• Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    Somewhere in the Pentagon there surely must be a series of rooms isolated for this war. In them intelligence is gathered, counterparts in Ukraine can be in instant contact, resources from both armies are tracked, tactics are formulated, simulations are run. How do I know this? Because this would be too good of a learning opportunity to pass up.

    And those folks ain’t talking.

        • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          two sentences is hardly a rant and there are plenty of quotes from american officials and armchair generals about how this war is great because it’s degrading “our enemy” without costing american lives.

          • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            I believe that degrading the army of one of the US greatest geopolitical world rivals at the cost of roughly 3% of the DoD budget is money well spent. In that there is no US blood is an added advantage. The Ukrainians are fighting this war for their own purpose, to reject tyrannical rule. That’s something that’s happened for a millennium, including the American revolution.

            The US didn’t impose this war, 100,000 Russians invading did. As France helped the US during the revolution, the US helps Ukraine.

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              I believe that degrading the army of one of the US greatest geopolitical world rivals at the cost of roughly 3% of the DoD budget is money well spent.

              They’re not gonna let you into the club just because you lick the boot leather. I believe the 100.000s of dead ukrainians are more important than some vague US geopolitical goal.

              The Ukrainians are fighting this war for their own purpose, to reject tyrannical rule.

              The ukrainians are forcibly conscripted and banned from leaving their country. They do not want to fight.

              The US didn’t impose this war, 100,000 Russians invading did

              Yeah one day putler just woke up and felt like invading, that’s what happened.

              If you think this is such a good war, go volunteer.

              • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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                1 year ago

                The Ukrainians could stop this war anytime they want, as could Putin.

                Reality is the Russians invaded. They rejected world order.

                • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  The Ukrainians could stop this war anytime they want

                  The Ukrainian government could, the same government that banned every political party that wasn’t sufficiently anti-Russia. And the last time the people got to vote, they elected Zelensky who ran as a peace candidate. So no, the people of Ukraine, the ones being drafted and sent to the front lines, have very little say over whether Ukraine negotiates for peace.

                  • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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                    1 year ago

                    Wait a minute…you expect a country to tolerate those sympathetic with a country.that they’re at war with?

                • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  The Ukrainians could stop this war anytime they want, as could Putin.

                  The ukrainians are being forcibly conscripted and banned from leaving the country. They do not want to fight. The russians have sought peace negotiations several times, NATO-members like the United Kingdom, have come and stopped these negotiations.

                  Reality is the Russians invaded. They rejected world order.

                  Ah yes, one day evil putler woke up and decided to invade, that’s what happened. He rejected our Good Guys Rules Based Order because he’s just such an evil dude.

                  • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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                    1 year ago

                    Geez…the Russians too are drafting folks. Conscription centers in Russia are firebombed. Your BS is kind of thick.

                    The Russians have not sought peace negotiations.

                    No, I think Putin is a murderer, comrade. I think he’s a wanted for war crimes. I think he was so stupid that he thought this would take three days.

            • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              ”This is a US proxy war.”

              ”That’s an uninformed rant!”

              ”This is a US proxy war, and that’s a good thing.”

            • TomBombadil [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.net
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              The Ukrainians are fighting this war for their own purpose, to reject tyrannical rule.

              Yes good thing their escaping tyrannical rule for totally wholesome democratic rule… That bans all opposition parties and bombs their own country for nearly a decade

            • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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              I believe that degrading the army of one of the US greatest geopolitical world rivals at the cost of roughly 3% of the DoD budget is money well spent.

              Which is why so many nations are smelling the blood in the water and casting off their western neocolonial overlords in Africa right now.

              Lmao.

              In that there is no US blood is an added advantage.

              hitler-detector

            • Grimble [he/him,they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              farquaad-point Department of Naval Intelligence

              American revolution was a counterrevolution you dolt. Now go ahead, tell me I “support the British empire” bc you can only think exactly one step ahead.

            • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Who gives a fuck about the money? Hundreds of thousands are dead, and we are close to nuclear annihilation.

              You are enthralled to a demon. Wake up and imagine you were marched to the frontlines.

            • HornyOnMain [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              to reject tyrannical rule. That’s something that’s happened for a millennium, including the American revolution.

              https://readsettlers.org/ch2.html

              long extract from Settlers about the nature of the 1776 revolution

              We need to see the dialectical unity of democracy and oppression in developing settler Amerika. The winning of citizenship rights by poorer settlers or non-Anglo-Saxon Europeans is democratic in form. The enrollment of the white masses into new, mass instruments of repression-such as the formation of the infamous Slave Patrols in Virginia in 1727 — is obviously anti-democratic and reactionary. Yet these opposites in form are, in their essence, united as aspects of creating the new citizenry of Babylon. This is why our relationship to “democratic” struggles among the settlers has not been one of simple unity.

