Cont: The Russian invasion of Ukraine part 6

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theprestige said:
I'd regard bin Laden as a combatant in a war, too.
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I think that's where we went wrong. Treating terrorism as a war, was wrong IMO. It's criminality.

And I'd say he got exactly the correct process due to combatants in a war: Either surrender on terms agreeable to your enemy, or get rocked at a time and place convenient to your enemy.


The criminal justice process is due to civilians during peacetime who are entitled to not be unduly oppressed by their government, when that government accuses them of a crime.
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Wars are supposed to be conducted according to the Geneva Convention. We didn't see too much of that in the "war" on terror.
 
jeremyp said:
I think that's where we went wrong. Treating terrorism as a war, was wrong IMO. It's criminality.


Wars are supposed to be conducted according to the Geneva Convention. We didn't see too much of that in the "war" on terror.
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One of the Geneva Conventions is that belligerents must distinguish their combatants from their civilians. Which terrorists do not do. Bin Laden doesn't magically get to grant himself all the privileges of criminal due process, just because he's committing war crimes. Neither does Putin.
 
ISW has a brief story on the US relaxing its opposition to Ukraine striking targets in Russia. Does Ukraine have the means to do that on a large scale?
 
sackett said:
ISW has a brief story on the US relaxing its opposition to Ukraine striking targets in Russia. Does Ukraine have the means to do that on a large scale?
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Highly unlikely, I'd say. They may have the capacity to do a few strikes on important military targets, at best, I think. They pretty well gave up that capacity a few decades past when they gave up their nuclear arsenal, IIRC, and have had other more immediate priorities since then.

Will they gain the means, whether by their own efforts or foreign aid? It's certainly possible, but they're not likely to be able to do so at large scale anytime soon. Enough scale to keep Russia off-balance, maybe. For now, ATACMS are likely the longest range that they'll likely be able to obtain at more than symbolic scale, either way, and those will likely be prioritized to hit supply bases in occupied territory, breaking Russian logistics even further.
 
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Also, Russia's economy and industry aren't on par with the Ukraine-NATO alliance*.

Ukraine doesn't necessarily have to launch deep strikes on a massive scale. The entire trend in modern warfare has been towards far fewer, far more precise strikes. If Ukraine can strike the airfields, supply depots, and rail junctions it wants to, when it wants to, that will probably do more to cripple Russia's warfighting ability, than all of Russia's strikes on schools, hospitals, and - yes - power stations have done to cripple Ukraine.

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*Yes, I know it's not technically NATO, but come on. Ukraine is being supported by most of the members of the alliance, using weapons the alliance developed and stockpiled precisely for the purpose of fighting Russia. This is pretty much a win-win for NATO: It gets to put that massive investment to the use it was intended, without having to put its own troops in harm's way. There's a joke going around:

Kruschev is allowed one day out of hell, for good behavior. He goes straight to the Kremlin. "How are things going?"

"Not well," says Putin. "We're at war with NATO, and so far, we've lost almost a hundred thousand troops, and thousands of armored vehicles. We don't have air superiority or artillery superiority. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel on precision guided missiles and new recruits. We've been reduced to soliciting military aid from Iran and North Korea. We've even had to steal some tanks from India."

"Wow, that sounds bad. But you must be inflicting heavy losses on NATO in return, yes?"

"Actually, NATO hasn't shown up yet."
 
theprestige said:
One of the Geneva Conventions is that belligerents must distinguish their combatants from their civilians. Which terrorists do not do.
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What's your point? I'm arguing it wasn't a war and now you are agreeing with me. These terrorists are criminals and murderers, not soldiers.

Bin Laden doesn't magically get to grant himself all the privileges of criminal due process, just because he's committing war crimes. Neither does Putin.
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It's either the privileges of criminal due process or it's the privileges accorded by the Geneva convention. Pick one.
 
Riding my hobby horse again. Sorry, cant help it.

Aridas said:
Highly unlikely, I'd say. They may have the capacity to do a few strikes on important military targets, at best, I think. They pretty well gave up that capacity a few decades past when they gave up their nuclear arsenal, IIRC, and have had other more immediate priorities since then.

Will they gain the means, whether by their own efforts or foreign aid? It's certainly possible, but they're not likely to be able to do so at large scale anytime soon. Enough scale to keep Russia off-balance, maybe. For now, ATACMS are likely the longest range that they'll likely be able to obtain at more than symbolic scale, either way, and those will likely be prioritized to hit supply bases in occupied territory, breaking Russian logistics even further.
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Symbolic attack is of no use. That's why I put some small* hope in uav tech. Much can still be done, expensively at first, more economically later on.

I can't pretend to be keeping up with the field; most of it is secretive in any case -- not to protect any nation's crown jewels, but to keep numerous companies' trade secrets safe from each other. Good. Greed is a wonderful motivator.

* Small like hell. It's all I want for Christmas.
 
jeremyp said:
What's your point? I'm arguing it wasn't a war and now you are agreeing with me. These terrorists are criminals and murderers, not soldiers.
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I apologize for not being more clear. I think it was, and is, a war. A war in which one of the belligerents consistently and egregiously violates the spirit and the letter of the Geneva conventions. But still a war. I am not agreeing with you that it is not a war. I hope this is clear enough. I hope that you will interpret my past and future expressed opinions in the context of me not agreeing with you, rather than interpreting them as somehow agreeing with you.

It's either the privileges of criminal due process or it's the privileges accorded by the Geneva convention. Pick one.
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The privileges accorded by the Geneva convention are reserved for those belligerents that observe the Geneva convention. That's the whole point of the convention.

