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956 Worldwide

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Posts posted by 956 Worldwide

  1. One thing to ponder here is that Iran shot something like 350 missiles, drones, and other projectiles at Israel. Nearly all got shot down, but Iran has now established that option as a “reasonable” response and action, anything less will be viewed as not so serious.  
     

    We saw in real time how Iron Dome normalized Hamas rocket attacks and established the expectation that Israel should suck it up and just hunker down defensively.  Israel will be highly inclined to set a difference precedent with Iran. If an embassy warrants 350 projectiles, how many does an attack on Iran proxies warrant? 20? 100?

    This is not a sustainable game for us and Israel.  Deterrence has failed and Iran can’t learn the lesson that it can shoot missiles at Israel with no kinetic response. 

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  2. 6 hours ago, Brisketexan said:


    And the first reply is about “Islam-religion of peace”…when the killer was a generic white dude. Gotta love the predictability.
    On the bright side, shows you how those pussy Australians are. Had this dude been in the US, his crazy ass could have obtained multiple firearms and racked up 10x the body count. What a bunch of losers the aussies are.

    As a side-show, a Russian and Syrian with big followings in Sydney started a social media storm by claiming it was a random guy named “Benjamin Cohen.” Their followers are really stupid so they had to clarify “the Jew.”  An Australian news station picked it up, so hopefully he’ll get paid. 
     

     

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  3. 4 hours ago, elfenix said:

    Europe isn’t especially violent or war-prone but Europeans and their spin-off/mentee cultures are very, very good at war.

    This is a big part of why Israel’s existence drives the Islamic world nuts, not really religion or even land for co-religionists. Jews left the Near East as tribesmen and came back organized as a Western nation with Western ways of war, thought, and social organization. Their existence in the middle of the Near East is a constant reminder of what the Islamic world believes is their humiliation at the hands of the West, which is supposed to be inferior. That’s why there’s so many comparisons to the Crusaders. 

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  4. We had gotten to a point where Biden was talking about conditioning aid to Israel and seeing opinion shift in a big way against Israel and then Iran launches a major attack that accomplishes nothing except probably shaking loose a huge Israel aid package.  Lol, maybe the Zionists do control the world, even the ayatollahs. 

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  5. More fun with numbers: we could implement a one-time Elon Musk tax and fund all of the current Ukraine supplemental with less than half of his worth.

    Elon would still have enough left over to purchase at least 4 Gerald Ford class nuclear aircraft carriers. 

    The idea that we are even marginally impacting our economy with this is just laughable. 

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  6. 13 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

    We also spend more gross dollars on walking shoes and bubble gum than any other country on Earth.  

    "But what about as a percentage of GDP to make it a scalable comparison?" 

    What do I look like, somebody who can walk and chew gum at the same time?  

    We cold double the current supplemental request and we still would not be donating Ukraine the equivalent of 5 thousandths of our GDP, or by another metric one Elon Musk, to fight all Russia. 

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  7. 8 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    Interesting, I thought the UK was providing a lot more than they are. I can't believe Slovakia has provided more percentage wise than both the UK and the Czech Republic.

    I mistakenly thought the Czech Republic and Poland were purchasing lots of US equipment and donating their older stuff to Ukraine. I guess that really hasn't been happening.

    It is also interesting that with all the bitching about Germany, they have done more percentage wise than most countries. I don't see France on the list so Macron talking shit about other countries especially Germany seems pretty messed up. Unless I'm missing something, France appears to be all talk.

    Overall, the percentages pretty much match proximity to the war with the closest countries to Russia providing the most and the countries furthest away providing the least.

    Overall, those numbers seem low. I'm curious how much those countries have been spending on defense as a percent of GDP. I know that they have all relied on the US but those times seem to be fading.

     

    Well, they have been. Your idea of the size and ability of these countries is all upside down.  Yes, the Czechs have emptied a lot of their inventory and purchased a fleet of Vipers, Venoms, and F-35s (24). The Czech Republic has 10 million people. How many F-35s do you think New Jersey can buy, or the Los Angeles MSA?!
     

    The $60 billion package currently being held up in the U.S. Congress is .002 of U.S. GDP, btw. That’s what we’re fighting over. 60 billion is .08 of Polish and .2 of the Czech GDP. Again, we are talking scale. We wouldn’t even move up the list of per capita but it’s a battlefield game changer THAT WE PAY TO OUR FUCKING SELVES. 

