if they sit there and just send out strongly worded letters, we should do nothing.
i hope im clear in saying that my personal opinion throughout all of this is to go hard in the paint WITH our allies. it doesnt need to be all of them. but if the EU wont protect their own region of the world, im not interesting in the US carrying them. im always down with leading from the front. im not down with doing things solo dolo.
This is my sentiment exactly. We are a member of NATO. As such every part of the alliance must work together if Russia is ever expected to take NATO seriously. That's why they must give support and be partners in this. The European nations are facing a much more immediate threat. If they aren't willing to be active partners, I'm not for going it alone.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
It should not be lost on anyone that Putin made a nuclear threat against the west last night in his declaration of war. That, alongside a FULL SCALE invasion of Ukraine that started a full 5 seconds after his speech ended. If he takes the entire country of Ukraine, I don't think the UN or world allies will allow it to stand. Talking heads late last night were saying Russia has a history of taking territory and not being able to hold it long term. They said this as if they were contemplating how the world will look with a long term occupation of Ukraine. But after WWII and the similarities here, I can't see the world allowing this to stand. I just can't see it. But I never thought I would see us abandon allies (Kurds) in the field, or leave Afghanistan like we did either. So, I won't be surprised regardless of the response. Nobody I know wants to start WW3, but I'm not sure Putin is leaving any wiggle room here.
yea its tough. we gotta remember though: we cant allow Putin to just threaten nuclear war every time he does something. cause then where does it stop? do we have to fall back every time he threatens to drop a nuke? that gives him justification to do whatever he wants, and we just have to accept it?
people need to realize this: he's not stopping at ukraine if he can help it. if we allow him to keep going, he will absolutely keep going. what message are we sending each other if we allow one dude to threaten nukes to get everything he wants?
again, whats the point of NATO if we just fold to one dude? ___________
Originally Posted by superbowldogg
Originally Posted by Swish
You said: your arguments are all over the place. we didn't stay out of both WW initially to build up production.
what I really said: "A main reason we were successful with WW1/2 was that we stayed out of it and gave our manufacturers a chance to build up production"
Originally Posted by Swish
You said: we still INCREASED the actual military budget every year
What I really said: "we are at a very low spend point vs our GDP."
Originally Posted by Swish
You said: and again, war games. do you not understand the difference between war games and real life experience?
- yes. I do. I also understand the value of practice.
War Games are real military exercises carried out to test or improve tactical expertise. They use real munitions amo etc and how they would communicate with each other etc not... a "call of duty" (your words) video games
Originally Posted by Swish
You said: you getting so caught up in numbers and quantity without realizing that we have tech that can destroy whole bases without putting a single american troop in harms way.
Do you realize that Russia just did this to Ukraine right without a single Russian boot on the ground right in Ukraine?
Originally Posted by Swish
You said: your arguments are all over the place.
Try reading what I wrote. My comments have been the same. You are attempting to twist/change my words and that is making you feel like I am all over the place. The reality is that you are all over the place.
so im trying to be nice here, and i reread the original post and my response.
and everything i responded to you with is spot on. once again, you provided stats with no context. you mention war games with no context. by the way, russia has BOOTS ON GROUND in ukraine.
so this is my problem with you, SBD. you don't provide any context to your post, and THEN on top of that you're blatantly wrong on other things.
seriously, how on earth could you just make that statement while the world just watched the russian military roll up in ukrainian territory and bomb other spots? are we paying attention to the same event right now? those russian tanks up in ukraine right now, those must belong to iran or china, right? those aren't Russians. its a deep state plot, right?
have you not noticed that im responding to everyone's post normally because they ask really good question and make good observations? you havent bothered looking at your own post and wondering why you're the only one i get this annoyed with in this thread?
i swear our interactions went from cool as hell to just a crapshow. bro, im being so honest when i say that i can make your own arguments better than you, even if they're still wrong.
you asked before why is it that i post like this toward you. its because i expected a lot better.
