With her announcement that " We are fighting Russia," I'm taking bets on how long before the dipshit running Germany's foreign ministry has her retirement announced.
But for those who think one person saying it, or that sending tanks to Ukraine proves it, tell the class how Russian SA-2 missiles around Hanoi triggered the US to nuke Moscow in 1965.
[Moscow is no more likely to take the bait on this than the West was likely to pre-emptively strike Russia the 27 times Vlad's minions threatened nuclear holocaust over Ukraine. Learn a lesson from that.]
For those who think a public official saying something makes it so, you ought to think long and hard before setting that precedent.
Long and hard. Just saying.
Germany's idiot minister is liable to get Berlin bombed, and then it's a nuke party. Which distant possibility has been the troubling aspect all along. Russia has been a failed state since 1990, but one with nukes. I suspect the German bimbo has already retired, even if she doesn't know it yet.
ReplyDeleteIMHO She got both feet.
ReplyDeleteIt's all fun and games until that second Sunrise.
ReplyDeleteThen it's on like Donkey Kong and no amount of He did it or she did it means jack shit.
Aesop you should remember throughout history how many military failures started out as a "Good Idea".
Now we play with far more destructive and far-reaching weapons.
Yeah, no matter how you finesse in it's clear to the Russians that they are at war with BATO and their masters the USA.
All the more reason for Russia to return to the status quo ante by admitting their mistake, and withdrawing from the country they invaded on thin pretexts, and do so in haste.
ReplyDeleteThen they can dicker with Ukraine over reparations for damages, and their return of Crimea and the Donbas to its actual sovereign.
Vlad is 200 years too late for colonialism.
The Russian will be rolling through the Fulda Gap before you know it.
ReplyDeleteThe tricky bit for Our Lord and Savior Putin is just how many of those nukes and rockets are actually functional & ready to go, right now?
ReplyDeleteEven a good design needs a LOT of regular maintenance to actually work right, and from what we are seeing in Ukraine, regular maintenance isn't a thing for the Russian army. And that's before they started sending the rocket guys into the meat grinder.
Yes, their space rockets go- but those are custom made to order, not stuck in a silo for years and years while Valinski sold the spares and Kaminski huffed the tritium.
Now, nobody wants to be the target of even a nuclear fizzle. But one can only bluff with an arsenal full of maypops.
They can't even get to Kiev.
ReplyDeleteGoing backwards, they've only got another 23,000 miles to go until they retreat as far as the Fulda Gap.
> tell the class how Russian SA-2 missiles around Hanoi triggered the US to nuke Moscow in 1965.
ReplyDelete---
Oh, come now. There's no reason to keep supporting that canard. Only two missiles were actually launched. One exploded shortly after launch and the other took out a fish hatchery in Arkhangelskoye. Though granted, that's *near* Moscow. And LBJ promptly declared it was an accident, practically groveled at Kosygin's feet, cashiered a bunch of officers, and gave the Soviets massive concessions as reparations.
Nuking Berlin? No. Hitting the tanks in transport while they are on rail cars in Poland? Very much on the table, I think. That would certainly put NATO in a dilemma. Since the tanks "belong" to Ukraine, they are military targets, but they are physically in a NATO nation that has been trying their best to drag the rest of NATO into outright war with Russia.
ReplyDelete@TRX,
ReplyDeleteI 've no earthly idea what dog whistle you were responding to, but when last I looked, Russia sent thousands of SA-2 missiles to Hanoi during the Vietnam War, which shot down fifteen B-52s and dozens of US aircraft over NVN, and yet we didn't try to shoehorn that into a pretext with threatening Moscow with nukes. Putin's butthurt over how it's affecting his impotent military efforts changes nothing.
That precedent having been set in stone, my point is that only total idiots would equate sending arms to Ukraine now with "making war" on Russia. The shoe is simply on the other foot.
@Phelps,
Re-read Article V of the NATO charter, and get back to us on what happens if Russia widens the conflict beyond the boundaries of Ukraine and Russia proper. Vlad's on his own here. And his talent and materiel pool is shrinking with every passing day.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17120.htm
They bomb Poland, and this goes nuclear within 72 hours.
Or - far more likely - Putin's brains decorate the wall behind his chair.
My money's on "B", and I think Vlad knows that in his bones, which is why I think he also knows better than to push things that far.
Words can be provocative. Sending weapons can be provocative. Sending actual troops is really provocative.
ReplyDeleteThe Soviets had their Russian pilots flying North Korean MiGs in the Korean War. There were supposedly lots of Russian-accented Russian speaking North Vietnamese MiG pilots on the radio in the Vietnam War too.
During the 967-1970 Egypt-Israeli "Attrition" War, the Israelis regularly waxed the Egyptian MiGs, and their Russian trainers blamed the Egyptians as poor pilots. Finally the Egyptians complained enough, so the Russian trainers went up against the Israelis one afternoon. The Israelis waxed their butts too.
No one expanded those wars and started fighting Russia.
RD
Wasn't that penultimate sentence Kamala's campaign slogan?
ReplyDeleteIIRC, Sen. Kneepads' winning slogan was "Taking a knee before it was cool."
ReplyDeleteMy science teacher in the Seventies said that it took 50 launches of an SA 2 to bring down one aircraft. That's not a very good ratio. Was he right? I'm too lazy to ask Alexa.
ReplyDeleteI know what Article V says. You want to look at Article VI. The very real danger that it will go nuclear is WHY NATO nations will begin backing out of it when we do something stupid like put Ukraine's name on assets in a NATO country, and people start arguing whether or not the clause in Article VI means that an attack is when it is against forces of a NATO country AND in a NATO country, or an attack against NATO forces OR an attack in a NATO country.
ReplyDeleteThe honest reading of Article VI is "and", not "or", so an attack on UKRANIAN targets ANYWHERE cannot invoke Article V, even in a NATO country.