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  8. 10 hours ago, Bevo said:

    This isn't true. They have a lack of manpower as well and have not been able to institute a draft and rotate personnel off the front line. And we all know why the supplies from the US have stopped. And we know why certain supplies from the US were never supplied. But, we don't have a clear idea of what is going on in Europe regarding supply. Turkey could send a shitload of supplies. Germany could do the same. What's going on there and in places such as Austria, Poland, and the Czech Republic? Those posts are interesting.

    We have literally a full accounting of what is going on in Europe regarding supply via the contact group that meets in Rammstein. Anyway to answer your question:

    https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/03/20/czech-led-bulk-ammunition-buy-for-ukraine-picks-up-steam/

    Quote

    MILAN – A proposed Czech-led bulk artillery ammunition purchase for Ukraine is picking up steam, as countries commit to bank-rolling the effort while sourcing shells from non-European vendors.

    Czech President Petr Pavel said in February that Prague had identified 500,000 155mm artillery shells and 300,000 122mm rounds outside the European Union that could be sent to Ukraine if necessary funds were secured.

    Shortly after this announcement, over a dozen countries joined the mission, contributing millions of dollars. So far, Pavel’s government has succeeded at gathering the support of almost 20 other allies, Canada, Germany, France, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium.

    Speaking at a March 19 meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Ramstein, Germany, German Defense Minister Borius Pistorius said Berlin would pay for 180,000 rounds. Defense officials in Berlin declined to put a price tag on the commitment.

    Russia's advantage in artillery ammunitions is unlikely to spur more frontline gains, but it will give Moscow some breathing space, one analyst said.

     

    Some of the most recent members to join are Sweden and Portugal, which said on March 14, that they contributed $32,6 million and $108,6 million to the efforts, respectively.

    According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, the Czechs have marked an additional 700,000 shells that could possibly be bought for Ukrainian troops. This would bring the total purchase to 1.5 million rounds, at a cost of $3.3 billion, the newspaper reported.

    Experts have pegged Russia’s firepower advantage at 5:1 for over Ukraine, with Russian forces firing as many as 10,000 shells per day, compared to 2,000 by Ukraine.

    Questions still remain about how quickly the Czech-led initiative could bring fresh ammunition to frontline troops in Ukraine. Czech national security advisor Tomas Pojar has said that the first rounds could be shipped by June.

    Officials in Prague have made it clear that they are ready to negotiate with almost any third-country vendor that could commit to making a contribution to the bulk purchase, with a few exceptions, including North Korea.

    The United States is the NATO Ally that has the defense base to supply most of the more pressing needs like high-end air defense and long-range fires. We are the supplier of choice to NATO Allies for this and we in fact have pressed to ensure we maintained some of these key capabilities as part of our defense industrial base. And now we are sitting on it. 
     

    Europe is contributing more per capita and in absolute terms but we are the nation that has surplus of extremely key hardware. It’s us or it doesn’t go. 

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  9. 4 hours ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

    We're not giving money and resources away,  we are investing it.  We're investing in a country being a wall to protecting the rest of Europe.  Investing in our own industry by showing off to the world how effective our old and new military equipment is. Investing in our own soldiers by limiting possible NATO war and face to face conflict.  Investing in a future partner and NATO ally with a very capable society.  The ROI on this stands to be massive considering the circumstances forced onto the world by Putin and his alliances.

    Based on what DJT said, this is probably going to be reframed as a loan, which everyone understands will never be repaid because you don’t give back a Bradley or a Patriot interceptor. It simply has to be framed that way as a sop to the grotesque ego of a man who needs to show he makes “good deals” and to satisfy—not LOW information voters— rather WRONG information voters. Just doing the thing that needs to be done by creating a Rube Goldberg machine for simpletons and half-wits to gawk at. 
     

    This especially uninspired bit of high school drama would be understandable as politics if the end result wasn’t killing lots of brave people who want to like us. It’s astounding how eager the GOP IS celebrate their own stupid harmfulness. 

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  10. 3 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

    I just think that the USA, with economic problems at home (e.g. inflation, housing, etc.) has already given $80bn to Ukraine's war effort. I think Europe as a whole continent of countries have given ~$90bn?

