Archive for the ‘war’ Category

How About we establish a Few “No Loot Zones” & “No shoot zones” in the US before we move to No Fly Zones elsewhere?

Posted: March 7, 2022 by datechguy in war
Tags: , , ,

Pat Wheeler: Son, l asked you over here because the Sheriff’s a friend of mine. He’s got trouble. He can use a good man.

Colorado Ryan: To go against the Burdettes, Sheriff?

Sheriff Chance: That’s right.

Pat Wheeler: I told him you were one of the best.

Colorado Ryan: I’ll tell you what I’m a lot better at, Mr. Wheeler. That’s minding my own business. No offense, Sheriff.

Sheriff Chance: No offense.

Pat Wheeler: I never expected that.

Sheriff Chance: He showed good sense.

Rio Bravo 1959

There has been a lot of talk about a No Fly Zone in Ukraine enforced by NATO. The president of Ukraine lobbied congress for such a think and the Ukrainians have been doing their best to shame the west into this kind of direct confrontation with Russia.

Now the Ukrainians are in the process of being invaded and that being the case I have no problem with them doing all they can to get allies in the fight, in fact they would not be doing their job if they didn’t, but something occurred to me as the echoing gong of intervention has been going out.

Where are the calls for US Intervention in Chicago and Baltimore?

We have people being shot there on a regular basis and innocent bystanders being killed and wounded including children, yet we don’t have anyone talking about sending forces to control the violence there nor are there outcries for intervention in Chicago or people putting the Chicago or Baltimore city flags or seals on their twitter feed.

War is a messy thing. There is shooting, there is violence. And when civil authority breaks down you can see arson, you can see looting which begs the question.

Where are the calls for US intervention in San Francisco, or Portland or even New York City?

We’ve had wholesale arson, we’ve seen people take over streets and threaten others, we’ve seen looting and theft with impunity, yet the very suggestion that Americans should be sent to a part of America to protect Americans from these things in any of these cities is practically beyond the pale and it seems odd to me that so many Americans are all gung ho about getting involved in Ukraine but don’t seem to give a damn about what is going on here, not just ordinary crime which you might say is a local matter but crime and violence of a type that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.

Am I saying that what Putin has done isn’t wrong, not at all. Putin should turn his armies around, head back to Russia and stay there.

But we’re not Poland, or Finland or the Baltic states, all of who have a history with Russia and have a legitimate worry about an aggressive Russia in their neighborhood and might decide it’s in their interest to get deeply involved . I submit and suggest it would show a lot of good sense to think long and hard before we go and get ourselves deeply involved in a war in eastern Europe that doesn’t involve a NATO ally that’s we’re committed to defend.

“I Did that” Ukraine War Variant

Posted: March 6, 2022 by datechguy in war
Tags: , , ,

Posted without comment

OK Kids Who Wants to Be Drafted First?

Posted: March 5, 2022 by datechguy in war

We are being bombarded with messages to support Ukraine as they defend themselves from a Russian invention. We’re seeing as I noted collectives punishment put on Russians, people censored for supporting Russia and polls showing Americans are supporting arming Ukraine across the board.

Ukraine’s president will be speaking the the US senate by Zoom to lobby for more aid, a no fly zone and NATO membership. All of this is of course his prerogative and makes a whole lot of sense. If my country was being attacked I’d be going all out to get support from anyone and everyone who will listen and might give help.

But let’s get down to reality, while Ukraine is putting up a good fight the only way to beat a mobilized army is with another mobilized army. Ukrainians might be able to conduct a pretty solid patrician war if it falls and it might be able to hold out until the cost for Putin to achieve his war objectives is too high to keep fighting but without troops the chances of the Ukraine actually defeating Russia are below slim.

And that brings us to the headline above.

There is one indisputable fact concerning American war-making since the mid 70’s. It’s done by an increasingly smaller portion of our population. The all volunteer army means that in some areas, particularly liberal ones you are not going to find a whole lot of people who know soldiers or military families. That slice of our population that chooses to be boots on the ground has become i smaller and furthermore this administration and the Obama administration before it has fought a cultural war against those who choose to serve.

So what happens when you have a decreasing base of soldiers and the pressure on your country increases for military action?

Two words: A Draft!

