Well, here we go red lines crossed Biden gives the go ahead to use long range missiles

originally posted by: yuppa
a reply to: Tolkien

China wouldnt coem at putin in the open. they would meet up in a meeting,and chinese guy would prolly end him.

Like I said, improbable IMHO.

No upside, lots of downside including the fact that most of their advanced jet engines are imported from Russia. Unlikely they would attack their weapons dealer.

Much more likely to attack Taiwan.

And what is Joe Biden doing to try to prevent this ?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Too busy eating ice cream or #ting his pants or smelling some kid....SMDH...

a reply to: Tolkien

Zero probability that China would get involved and make itself a nuclear target. There is no upside for them.

China has quite firmly told Putin that they oppose ANY use of nuclear weapons.
If Russia ever does use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or anyone then it is highly likely that China would join in the almost universal condemnation and any subsequent reprisals be they military or economic.

China has had it's eyes on mineral rich areas of far eastern Russia for quite some time, some of which it considers historically part of China.....and they are certainly no fools.

China has no sense of allegiance to Russia whatsoever.

The US should station tens off thousands of troops and materiel now in Taiwan, to deter a future invasion in the first place

Interesting. You advocate US troops in Taiwan and seemingly unstaunching loyalty to them but would willingly see the US sell out and abandon Ukraine.

a reply to: Tolkien

"The left"?

As for the Houthis, should we just let them attack shipping at will?

a reply to: Tolkien

Oh right, i just thought it was Pizza night, silly me.

Of course, no one wins a nuclear war, and that should tell you something right there.

Still dont mean you kowtow or bend over for Vladimir's antics.

And that's even with dinner, a date, and an invasion.

FIRST use of a MIRV ICBM by a hostile nuclear power in war.

But definitely not closer to WW3.

a reply to: CarlLaFong

Not an ICBM?

And no warheads?

a reply to: CarlLaFong

it was a MRBM,not a ICBM.

originally posted by: Freeborn
a reply to: Tolkien

Zero probability that China would get involved and make itself a nuclear target. There is no upside for them.

China has quite firmly told Putin that they oppose ANY use of nuclear weapons.
If Russia ever does use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or anyone then it is highly likely that China would join in the almost universal condemnation and any subsequent reprisals be they military or economic.

China has had it's eyes on mineral rich areas of far eastern Russia for quite some time, some of which it considers historically part of China.....and they are certainly no fools.

China has no sense of allegiance to Russia whatsoever.

The US should station tens off thousands of troops and materiel now in Taiwan, to deter a future invasion in the first place

Interesting. You advocate US troops in Taiwan and seemingly unstaunching loyalty to them but would willingly see the US sell out and abandon Ukraine.

Sell out Ukraine after paying how much?

Hell Freeborn without Uncle Sam's wallet there would have been negotiations in 2022. It's not a sellout when you realize it's throwing funds down a money pit and there is no plan or blueprint for a complete Ukrainian victory.

commonslibrary.parliament.uk...

US military support to Ukraine
The US is the largest provider of military assistance to Ukraine. At the time of writing, the total level of military assistance provided by the US since the start of the Biden administration stands at $61 billion (PDF). $60.4 billion of that funding had been provided since February 2022.

The latest levels of funding reflect several new substantial packages of assistance announced by the US administration after Congress approved a $60.8 billion funding package for Ukraine towards the end of April 2024, after several months of delay.

It is unclear what impact the 2024 US presidential election will have on longer-term support to Ukraine. President-elect Donald Trump has opposed further military assistance to Ukraine and has made a negotiated peace agreement a key priority for his forthcoming term in office, although the detail of any proposals is yet to be seen.

a reply to: putnam6

The world has a lot to thank the USA for and the role it has played as the world's police force. It may have made some massive errors in it's foreign policy and military decisions but on the whole it has guaranteed more or less a peaceful world through trying times. That there has been no major global conflict during the last 80 odd years is largely down to the role it has played.
I for one fully respect, appreciate and acknowledge that.

A large part of that has been other large 'superpowers' and powerful nations knowing that the USA will defend and protect smaller, weaker nations against bullying, intimidation and aggression.

Any weakening of that policy will give a green light to those who seek to gain land and resources at the expense of other weaker and often non-threatening nations safe in the knowledge that the US and it's allies will do nothing.
That can only strengthen those nations seeking advantage.
How long till their interests impact the US's interests?
And how much stronger and better prepared will they be if any subsequent conflict should occur?

