It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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After the fiasco in Afghanistan, I can see how intelligence agencies could become cynical about the commitment of local populations to fight for their own freedom.
However, we discovered that the people of Ukraine were not cowards like the people of Afghanistan
holy shit holy shit someone should drop this fucker in a warzone
Neither were cowards, both corrupt war machines started to break down when the flow of US money dried up. It has nothing to do with individual bravery, everything to do with a puppet state being cut off after it proved insufficient for our needs
These motherfuckers need materialism
not cowards like the people of Afghanistan
I don't know how you could look at the modern history of Afghanistan and not think that Afghan people are brave to the point of insanity.
Wow this rivals "an outbreak of gratitude among the Iraqi people" as one of the things someone can say to get themselves Disney fastpassed instantly to the front of the wall line
fight for their own freedom.
"Freedom" once again just means "Western rule".
Pretty sure it makes very little difference for the average Ukrainian whether wholesome100 Cpt Zelenskyy or evil Putler is in charge of their government. Russians are not any less "free" than Ukrainians, if anything, their freedoms are limited by Western sanctions and being banned from participating in international competitions.
I love how they conveniently ignore there has been mass emigration of Ukrainians to the rest of Europe (and I'm not blaming them to be clear, it's a war, I probably would too).
Hell, a German MP recently said there are around 200k able Ukrainian men (as in able to fight) in Germany and they need to fuck back off to Ukraine and fight (apparently, Europe and the West in general has decided to fight to the last Ukrainian, Ukrainians' opinion about the whole thing be damned).
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/ukraine-unterstuetzung-kiesewetter-100.html
These are the people who call themselves the adults in the room and say you're only left-wing because you don't have enough life experience.
These deeply unserious people managed to find an old bottle of vintage N*zi Germany era anti-Slavic racism and have been gulping it down heavily. It's literally the "superior Western Europeans cannot be defeated by the inferior and stupid ~~Slavic hordes~~ RUZZIAN ORCZ. Operation Barbarossa will be a success!" all over again.
When you kick in the door but the whole rotted structure doesn't collapse 
Well the rotten structure collapsed, but it wasn’t the one the Nazis believed.
Well, Putin...
Exactly. Also...
I completely agree. Then there's...
Exactly. The USSR...
THIS. He doesn't...
Exactly. The sheer number...
Exactly.
You know when the thread has this structure that meaningful discussion is ongoing
One of the worst aspects of places like R*ddit is their use of political analogy in the place of political analysis.
Obviously some of the most egregious offences are when people do like Harry Potter fanfic or whatever (e.g. Joe Biden is Harry Potter, Kamala Harris is Hermione, and Trump is Voldemort... that kind of bullshit) but the second worst is when they do pop-history political analogy.
No, Napoleon doesn't have any direct bearing on the current war in the Ukraine and no matter how closely you retcon major political or military figures into a superficial match with major figures today it won't make your analysis any more sound, let alone any more true.
This isn't the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan. This isn't one of the wars in Iraq. This isn't the same as a box office smash hit movie which you love and have seen half a dozen times.
If you want to draw upon history for some analysis of the war in the Ukraine, I would point you to the Syrian civil war because there you will see Russia's modern military tactics on display and this would be a sound basis for developing an understanding of Russia's military tactics in the Ukraine. It's not a surefire 1:1 match and it's never going to be but it's where I think any credible person would start (aside from any fairly recent Russian war game tactics.)
But that's nowhere near as compelling and it doesn't have the aura of gripping narratives and silver screen treats in the way that this cheap political analogy has. Discussing troop movements and artillery positions and the names of contemporary Russian generals is dry af and almost nobody is actually going to listen if you're talking about that stuff.
I know the whole "Reddit hivemind" trope is completely played out by now but there's a grain of truth to it. Mainstream Reddit subs are particularly bad at this alt-present narrative scripting as a stand in for reality that gets elevated into something widely celebrated across that site (and all those sycophantic comments that come to bask in the upvotes are a part of this phenomenon.)
This isn't the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan. This isn't one of the wars in Iraq. This isn't the same as a box office smash hit movie which you love and have seen half a dozen times.