but thats my biggest flaw as a human being. im constantly expecting better out of people despite evidence stating otherwise. my bad bro, it wont happen again on this board.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
He loves to point at money spent per GDP. He doesn't want to talk about how we spend more on our military than the next ten top military spending nations on the planet. He doesn't want to talk about how year after year our military budget has increased. Reality can be blurred if you pick a single point to amplify while ignoring all others.
dawglover 05 is spot on. We spend enough, and even far too much money on military spending. The reason we don't see the proper return on the investment is due to the waste in the process of spending it. Rather than address the real problem they advocate we just keep throwing more money into a broken system like that's going to fix it. It's not.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
California already did that. They couldn't keep him away from the housekeeper. Not saying that means anything these days. I mean he could be like every other politician and deny it. But in his case there's that pesky DNA.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
if they sit there and just send out strongly worded letters, we should do nothing.
i hope im clear in saying that my personal opinion throughout all of this is to go hard in the paint WITH our allies. it doesnt need to be all of them. but if the EU wont protect their own region of the world, im not interesting in the US carrying them. im always down with leading from the front. im not down with doing things solo dolo.
This is my sentiment exactly. We are a member of NATO. As such every part of the alliance must work together if Russia is ever expected to take NATO seriously. That's why they must give support and be partners in this. The European nations are facing a much more immediate threat. If they aren't willing to be active partners, I'm not for going it alone.
I hate to say it, but this isn't the turn of the century 1900's or the late Victorian era where what happens there doesn't directly impact here. The fact is, with or without the rest of NATO, we have enough vested interest in shutting this down to damn well do it alone. The world, especially OURS, doesn't operate in tiny little isolated neighborhoods any longer.
The biggest reason we would not want to, however, is China and Taiwan. If we get too deeply tied up here, we likely couldn't stop China from taking Taiwan if they really wanted to take it.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
people need to realize this: he's not stopping at ukraine if he can help it. if we allow him to keep going, he will absolutely keep going. what message are we sending each other if we allow one dude to threaten nukes to get everything he wants?
again, whats the point of NATO if we just fold to one dude?
I hope I'm wrong, but I think NATO stopped being the unified force it once was the day the Berlin Wall came down.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
I think the biggest problem on that front is Europe, honestly. I agree with your point that we have the capability to go in there, and some of Putin’s rationale is that he’s banking on the fact we won’t go it alone. But attached to that notion - even more so in my mind - is he’s banking on the continued reluctance of Europe to actually respond with strength. It feels like Neville Chamberlain is running every NATO country over there lately.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
Well, IMHO, it's time to justify all the MIC spending. This can't stand. I don't want WW3 any more than the next man. But it's obvious that Putin is backing us into a corner with these actions. We either stand now, or we lose what's left of our credibility and Superpower status. What good is a Superpower that can't help its allies against a bully on the world stage? And I have no idea why we would need a Reagan at this point. I have not seen a conservative even address the misinformation or Putin loving rhetoric on the right… why the hell would we want one of them leading? I don't know that we have a single political leader in this country that is up to the task. Hopefully our Military has it together and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have GOOD options for Biden. Who, other than Mayor Pete, even has military experience in this admin? People talking Trump… We could use somebody crazy enough to scare Putin, but that is definitely not Trump. So, I think Biden is our best bet, and that ish is scary af.
Yes, it does... and, like I mentioned earlier, without permission from member countries, we cannot use their airspace to launch attacks. This negates any air superiority forces we have in ground bases in europe and relegates our ability to respond to incursions over the Black Sea or the Baltic Sea. We have a carrier right now within range of the Black Sea, but their complement of aircraft likely isn't close enough to being able to negate the entire Russian air force, so at first, we're limited to cruise missiles unless/until we get another carrier or four in the area. When we built up our forces for Desert Storm, we had SIX carriers on station for Kick-Off. We'd likely need the same number if we can't get use of those aircraft in European bases.
Going through the Baltic Sea route means a LOOOONG flight through Russian airspace to get to anything in Ukraine. We *NEED* Poland's buy-in, and/or Czech/Slovakia. Ideally, if we could get a land base in Turkey, then we're golden. We could cross the Black Sea at-will and pound his forces into the dirt.
