We can't win

[liberty]

You guys continue to think we can win against the Russians. Well we can’t, some people cannot accept the truth. If our professional military can’t pull off an Israeli style miracle in short order, we have lost. If we were still fighting communism I would be willing for my children to fight to the death; anything is better than slavery. But that is not the case we could live under the Russians.

The article didn’t mention psychological fitness that is where we are really weak. We don’t have the grit.

http://time.com/2938158/youth-fail-to-q ... y-service/

Approximately 71% of the 34 million 17-to-24-year-olds in the U.S. would not qualify for military service because of reasons related to health, physical appearance and educational background, according to the Pentagon.
The ineligible typically includes those who are obese, those who lack a high school diploma or a GED, convicted felons, those taking prescription drugs for ADHD and those with certain tattoos and ear gauges, the Wall Street Journal reports, though some requirements can be waived.
Only 1% of young people are both “eligible and inclined to have conversation with” the military about possible service, according to the Defense Department.
“The quality of people willing to serve has been declining rapidly,” Major General Allen Batschelet, the U.S. Army Recruiting Command’s commanding general, told the WSJ.
Approximately 180,000 men and women volunteer for and enter active-duty forces each year, though U.S. military activity in recent years has led to some looser standards for recruitment. Only 79% of those enlisted had a high school diploma in 2007, while that figure was 90% in 2001. During the Iraq war, the military was also less strict about soldiers’ body fat.
“We have not adopted a zero-defect mentality,” said Defense Department spokesman Nathan Christensen, who noted that the military’s recruiting targets in recent years have been met. “We evaluate each applicant from a whole-person perspective.”
[WSJ]f

[Burning Petard]

Yes, it is all very sad. If only that nice young man had finished his GED test, and not gotten those ear gauges, he would be able to stop the new underwater drones and the intercontinental missiles Putin described a few days ago.

So sad.

snailgate.

[Lord Jim]

the new underwater drones and the intercontinental missiles Putin described a few days ago.

And I have to say I was very proud of my President when he responded to this bellicose, thuggish saber rattling the way any American President would...

By issuing a strongly worded condemnation...

of Alec Baldwin...

we could live under the Russians.

Well you're in luck, lib...

We have a President who shares your view...

[Joe Guy]

I wonder why Trump didn't say he has a bigger button than Putin, he will unleash fire & fury and all that stuff. You'd almost think he's afraid to make Putin mad.

[liberty]

the new underwater drones and the intercontinental missiles Putin described a few days ago.

And I have to say I was very proud of my President when he responded to this bellicose, thuggish saber rattling the way any American President would...

By issuing a strongly worded condemnation...

of Alec Baldwin...

we could live under the Russians.

Well you're in luck, lib...

We have a President who shares your view...

I think you are wrong Jim. I don’t think anything will happen while trump is president; he has such an ego he couldn’t stand taking orders from anyone. Putin will wait until there is another Obama like president. We don’t have tactical nukes except for a few gravity bombs, but that wouldn’t stop trump he would use strategic nukes for tacticals. It would mean a thousand times for more leukemia but he would do it.

[liberty]

Some say the answer is more money for education; I say they are wrong what good would it do to throw more money down the rat hole. We could triple the pay of every teacher in the country and that would change nothing. We would still have same number of weak, cowardly, perverted pacifist.

The only way money would make any difference is if it was used to hire more teacher aids and provide for cash rewards to motivate students, but that would not help national defense.

[Scooter]

Putin will wait until there is another Obama like president.

Yes, that's why when Obama was president, Putin was always threatening to launch nuclear attacks against the United States, and why those threats stopped when Trump assumed the office.

Oh, wait....

Some say the answer is more money for education

I would say the answer is a president whom the Russians didn't have by the short and curlies because he was in hock up to his eyebrows with them, for starters.

We would still have same number of weak, cowardly, perverted pacifist.

You're correct, there will always be Russophile traitors like you spouting defeatist propaganda.

Since you seem so enamored with the idea of living under Russian rule, and are always boasting about your family's origins there, why don't you just move there.

