This War Comes Already Pre-Nuked

by

So, the Biden (Mis) Administration, or whoever and whatever powers have the strings firmly attached to the puppet in the Oval Office seems determined to pick a fight and a war with Russia over the Ukraine. A fight in which most Americans might have some mild-to-moderate sympathies with the Ukrainians, as they were most viciously abused under Soviet rule, having the misfortune to be essentially the breadbasket of the Soviet Union and relatively unwilling to have their crops and livelihoods confiscated for the good of the Party of the Workers, and having in the interim since the fall of the Iron Curtain to have developed some pesky notions of a separate and rather rebellious national identity. The Ukraine, like Poland, is luckless geographically, in being the pathway of invading armies from either direction, so one can’t really blame them for being a little testy and proactive about another one.
But it’s not really our fight, and it seems to be one constructed in a Potemkin village fashion.
There was a story, most likely apocryphal regarding a proposed alliance sometime during the late 19th century, between (IIRC) Britain and France, likely against a bellicose Germany, wherein a high-level British diplomat and his equally high-level French counterpart began pounding out the details of the proposed military alliance. The British diplo asked his French counterpart; what would be the absolute minimum number of troops that Britain would contribute to the situation in an emergency in the case of German invasion. “Only one,” replied the French diplomat, “And we would make certain that he would be killed at once.”
That is what the Biden administration would like, apparently. They would like to be able to wave the bloody shirt, the blood-saturated BDU blouses of American military personnel as a cynical and calculated distraction from a year of epic fail.

They seem to be counting on a series of metal coffins covered in flags – flags for which they themselves have no real affection or respect – off-loaded at Andrews AFB. The Biden administration seems to believe that ordinary, flyover-country Americans, who contribute most of the recruits for the military … will snap a salute and fall to doing their patriotic duty. In any case, the Biden mush-for-brains trust appears to assume that Americans whose sons and daughters served the military, following their parents (and/or grandparents) onto those footprints stenciled onto the pavement at Parris Island, or marching across the parade ground at Lackland AFB, will obediently fall in line and support an administration-generated war. A foreign war in which we had very little real interest before the debacle of the withdrawal from Kabul and even less afterwards, upon observing what a total goat-rope that operation turned out to be. (There’s not enough propaganda lipstick in the world to slather on that pig of a disaster, much as the establish media would like to disappear it all from a public memory since they are as readily distracted by novelty as a three-year-old with a new toy.)
This after being calumniated by establishment pols and media talking heads for the last year and more as stupid flyover-country gullible rubes, as racists, white supremacists and insurrectionists. They certainly haven’t done anything else by way of mustering support for such a war – so I think they must be counting on the bloody shirt tactic to make the argument for them.
As far as most of us on the conservative side of things know of the Ukraine, it’s that certain of their energy corporations granted Hunter Biden a whacking great sinecure for … well, not very much. I doubt that Biden’s puppet-masters care anything for the Ukraine itself anyway – it’s just the most immediately convenient venue for a spot of wag-the-dog warfare that isn’t in the Middle or Far East.
No blood for Hunter’s oil paychecks … is that what will be on the signs at the anti-war protests?
And there will be anti-war protests, if President Brandon’s cunning plan to distract from his appalling record of accomplishments over the last year does go through this week. Only it won’t be the usual academic loonies and professional activists hitting the pavement (as well as strenuously advising their younger relatives to avoid the recruiting office, and if active-duty, to seek an exit as soon as possible) – it will be veterans and veterans’ families.
I remember the 1960s and the Vietnam War and the fallout very well; the wreck that the draft made of the military, the wreckage that the so-called best and brightest that Robert McNamara’s wiz kids managed to make of a war effort in Vietnam – but it took almost ten years of unmitigated mismanagement to wreck military and civilian support. (Even so, South Vietnam was still sort-of-functioning after the time that we pulled out our troops and called it a victory. It took a stab-in-the-back from a Democrat Party congress to really pull the plug in 1975.) Ten years to nuke interest and support for a war, to basically render involvement in Vietnam politically radioactive.
US participation in a war in the Ukraine comes already pre-nuked.
Discuss as you see fit. I know Trent Telenko will have something interesting to contribute about the Ukrainian chances.