In Bin Laden's case as in Putin's I pick the Geneva convention. For the (to me) obvious reason that in both cases we're dealing with commanders-in-chief of an army at war.
 
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theprestige said:
I apologize for not being more clear. I think it was, and is, a war. A war in which one of the belligerents consistently and egregiously violates the spirit and the letter of the Geneva conventions. But still a war. I am not agreeing with you that it is not a war. I hope this is clear enough. I hope that you will interpret my past and future expressed opinions in the context of me not agreeing with you, rather than interpreting them as somehow agreeing with you.


The privileges accorded by the Geneva convention are reserved for those belligerents that observe the Geneva convention. That's the whole point of the convention.

In Bin Laden's case as in Putin's I pick the Geneva convention. For the (to me) obvious reason that in both cases we're dealing with commanders-in-chief of an army at war.
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The argument in that case would be that they are legitimate military targets.

And to be fair, I would also argue that a lot of recent presidents of the US have been legitimate targets.
War ain’t nice.
 
autumn1971 said:
The argument in that case would be that they are legitimate military targets.
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That is indeed my argument. Further, it is my argument that assassination of military leaders in wartime is a legitimate prosecution of a war.

And to be fair, I would also argue that a lot of recent presidents of the US have been legitimate targets.
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Of course! How was that even in question?
 
theprestige said:
That is indeed my argument. Further, it is my argument that assassination of military leaders in wartime is a legitimate prosecution of a war.


Of course! How was that even in question?
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Given that US Presidents are literally the "Commander in Chief," it would be quite difficult to argue that they don't qualify as legitimate military leader target.
 
theprestige said:
Russia seems to be fighting a two-pronged war of strategic attrition right now: One against the Ukrainian power grid, to slow down economic activity, wear down the labor force dedicated to keeping the country running, and demoralize the population. The other against the main strength of the Ukrainian armed forces, by turning Bakhmut into a meat grinder for them as much as for the Russian troops being thrown at them.

These wars of attrition are basically races against the clock for Russia. Its hope is to push Ukraine to the point of breakdown, economically and militarily, before Russia's own economic and military breakdown finally catches up to them. However, with the west's backing, it is unlikely that the Russian goals in these wars of attrition will be realized.
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Don't leave out of it the hope of Pootie that the decadent and selfish West will tire of the thing and abandon Ukraine to its fate. I mean, with the cabal of Pootie-loving traitors in the US HoR already making noise about curtailing or ending this support, Pootie has at least some reason to prolong the agony.
 
Lurch said:
Don't leave out of it the hope of Pootie that the decadent and selfish West will tire of the thing and abandon Ukraine to its fate. I mean, with the cabal of Pootie-loving traitors in the US HoR already making noise about curtailing or ending this support, Pootie has at least some reason to prolong the agony.
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Whose agony?

It looks like the US has found a very powerful way of converting tens of billions of aid (https://www.csis.org/analysis/aid-ukraine-explained-six-charts) into power outages in Ukraine.

Former students in debt will have to wait.
 
Lurch said:
Don't leave out of it the hope of Pootie that the decadent and selfish West will tire of the thing and abandon Ukraine to its fate. I mean, with the cabal of Pootie-loving traitors in the US HoR already making noise about curtailing or ending this support, Pootie has at least some reason to prolong the agony.
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Can you please take your anti-Trump hobby horse to the thread set aside for that purpose?
 
Aridas said:
:rolleyes:

Truly a spin one would expect a Russian propagandist to put on things, both in how utterly nonsensical the argument is and how it's trying to pin the blame for Russia's actions onto others.
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What nonsense. Everyone knows that Russia isn't at fault in attacking power infrastructure or hospitals, it's Ukraine's fault for choosing to move to closer relations with an anti-Russian criminal organisation and also not capitulating to Russia in order to protect their people from being genocided by the very country using genocial rhetoric. If it wasn't for stuff like that then Russia wouldn't be forced to kill pregnant women and children.
 
theprestige said:
Everyone except Russia is responsible for Russia's actions.
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The analogy of the abusive husband once again occurs to me. Apparently not only is it an abused wife's fault for refusing to submit, anyone who tries to help her defend herself is equally responsible for the damage done by the husband's subsequent blows.
 
Aridas said:
:rolleyes:

Truly a spin one would expect a Russian propagandist to put on things, both in how utterly nonsensical the argument is and how it's trying to pin the blame for Russia's actions onto others.
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Zelensky (who is, of course, the president of Ukraine), has a well known avisor, who is often quoted.

His name is Mykhailo Podolyak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailo_Podolyak).

His tweets may reveal, in a rather frank and straightforward way, what the leaders of Ukraine are really thinking.

His two latest tweets are:
No need to be scared of post-Putin future. There is only one way to end the war: military defeats of Russia on the battlefield + sanctioned depletion of Russian economy + isolation of Russia on world markets + internal sabotage within Russian Federation = Ukrainian victory and recovery of global security.
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Putin is absolutely incapable of negotiating. I guess, all European leaders who talk to him periodically are aware of it. He directly declares neglecting international law, desire to seize territories and kill Ukrainians until his demands are met. Solution is obvious – Ukrainian victory
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(https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M).

As you can see, he is praising "Ukrainian victory", "depletion of Russian economy", "isolation of Russia", "internal sabotage within Russian Federation", and expressing contempt for the president of Russia.

He doesn't seem to be a man who is seeking a deal which would bring peace through mutual concessions, and would be good for everyone (and this deal is easy to find).

This is the problem that I have: the West is funding extremism, people who seek an unnecessary "victory". Even if this could be achieved, what would be the cost for the Ukrainians, and many others?
 
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