If the USA pulls the plug on aid and support to Ukraine how will other countries who face intimidation and aggression from more powerful neighbours feel?
Countries like Taiwan, South Korea and even Japan will all feel threatened and will have just cause to doubt the USA's commitment to support them and will only embolden it's strategic opponents.

The USA, along with the UK and to a lesser extent France, were signatories on an agreement to help aid Ukraine should it ever be invaded, to renege on that now sends a very dangerous sign to the world.

I fully understand that the USA has its own domestic issues that need addressing as a matter of urgency. And you have elected a President who has sworn to start dealing with these problems head on. But does that require the total abandonment of a policy that has served the world so well? Surely the USA has enough resource for both?

The USA will do itself and the world at large no favours whatsoever in abandoning Ukraine now at a time when it needs support and aid more than ever.

Isolationism has never worked for the USA or anyone else.
Appeasement has never worked.

The United States publicly maintains that "the Memorandum is not legally binding", it is a "political commitment".

It’s not a treaty.

Technically we don’t owe Zelensky sh*t.

It’s been going into the dumpster fire anyway.

And for what? For the regime in Ukraine to get toppled in the future coming up anyway?

Ukraine is not worth a cent further for the world getting into WW3 with.

originally posted by: Freeborn
a reply to: putnam6

The world has a lot to thank the USA for and the role it has played as the world's police force. It may have made some massive errors in it's foreign policy and military decisions but on the whole it has guaranteed more or less a peaceful world through trying times. That there has been no major global conflict during the last 80 odd years is largely down to the role it has played.
I for one fully respect, appreciate and acknowledge that.

A large part of that has been other large 'superpowers' and powerful nations knowing that the USA will defend and protect smaller, weaker nations against bullying, intimidation and aggression.

Any weakening of that policy will give a green light to those who seek to gain land and resources at the expense of other weaker and often non-threatening nations safe in the knowledge that the US and it's allies will do nothing.
That can only strengthen those nations seeking advantage.
How long till their interests impact the US's interests?
And how much stronger and better prepared will they be if any subsequent conflict should occur?

If the USA pulls the plug on aid and support to Ukraine how will other countries who face intimidation and aggression from more powerful neighbours feel?
Countries like Taiwan, South Korea and even Japan will all feel threatened and will have just cause to doubt the USA's commitment to support them and will only embolden it's strategic opponents.

The USA, along with the UK and to a lesser extent France, were signatories on an agreement to help aid Ukraine should it ever be invaded, to renege on that now sends a very dangerous sign to the world.

I fully understand that the USA has its own domestic issues that need addressing as a matter of urgency. And you have elected a President who has sworn to start dealing with these problems head on. But does that require the total abandonment of a policy that has served the world so well? Surely the USA has enough resource for both?

The USA will do itself and the world at large no favours whatsoever in abandoning Ukraine now at a time when it needs support and aid more than ever.

Isolationism has never worked for the USA or anyone else.
Appeasement has never worked.

I appreciate your response, Freeborn. As always, it is well thought out and always makes me think deeper and/or learn something outright.

I could say the Sudanese want to know why the World Police Force isn't answering their 911 call.

But we know it's deeper than that and more degrees here than a rectal thermometer.

Who the World's Police Force shows up for sometimes depends on how much can be made by showing up to the call. American politicians won't take thier nice suits to the cleaners in Khartoum but they love the laundromat and dry cleaners in Ukraine. UK, Europe and America are making bank by sending military supplies and equipment and sooner or later will make bank on "rebuilding Ukraine".

Sticking it Putin was a likely factor? Yes or No

Not to mention getting Europe off of Russia's cheap gas will enrich American and European companies.




America picks and chooses who they fight, they pick who they will finance, and when they pick when to put away the wallets and say that chit isn't working.

It's always been about the money especially now that our corporations have so much influence. America backs Ukraine because Raytheon and Lockheed Marietta strongly want America to back Ukraine. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin don't make as much in the Sudan.

This was a huge factor if not the deciding factor from the beginning.

And yeah FB if Putin was such a menace, perhaps Europe shouldn't have been buying natural gas from him in the first place.

again what's the plan for a complete Ukrainian victory what's the blueprint? After allocating 120 Billion doesn't the American taxpayer have a right to ask?