45 thoughts on “This War Comes Already Pre-Nuked”

  1. “A fight in which most Americans might have some mild-to-moderate sympathies with the Ukrainians”

    That’s not what I am seeing. The most common view seems to be that the situation in the Ukraine is not our problem — not worth the bones of a single US serviceman. The most frequent comment I hear is the question about why Biden* cares more about the Ukranian border than about the ongoing invasion of the US southern border. Those who are paying more attention to the situation in the Ukraine mostly seem to come down on the side that NATO expansion is the problem, and our side should quit being so aggressive.

    But we all see the world through a keyhole. Maybe the view through your keyhole is different.

  3. Ukraine in the 30s was arguably the worst place to be in history.
    Russia should leave them alone now.
    I don’t believe for one second there’s about to be an invasion, for reasons already stated.
    No direct US involvement is going to happen, for reasons Sgt Mom eloquently states.
    It’s amazing the turnaround that the Democrats and the Pentagon have managed to pull off regarding conservative attitudes towards the military, along with the GOPe’s inability to admit mistakes, of course.
    This is all a sick pantomime, I have no doubt.

  4. From the standpoint of military intervention in Ukraine, I can’t even begin to make out what the hell is going on. Other than arrant ignorance and stupidity on all sides, with no discernible benefit to be seen for anyone.

    I don’t think the Ukrainians are going to quietly acquiesce to Russian dominance again. Given what they’ve got access to, and what they might have hidden up their sleeves, I’d just as soon not find out. The long-term effects of the whole thing are entirely unknowable, much like Sarajevo in 1914.

    All I can say is, this is not my fight. I don’t think it is anyone’s but the Ukrainians, and if they’ve gathered enough national identity to be willing to fight the Russians, this time around? More power to them; the Russians are the classic abusive spouse, never really taking care of the Ukrainian interests and doing their best to exterminate them. The Holodomor has a long, long shadow–And, I don’t think the Russians have paid that blood price, as of yet. They’re probably going to wish they’d stayed the hell out of the mess, and left the Ukrainians alone to make their own way.

    It will be interesting to watch, but I don’t think anyone is going to come out of this with their hair unshorn. The NATO countries don’t seem to realize that they’ve already mortgaged their futures to Russian gas, and the Russians don’t seem to grasp that they’re a third-world country with pretensions. Their economy is literally smaller than Florida’s, ferchrissakes… How’s that going to work out, when the sanctions bite? Think the Chinese are going to look at an over-extended Russia, and say “Yeah, you can keep your ill-gotten gains from when you raped Imperial China back when…”.

    More than likely, this is going to end with Russia severely truncated and China owning much of Siberia, again–With all that entails, geopolitically.

  6. The problem with Sundance’s theory is that it leaves out the Ukrainian people and their choices. Biden cannot and does not speak for them, and what they decide to do in the face of Russian/American deal-making…? That’s going to be the real issue. Not to mention what the Russian separatists may decide to do or not do.

    I don’t think any of these idiots are at all competent, and I’m certain that we currently have the worst set of political hacks and so-called “statesmen” running things around the world. Most of these idiots can’t even get out of their own way, and they’ve got no earthly idea what the hell they’re playing with. You put some of those Ukrainians up against the metaphorical wall, and there is no telling whatsoever what they might decide to do, rather than go under the Russian yoke again. What they’ve got available for options? No idea; don’t want to speculate, but I will point out that cracking the sarcophagus at Chernobyl would make a nice, big mess across a wide swathe of Central Europe. There’s also no telling what might have gone astray when they collected up all the nukes, back when, or what they might have managed to cobble together since, on their own. There was a significant chunk of Soviet nuclear expertise left in the Ukraine, from what I remember…