              This was fully proven in practice once again by the 1776 War of Independence, a war in which most of the Indian and Afrikan peoples opposed settler nationhood and the consolidation of Amerika. In fact, the majority of oppressed people gladly allied themselves to the British forces in hopes of crushing the settlers.

              This clash, between an Old European empire and the emerging Euro-Amerikan empire, was inevitable decades before actual fighting came. The decisive point came when British capitalism decided to clip the wings of the new Euro-Amerikan bourgeoisie — they restricted emigration, hampered industry and trade, and pursued a long-range plan to confine the settler population to a controllable strip of territory along the Atlantic seacoast. They proposed, for their own imperial needs, that the infant Amerika be permanently stunted. After all, the European conquest of just the Eastern shores of North America had already produced, by the time of Independence, a population almost one-third as large as that of England and Ireland. They feared that unchecked, the Colonial tail might someday wag the imperial dog (as indeed it has).

              Like Bacon’s Rebellion, the “liberty” that the Amerikan Revolutionists of the 1770’s fought for was in large part the freedom to conquer new Indian lands and profit from the commerce of the slave trade, without any restrictions or limitations. In other words, the bourgeois “freedom” to oppress and exploit others. The successful future of the settler capitalists demanded the scope of independent nationhood.

              But as the first flush of settler enthusiasm faded into the unhappy realization of how grim and bloody this war would be, the settler “sunshine soldiers” faded from the ranks to go home and stay home. Almost one-third of the Continental Army deserted at Valley Forge. So enlistment bribes were widely offered to get recruits. New York State offered new enlistments 400 acres each of Indian land. Virginia offered an enlistment bonus of an Afrikan slave (guaranteed to be not younger than age ten) and 100 acres of Indian land. In South Carolina, Gen. Sumter used a share-the-loot scheme, whereby each settler volunteer would get an Afrikan captured from Tory estates. Even these extraordinarily generous offers failed to spark any sacrificial enthusiasm among the settler masses. (14)

              It was Afrikans who greeted the war with great enthusiasm. But while the settler slavemasters sought “democracy” through wresting their nationhood away from England, their slaves sought liberation by overthrowing Amerika or escaping from it. Far from being either patriotic Amerikan subjects or passively enslaved neutrals, the Afrikan masses threw themselves daringly and passionately into the jaws of war on an unprecedented scale — that is, into their own war, against slave Amerika and for freedom.

              The British, short of troops and laborers, decided to use both the Indian nations and the Afrikan slaves to help bring down the settler rebels. This was nothing unique; the French had extensively used Indian military alliances and the British extensively used Afrikan slave recruits in their 1756-63 war over North America (called “The French & Indian War” in settler history books). But the Euro-Amerikan settlers, sitting on the dynamite of a restive, nationally oppressed Afrikan population, were terrified — and outraged.

              This was the final proof to many settlers of King George III’s evil tyranny. An English gentlewoman traveling in the Colonies wrote that popular settler indignation was so great that it stood to unite rebels and Tories again. (15) Tom Paine, in his revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense, raged against “…that barbarous and hellish power which hath stirred up Indians and Negroes to destroy us.” (16) But oppressed peoples saw this war as a wonderful contradiction to be exploited in the ranks of the European capitalists.

              Lord Dunmore was Royal Governor of Virginia in name, but ruler over so little that he had to reside aboard a British warship anchored offshore. Urgently needing reinforcements for his outnumbered command, on Nov. 5, 1775 he issued a proclamation that any slaves enlisting in his forces would be freed. Sir Henry Clinton, commander of British forces in North America, later issued an even broader offer:

              I do most strictly forbid any Person to sell or claim Right over any Negroe, the property of a Rebel, who may claim refuge in any part of this Army; And I do promise to every Negroe who shall desert the Rebel Standard, full security to follow within these Lines, any Occupation which he shall think proper. (17)

              Could any horn have called more clearly? By the thousands upon thousands, Afrikans struggled to reach British lines. One historian of the Exodus has said: “The British move was countered by the Americans, who exercised closer vigilance over their slaves, removed the able-bodied to interior places far from the scene of the war, and threatened with dire punishment all who sought to join the enemy. To Negroes attempting to flee to the British the alternatives ‘Liberty or Death’ took on an almost literal meaning. Nevertheless, by land and sea they made their way to the British forces.” (18)