It's a question a few here have been asking all along.

and as for the concerns that now tin-pot dictators will be encouraged to invade elsewhere because America has closed its wallet in Ukraine, where would that be, and which tin-pot dictator that American Intelligence hasn't thought of and likely owns already? Even if true it's not enough to not turn off the spigot without a solid plan or timeline.


www.bbc.com...

The number of people dying because of the civil war in Sudan is significantly higher than previously reported, according to a new study.
More than 61,000 people have died in Khartoum state, where the fighting began last year, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine's Sudan Research Group.
Of these, 26,000 people were killed as a direct result of the violence, it said, noting that the leading cause of death across the Sudan was preventable disease and starvation.
Many more people have died elsewhere in the country, especially in the western region of Darfur, where there have been numerous reports of atrocities and ethnic cleansing.

originally posted by: Freeborn
a reply to: Tolkien

Zero probability that China would get involved and make itself a nuclear target. There is no upside for them.

China has quite firmly told Putin that they oppose ANY use of nuclear weapons.
If Russia ever does use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or anyone then it is highly likely that China would join in the almost universal condemnation and any subsequent reprisals be they military or economic.

China has had it's eyes on mineral rich areas of far eastern Russia for quite some time, some of which it considers historically part of China.....and they are certainly no fools.

China has no sense of allegiance to Russia whatsoever.

The US should station tens off thousands of troops and materiel now in Taiwan, to deter a future invasion in the first place

Interesting. You advocate US troops in Taiwan and seemingly unstaunching loyalty to them but would willingly see the US sell out and abandon Ukraine.

No.
The point you are unable to understand is that if the US wanted to prevent invasion in the first place in Ukraine, the US should have stationned troops there in the first place, as a DETERRENT, the same know proven strategy used in Europe with success during decades of the cold war.
The exact same strategy of deterrence should be used with Taiwan.
This deterrence strategy also worked well for half a century in Korea.
Once the invasion begins the supply lines are just too long to support pushing back the Russiansor the Chinese, quite asie from directly fighting the Russians or the Chinese post invasion would be WW3

Biden's continous escalation of fighting in Ukraine risks WW3.
The only solution is a ceasefire as was done by Eisenhower in Korea.

originally posted by: Oldcarpy2
a reply to: Tolkien

"The left"?

As for the Houthis, should we just let them attack shipping at will?

No.
Fight them from the air and just destroy their launch sites and weapons depot on an as required basis, exactly like was done with Somali pirates.

The US should leave the middle east to themselves; they have been fighting among each other for 3000 years with no end in sight and seem to enjoy it, however aberrant it might seem to us.

Syrians live under a dictator, but like Libya, they like it. Aberrant to us but it's their culture. US involvement in Libya in toppling Gaddafi only made things WORSE for the average Libyan, however noble US intentions may have been.

Afghans treat their women like garbage and we wasted 20 years, too many lives and hundreds of billions trying to fix that but, however unacceptable it seems to us, they clearly want this.

Let the primitives live the way they want.
Nothing we do to try to civilize them has worked or will work.
They WANT to be savages.

a reply to: Tolkien

Let the primitives live the way they want.
Nothing we do to try to civilize them has worked or will work.
They WANT to be savages.

Actually, most of them want to come and live in our respective countries.

And if we bomb them they will come.

As to being "savages", that's a matter of opinion, but a lot of those "savages" as you choose to put it, come from societies far older than our own.

As to how they treat woman, go back a century or two and we are in the same too similar boat as unfortunate as the case may be.

Its a sh@t show really but those people are on the same planet as ourselves and ignoring them won't make them go away.

Hell of a predicament and not a situation where there are any clear answers in sight.

a reply to: Tolkien

No.
The point you seem unable to understand is that should have, would have, could have are irrelevant.
We are where we are and we have to deal with the realities of the here and now.
The FACT is Russia invaded a non-threatening neighbour.
And Russia could put an end to the senseless killing overnight by calling an immediate ceasefire and entering open and honest negotiations without any ridiculous pre-conditions.
But Putin refuses to do this.

If we abandon Ukraine to its fate then we are giving a green light to any and every tin-pot dictator that they can bully and intimidate weaker nations.

a reply to: Freeborn

If we choose to abandon Ukraine, the dominoes will start to fall by my guess.

Picture Europe if nobody had chosen to stand against the Nazis.

And that is the future thats in the post.

As we both know you dont kowtow to dictator scum like Putin.