    This whole thing smacks of Biden’s Krime Krewe playing with fire, in order to make something happen to make him look good, a distraction. Thing is, though…? Once you roll the dice, there’s really no telling which way they’re going to come up. And, that goes for Putin, as well–The indicators I’ve seen show him stripping the Chinese frontier of weapons to face Ukraine with, and that strikes me as ill-advised, at best. How hard would it be for the Chinese to have made assurances to him, and then stab him in the back nice and hard? China could take back their losses from the 19th Century, and then not have to worry about playing games elsewhere to get the resources they need.

    Which might work out for us, but I doubt that the resultant shift in international balance will make anyone happy. I would find it difficult to support US intervention to keep Siberia Russian, in all honesty.

    I remember a friend who was a Soviet analyst commenting back during the early 2000s when Putin first started getting big, and his comment was that Putin was the perfect “useful idiot” for the Chinese, in that he had this “Russia Irredenta” thing going on with Belorussia and Ukraine–Which was going to play right into Chinese hands, when it came to getting their Siberian provinces back. It is really odd to observe his predictions playing out in front of me…

  7. I tend to agree with this analysis.

    Putin wants respect in Europe and, in typical Russian fashion (related to German fashion) he uses threats to get it. I suspect that this will end with an agreement not to extend NATO and Biden will take credit for this “solution.” Crimea voted in a referendum to join Russia and the eastern, Russian speaking areas, will eventually do the same. We (Obama) created much of this with the “Orange Revolution” which was a US/CIA directed coup.

  8. its plausible, after all peter the great started what catherine the great continued, the sneeringly referred potemkin villages, became great settlements like sevastopol and sochi, of course the regime, is just hell bent on eliminating all progress made in the last four years, and carlos slims follows along

    https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/02/nyt-refuses-to-mention-trump-in-story.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR1Un6SCFBhEwDNm0rxxq-mbNtXoqyaE0NR0jXqyWGRuUShYrEL2RfNaG4E

  10. Trump wasn’t “the right sort”, and not invested in the oligarchy or its games.

    “The rest of us” are about to have a salutary lesson in why you keep a tight rein on the elite, as they drive off the cliff.

    I really don’t even want to begin to try to analyze or predict what is “really going on”, but I feel pretty safe in asserting that the idiots we have at the helm have about zero clue about what they are doing, or where it will all end. I don’t think they’re going to come out of this with their egos intact, or that the rest of us aren’t going to pay, one way or another, for their hubris.

  11. As noted by Kirk, Ukraine has nuclear reactors that have been in operation since independence and before. 15 I believe. Who knows what has been sequestered in all that time. Just in passing, YHS is not a physicist, but from what is basically general knowledge even I could probably design a gun-type device [like Hiroshima] that would work if enough nuclear materials of sufficient purity were available. Ukraine has nuclear physicists. A bunch of them,. Building a nuclear device may cost lives, and delivery would not be easy . . . but the possibility is there. And there is the possibility of dirty devices. And the ultimate dirty device at Chernobyl. The direction of prevailing winds may become a matter of great import, and I don’t mean to sailboat captains.

    I also believe that the last guerilla resistance to the Soviets in the Ukraine after WW-II ended . . . in 1956. Stubborn lot that they are, it might get downright untidy.

    Add in what SGT. MOM said, remembering that it takes a level of consent by current members that does not and will not exist for Ukraine to join NATO, and that we know the agit-prop game being played by the current regime in DC, and I think that most Americans will join me in figuring that we saved Europe from destroying/enslaving itself 3 times last century. We did our share. And they [Europeans except for former Warsaw Pact victims] will not and cannot resist the Russians; we do not owe them anything. They chose to be in this position, they are on their own.