So, even with Germany's Ok, we still really need other nations just to make it functional..... and we need more carriers there.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
I don't disagree that it will impact us. I'm just tired of us playing world police. My threshold for funding everything that impacts so many others is has reached its boiling point. Western Europe faces the strong possibility that they may be next on Putin's hit list. That's a far more immediate threat than anything we face from Russia. I'm not a "peace love dope" kind of person. Yet at the same time I'm not for winging it on our own half a world away.
One of the main reasons our military is not nearly as strong as it should be is that we have been carrying the weight of foreign wars over the past 20 plus years. We've spent trillions of dollars over the past 20 years. We've been bogged down in war and in one of the two cases it had nothing to do with 9/11 or fighting terrorism. We are depleted because of war, not a lack in spending. Russia is fully aware of this.
If we were going to go it alone in wars involving Europe there was no need for NATO. I'm all for pulling our weight if everyone else pulls theirs. Otherwise it's nothing but military welfare for nations that do not qualify for the benefits.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
President Joe Biden has been presented with a menu of options for the U.S. to carry out massive cyberattacks designed to disrupt Russia’s ability to sustain its military operations in Ukraine, four people familiar with the deliberations tell NBC News.
Two U.S. intelligence officials, one Western intelligence official and another person briefed on the matter say no final decisions have been made, but they say U.S. intelligence and military cyber warriors are proposing the use of American cyberweapons on a scale never before contemplated. Among the options: disrupting internet connectivity across Russia, shutting off electric power, and tampering with railroad switches to hamper Russia’s ability to resupply its forces, three of the sources said.
“You could do everything from slow the trains down to have them fall off the tracks,” one person briefed on the matter said.
The sources said the options presented include pre-emptive responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, irrespective of whether Russian launches its own cyberattacks on the U.S. in retaliation for sanctions. They said most of the potential cyberattacks under consideration are designed to disrupt but not destroy, and therefore fall short of an act of war by the United States against Russia. They say the idea is to harm networks, not people. Officials are debating the legal authorities under which the attacks would take place — whether they would be covert action or clandestine military activity. Either way, the U.S. would not publicly acknowledge carrying out the operations, the sources say. U.S. Cyber Command, the National Security Agency, the CIA and other agencies would have a role to play in the operations, the sources said.
“Our response will be harsh and measured, but not so severe as to encourage Putin to take more drastic steps,” one U.S. official said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
What are the options now that Russia has attacked Ukraine? The person briefed on the matter said there was a significant divide within the U.S. government, with one camp fearful of escalating and another urging a strong cyber response.
Any use of cyberweapons to retaliate for the Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a turning point for U.S. cyber operations, which have largely been focused on intelligence gathering, information operations and targeted strikes, many of them for counterterrorism purposes. The most significant use of American cyber capability is believed to be the Stuxnet attack on the Iranian nuclear program from 2007 to 2010, which used computer malware to cause massive physical damage.
But the U.S. has been laying the groundwork for years for possible cyber operations against Russia, China and other adversaries, experts say. Those countries have done the same on American infrastructure networks.
“Cyberweapons are going to be used in a way we haven’t used other weapons,” said James Lewis, a cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It gives us options we didn’t have before.”
Some experts say the risk of escalation is high.
“The last thing we want to see is a cyber tit for tat between the U.S. and Russia to see who can destroy one another’s critical infrastructure,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, a cybersecurity expert at the Silverado Policy Accelerator. “I think it is horribly escalatory, can have devastating impacts to our security, and could drag us into a war.”
Cyber expert John Cofrancesco said a “digital 9/11 … is unlikely,” but that the Russians would likely “make very strategic attacks against parts of our infrastructure that impact everyday Americans,” like driving up the price of gas. “This is standard Russian operating procedure.”
“We have to start behaving as though cyberweapons are in fact weapons,” said Cofrancesco, who is vice president for government at Fortress Information Security. “They can bring the attack home and we need to be prepared for that.”
