billbindc

Grant was at Shiloh because Halleck ordered him there.

Have to quibble: Grant did fight at the start of the war and he did not fight at all like Lee. He also had a very clear sense of the strategic goals of his moves right from the beginning. I agree that Lee made the calculation you did above but he was very muddy on how to get there.

Exactly. And if Zelensky wasn't absolutely sure that Zaluzhny believed in the direction they've chosen then it was incumbent on him to make a change. Systemic success starts first with belief.

Prepare yourselves for a lot of coverage of this event that will resemble the "Just send <insert deus ex machina weapons system here> and we will win the war!!!!!" takes. There is far too much emphasis on individuals, isolated policies in the way in which the media understands this war. A new direction is clearly needed and Zaluzhny is out. That's how systems work. https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-dismisses-commander-in-chief-zaluzhnyi/

I agree with this. It's a "what the **** are you going to do about it" flex. That said, Putin is clearly being very careful about challenges to his rule.

Ah...sociopathy of trolling.

I agree to a large extent but to do it well also requires a unified and clear political strategy to minimize the friction it's going to cause. Zaluzhny needed to stay out of that aspect of it...and he clearly didn't.

When talking about Zaluzhny and Zelensky, it's important to take note of the mobilization issue: It's pretty clear that the general with his ask of 500,000 men has little understanding of the political problems such a step could cause. That's why you don't let generals over rule politicians.

You mean you haven't been already?

One more caveat: A big difference in American politics now from even 7 years ago is that there is a lot of actual intimidation going on on the Republican side. GOP pols get swatted (i.e. have bogus hostage/shooting calls made to police with their address), their kids get targeted online, they deal with waves of threatening emails, calls and texts if they publicly break with Trump. Nikki Haley was swatted in December at her home and just applied for Secret Service protection because of the unrelenting and violent comms she gets. When 20 GOP Senators who would have killed for this border bill in 2015 run cowering from it, it's not because they suddenly had a change of heart. They were scared off it for both political and personal reasons. One of America's parties has entered a very dark phase and it's not going to get better unless they lose and keep losing.

Agree with pretty much all of the above except for the both sides aspect of it. Partisan extremism has affected the GOP far more than Democrats. Pew has the data: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/

The next round in the Senate will be a standalone Ukraine bill for $60 billion. That will almost certainly pass the Senate. The mask will fully come off when Johnson tries to stymie it at every turn. That might be just a bit too far for enough GOP House members.

Sure. But it's a very good thing this is being said by Kofman. Whatever his flaws, he's listened to in DC.

This, all damn day: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2024.2309068

Tito obviously looms large in this discussion but it was a lot more than Tito. Yugoslavia as a state was most viable when it was held together by the facts on the ground of the Cold War that surrounded it. When the USSR began to fail, the coherence of the state began to blur just as the generation that had created it left the political scene.

Much longer than 40 in many cases. Loyd's "My War Gone By I Miss It So" is absolutely chilling and unfortunately more relevant by the day. Loyd, btw, is the great grand son of Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart.

Reading Anthony Loyd at this exact moment: "What defined the two groups? Race? They were the same race. Culture? They were all Tito-era children. Religion? No man present had the first clue about the tenets of his own faith, be it Orthodox or Islam. They were southern Slav brothers, pitting in conflict by the rising phoenix of long dead banners raised by men whose only wish was power, vlast, and in so doing they created a self perpetuating cycle of fear and death that grew in Bosnia, feeding of its own evil like a malignant tumour." A lot of that going around these days.

Zaluzhny also talked about a huge mobilization, inter alia that I can tell you was used as fodder in DC to question the Ukrainian war effort. It is not that he's wrong...it's that he's contradicting the civilian leadership in a public way that is complicating their job in getting American aid. That's not what his job is and he should be vetting all of his statements through Zelenksy, period and end of story.

How it passes the Senate will matter. If it gets significantly over 60, the chances of a discharge petition forcing it the floor of the House go up. It's a rocky road but it very likely passes if it makes to a vote there.

Zaluzhny actually admitted that he didn't deliver when in his Economist interview he called it his own personal mistake that he underestimated Russia's ability to regenerate force and resist the Ukrainian offensive this summer. With the fate of the nation at stake, I think it's pretty clearly Zelensky's role to decide if Zaluzhny should stay on the job and the latter making public statements about what should be done in opposition to the administration he serves isn't making that any easier. What politics there is *should* be in Zelensky's corner. Zaluzhny...like MacArthur as mentioned above...is inserting himself into that arena and will have only himself to blame if that gets him fired. Note: I say all of the above while liking and respecting Zaluzhny but generals don't get to call the shots in the kind of government I want to support.

There are several layers to it. In crude terms, it's that Zalushny has a different vision going forward for how to fight the war that includes, inter alia, very large mobilization and an emphasis on drone warfare. He also feels quite comfortable talking outside the chain of command and in public to attempt to make his vision of the war apply going forward. Zelensky has what could be described as a more political take on the war but really it seems like the biggest issue is that he believes that the civilian primacy over the Ukrainian commander should be complete. It should not be a competition, whatever tensions may exist within the relationship and Zaluzhny has to some degree made it one...even if with pretty good intentions. I tend to agree with Zalushny's assessment in military terms but I think in the long run Zelensky has the right of it. If Ukraine is really going to reject the "Eurasian" model Putin sells than it has to fully buy into elected, civilian control of the security services writ large. My 2 hryvnia.

Banks gone way too soon. Had absolutely stellar opinions on uisce na beatha too.

Add in one further caveat...any society must by definition pick relative winners and losers in resource allocation, rights, etc even in the most benign scenario possible. The politics of that by definition end up in a Butlerian Jihad every time.

I would suggest the Culture novels for a long exegesis on this topic.

Zelensky is not the only important Ukrainian making appeals to a Western audience...