    Subotai Bahadur

  13. Interesting article in the London Daily Mail — in which the author brings up a good point:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10512693/MARK-ALMOND-hours-away-war-Europe.html

    “It is impossible to overstate how wretched, criminal and lawless the Ukrainian economy has become. The only countries which have done as badly are Congo, Yemen and Somalia. …

    Shortly before the pandemic, I was at a conference in Crimea where I spoke to teachers whose schools were in towns annexed from Ukraine to Russia. I asked them what the biggest change was. ‘We now get paid on time,’ they said.”

  14. From that Daily Mail article:
    “And with more than 130,000 troops already deployed, Russian forces could be in Kiev within 48 hours.”
    In 1999, Russia bombed Chechnya for more than a month, starting in late August. Then invaded in early October. Reached Grozny in early December. Capturing what left of the city, which was basically completely destroyed, in early February.
    But they’re going to be in Kiev in 48 hours.
    Give me a freaking break.

  15. Prof. van Creveld thinks Putin will move eventually–or have his hand forced. I am reminded of the dictum that you can do anything with bayonets–except sit on them. And the very fact that he has (apparently) to shift forces from the Far East to the West to be convincing, to me conveys weakness, as it does to other commenters.

    If it comes to shooting, the Russians will have to win quick and win big OMHO, or the whole kleptocracy implodes. Very risky stuff.

  16. Just a thought — What happens if Wednesday comes & goes and Biden*’s predicted Russian invasion does not happen? (Various sources report Putin has said he can’t do an invasion on Wednesday; he has a prior engagement with the President of Brazil).

    Biden* will take a victory lap, but the Russian forces are still there in South East Russia, and Russia is still demanding that NATO stay out of the Ukraine.

    “Wednesday” jokes start to rock the kasbah. Biden* says he really meant Friday — but Friday comes & goes too. A Euro country, probably Germany, says — Enough! We will veto any request by the Ukraine to join NATO. The rest of Europe applauds. Big photo ops with Putin and Euro leaders — Biden* not invited.

    Perhaps Biden*’s handlers are over-playing their war-drum beating hands?

  17. After spending the last 20 years watching the semi-literate dregs of one of the most backwards corners of the world grind up trillions of dollars in American treasure, 130,000 troops sounds like a target-rich environment for the nascent Ukrainian insurgency.

  18. Who thinks telling Putin he doesn’t have the stones to invade Ukraine will work out well? Joe Biden, senile pedophile, is such a forceful force of steely-eyed determination that ol’ Vlad is quaking in his boots. Why, he wouldn’t dare invade! See? Look at that weak-willed pussy! He’s dancing to our tune! Dance monkey, dance! You’re not man enough to invade. Cluck like a chicken! Now kiss Joey’s boot – you don’t want what Corn Pop got, do ya?

    If it was all fabricated to begin with, it won’t be for long. A strongman can’t look weak; telling everyone he’s not acting because he’s scared means he has to act to show he isn’t.

  19. “After spending the last 20 years watching the semi-literate dregs of one of the most backwards corners of the world grind up trillions of dollars in American treasure, 130,000 troops sounds like a target-rich environment for the nascent Ukrainian insurgency.”

    Couple of points, there: One, that mostly happened due to the excessive idiocy of the people running the war. Rules of Engagement were insane, enforced with draconian glee by the staff and JAG, and as well, the real center of gravity in Pakistan was never addressed. I have come to realize that Afghanistan as fought by the United States was mostly an exercise in transferring foreign military aid to various and sundry contractors and congressional representatives/senators. Or, a la the Biden Krime Krewe, their immediate relatives.

    In other words, the “War in Afghanistan” was not fought in a manner meant to win, and it wasn’t really a war–The whole thing was an exercise in creating generational wealth for our elites and the military brass plus contractors. Fraud, pure and simple–You can tell that from the fact that we never addressed Pakistan’s operational control of the Taliban, their support for it, or their provision of safe harbor for those “insurgents”.