    Instead of looking to USA to carry the lion share of the load here indefinitely, all I'm saying is to add some accountability for others to help support Ukraine.

    It should be a source of embarrassment to Ukraine's brother and sister countries and land (neighbors, etc.) that Russia with the help of NK/China are able to out-produce and out-gun Ukraine with the whole of NATO/EU behind them. Those countries ought to be subsidizing the majority of the war and yes, America should too, but not disproportionately IMO. And I don't think it's that wildly offensive of an opinion and one shared by many.

    To the point of this thread, I think it's stupid to hold the money hostage, but I also think it's stupid to just be a revolving door and blank check go brrrrrrffftttttt (or even have the optics of it) when domestically we have our own financial issues (see: Inflation report this week).

    You keep repeating nonsense GOP lines (there’s no money printer) and you are actually making a great point that the NATO Allies outside of us as a whole are slightly larger than the U.S. and have a slightly larger economy cumulatively— and have contributed proportionally. 
     

    The Alliance can’t undo years of mistakes and underinvestment. We have the equipment and DIB to give stuff.  The others don’t. It sucks but it’s what it is. The question is why you want to abandon US leadership in Europe and why you hate the idea of modernizing our own forces while supporting Ukraine and creating America jobs? 
     

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  11. 15 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

    I am pro-Ukraine (and pro-Israel) and anti-Russia (and anti-Hamas), so your personal attacks don't offend me. Before just cutting checks every session, why not go after your "allies" like India who are funding Russia by buying their gasoline, spitting in the face of the West?

    What the message I hear by people reflexively freaking out about trying to put some guard rails around the spending on a very inefficient war with a very improbable positive outcome (Ukraine wins, because again I'm a Ukraine guy), is that you guys are okay with just a blank check indefinitely for a war that will eventually end at a stalemate or loss? @Dahobbs is right, Russia isn't going to lose, no matter how much aid is wasted. And it will be wasted, just like the Ukrainian lives.

    Or you can just dismiss any stance that is anything other than "give billions of dollars for the life of the war" as being a commie or secret russia lover, but it seems to me that a reasonable conversation can and should be had around America (and ultimately the American people-- you and I) responsibility and financial commitment. AND Europe's responsibility and financial commitment as direct neighbors.

    Anyone who lives in a world where Bucha, Mariupol, and Irpin happened and where Russia is forcibly deporting tens and thousands of children yet still says the loss of life is “wasted” is being either willfully ignorant or dishonest. 
     

    This is what armies are for. They exist to fight and die so that other armies don’t rape and murder civilians and kidnap children. 

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  12. 53 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    Yes, but hardly along central supply lines. The Soviets had to extend their logistic network. That simply isn't the case for Russia in Ukraine. Again, these conflicts are not even close to the same scale. 

    Also, the Soviets won in Afghanistan, at least the early going. We financed an insurgent campaign designed to inflict maximum attrition anytime they left their urban strongholds. 
     

    The goal in Ukraine is not to surrender the nation to Russia and then bleed them dry. Not to re-litigate the morality of what happened there, but this would be a cruel and cynical approach that would cost at a minimum tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian lives and would confirm the worst narrative of what we are doing by supporting Ukraine.  We want Ukraine to be free and sovereign. The goal isn’t just dead Russian soldiers as useful as that is. 

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  13. 10 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    1.) I Wish this shit would happen to more of them. Period, fill stop.
    2.) I wish some of them would learn that they've been conned and act accordingly
    3.) We all know they'll blame corrupt democrats for somehow fucking with the stuck unjustly and ruining his life. 

    EL-OH-EL. Proof that being able to make significant amounts of money is not related to intelligence.

    queue reaction s GIF

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  14. 13 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

    With the caveat of a promise that this is the last, best and final aid package to Ukraine, I think this would be a deal.

    All U.S. military aid to Ukraine either comes from U.S. stocks and is backfilled with newer, better stuff or is being produced in the U.S. and reinvigorating our defense base and preparing us to fight the next war. You’re choosing American weakness and Russia/PRC victory. 

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  15. 3 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    Ukraine is going to get plenty of weapons whether there is a resolution or not.  No way Lockheed Martin and other big boy defense contractors are going to miss out on those revenues.

    Yeah, this is wishcasting. This consensus doesn’t exist. The obstructionist wing of the GOP is invulnerable to even domestic economic lobbying. 

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