They can't even point to the Chechen War or the Russo-Georgian War, which is much more recent and has Putin playing a role in those conflicts. I suspect they don't want to point to those conflicts because Russia more or less accomplished all of their strategic objectives lol
you're assuming they even know about those wars, let alone the outcomes and the details of them - this is reddit we're talking about
To admit that would be to admit that Putin succeeded in pacifying the Chechens.
Remember when everyone was saying that Russia is doomed to face endless insurrections from the Chechens after the end of the Second Chechen War, how Putin has now tied himself in a blood feud with the Chechens who will want their revenge sooner or later.
You can criticize how reactionary Chechnya is but you cannot deny that there has been peace in the highly volatile region over the past 20 years. They will never admit that Putin has any ability to bring peace to a conflict.
There'd also be slightly more explanatory potential if they weren't dogmatically ignoring United States history. Like, we're funding and arming a group of people with the idea of locking Russia into a costly conflict -- now why does that sound so familiar? This is the preamble to consequences that are going to define the next few decades, if not the rest of the 21st century, for both the United States and the European Union. And yet we're still talking about it in a --"Home in time for Christmas, by Jingo!" -- sorta way. It's already been two years!
we're funding and arming a group of people with the idea of locking Russia into a costly conflict -- now why does that sound so familiar?
What are we up to now... is it Gladio-C?
I worry that we're going to run out of letters in the alphabet and we'll have to start resorting to COVID naming protocols if this shit keeps up. This is a matter of national security!!
Gladio-Æ-X-S3XY will sure turn the tide against the asio-slavs
This one really got me. Thanks for the laugh, I needed it.
(Poor kid though. Imagine being Elon Musk's child and being named like you're a robot who does a bit-part role in a Star Wars movie. Either is bad enough but both?
I can't wait until they grow up to be yet-another nepo billionaire shilling crypto and dick pills so that I can feel vindicated for participating in their online bullying back when they were still an infant.)
Doesn't muskrat have a kid who's Trans and hates his fucking guts? There's always hope for children as they can develop into their own people separate from their environment they were nurtured in
What's that old pre-wojak meme, Like a Sir? Whenever redditors talk about a Designated Bad Country, I always imagine like 6 or 7 of those guys sitting around a table
Reminder that we've been hearing that Russia has one (1) week left of ammunition since March last year. It's been a long week.
Remember that OSINT guy who said that Russian military vehicles are 3 weeks from completely breaking down because he saw some photos of Russian trucks and concluded that they forgot to rotate their cheap Chinese tires?
So you think Ukraine is losing? 
Well, my 4-year-old just did the Hitler salute and said "Ukranda forever" so take that, Putler.
Lol. Lmao even.
It was a big moment of radicalization for me when I first became aware that the US was actually the worst side in the revolutionary war, a very great feat of evil considering their enemy was the fucking British Empire.
"TrumpedBigly".
Individiual who's received their political education on twitter as of Trump's election and also by hanging around on r/cheetointhewhitehouse
The Anglo-French war of 1778 with military assistance from the Spanish and diplomatic assistance from the Russians was what helped ultimately cinch victory for the American revolutionaries as it was an opportunity for the other less strong imperial powers to stomp of England's foot and pull out one of the colonial gems from the English crown.
Also comparing the 13 colonies to Ukraine is backwardly saying it's a colonial subject of Russia that's been settled by Russian colonials who eventually developed their own national culture distinct from Russia, backwards liberal ass.
Russia won’t pull out, Putin has to appear powerful. It doesn’t matter if it ruins Russia economically, he won’t ever stop.
Russia is the fastest growing economy in Europe.
They have a birth rate well below replacement and are bordering on demographic collapse. They can't afford to lose millions of men like they could in WW2.
Once about 32 million Russians die (probably early 2025) then the door will be locked in and the whole rotten edifice will fall down.
What I hate is most people don't seem to realise it's not only about Ukraine. Letting Russia win opens a whole other can of worms. Do we really want authoritarian powers with imperialistic ambitions around the world to think they can just invade what they want and wait until the West gets tired?
The west is the vanguard of anti-imperialism.
Meanwhile, Russia has had to sell oil at loses, has had assets frozen, has suffered heavy sanctions meaning lack of materials and equipment/technology, and has had to switch to a war time economy. Meanwhile, it has barely made a dent in the wests finances.
Russia the fastest growing economy in Europe.
Do we really want authoritarian powers with imperialistic ambitions around the world to think they can just invade what they want and wait until the West gets tired?