    Do note that very nearly the first thing they tell you in classes about counterinsurgency is the urgent need to isolate the battlefield, and prevent the “insurgents” from getting aid or refuge where you can’t touch them. Things that make you go “Hmmmm…” when you pause to consider them.

    Second point is that the Turks are playing games here, akin to the way they played games in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia–They’re providing drones and other toys to the Ukrainians. Putin’s boys aren’t likely to have it all their way, and I suspect that the conflict is going to go about like WWI–New weapons coming into use, greatly influencing things at first, then when they run out of stocks, well… Yeah. Gonna be a paradigm-breaker. I don’t think anyone really knows how to deal with the sort of warfare that went on in Azerbaijan and Armenia, as of yet–That little tiff will likely be seen as the modern equivalent to the Russo-Japanese War, with regards to the charnel house that was WWI. Mostly, as a precursorial warning of things to come.

    The third point is that the lessons of Afghanistan are not quite what people think they are. The war was never fought properly, and from that? You can rest assured that any “lessons” you take from it are going to be warped out of recognition due to that fact. “Oh, Afghanistan just proves that you can’t win a war there…”. Well, not really–All that’s been proven is that you can’t win a war fought ineptly and with your hands tied behind your back. Also, that the morons from the State Department who were doing “hearts and minds” there were, per the usual, utter dolts. Along with most of our “intelligence” agencies, who again are manned by who…? Oh, yeah; same idiots manning our military upper ranks and the State Department. I’m surprised they didn’t wind up surrendering Washington, DC to the Taliban, to be quite honest. They’re that stupid and fscked up.

    I don’t think that you could win the “War in Afghanistan” as we defined it and fought it. That was essentially a fool’s errand.

    However, that does not mean that we would not have been able to win a better-defined and fought war, one that actually had achievable goals like “Teach the locals not to launch terrorist attacks on the US, ever again…”. Call it a punitive expedition, a genocide campaign, or what have you–Properly addressing the real responsible parties like the Pakistani ISI was both doable and morally acceptable, to any sane person with half a brain–Which qualifications leave out most of our leadership “elite”. Not to mention, we should have been executing every unlawful combatant we encountered, immediately after holding the requisite field tribunals.

    Which we should have fed many of our own JAG officers into, as enemy combatants, were we sane.

    Frankly, there’s not a lot to be learned from Afghanistan–Other than “That ain’t the way to do it…”. Much like the Soviet lessons they should have learned from their time there.

  20. Big C makes a good point… The idiots behind Biden think they’re playing a game, one that Putin likely can’t or won’t. So, miscalculations layered upon miscalculations and poor communications between sides will likely result in things happening that neither side really intended with their posturing.

    Whole thing has potential to go really bad, really quick–Leaving everyone involved covered in blood and/or radioactive fallout.

    I’m still really leery of the idea that we got all of the nukes out of Ukraine back when, and that they couldn’t have built new ones since. If I were running the place, I’d have damn sure done something along those lines, and I don’t think the Ukrainians are anywhere as dumb as everyone is thinking. At. All.

    Hell, I’d be planting explosives all around Chernobyl’s sarcophagus, right about now, and casually mentioning that fact to both NATO and the Russians. “Invade, and you’re going to be dealing with crop contamination and God alone knows what else…”.

    Ideally, I’d have a working gun-type nuke sitting somewhere within easy reach of that sarcophagus, primed to turn the whole thing into a continent-scale dirty bomb. I don’t think that’s outside the realm of the unlikely, either… Y’all really have no idea how much the Ukrainians hate the Russians and everyone else–It’s on the same scale that the Jews have for the rest of the world, without the civilizing restraint of Judaistic morality on it. I think the Ukrainians would happily pull down Central Europe around their ears, if they are staring down the barrel of Russian enserfment, again.

  21. Cogent, critical, analytical and prescient observations aside, remember that *POTUS can say, during campaign speeches, “Well, after all, I got us out of Afghanistan.”
    Likely with a straight face. The thinking of the administration/puppeteers being that getting out, of and by itself, regardless of how incompetent the people thronging unsuccessfully to board USA-bound aircraft made things appear, was ‘successful’ enough to be something positive to crow about. I demur.