[liberty]

Liberal can never see a crisis a coming; they are always reactionary and never proactive. If they had not been so eager to appease Hitler a lot of American lives could have been saved. True FDR is seen as a liberal, but I think of him as more of a pragmatist. He chose to take on Hitler long before he, Hitler, was any threat to North America. That’s not something liberals do. They like to say; I will wait until they invade New York.

If we are not going to prepare a generation capable of fighting the Russian we should negotiate with them now and save what we can. But that will never happen liberal will wait until we lose everything. The ancient Romans of the Western Roman Empire couldn’t see the end coming and now we are them.

Now you people who think Trump is in Putin pocket here is how to test your theory: If Putin grabs more territory and trump does nothing then you are correct there is collusion. But if Putin does not invade additional territory there was no collusion. Putin does nothing but what he sees as in Russia interest; as he see it division in this country is good for him. And, Putin needed no additional motivation to hate the Clintons. His contempt for the Clinton criminals goes back to Kosovo.

Trump wants to build more tactical nukes and liberals don’t so who is really helping the Russians.

[Burning Petard]

We absolutely cannot win with 'tactical nukes'. In 1961 I lived with a US artillery unit in Germany equipped with Honest John rockets. They had 20 Kt warheads and the rocket had a 30 mile range. That unit was tasked with blocking the Fulda Gap. Suicide for anyone who ever fired them. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 Kt. Tactical Nukes make sense only to military thinkers who believe all the people in uniforms with gold braid in the movie 'Dr. Strangelove' were military geniuses. If Strategic Nukes are used, there will be no winner except cockroaches.

God Bless America--we certainly need it.

\snailgate

[Big RR]

As I recall, the label "tactical" is not based on size, or even on proposed use, but on how it is delivered. So the same bomb which would be strategic when delivered by a B 52, would be tactical when delivered by an F16.
And once the nuclear weapons are used, the escalation to the use of Larger ""strategic" weapons would be quick--few countries would surrender before exacting significant revenge on a country lobbing nuclear weapons at them; indeed, it is this fear of retaliation which has resulted in no nuclear exchanges since 1945, and the thought that someone could use nuclear weapons for a tactical advantage and not expect and unspeakable reprisal is pretty silly--likewise we will not see first strikes from any country with a significant nuclear arsenal.

[liberty]

As I recall, the label "tactical" is not based on size, or even on proposed use, but on how it is delivered. So the same bomb which would be strategic when delivered by a B 52, would be tactical when delivered by an F16.
And once the nuclear weapons are used, the escalation to the use of Larger ""strategic" weapons would be quick--few countries would surrender before exacting significant revenge on a country lobbing nuclear weapons at them; indeed, it is this fear of retaliation which has resulted in no nuclear exchanges since 1945, and the thought that someone could use nuclear weapons for a tactical advantage and not expect and unspeakable reprisal is pretty silly--likewise we will not see first strikes from any country with a significant nuclear arsenal.

No tactical nukes are smaller but the real difference is between tactical nukes and strategic nukes is who they would be used against. Tactical nukes are used against armies and strategic nukes are used against cities.

And only a mad man would respond to a tactical attack that wipes out an army with a strategic attack on a city because the response would be a strategic strike on his own cities. No, a sane man would sue for peace because we can live under Russian dominance. ML bed wetter might have a problem, but most of us would be ok if we didn’t resist too long.

However, the attitude you expressed is the reason the Russian would win. Nukes favor the brave and the crazy and we are neither.
The Russians have a full range of tactical nukes and we have only gravity bombs and not that many. It would be wise to see this nation as it really is and do something before it is too late.

[liberty]

We absolutely cannot win with 'tactical nukes'. In 1961 I lived with a US artillery unit in Germany equipped with Honest John rockets. They had 20 Kt warheads and the rocket had a 30 mile range. That unit was tasked with blocking the Fulda Gap. Suicide for anyone who ever fired them. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 Kt. Tactical Nukes make sense only to military thinkers who believe all the people in uniforms with gold braid in the movie 'Dr. Strangelove' were military geniuses. If Strategic Nukes are used, there will be no winner except cockroaches.

