The Fez
Analog Millennial
That's a damn fine analogy! I'm no fan of either. But now I can't help but wonder if Putin has or will send Trump a Valentine's Day card saying, "I choo choo choose you!"
F/A-18E v. Su-22
- Thread starter tomokc
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Lawman
Well-Known Member
Amongst others....
[quote uid=7631 name="Itchy" post=2669809]Looking like possibly they had plenty of advance warning on this. "Look out, I'm waving my unit in your face in 4 hours!"<br /><br />This was more about optics than anything else if that's the case.[/QUOTE]<br /><br />Bingo. We told the Russians in advance, knowing full well they would in turn tell the Syrians so that any high-value target could be moved out of harm's way.<br /><br />Anyone who at this point believes we're going to do <u><i>anything</i></u> that the Russians don't like or approve is kidding himself. This was a joint Russian/American effort to temporarily boost a weak president with dismal approval ratings. So, we expended $49 million ($832,000 in today's dollars x 59 cruise missiles) to blow up some easily and cheaply replaced infrastructure, and it was all for show.
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Putin has spent his entire life in a profession of manipulation and reading people without giving away anything that wasn't calculated.
I was amazed at the arrogance of the Kelly interview. I mean what the heck did she think she would accomplish. She was questioning a guy who has literally spent training time being tortured while having to dodge giving away information. That's like a brand new detective trying to question/interview a Hannibal Lecter type character. They aren't even in the same sport much less the same league.
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bunk22
Well-Known Member
Sorry, I meant 91, not 03.. you are right. That was Spiecher.
Lawman
Well-Known Member
The one thing Putin cares about is a warm water port on the Med side of the Bosporus.
I honestly think Assad's days are numbered even in Putin's mind. Probably offer him up as a sacrificial lamb once things settle and new more agreeable leadership can be found.
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SeanD
Well-Known Member
True. This is a major opportunity for him. I still think we are going to get into a skirmish with Russia any day now. Today they said any US airplane is now a target.
BigZ
Well-Known Member
The division on that map hasn't changed much over the past two and a half decades of Ukraine's existence.
But that's not important since it doesn't support the agenda on hand.
That's all I'm saying
A
Adler
Guest
The division on that map hasn't changed much over the past two and a half decades of Ukraine's existence.
But that's not important since it doesn't support the agenda on hand.
That's all I'm saying
That's why I liked his post. I don't agree with the point he was making, just that the maps accurately represent what I've came across in the area. It's pretty interesting being in western Ukraine and everyone is speaking Russian.
My pillow smells like tuna!
NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
Did your mom sleep over? Boom!
One of the problems with this situation is what is the US end game? Are we fighting ISIS, or are we fighting the Syria government forces? Knocking down one of the Syria government jets gives us the impression to some of being the ad hoc ISIS Air force, doing their job for them.
The Fez
Analog Millennial
Aside from "annihilate ISIS", which is about as specific as our mission in Afghanistan, we don't have one. What's worse is that we're only one "I felt threatened" away from a Coalition shoot down of a Russian-flagged jet, or vice versa.
What's worse is that this enemy of my enemy of my enemy of my enemy is my friend for right now has become normal. Nobody knows who is really in their camp.
Fred Thompson's line from "The Hunt for Red October", I know YOU know the one, keeps running through my head.
Cool! As long as she made you a sandwich afterwards!
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
Having spent a fair bit of time in the Middle East, I can honestly say we picked the wrong side in Syria and continue our Middle Eastern policy of creating failed states.
My memories of Syria - the safest place in the Middle East where the Assad's have protected the Christian minority for fifty years as well as allowing them to achieve prominent positions in government and the military. For decades, the Assad's explained that the demographics of Syria would make a civil war likely under weak rule. They were right.
The United States has blood on its hands. We destabilized the Assad regime by encouraging Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states to fund and arm Sunni anti-Assad groups. Now, we find ourselves allies with ISIS when they point their guns one way, enemies with ISIS when they point them the other way.
I never thought I would see the day where Russia and Iran own the moral high ground while we are part-time allies with ISIS.
What motivated us to destroy another country? Assad's enemies, much like Gaddafi's enemies, only had to utter the word "democracy" for us to get all school-girl giddy. Hasn't anybody seen a pattern here? Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and now Syria.
What about chemical weapons? They are evil right? Their use makes Assad evil, right? Hasn't everybody signed treaties agreeing not to use them? Well, when the enemy is at your doorstep shouldn't you be justified to use any weapon at your disposal? Let's remember, the post WWI bans on gas warfare weren't because they were especially lethal or couldn't discriminate between combatants and civilians, they were simply viewed as impolite and ungentlemanly as soldiers were thought to deserve more attractive deaths.