  23. Bizarre situation in the on-line conflict-watching world…everyone thinks that because Brandon said Putin has decided to invade that that means anything, but they also thought the invasion was scheduled for 3am Wednesday…and of course it’s impossible to tell how many of the on-line randos are actually just Western IC plants…most of them, I think.
    It’s all so inexplicable. Basically it’s like Putin’s trying to show that he’s about to invade. Even though we all know that makes zero sense, and can only end in complete catastrophe. It doesn’t feel right at all. I’m not a Russia expert, but it feels like a huge show, a decoy, like I’ve said for a while now….also note that many of us said to watch for the post-Olympic timeframe as the danger zone…I say watch China, this Russia thing doesn’t seem real, or at least not like it is what it appears to be–it’s trying too hard…
    I don’t know who this guy is, but this is interesting stuff…
    https://3circleinvestments.substack.com/p/russia-isnt-attacking-ukraine-they
    “I continue to put pieces together post the Putin/Xi meeting from before the Olympics. What I think is happening is that Russia and China have been rapidly accelerating their plans to take down the United States as the world’s leading hegemonic state without firing a single shot. They are engaged in economic warfare with the US, through their control of gold, energy prices, and the global supply chain, and along with their selling of US Treasuries, they are weakening the US$ and attempting to remove its status as the world’s reserve currency.”

  24. “Russia isn’t attacking Ukraine. They (and China) are attacking the US$”

    Not sure about that. The author seems a little close to being a standard gold-bug.

    China has been waging economic war on the US for at least a quarter of a century, as the US Political Class happily took Chinese backhanders and offshored industry. Realistically, China today could bring the US to its knees at any time of its choosing, simply by ceasing exports. (Oh! But China can’t do that. They need our Bidenbucks more than we need the real goods they send us. Yeah! Right!).

    But Russia? That is the strange one, since Russia would probably have much preferred to integrate into Europe. But our Political Class drove Russia into China’s arms — almost as if they had been paid to do that. The fact that Putin has shifted troops away from Russia’s long border with China suggests that some deal has been cut. The simplest explanation is that the Crips did not want Russia, so Russia joined the Bloods.

    The important question then is — What does China get out of the situation in the Ukraine? Most likely answer is an irrefutable demonstration the weakness of the US and the Euros, at no risk to China. Then China makes Taiwan an offer they can’t refuse. Taiwan voluntarily rejoins the Mainland. Xi easily gets re-elected to leadership of Greater China. Then the world faces a situation where Russia has its hand on Europe’s gas & oil supplies and China has its hand on the world’s computer chip supply. Game over — or at least the current round of the never-ending game would be over.

    What is frustrating is the lack of reliable reporting from anywhere, whether it is the Ukraine, Russia, China, or the DC Swamp. Communication has never been better, but real information is hard to find … and even harder to trust.

  25. I think you’re thinking too linearly…A happens, then B, then C…it makes no sense for Putin to stick his neck out so far by invading Ukraine, just for China to “see what happens”…I still think it’s all a bluff, but if it’s not, I think we’ll see a whole lot of dominos going all at once…

  26. It’s probably a mistake to look for rational explanations to understand the actions of rational actors, because there ain’t any such creatures walking around. This is chaos, baby, and there ain’t no rules or rationality that you can apply to it.

    I’m sure Putin has a plan; likewise, I’m sure that Xi has one, as well. What am also certain of is that neither of those plans are going to work out the way either planner wants them to. Same-same with whoever is pulling Biden’s strings, be that George Soros or some other actor behind the scenes.

    The current world situation is actually a lot worse than the poor bastards chained in Plato’s cave–We can’t even rely on the shadows projected on the wall as being indicative of “what’s really going on” out there.