              The war was a disruption to Slave Amerika, a chaotic gap in the European capitalist ranks to be hit hard. Afrikans seized the time — not by the tens or hundreds, but by the many thousands. Amerika shook with the tremors of their movement. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were bitter about their personal losses: Thomas Jefferson lost many of his slaves; Virginia’s Governor Benjamin Harrison lost thirty of “my finest slaves”; William Lee lost sixty-five slaves, and said two of his neighbors “lost every slave they had in the world”; South Carolina’s Arthur Middleton lost fifty slaves. (19)

              Afrikans were writing their own “Declaration of Independence” by escaping. Many settler patriots tried to appeal to the British forces to exercise European solidarity and expel the Rebel slaves. George Washington had to denounce his own brother for bringing food to the British troops, in a vain effort to coax them into returning the Washington family slaves. (20) Yes, the settler patriots were definitely upset to see some real freedom get loosed upon the land.

              To this day no one really knows how many slaves freed themselves during the war. Georgia settlers were said to have lost over 10,000 slaves, while the number of Afrikan escaped prisoners in South Carolina and Virginia was thought to total well over 50,000. Many, in the disruption of war, passed themselves off as freemen and relocated in other territories, fled to British Florida and Canada, or took refuge in Maroon communities or with the Indian nations. It has been estimated that 100,000 Afrikan prisoners — some 20% of the slave population — freed themselves during the war.

        • bazovanyi@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Fuck this tankie shit. I knew lemmy was made by tankies, I did not know that majority of people here are also russian shills

      • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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        The US has had its weapons used in conflicts for years. Yes, they do what they’re supposed to do. Not much to learn, really.

        • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          Then why do you think they’re gathering intel? Surely the situation is very different in Ukraine. A weapon system is context dependent, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

          • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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            Intel is a tool which the US has high capability and it takes many forms. I am sure we share this intel with the Ukrainians

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              Who is this we? And why are you so sure? I’m not saying you are some guy working for the government I’m just saying you are making shit up and read too much of OSINT twitter so you feel ‘in the know’. You don’t know what intel is being gathered, if that intel even gets out or not. Like why should the US feel compelled to share with Ukraine? Because they are on the same side? From the few statements they seem more interested in using the war to pay off the MIC similar to Afghanistan and it doesn’t seem like any intel was gained over a 20 year period.

            • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Judging by the number of western vehicles lost to mines in the last few weeks alone they do not perform the same fighting a peer military with access to large amounts of modern equipment vs ill equipped militias fighting an insurgency

                • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  No, but they haven’t faced massive minefields, helicopter gunships, artillery, electronic countermeasures, airstrikes, etc when occupying Iraq or Afghanistan. Fighting guerrillas and fighting a peer army are two entirely different beasts, and we see the proof in more western tanks being lost in 2 months than USA lost in 2 decades in Iraq or Afghanistan

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                    Also, America keeps losing wars to those guerilla fighters let alone an army with actual military doctorine

            • A butter knife works the same when cutting butter or steel. It still isn’t useful for cutting steel. This is what they’re trying to communicate.

              A reaper drone works the same when blowing up random weddings or when flying in airspace with a networked AA system of S300s, S400s, and S500s

              Which is to say we know the underlying physics continues to operate the same but the context changes how useful the equipment is, because a butterknife is made for butter and a Reaper is made for blowing up weddings without an air defense network nearby.

                • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  They had gunships in Afghanistan and US still lost, not sure I see your point here. Not to mention the Taliban didn’t have close to the anti-aircraft capabilities that the Russian military has. AC-130s work fine for bombing defenseless hospitals, but against a force with radar, electronic countermeasures, anti-aircraft missiles, fighter jets, and all the other tools that a modern military has access to? I think the gunships would not be nearly as effective as you think

            • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
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              I do find these comments entertaining. It reinforces my belief that US hubris is leading to it’s decline. Imagine believing your own lies when its literally your country’s existence on the line.

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                … K

                We clearly have fundamental, serious issues – but you’d have to be completely delusional if “actual millitary strength” is something you think the USA lacks and Russia is anyway comparable. They’re in a stalemate with with a small country using 40 year old western equipment.

                • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  The US lost Afghanistan where their enemies had no airsupport and old equipmemt and weren’t being supplied by the global hegemon. They also lost Vietnam which they fought a much smaller less well equipped country.

                • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
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                  So it seems you aren’t aware about the $50 billion of military hardware, training, mercenaries, and aid that NATO have provided Ukraine since 2014. Are you being disingeneous for the sake of winning the argument or are you acting in good faith? I need to know whether I should continue to engage or if you’re just trolling/playing dumb.