U.S. cyber options, a Western intelligence official said, “will be guided by ethics and proportionality of response, bearing in mind the likelihood of any collateral damage, especially civilian. The U.S. is not at war with Russia.”
I don't disagree that it will impact us. I'm just tired of us playing world police. My threshold for funding everything that impacts so many others is has reached its boiling point. Western Europe faces the strong possibility that they may be next on Putin's hit list. That's a far more immediate threat than anything we face from Russia. I'm not a "peace love dope" kind of person. Yet at the same time I'm not for winging it on our own half a world away.
One of the main reasons our military is not nearly as strong as it should be is that we have been carrying the weight of foreign wars over the past 20 plus years. We've spent trillions of dollars over the past 20 years. We've been bogged down in war and in one of the two cases it had nothing to do with 9/11 or fighting terrorism. We are depleted because of war, not a lack in spending. Russia is fully aware of this.
If we were going to go it alone in wars involving Europe there was no need for NATO. I'm all for pulling our weight if everyone else pulls theirs. Otherwise it's nothing but military welfare for nations that do not qualify for the benefits.
The USSR fell after it's 20 year war with Afghanistan. Maybe on the heels of Trumpian divides and our own shellacking in Afghanistan, Putin thinks we will either lay down or fail as a country. He has us backed into a horrible corner with this, that's all I know.
I don't disagree that it will impact us. I'm just tired of us playing world police. My threshold for funding everything that impacts so many others is has reached its boiling point. Western Europe faces the strong possibility that they may be next on Putin's hit list. That's a far more immediate threat than anything we face from Russia. I'm not a "peace love dope" kind of person. Yet at the same time I'm not for winging it on our own half a world away.
One of the main reasons our military is not nearly as strong as it should be is that we have been carrying the weight of foreign wars over the past 20 plus years. We've spent trillions of dollars over the past 20 years. We've been bogged down in war and in one of the two cases it had nothing to do with 9/11 or fighting terrorism. We are depleted because of war, not a lack in spending. Russia is fully aware of this.
If we were going to go it alone in wars involving Europe there was no need for NATO. I'm all for pulling our weight if everyone else pulls theirs. Otherwise it's nothing but military welfare for nations that do not qualify for the benefits.
There's a fine line between calling it "World Police" and realizing that we need to take care of our own interests. It's the entire reason we have maintained the military we have for so long. It's the entire reason we maintain the greatest Navy the entire history of the world has even seen. Our interests are fully and completely global in every sense of the word. We either play "world police" and protect our interests, or we don't and allow another nation to insert itself into our interests which then has an increasingly negative impact on us.
In street terms: you protect your turf or you're getting kicked off the block.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
I agree we need to hit them with the hardest sanctions possible, BUT that can not be the sum total of our response. Hopefully cyberattacks can take him out, but Putin is not going to be deterred by sanctions alone.
President Biden and other world leaders should take notice of the commitment this lady made. I will laugh my ass off if Putin gets overthrown for this.
Our response needs to be a good bit more than just cyber attacks. They're attacking over their own border; trains aren't a big deal. They're coming in trucks, armored cars, and tanks. You aren't derailing those. Most likely, anything you do will merely impact the Russian people and not the forces doing the attacking.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
I agree we need to hit them with the hardest sanctions possible, BUT that can not be the sum total of our response. Hopefully cyberattacks can take him out, but Putin is not going to be deterred by sanctions alone.
If this is all we do, he is Neville Chamberlain.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
Ukraine isn't even a member of NATO so I had no ideas Ukraine was "our turf". Under the guidelines of what you seem to be suggesting, we would be going to war to protect every nation on the globe that we had any self interest in. That's actually most of the globe. To me that's the very definition of world police. I believe the moment when and if Putin tries this with any NATO nation we are obligated and should step up on a military basis. If NATO as a body decides to intervene militarily I would support joining them in that effort. That isn't the case here.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Not a huge fan of the address Biden just gave. I think we need to look stronger and more resolved. I could have missed details, but I think it will fall flat in Putin’s mind.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
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