Trump, not Iran, is the world’s greatest danger. He’s a one-man weapon of mass destruction: As the bombing starts again, it’s clear the president has dragged the US into a limitless fiasco

Feckless and clueless, Donald Trump is lost in Iran, unable to find a way out of the disastrous war he started. Once again, the US military is pummelling the country and, increasingly, its civilian infrastructure. As before, this unlawful bludgeoning strengthens the resistance of a hardline regime that cares little for its people’s suffering. How often have Trump and Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon’s wildling lord of bones, hailed a bogus victory? The president claimed this week to be “winning big”. No one believes him. Even as it counts the vast human and economic cost of his Persian folly, a watching world scoffs at US impotence.

No, Trump doesn’t have it wrong.

And mere polemics isn’t good analysis.

For something to be an analytic product, you have to have arguments with some degree of correlation and causality that support a logical conclusion.

That’s not the case in that article - if you want to call mere opinions as story.

Russia is in a limited war, no different than us in Iran today, or in Iraq 2003 - present (we’re still there).

Just inventing new goal posts in order to define success and failure is not how it works.

—Russia has already achieved their political goal: Ukraine is NOT in NATO.

—Russia has already achieved their military objectives (I would claim about 80%): seize the Eastern and more ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine.

NEVER was it Russia’s goal to take Western Ukraine, or invade Poland, the Baltic states... stupid ideas floated in our media. That is our propaganda to get the people all stirred up and behind the cause. Russia invaded with a force of about 190,000 men, vastly inadequate for much more than what they took. Ukraine is >1/3 more area than Iraq, >1/3 more populated and we went into Iraq with about 350,000 men 2003. Ukraine is a far more formidable adversary than Iraq (literacy rate, military training, size of their military, advanced military hardware, intel capabilities).

Russia went into Ukraine with a limited scope no different than 2014 taking the Crimea. We’re just in the business of “inventing” new benchmarks/goal posts for success and failure which serve our fantasy of how we would like things to be.

Given that Russia has achieved their goals, they are not really advancing. They aren’t even pushing that hard anymore, not because Russia is failing, but because Ukraine can’t muster the manpower. Ukraine has serious military manpower issues.

For about two years, Russia was doing a “slow creep.” They were seizing about 600 square Km a month. The goal is to force Ukraine to commit their forces and not be able to build up a reserve with which they can mount a counter offensive. But that has become a moot point.

We are today defining Ukraine that is not in NATO (political cause of the war), and lost its Eastern areas (military objectives) to include a major industrial area, their entire steel industry and a major port city as success. LOL

When Mr. Z came to DC on his shopping trip after Trump took office, he had to be put in his place. Our little olive drab action hero (who never served in the military), was going to push and make demands, rather he left the White House being told what to wear the next time he comes back (got slapped on the ass): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlcIfe7jg7Y (I don’t think most people really understood what that was about)

The real issue is that you have too many hands in the cookie jar and when the US attempted to move towards peace in Ukraine (which will require concessions from BOTH sides) the Euro’s chimed in and basically undermined our efforts.

They want to be important, they want to have a say: France and UK.

Here’s the sad thing, in Ukraine you have two parties that are somewhat pragmatic/rational. Peace is definitely achievable, while with Iran you’re dealing with an ideologically driven adversary. Negotiating a peace with Iran will be far more challenging.

If the Euro’s want the say, Trump rightfully so, let them have all the say they want, and they can pay for it hereon out: https://www.gzeromedia.com/media-library/image.png?id=62213405&width=1200&height=1035

I would suggest, and I cannot prove this (pure speculation), that Venezuela is far more important to us than Ukraine, and Russia which had technical personnel, mercenaries, and their navy doing port calls in Venezuela (a fact) wasn’t present when we went in. If the Euro’s don’t want to follow our lead on Ukraine and do their own thing, offer Russia our departure from Ukraine, if they leave Venezuela.

I don’t think that’s the case.

The same military junta is still in power in Ukraine.

The Russians have achieved their political and military goals, as in 2014 with Crimea, and aren’t pushing.

Ukraine is exhausted and can’t really mount a major offensive to take anything back.

This war should have been settled after the failed counter offensive of 2023.

All the death and destruction after that was for nothing - low provability of achieving anything.

The policy makers in the West pushing this nonsense war along after the failed 2023 counter offensive scare me. Idiots like this cause a lot of senseless death and destruction and if they could, that would be our children too.

They just can’t get away with it today, the public would freak out (this isn’t 1914), political system is different, people value life more, information travels faster and better. But since the death and destruction (pain) is all felt by the Ukrainians, it’s all just numbers and some abstract concept far removed from the daily lives of most Western Europeans and Americans. As long as this war isn’t personal and just “money” it’s easy to keep things going with some victory stories and fake rationalizations of our side being right. If the pain were personal, people would question this war.

‘Everyone’s afraid to die’: Struggle to recruit soldiers in Ukraine turns violent

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7k5ngde3vo

Yahoo! link:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/everyones-afraid-die-struggle-recruit-001917417.html

Vasyl Krupych knows what it is to fight for Ukraine.

He describes terrifying scenes from battles in the eastern Donbas region where, sometimes praying, sometimes crying, the machine gunner somehow survived the onslaught by Russian troops.

But last December, by then serving in the rear, Krupych was attacked by his own countrymen whilst out searching for draft dodgers.

He says two men ignored demands to show their documents and fled. When his patrol gave chase, Krupych was badly beaten with a crowbar. He spent six weeks in hospital.

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