Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Tuesday, August 22. 2023

Why the Ukraine war is nuts, from a general

400,000 Ukrainian deaths, 13,000,000 Ukrainian refugees who will never return, maybe 40-50,000 Russian military dead.


Why is the US contributing to this? I annoyed lots of people on this topic from the beginning, but it is nuts.  Good interview.



Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 14:43 | Comments (12) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Col MaGregor is not stranger to controversy. He wrote a book entitled Breaking the Phalanx the seriously ticked off the Army. Regarding the interview, as a retired military officer myself, I know he's right. We provoked the Russians with the expansion of NATO to their border and when it looked like Ukraine would be extended membership, the Russians launched a limited attack. Since then the Western media has persistently claimed that the Russians are incompetent and losing. They are not. We've wasted billions of dollars on Ukraine and will keep pushing them to fight to the last Ukrainian. We have met the enemy and he is us.
#1 RetiredSOF on 2023-08-22 15:00 (Reply)
RetiredSOF,

I agree with you 100%. I think Douglas Macgregor is 100% spot on with everything he has said over the past 6 months on Andrew Napolitano's "Judging Freedom". Same for Scott Ritter, Ray Mcgovern, and Larry Johnson; all of whom are regularly on "Judging Freedom".

BTW, I highly recommend "Judging Freedom" over on Youtube.
#1.1 Abelard Lindsey on 2023-08-22 18:01 (Reply)
BTW, I mentioned Douglas Macgregor and the rest over on Marginal Revolution. The people over there only talked about Russian "mis" information. The people over on Marginal Revolution are over-educated idiots, usually of leftist political persuasion.
#1.2 Abelard Lindsey on 2023-08-22 18:12 (Reply)
Col McGregor has commented on this often and he tends to tell a story that supports his bias. It is likely that the number of Ukrainian deaths he stated is greatly exaggerated while at the same time Russian deaths understated. So assuming that is true why? Why not come out and state the more realistic numbers? Well, he has a story to tell and it doesn't necessarily involve the truth. Should the U.S. stop sending money and equipment to Ukraine? Yes. In fact we should never have gotten into it this much. Should Ukraine surrender? No. I think Ukraine is doing the right thing. I would want to defend my country to the death. Why not???
#2 OneGuy on 2023-08-22 15:10 (Reply)
I agree. The Ukrainian people have to choose between permanent exile and extermination. I don't see the peace option here.
#2.1 Texan99 on 2023-08-22 19:10 (Reply)
Considering that Russia was the aggressor (not to mention perpetrator of mass murder via starvation in the 1930s), that Ukraine is a sovereign country (see UN General Assembly roster), that the USA nudged Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons, and that the Ukrainians are willing to fight, we should help. As a learned scholar of geopolitics and history has observed, a dead Russian is a peaceful Russian.
#3 Axel Kassel on 2023-08-22 19:07 (Reply)
"Russia was the aggressor", eh? Says who? From the Russians' perspective, the US and NATO have been acting pretty "aggressively" for many years. (Failing to consider how things look from all sides is foolish.). Further, Russia didn't perpetrate "mass murder" in the 1930s, the USSR (under Stalin, a Georgian) did. Facts truly matter. Oh, and if "willingness to fight" is the yardstick you use to assess whom merits support, then it's a long list and, by all means, have at it. Head over immediately! (As a combat vet with 31 years active Regular Army service, I get tired of voices like yours lobbying to send soldiers like me (and/or national treasure) all over the world on the thinnest of justifications. Truly vital national interests matter, and Ukraine sure as hell ain't one of them).
#3.1 PCB on 2023-08-22 22:07 (Reply)
That is what the talking heads are pushing but if you were not asleep you saw the Russians actually invading Ukraine. Hmmm! Kinda blows your theory out of the water.
#3.1.1 OneGuy on 2023-08-23 10:49 (Reply)
Umm, I seem to recall that we invaded Grenada, Panama, and a few other places (and I participated in each). When I was a young officer, I hosted two Russian Generals after Desert Storm. They were insistent even then that NATO not move east. And there was no reason for NATO to move east wit the fall of the USSR. But NATO did move east until Russia could no longer tolerate it. We were the aggressors. We still are. And BTW, Smedley Butler (BG, USMC) was right: war is a racket.
#3.1.1.1 RetiredSOF on 2023-08-23 10:59 (Reply)
If you do not fully understand why we went into both of those places perhaps should have gone into coding instead of the military.

As for NATO and Ukraine is Ukraine a country or not? Do they have the right as a country to join with other countries in a mutually protective agreement? Does NATO have a right to decide for themselves without a "by your leave" from Russia? Should Sweden have not decided to join NATO so that the Russians weren't upset?

And all of this begs the question since Ukraine isn't in NATO!!!
#3.1.1.1.1 OneGuy on 2023-08-23 15:28 (Reply)
When it comes to Ukraine, too many seem permanently stuck at 23 February 2022.

The failed Russian invasion changed the dynamics of this conflict completely. By attempting a coup de main on Kyiv, the Kremlin took a regional post-Soviet squabble in the Donbas and elevated it to an international incident through its own diplomatic and military incompetence.

The guilty party here is Russia and no one else.
#4 JJM on 2023-08-23 16:31 (Reply)
I have had to come to the conclusion that Tucker is either so narcissistic that he can never admit that he is wrong, or an active Russian agent of influence paid by the first chief directorate of the FSB. I am beginning to think that it is the latter after this complete tissue of lies and untruths. The fact is that the war in Ukraine is the most well documented war in history, with battlefield information disbursed to the web almost immediately, by people from both sides. We don't have to take Colonel Macgregor's assertions blindly. We can go to say, any number of youtube channels and twitter feeds and see for ourselves. Just go to the Combat veteran youtube channel and the institute for the study of war for daily map updates.
The fact is that Ukraine is not technically backward, I don't think that Ukranian units are surrendering enmass and from what I have seen, they get the wounded evacuated as well as they can under the circumstances.
As far as being technically inferior, Ukraine has deployed drones and other innovations before the Russians did, used any advanced weapons that they have been able to get their hands on and frankly been brilliant in what they can achieve. On the other hand, Russia has sent far too many troops to the front with rusty ancient rifles left over from the early cold war, tanks from the 1960's without upgrades or adaptations and uses drones purchased from Iran.
Over the course of the war, the Ukranian Army has been better trained, equipped and led and that has made itself felt on the battlfield, where Russia hasn't, in spite of the fact that it retains some advantages, managed to advance more and five kilometers from the start line and when it has, the cost has been terrible in blood and lost equipment. The taking of Bakhmut cost the Russian army and Wagner perhaps well over a hundred thousand men, many of the taken right from their homes in press gangs.
Tucker seems to believe that somehow, the US can end the war. He apparently doesn't watch Russian Television. The only way to end the war is to defeat Russia and if Ukraine is allowed to lose and Russian aggression is rewarded, there will be more Russian aggression. The Russians themselves admit that and we should listen.
#5 JCC on 2023-08-27 17:24 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.