    My best guess? I don’t have one. The odds are that people are going to act in their own interests, to their own goals, those things are going to interact with other people doing the same things, and ain’t none of it going to work out the way any one of them intended it to. I just hope we don’t see nukes flying around, although I’d wager long odds that anyone resorting to that measure is due for a bit of a surprise about all those shiny toys they bought…

  27. It’s true you’ll never go broke betting on crazy. This is crazy and totally out of character though…
    Well, at least we aren’t living in boring times…

  28. They are engaged in economic warfare with the US, through their control of gold, energy prices, and the global supply chain, and along with their selling of US Treasuries, they are weakening the US$ and attempting to remove its status as the world’s reserve currency.”

    David Goldman agrees. It’s been going on for a while.

  29. If it weren’t for the historic accident that made Russia a nuclear power, they would have the relevance of Nigeria and if not for the geologic accident of their oil would rank down there with Zimbabwe. I suppose it’s possible that this latest evidence of American fecklessness could cause some sort of catastrophic decline in confidence in the Dollar, I find it statistically unlikely considering the many, much more relevant, provocations of the last 15-20 years that have seemingly been ignored. Why this time, instead of 2008 or 30 trillion national debt?

    Outside of the Bidens and a few dozen others invested in the Ukrainian kleptocracy, whether Ukrainians are misruled from Kiev or Moscow wouldn’t make a dime’s worth of difference to Americans, except that Ukraine is significant player in agricultural commodities, especially wheat. All of this unrest is likely to raise prices to consumers of which China is the largest. We, as producers could actually profit.

  30. it wasn’t an accident, they had a talented scientist named kurchatov, as well as the contribution of a half dozen western intelligence sources, same with their rocket program, with Korolev the former Zek, I found out from that Cosmos revamp, that there was a talented Soviet scientist, which devised the trajectory that our probes depended on,

    There are no white hats, it’s like most of our adventures in Central America, there are some that are a lighter shade of grey Duarte was a reasonable figure, some of the allies in the paramilitary community were less so, a relatively small investment helped keep the guerillas at bay for a generation, no thanks to the likes of Chris Dodd among other, but eventually they came to power peacefully, with monies from the Sun Cartel, Venezuelan Army officers
    rich with the coke they enabled, that hapless Keystone adventure a few years ago,came from one of these middleman Guillen, who referred to another compromised officer, General Al Cala,
    Zelensky is relatively clean, but he was sponsored by the oligarch Kolomoisky who signed Hunters checks, who funded the notorious Azov militias, among others,

  31. Trying to discover all the details and then make sense of them is a fool’s errand for anyone without access to the classified data. It’s a lot like soothsaying–You can read the entrails in the open source documentation that’s out there, but you’ve then got to make so many inferences and intuitive leaps that by the time you’re done, you’ve probably introduced so much randomness into your work product that it is useless.

    What’s really frightening to me is that I know for a fact from the time that I had access to such data that even with access to the “hidden knowledge”, you have a hell of a time trying to figure out what is going on. You see signs and portents come across the networks, and you think they mean something, only to have precisely nothing come of them. Then, when something does happen, you go back and look, to discover that there were indicators, but they were so subtle, esoteric, and buried in the background noise that you completely missed them.

    Frankly, I wouldn’t want to be an intelligence analyst in today’s world for love nor money. Just think about the last forty-odd years, and try to imagine being sent in a time machine back to 1980-ish, tasked with delivering a warning of things to come for the leaders of the time.

    You’d still be locked up in a padded room, somewhere, just based on what you told them about the course of the Cold War, let alone Middle Eastern affairs. Everything else? LOL…

    There are two points to be remembered about all this: The truly scary thing to realize is that there are no vast conspiracies running things from the shadows. All of this is happening because of basic human idiocy, miscalculation, and essential inability to foresee likely outcomes. The flip side to that is to understand why so many people come up with and believe in conspiracy theories: It’s a hell of a comfort to make believe that someone, somewhere out there, really knows what’s going on and has a plan. That’s a comfort; acknowledging that we live in a chaotic universe where literally anything can happen? That scares the ever-loving snot out of the average human, and for good reason.