All of these moves seem practically designed to foster a new draft on the youth of America The problem is that unlike the days of World War 2 and Korea parents generally don’t have all that <a href="http://<a href='https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate'>Sourcemany kids to draft:

Source http://www.Macrotrends.net

Conscription was not all that popular when the average woman (and I’m talking actual women not mentally ill folks who think they are) was having three or more children when parents are having one, maybe two even less and that was before people started making pitches for us to go save Ukraine from Russia.

What’s even funnier is the prospect of drafting teen and twenty somethings who are being taught to need safe spaces from microaggressions. It’s one thing for such youth trained in narcissism and virtue signaling to put a virtue signaling Ukrainian flag on their social media accounts. It’s quite another to teach such snowflakes to fight.

Yet all the signs and all the moves of the left keep pointing in this direction.

So before you ask me why I don’t have a Ukrainian flag or my twitter or why I’m not calling for a no-fly zone or NATO membership for Ukraine let me ask one simple question.

Who’s ready to sign up to fight?

I’m VERY iffy About the Use of Guilt By Association Business to Counter Russia

Posted: March 4, 2022 by datechguy in war
Tags: , ,

Let’s stipulate two things at the start of this post:

It is my opinion, even after hearing Lee Stranahan case for it, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is wrong and they should pull out of the country at once.

It is my opinion that the sudden unity (which frankly I find suspicious but that’s a post for another day) in the world in punishing ordinary Russians in general and wealthy Russians in particular, is, short of actual military intervention, the most likely method to succeed in at the very worst bringing Putin to the table and at best causing him to rethink the invasion.

Nevertheless, I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit for a couple of reasons:

It sets a terrible precedent or rather revives one:

The idea that any group of people can be targeted collectively for actions (real or imagined) that are disliked by either leaders or prominent leaders of such a group is an easy way to get abuses. Three examples instantly come to mind. During the settlement of North America it was not uncommon for settlers who had been raided or various tribes for that matter) , to retaliate with little discrimination against the surrounding Indian Tribes, or other white settlers. This cycle of collective guilt was used to justify all kinds of violence not to mention ignoring various treaties protecting tribal rights. In Germany’s Jews were collectively blamed for the nations defeat in world war 1 and the grief afterwards (what the basis for that claim was still alludes me) but the basis for that claim directly took us to the death camps, in fact even today many Arab nations use collective guilt against Jews for any action by the state of Israel that they dislike or even actions taken decades ago. Look at the Jim Crow south and you’ll see this in play. (In fact CRT is the same thing on steroids’ not just guilt by association for people actions but for people’s actions centuries ago) This type of thing doesn’t end well.

Russia is not as “free” as it pretends

You could make the case that the people of the Confederacy could be held responsible for their acts because their representatives were freely elected and you could make the case that the white population of South Africa could be held responsible for their abuses as they elected the leaders who maintained apartheid but Russia is a different matter:

Russia’s parliamentary elections in less than two weeks’ time are shaping up to be the least free since Vladimir Putin came to power 21 years ago, warn opposition leaders and independent election observers.

The details are not a big surprise to anyone who pays attention:

Nonetheless few Putin opponents doubt United Russia will win the elections handsomely, thanks to ballot-rigging, the silencing of Putin critics, the barring of independent candidates, voter intimidation and cash handouts to voters.

“The thinly veiled bribery of voters, all sorts of manipulations, mobilizing administrative [resources] and persecution of the critics of the regime — these are the election tactics of Putin and his party in 2021,” according to Fyodor Krashennikov, an opposition political commentator.

Krashennikov recently left Russia for Europe, joining an exodus of opposition figures who say they’re being chased out by a crackdown on dissent, which has seen dozens of independent media outlets and civic groups forced to shut after being designated “foreign agents” or extremist organizations in a ramping up of repression up ahead of the elections.

Given that Putin is Ex KGB none of this is a big surprise, but this is why the wave of making not the Russian Nation but making individual Russians pariahs who are not connected to the government, that’s just wrong.

And don’t think the precedent of confiscating of their private propriety will end with them, just as the freezing of donors to the Truckers bank accounts in Canada will be the end of it.

I understand the desire to be seen to do something but there seems to be a virtue signaling race (like banning Russian Cats from cat shows, yes you’re reading that right) to be seen to do so and as I’ve already said, doing something, particularly the wrong thing that creates a bad precedent for the sake of doing or being seen to do something is a lot worse than doing nothing.

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