I don’t want our troops to be targeted for bounties. But three observations:
1) We are fighting a long grueling war against the Taliban.
They want to kill our forces when opportunity avails. Are they really going to “try harder” because of a bounty from the Russians they hate even more than they hate us?
2) During the Carter administration, the US supplied massive amounts of weapons to the Taliban for their use in killing thousands of Russian troops, downing planes and helicopters, etc. Are we really shocked, shocked, shocked, that Russian military officers would want some payback?
3) What is the evidence that this bounty scheme really existed? Doesn’t the fact that it involves Russian intel officers sounds a bit suspicious? That Putin even knew about it? Other than ask Putin not to allow it, what can we do to stop them? Nuke-em?
The whole thing sounds like a repeat of the Ukraine phone hoax perpetrated by US intel.
[They want to kill our forces when opportunity avails. Are they really going to “try harder” because of a bounty from the Russians they hate even more than they hate us?]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years’_War
People engage in alliances of convenience all the time. Having fought each other for close to a thousand years, beginning with the Norman conquest, the UK and France weren’t bosom buddies. They weren’t exactly friends with the Ottomans either, but they allied with the Ottoman Empire to prevent Russia from taking over every single square foot of Ottoman territory. Hence the Crimean War.
Note that the Ottomans had been fighting Christians for almost 600 years when the Russians invaded their domain. Yet they gladly accepted assistance from both the British and the French to ward off Russian advances.
Real life isn’t a Star Wars episode, where each ally is clamoring to take on more danger. In real life, allies want the easiest jobs but put out press releases claiming credit for someone else’s victory.
We allied with the Soviets against Germany. The Brits allied with the US against Germany and Japan, even though they knew that FDR wanted their empire completely dismantled. Countries make temporary arrangements because they want to do things without paying the entire cost themselves. What’s wrong with paying one enemy to fight another? The US is the primary country preventing Russian territorial expansion. For the Russians, Islam is a minor problem solvable via traditional Russian methods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Chechens_and_Ingush
The American challenge isn’t.