God Bless America--we certainly need it.

\snailgate

Well I agree with that but why should he bless us. Do we deserve it?

[Econoline]

[Scooter]

If [liberals] had not been so eager to appease Hitler...

It was liberals who were eager to appease Hitler? Must be another one of those things that the village idiot "heard somewhere", like Europeans don't eat corn and Canada was an ally of the Soviet Union.

[BoSoxGal]

One of my all-time favorite films!

[MajGenl.Meade]

True FDR is seen as a liberal, but I think of him as more of a pragmatist. He chose to take on Hitler long before he, Hitler, was any threat to North America.

I hoped you might get something right, but you didn't. Hitler took on the USA - not the other way around. He declared war on the U.S. four days after Pearl Harbor.

Now you'll probably decide you were talking about FDR's assistance to the UK which strained, but did not break, the neutrality of the USA. If you believe that the possibility of a German-dominated Europe was not a threat to the USA, you're nuts (and FDR wasn't).

[RayThom]

I'm curious. Which is better, or worse -- to be tactically or strategically dead? I doubt if any victims or survivors would be in a good position to argue one way or the other.

I think there are now nine countries with nuclear war capabilities. Smart money says it will be the US to uses them first -- especially within the next three to seven years. Maybe soon after the grand military parade that will be scheduled in DC in a few months. All that fire and fury in Lord Dampnut's grasp will be hard for him to resist showing the world who's in charge.

[Crackpot]

pssst! we already did.

[rubato]

Conservatives were isolationist and fought against th US arming for war in the 1930s because the whiners didn't want to pay taxes. Or, like Lindbergh, they were defeatists like Liberty.

Yrs
rubato

[Bicycle Bill]

True FDR is seen as a liberal, but I think of him as more of a pragmatist. He chose to take on Hitler long before he, Hitler, was any threat to North America.

I hoped you might get something right, but you didn't. Hitler took on the USA - not the other way around. He declared war on the U.S. four days after Pearl Harbor.

Now you'll probably decide you were talking about FDR's assistance to the UK which strained, but did not break, the neutrality of the USA. If you believe that the possibility of a German-dominated Europe was not a threat to the USA, you're nuts (and FDR wasn't).

Wasn't the "official" US policy during the first half of the 20th Century one of aloofness and isolationism?  You see where that got us — two world wars and an economic collapse the likes of which this nation had never seen — in the space of less than forty years.

This is the scenario FDR inherited when he took the oath of office in March of 1933.  During the first eight years of his administration, Roosevelt was picking up the pieces of the worst depression this country had ever experienced.  Many of the policies espoused by FDR, for which lib is ready to excoriate him as being "liberal", were intended to get America back on its feet and put its citizens on some sort of payroll.  Programs like the WPA and the CCC, just to name a couple, were actually an early version of "workfare", and much of the infrastructure created by their labors during this period is still in service today.

Yet, when an American outpost on a distant territory — not even a state, but a *TERRITORY* — was attacked by Japanese forces and Hitler piled on, declaring war on the US a few days later, this same "liberal" took the helm and piloted our country from this



to this



in less than four years.

Now let's look at how lib's conservative hero, Trump, would have handled things.  The Great Depression?  I'm afraid his attitude would have been one of "Fuck you, I've got mine".  And if he had been Commander-in-Chief when Pearl Harbor happened, he'd have probably doubled-down on the internment camps, making them nationwide rather than just a West Coast thing, or ordered anyone with Japanese ancestry loaded on board ships, bid them "Sayonara", and unceremoniously shipped them all back to Tokyo.

As far as guiding this country to an ultimate victory, fuhgeddaboudit!!  Trump would be hard put to organize a successful panty raid, let alone a war raging on two fronts.  His "leadership" would have consisted of a terse tweet or two (or ten), followed by a rapid exodus from the White House to Mar-a-Lago or one of his other golf courses somewhere while "somebody else" handled it.

-"BB"-