This idea of innocent civilians is a rather recent concept. If your enemies find aid and comfort among their supporters, those supporters are legitimate targets ... historically. At some point, politicians thought that preventing collateral damage was more important than defeating our enemies.
A good case could certainly be made for eliminating the Assad regime .... forty years ago when they were a real threat. In this decade, about the worse thing we can say about Assad is that he hasn't welcomed such democratic institutions as the Electoral College or allowed his domestic rivals the right to bear arms.
I thought we had elected a Lindbergh isolationist, but it appears to simply be a case of the parting on the left now parting on the right. The consequence, in the words of Pete Townshend, "we're all wasted".
My memories of Syria - the safest place in the Middle East where the Assad's have protected the Christian minority for fifty years as well as allowing them to achieve prominent positions in government and the military. For decades, the Assad's explained that the demographics of Syria would make a civil war likely under weak rule. They were right.
The United States has blood on its hands. We destabilized the Assad regime by encouraging Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states to fund and arm Sunni anti-Assad groups. Now, we find ourselves allies with ISIS when they point their guns one way, enemies with ISIS when they point them the other way.
I never thought I would see the day where Russia and Iran own the moral high ground while we are part-time allies with ISIS.
What motivated us to destroy another country? Assad's enemies, much like Gaddafi's enemies, only had to utter the word "democracy" for us to get all school-girl giddy. Hasn't anybody seen a pattern here? Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and now Syria.
What about chemical weapons? They are evil right? Their use makes Assad evil, right? Hasn't everybody signed treaties agreeing not to use them? Well, when the enemy is at your doorstep shouldn't you be justified to use any weapon at your disposal? Let's remember, the post WWI bans on gas warfare weren't because they were especially lethal or couldn't discriminate between combatants and civilians, they were simply viewed as impolite and ungentlemanly as soldiers were thought to deserve more attractive deaths.
This idea of innocent civilians is a rather recent concept. If your enemies find aid and comfort among their supporters, those supporters are legitimate targets ... historically. At some point, politicians thought that preventing collateral damage was more important than defeating our enemies.
A good case could certainly be made for eliminating the Assad regime .... forty years ago when they were a real threat. In this decade, about the worse thing we can say about Assad is that he hasn't welcomed such democratic institutions as the Electoral College or allowed his domestic rivals the right to bear arms.
I thought we had elected a Lindbergh isolationist, but it appears to simply be a case of the parting on the left now parting on the right. The consequence, in the words of Pete Townshend, "we're all wasted".
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If you look at what the Russian defense ministry actually said: "...Any aircraft, including planes and drones of the international coalition, detected in the operations areas west of the Euphrates River by Russian air forces, will be followed by Russian ground-based air defense and air defense aircraft as air targets..
Notice that the statement does not say "....will be shot down"; only "will be followed". Im pretty sure the ambiguous wording is intentional, as Im sure they know the escalation such an action would cause, unless there was some very solid reason for doing so, such as an allied aircraft attacking Russian forces directly.
thevideographer
Well-Known Member
We're in far too deep to just do a 180 on it now.
During Desert Storm, Syria/Assad was an ally of ours. Assad's forces helped us dislodge Iraq forces from Kuwait City, and provided the bulk of troops of the arab coalition. Syria was an emergncy divert for our planes if needed. And this was after only 6 or so years prior, we were undertaking airstrikes on Syrian positions in Lebanon, losing 2 aircraft and having one pilot killed and his NFO/BN as a POW. Even Japan was giving Assas a fair amount of financial assistance.
We never seem to learn from our own past foreign policy failures.
We certainly had no issue with innocent civilians in Schweinfurt or similar places. Now one civilian as collateral damage is one too many. We screwed ourselves during Desert Storm, with all the press briefings we gave going on and on about smart weapons such as LGBs, and using neat terms like "surgical" and "precise" and giving the impression that war is just a video game, where only the bad guys die and good people now dont have to get hurt. Now we are paying for that.
BigZ
Well-Known Member
I can guess a couple of things from what they said.
Highlighted what pissed them off the most
Also, "will be tracked as targets" isn't an ambiguous threat, they are saying that anything west of Euphrates will be tracked as a target - as opposed to a random traffic - implying finger on the trigger and "think about what you gonna do before you do it".
We need some evil ugly aliens or some chit. World would be a better place without major powers practicing comparative phallometry.