Enough About Russia’s Incompetence
If Putin is so weak, why does he still control 20% of Ukraine while our President blathers on about killer Chinese Spy balloons?
Except for a few ex-generals who believe Russia is winning, most military experts talk tirelessly about how bad Russia’s military is performing. The corruption preventing the real Russian Army from properly outfitting soldiers, the Wagner Group, using prisoners as cannon fodder, the desperation in using washing machine electronics in fighter jets (not sure I believe that one), etc., etc.
If I’ve heard this once, I’ve heard it dozens of times, “The Russians have shown no ability to fight using combined forces, maneuver warfare”
I’m sick of it. It’s not that I disagree with that assessment. I question, if it matters anymore.
I’m waiting for a journalist to stop one of these general’s mid speech and ask, “Yes, but if we have it so-together, why aren’t we winning?” Why is Russia still in Ukraine?
Why can’t Russia just wait it out with their 20% of Ukraine and constant shelling and missile strikes?
As we enter into the second year of the war I see continual rise in Western excuses. Zelensky asks for military aircraft. Excuses. He asks for ATTACMS. Excuses. He asks that the West enforce bigger sanctions. Excuses. He asks to join the EU. Excuses.
Due to information blackouts, it’s been difficult to ascertain how much, or little, the U.S. and Europe have been sending Ukraine in the way of equipment and support. Whatever it is, the results are beginning to speak for themselves. Listening to the gossip from Western governments, people are beginning to realize a simple truth.
If Ukraine can’t make a big push this summer the fault will lay completely at the feet of the Biden Administration, with a few morsels left over for Europe.
Would the U.S. admit to its failure. Never.
As for France and Germany. They would have rather let Russia take control of Ukraine.
The West can hold hands in Brussels and say all the right things. Us cynics know what that means.
As Britain and France learned in the 1930s, there’s a fine line between responding with measured care and lard-ass incompetence.
There’s a powerful scene in the movie Patton where a line of tanks and soldiers have been bottled up by a civilian horse-drawn wagon. A captain is working hard to get the truck out of the mud. Patton rides up to see why the advance has stopped (causing them to get strafed by a German plane), throws a fit, personally shoots the horses and tells the men to push everything off the bridge and down into the raven.
A hero in a movie today shooting horses!? Can you imagine!
Post WWII, the U.S. narrative was that one had to do whatever it takes to thoroughly crush the enemy. Whether it was shooting hapless horses or dropping nukes on civilian cities. I’m not arguing right or wrong. My point is that the U.S. no longer follows that policy.
So what is U.S policy? Or European policy for that matter? What do people care about in the West. It certainly isn’t “liberal democracy”.
Isn’t there hypocrisy in clamoring for gun control while sending guns to Ukrainians? War has its own kind of “gun control”, which is that there needs to be guns in such numbers and strength that the shooting stops. Otherwise, people keep dying. Is a dead child in Ukraine worth less than a dead child in a U.S. school? (Please, this isn’t about our political parties).
Patton has a simple theme. Play to win or more people than you can imagine will die. If you don’t play to win (shoot horses and throw wagon off bridge) people behind you will die.
The U.S. is not remotely playing to win. Why have we discarded that sentiment, that was so strong after WWII? How do we know more about stopping World War than those who lived through it?
Why do we ignore that China (and my guess others) are selling more and more military equipment to Russia. You might say, “but the sanctions!” They’re not being enforced; if they were we’d hear about it.
If we tried to call out China, it would point out that most Western brands have turned a blind-eye to the distributors who are smuggling their products into Russia. How can the Biden Administration make a stink about China selling to Russia when Russians can easily post a photo of Reebok and New Balance (Massachusetts, U.S.A.) sneakers for sale at the local shopping mall?
Why aren’t we challenging the assumption that Russia will 3-Stooges lose the war if we just wait long enough?
A year later, that hasn’t happened.
Patton, and movies like it, gave a solution. No one believes it will come to that because — because why?
If Patton has it right, we have a long way to go and countless millions killed.
How we get there will make as much sense as it did in the 1930s — no predicting any of it — it just spread until men like Patton and LeMay ran it to its horrific conclusion.
***
Shout out for the Russian Immigrant. He has written some killer stories in the past few weeks.