As what comes next is simply more of the same.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Tolkien

Let the primitives live the way they want.
Nothing we do to try to civilize them has worked or will work.
They WANT to be savages.

Actually, most of them want to come and live in our respective countries.

And if we bomb them they will come.

As to being "savages", that's a matter of opinion, but a lot of those "savages" as you choose to put it, come from societies far older than our own.

As to how they treat woman, go back a century or two and we are in the same too similar boat as unfortunate as the case may be.

Its a sh@t show really but those people are on the same planet as ourselves and ignoring them won't make them go away.

Hell of a predicament and not a situation where there are any clear answers in sight.

Right .
Back to my point, we should not bomb them, we should not be there.
And with respect to them coming here, while Biden chooses to ignore his responsibilities, the President (and all Western leaders) DOES have the ability to protect our borders against invasion by these people. We CAN ignore them. We DO NOT have to accept them and their brain dead "traditions" into our countries. When in Rome.....

And yes, they are savages, it's not a mattter of opinion.
Objectively, nowhere in the history of the West, not 100 years ago, not 1000 years ago, even pre-Christian, have women been treated so poorly as they are in today's Afghanistan in 2024.

But hey, they want to live that way.
Fine.
Ignore them and let them live in their closed societies ( which are NOT older that the West) like we do isolated tribes in the Amazon.

Cheers.

originally posted by: Freeborn
a reply to: Tolkien

No.
The point you seem unable to understand is that should have, would have, could have are irrelevant.
We are where we are and we have to deal with the realities of the here and now.
The FACT is Russia invaded a non-threatening neighbour.
And Russia could put an end to the senseless killing overnight by calling an immediate ceasefire and entering open and honest negotiations without any ridiculous pre-conditions.
But Putin refuses to do this.

If we abandon Ukraine to its fate then we are giving a green light to any and every tin-pot dictator that they can bully and intimidate weaker nations.

NO!

You are the one that is obtuse and refuses to follow known good military strategies of the past 80 years that involved NO invasion and NO bloodshed.
There's already 1 million dead. You want more ?

The Communists in North Korea never withdrew bak to China. Eisenhower, an outstanding general that led Allies to Victory in WW2, as able to see a no win situtaion in Korea and the only solution being a cease fire.
Yes, North Korea should not have invaded the south.
Yes, the cease-fire meant leaving millions of Koreans in the North in the hands of the communists, and the millions who died in famines caused by those same communists in the following decades.

The West tried "world policing", it does not work.
Every "tin pot dictator" is ALREADY invading their neighbors, whether in Africa or elsewhere.
We should not intervene militarily in ANY of those conflicts.
We can't force drunks away from their bottle.
The best we can do is limited humanitarian aid and protect and close OUR countries from this dreck


This continuous escalation by Biden WILL lead to WW3 , nuclear war and tens or 100s of millions of DEAD.

Cease-fire in Ukraine, like in Korea and pull out.
ENOUGH !

originally posted by: Tolkien

You are the one that is obtuse and refuses to follow known good military strategies of the past 80 years that involved NO invasion and NO bloodshed.
There's already 1 million dead. You want more ?

I guess you missed the war's objective from the US point of view. The main objective is for this to be a war of attrition and devastating sanctions that leads to a regime change with Putin gone and with him goes his insane desire to get the old team back together like the days of old.

Your view is if Mexico invaded the south, you would just say, we do not want bloodshed so take back the lower half of the states there. Seems a little strange when we put it in that context, doesn't it?

Putin started this war and he could end it tomorrow. There is no win for him anyway. It would be still years more to take the country, massive sanctions are crushing them, the large food basket of Ukraine isn't happening, Russia's infrastructure is dying with zero Western support, and so much more. Then when he finally takes the country, if we do not put in air power that would end it too, the sanctions are still there and he would need to keep 3 million soldiers there to maintain the occupation. There is no win for him except to end it and just take Donbas and the land bridge to Crimea.

originally posted by: Freeborn

If we abandon Ukraine to its fate then we are giving a green light to any and every tin-pot dictator that they can bully and intimidate weaker nations.

The question that Tolkien can't answer is where do you draw the hard line? So, we give them Ukraine and in 10 years they attack Poland or another ex-USSR satellite country, do we just do the same once again? Putin wants the 13 ex-USSR countries back to make them strong again, so do we let him, or stop him here in Ukraine?