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      All those folks in the 50+ age group that grew up with “Russia is enemy #1” are probably cycling through waves of intense work and prolonged orgasm.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the first things considered in strategizing any armed conflict is whether they want Russia and China to know that we have X or are capable of Y. Russia has shown their hand. If they could do more, they would have by now.

      It has also taught NATO that Russia is still in the barbaric tactics mindset. Hospitals, schools, churches, shipping centers - they’re all valid targets. If Russia wants a position, they’ll level the entire town. That certainly changes the plans, of anyone thought they would abode by the Geneva Conventions.

      • rastilin@kbin.social
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        All those folks in the 50+ age group that grew up with “Russia is enemy #1” are probably cycling through waves of intense work and prolonged orgasm.

        The ones that haven’t suddenly decided that Russia is our best friend all of a sudden for some reason that I still can’t figure out. This is even considering that Russia was found to have been paying out bounties on dead American soldiers, or that they had people assassinated in the UK. Certainly it should be a disqualifier that Russia isn’t a true Democracy and had Putin’s political opponents jailed. Two Democracies won’t directly start a conflict against each other, but that doesn’t hold up between Democracies and non-Democracies.

        My hope is that as Russia runs out of money and organization to fund overseas psyops, the sheen will wear off.

        • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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          My hope is that as Russia runs out of money and organization to fund overseas psyops, the sheen will wear off.

          Same, feels like the democracies of the world really got caught with their pants down by authoritarian operatives and their LLMs on social media.

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          Putin will only run out of money once the price of oil nosedives.

          That won’t happen because Saudi Arabia has been squeezing oil output to keep the price high because they need the money for their countries transformation to a horror Show (different discussion required there) and they basically keep squeezing until the US gives them a whole lot of concessions that they don’t want to…

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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          The ones that haven’t suddenly decided that Russia is our best friend all of a sudden for some reason that I still can’t figure out.

          The reason is money. Either they got paid by Putin or they’ve been brainwashed by someone who got paid by Putin.

      • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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        The Russians have less tactics and capabilities than NATO thought. Now it is a matter of how quickly they can be overwhelmed should it come to it. Their big problem is mid level command.

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        It has also taught NATO that Russia is still in the barbaric tactics mindset.

        Oh those backwards Russians, still stuck in the past, where they were just a bunch of barbarian hordes. I assume the West, by contrast, has developed a civilized kind of warfare, as befitting their superior civilized culture? That’s what you’re saying, right?

        The civilized West would never… oh yeah they would and they did, repeatedly, and it was worse actually in e.g. Iraq. So all this “barbarism” shit is just racism with no basis in reality.

        • figaro@lemdro.id
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          Or both sides suck and all war is bad, and no one should attack sovereign countries

          • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
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            Russia is still using barbaric tactics, according to the person I replied to. This implies that barbarism is typical (and backwards) of Russia, like that racist trope about barbaric Mongol hordes. It also implies that someone else (presumably NATO, which they mention) isn’t using barbaric tactics, which is blatantly untrue.

            I don’t understand how what you wrote is a addressing my post? What’s your point?

            • figaro@lemdro.id
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              Has Russia been bombing civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine?

              Please note, I am asking nothing about NATO or America. I agree, the US has committed atrocities in other countries at war. I’m asking specifically if Russia has bombed civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine.

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                So it’s not racist to say Russia is still in a barbaric mindset, because they are bombing apartment buildings in Ukraine? Is that it? Even though the way it was phrased implies that barbarism is typical of Russia and its history, and also falsely implies NATO isn’t barbaric and isn’t doing the same thing, and it’s a well-known racist trope?

                This person’s comment exhibits the common double standard of the good civilized nations vs. the uncivilized primitives bullshit, which is about the oldest racist narrative there is.

                • figaro@lemdro.id
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                  I didn’t say anything about the people. Every Russian person I have met is super nice.

                  Governments though, they suck. Governments bomb apartment buildings full of people. These particular governments are barbaric.

                  I think it is important to acknowledge that both the US government and the Russian government are responsible for terrible atrocities. It is not racist to say that.

    • Grimble [he/him,they/them]@hexbear.net
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      Someone should go bunker-hunting as a ‘lost urbex enthusiast’ and put them on a map. Maybe some backchannel archive in case they go ‘missing’. Once the list/map goes public, thousands of unmissed tech sociopaths turn to pink mist overnight.

    • JoYo@lemmy.ml
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      the whole world is sending people to become veterans so they can return with their experience and become trainers.