  32. there was an episode of classic stargate, when they go back to 1969, and almost end up in that circumstance, the classic ken greenwood replay, considers that prospect working out disastrously when the protagonist tells the pentagon about qaddafi among other things, also stephen king’s 11/22/63

  33. I am going to put this as simplistically and crudely as possible: Mr. Biden lost Afghanistan so why should we think he would do any better against Russia? Picking a fight we wouldn’t win is a bad call.

  34. The whole thing is kabuki theater, shadows on Plato’s wall.

    I have no idea what is going on, and I’ll lay you long odds that the assholes in the White House and in Foggy Bottom think they know what is going on, but in reality…? Don’t.

    Likely, same-same in Russia, China, the UK, and everywhere else. The root problem we have here is that we’re all of us governed by utter fscking morons who would be unable to get work as sanitation workers in a sane world. Which, I fear I must continue to point out, we do not.

  36. It was suggested in a comment thread on another blog that the reason Biden (or whoever holds his strings) is so keen on fomenting a war in the Ukraine (or actually any war, just that the Ukraine is the handiest) is so that political opponents to the Biden régime can be prosecuted for sedition, aiding and abetting the enemy, being traitors in time of war, picking their nose in Poughkeepsie, and who knows what all. But for all that to fly, they need a war. Any war will do.
    Discussing this with my daughter, who says that it wouldn’t work in the long run, but I say that it wouldn’t stop them from trying anyway.

  37. Sgt Mom — It is telling that not even Biden*’s handlers have instructed the sock puppet to threaten war over the Ukraine, only sanctions. And with Germany & China having no interest in supporting sanctions on Russia, those sanctions are likely to do as much or more harm to the West as to Russia.

    Pre-emptively taking US military action off the table tells us what Democrat private polling is telling them — very little support for enduring any serious pain over the Ukraine.

    Now Russia has recognized the eastern republics as independent countries, Biden* really is in a tough spot: find a graceful way to retreat, or endure rising backlash from US citizens as his sanctions drive up inflation and cause other disruption here.

  38. the sanctions fall on the donetsk region, which is the most mineral rich region in the country, so I doubt there would be anyone who enforce them, even if they wanted to

  39. So now Putin has actual Russian troops in Ukraine, and everyone relieved about it. He’s cleaning up, because the West is “led” by a collection of pitiful feckless morons.
    And in a few days he’s going to have a “summit” with Biden where the drooling dementia patient is going to “refuse” to do a joint press conference so as not to give “legitimacy” to Russian aggression, when everyone will know it’s because he can’t string together two sentences to form a coherent thought.
    It’s pathetic, but what’s the most damning thing of all, is that there’s all this shrieking from the media and political establishment, and most Americans couldn’t care less. They’re trying to make us care, and we refuse to, because in our daily lives we see everything falling to pieces. A few decades ago we were so rich and powerful that we could obsess over trampling on distant countries without a serious care–seems like several lifetimes ago…

  40. Huh – and right on time, a lefty professor at one of the storied Ivies chimes right in with a suggestion that opposition to American military involvement in the Ukraine is ‘treason’. Imagine that. Link here –

  41. Tribe has always been a lefty hack, even when he is right on the law, which in this case he is not. I had read that he deleted the comments, which indicates to me that he knew he had gone too far.

  43. Ah, but you see, Miguel… They do not ever expect to be on the other end of that situation. Just like with Biden’s refusal to defend Trump’s executive privilege, they’re certain they’re safe. And, they may be, but if I know the Karma Police as well as I think I do, they’re going to wish they hadn’t have done all this. Imagine the same rules applied to the donors of BLM, the Tides Foundation, or any of the other Soros flying monkey Astroturf operations…?

    Precedent is established. Remember what happened when they blew up judicial nomination filibusters…?

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