, and a powerful military is important to that future, but it must support the culture, rather than consume it.
 
And looking at Russian priorities, it's clear which route they've chosen, and certainly not to the betterment of their children's future.  Russian cultural contribution to the world needs to be more than AKs, T-72s, Russia Today, etc.  Its future needs to be more than isolation for marginal goals.  It could very well claim a spot in the sun if only it was a member of the global community, rather than expecting the world to revolve around it.
 
 
As much as I joke about it, it's actually something that makes me more than a little mad.  There's plenty of NATO countries that underwrite their own social welfare and discretionary spending using money that has been promised to collective defense, who will then turn around and expect 24-7 on call military support at all echelons because they're scared/need to go beat up former colonies.  
 
If the defense burden was better shared, perhaps the US could get away with a smaller military, and more schools, public works, etc.  But as the case is, most of NATO will sit around looking down their noses at American militarism while fully expecting American dollars to replace withheld Euros, American boots to replace military forces downsized to appease short sighted populaces, and American blood to be shed for their freedom and liberty all over again.
 
The point of NATO was to keep Europe collectively safe.  Not have America ensure the security of Western Europe, and shoulder the defense burden for the free world.  

As much as I am a part of the military-industrial complex:

 
 
I've always liked Eisenhower.  And I feel his speech on the dangers of the military-industrial complex to be both meaningful, and very important to preservation of our way of life.  We cannot trade our future to the iron mongers.  There's a time and place for defense, and a powerful military is important to that future, but it must support the culture, rather than consume it.
 
And looking at Russian priorities, it's clear which route they've chosen, and certainly not to the betterment of their children's future.  Russian cultural contribution to the world needs to be more than AKs, T-72s, Russia Today, etc.  Its future needs to be more than isolation for marginal goals.  It could very well claim a spot in the sun if only it was a member of the global community, rather than expecting the world to revolve around it.
 
 
As much as I joke about it, it's actually something that makes me more than a little mad.  There's plenty of NATO countries that underwrite their own social welfare and discretionary spending using money that has been promised to collective defense, who will then turn around and expect 24-7 on call military support at all echelons because they're scared/need to go beat up former colonies.  
 
If the defense burden was better shared, perhaps the US could get away with a smaller military, and more schools, public works, etc.  But as the case is, most of NATO will sit around looking down their noses at American militarism while fully expecting American dollars to replace withheld Euros, American boots to replace military forces downsized to appease short sighted populaces, and American blood to be shed for their freedom and liberty all over again.
 
The point of NATO was to keep Europe collectively safe.  Not have America ensure the security of Western Europe, and shoulder the defense burden for the free world.