Biden said the same thing during a UN speech. I cannot and will not take these people seriously, even if i truly wanted to.
Meanwhile, it has barely made a dent in the wests finances.
… what? This entire comment has to be a joke right.
Meanwhile, it has barely made a dent in the wests finances.
How long do you think it'll take liberals to figure out that derivatives and oil futures don't translate into ammunition and rations if you outsourced all your factories?
They never will, the signs are already bad for the Ukrainian side.
In March 2023, the EU made the historic decision to deliver a million artillery shells to Ukraine within 12 months. But the number that has actually been sent is closer to 300,000.
According to the armed forces of Ukraine, over the summer of 2023, Ukraine was firing up to 7,000 artillery shells a day and managed to degrade Russia’s logistics and artillery to the point where Russia was firing about 5,000 rounds a day. Today, the Ukrainians are struggling to fire 2,000 rounds daily, while Russian artillery is reaching about 10,000.
Russia is likely to be able to fire about 5m rounds at Ukraine in 2024, based on its mobilised defence production, supply from Iran and North Korea, and remaining stocks. Despite the flippant observation – often made by European officials – that Russia’s economy is the same size as that of Italy, the Kremlin is producing more shells than all of Nato.
This is not to say "Russia stronk, victory imminent", but that there's a rising tide on the Russian side which has, amusingly, more stable allies, that can actually ship war supplies on time. Even this lib commentator is not shying away from noting the Ukrainian counter-offensive floundered. The closer you get to the actual details, the less gung-ho you are about the war, funny that.
One of the worst and best things to happen to the world was the rise of the private defense contractors.
Obviously I don't need to explain why it is one of the worst things. But as for the best? Man, if all of the worst excesses of capitalism and neoliberalism aren't captured in a microcosm that is defence contractors...
The sheer amount of graft and inefficiency and boondoggles and everything else that comes from putting profits first in a captive capital environment. That's not to say that truly free-range capital is somehow a force for good but when defence contractors know that they're going to get handed billions upon billions of dollars every year and that they're competing against maybe a couple of other contractors, and sometimes none at all, then they're largely insulated from the forces of the market that tend to drive capitalist innovation.
The fact that the US had basically emptied its stocks of certain munitions really early in the Ukraine war speaks volumes about how fragile of a paper tiger the military-industrial complex really is. Obviously the US would have strategic stockpiles tucked away for when the shit hits the fan but last I checked it was going to take years for stocks of certain munitions to be replenished.
And the US isn't even in close to being in a full-blown war right now.
If it was like the old model the US would be able to take direct intervention into production, command-economy style, to produce weapons in order to fill the current shortfall in production but it would probably require an all out war with the US at the centre before they'd even consider abandoning their precious and fundamentally hamstrung neoliberal model.
Shit's rotten to the core and it is glorious thing to behold.
It comes down to blood. Which side can bleed more. And the answer is Russia. Someone can correct me on this story, but it goes like this… A country goes to war agains China. Every day the Chinese lose one million fighters. After 100 days the enemy surrenders to China. Suffering and dying is part of the Russian psyche. They will bleed their own country dry and consider it a patriotic gesture.
They actually still believe they are dying in droves, just naruto running into the bullets in human wave attacks.
"The slavic brainpan is predisposed towards human wave attacks and death" is...certainly a take to have
This dude's definition of Slavic is anywhere east of Prague. Chinese Slavs, amazing.
dividing up Europe and Asia based on use of human wave tactics
dividing up Europe and Asia based on whether shoes are allowed in the house
Libs sure do love their literal Nazi propaganda.
what story goes like that? what the fuck are they talking about?
The racist story of "those hoards in the east don't value human lives as much as we do".
There was a line in a German newspaper recently that said "Israel is a democracy, where every life matters" 
its true if you don't believe anyone else is a real person
You can't keep people down like the Russians are trying after what Ukraine has experienced of even fledgling democracy and freedom.
Pure vibes, stated wrongly and with supreme confidence
Getting the sinking feeling that they're straight up never going to acknowledge any kind of Ukrainian defeat
The real Vietnam Syndrome
"We killed [made up number of Russians] but lost the land and any strategic goal, you call that a loss???"
I wonder if the CIA will kill Zelensky and liberals and Ukrainian refugees will still worship the US like they did with Ngo Diem lol