This is about forcibly drafted men (particularly those with additional issues like addiction) who get sent on assaults with low rates of success and high chances of death (or serve in similarly dangerous roles). Very different from the glamour raids they publish on social media. Russians do these assaults too, of course. Because, for the most part, that’s how territory is taken in this war.
Women in the AFU are volunteers and serve different roles.
> The country that’s getting 55% of its state budget from the EU isn’t a proxy. Not to mention the munitions, the weapons, the training, and above all the access to the US’ trillion dollar ISR and satcom network.
It’s conceivable that Russia could force the West to back out of the proxy war. But then they’d get proliferation in Europe, Taiwan, South Korea, and other places. And Usrael would very likely use nukes against Iranian missile cities. (Conversely, first use against Iran would give Russia license etc.) Apart from general global instability and uncertainty this might unleash.
So, it’s not hard to see why they haven’t—so far. And why they are pursuing their (slow and costly, sure) conventional military, economical, and demographic long-term neutering of Ukraine. And let’s not forget the enormous economic/budgetary cost to the EU.
Also, Russia retains a number of ways to escalate inside of Ukraine: bridges, dams, depopulation of frontline cities. China could finally abandon their stance of being mostly neutral.
The problem is that Ukraine/West keep escalating and the day when Russia’s calculus changes may yet come.
For the US and friends is terrorizing the enemy, his forces, his civilian population into giving up. Is feeding a civil war until he crumbles.
> bomb the living shit out of anything armoured
That’s absolutely not what’s missing in Ukraine.
> and then push forward with your own armour.
And then, as soon as you assemble let alone move in the open, you get wrecked. No one has an easy answer for this. The answer is what we’re already seeing: attrition.
> Iran
Iran prevailed in an highly asymmetric conflict by successfully attriting US/Israeli air defenses and surviving their attacks, depleting their arsenals. Which was their goal, not “levelling Tel Aviv”—however much they would have liked to.
Finally, what Israel is facing in Lebanon right now is but a pale imitation of what’s going on in Ukraine. But bad enough. One can imagine what just a couple days of Ukraine-level losses would do to them, militarily and politically. No matter their air superiority.
> The meek recent Senate protest means nothing. If the elites didn't want the war, the House and the Senate would have 2/3rd majorities to stop it.
Yesterday’s AIPAC-driven ouster of Rep. Thomas Massie should tell you why no one is trying to stop this and who these “elites” you speak of answer to.
> The IRGC wants the blockade for self-preservation among its own population to show it is resisting "The West".
They are not showing off. They are actively and successfully resisting “The West”. Which could only sustain 5 weeks of active hostilities, got nowhere, hurt its position in the ME severely, but still cannot concede. Which brings us back to the root cause.
The notion that the bombings constituted an informed political decision intended to forestall an otherwise unavoidable invasion, and that Japan wasn’t ready to surrender is a complete retcon.[0] But a great example of how well Americans control the narrative—even eight decades after the fact. If anyone else did them they would be condemned as Great Crimes of History.
[0]: Truman didn’t order Hiroshima, and didn’t even know about Nagasaki. He did stop them after that.
Did that language imping on the interests of America’s ruling elites, its security apparatus, or the interests of a certain entity in the eastern Mediterranean? No? Then we’re talking about entirely different things.
> I'm no fan of the party in power in the US, but I can campaign and speak out against them. I can raise money to oppose them. I can band together with like minded individuals to protest.
You can. Just not in any way that matters. And you won’t. Because that takes organization and all existing organizations that matter are captured by the system and novel ones would quickly be.
Perfect example: The US just launched a disastrous and illegal (both in their own and the UN system) war at the behest of a foreign power/influential minority against the will of its people and against its geopolitical interest. And the “opposition” does less than nothing. There is little anti-war protest and none of consquence.
Compare it with 2003 and earlier wars: The American public has been all but neutralized as a political force. Not that it could do much even then.
