With all due respect to Matt Bracken,
we propose the US military pursue a less-retarded approach
to the Eastern Med:
Erdogan is his own worst enemy, and Turkey needs to be saved from him, even at the choice of removing him from power and halting his futile pursuit of delusions of former grandeur.
This isn't 1960 off Cuba, and you don't stall until your only choices are bad and worse.
We're not there to intervene in the original conflict. We're the guys at the barfight with the sawed-off shotgun, keeping the original fight a one-on-one match-up.
Hamas bought their ticket; now let them ride that bull the whole eight seconds.
If that means Erdogan catches a bellyful of buckshot for interfering, so be it.
Literally no one will miss him by day after tomorrow.
Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'.
16 comments:
Might make for a good fiction action novel. In real life it would start WWIII and almost certainly lead to at best a nuclear exchange...and quite possibly total nuclear war and the end of civilization.
A nuclear exchange with whom?
Turkey has no nukes.
Neither does Syria.
Neither does Gaza.
The US does.
Israel does.
Russia would sulk, but it isn't going to war over Gaza.
They have troubles enough - more than they can deal with - in Donetsk and Crimea.
mm no, this does not pass the KISS test, and there is a high probability that joe's handlers want a ship sunk.
And as for nuclear exchange, there is the law of Unintended Consequences.
Or, how about this one.
1. Turkey sends peace convoy.Declared terrorist support
2. Russian ships move to escort.
3. Long before they meet up, U.S. Navy SEALS and Marine MEU/SOC board and capture convoy under massive air cover. USN keeps 24 hrs CAP over Russian ships at sea so they don't get any ideas. Tell world it is for their protection because Hamas para-gliders are a threat.
4. Ships sail to Cyprus, peaceniks handed over to Greeks. Weapons and contraband laid out for world press.
5. Color revolution in Turkey.
6. Erdogan gets Khadafi treatment.
Maybe you forgot, Russia has SHIP loads of hypersonic ship killer missiles.
On our side we have enough diversity to phuque up a wet dream. The "world" is all in favor of humanitarian shit. Opinions aside, we'll see, won't we.
One "hypersonic ship killer missile" flies and our reply lands in Moscow in about 30 minutes, or your next pizza is free.
You figure Vlad is having so much fun getting kicked in the balls in Ukraine, he's going to pull the whole world down on his own head for the ragheads in Gaza even the other ragheads don't want?
Sh'yeah, okay.
Because they fired all those nukes at us right after Trump levelled half the Syrian Air Farce, and again when we took out a regiment of Wagner doofuses in Syria a bit later.
Oh, wait, none of that happened then either.
So we should totally just wait for the shitshow to ripen, and then stomp on it, rather than nip it in the bud while leaving Russia no place to play in the region.
I'ma go with Plan B, rather than doddering around until there's no win left, and we just cede the entire Eastern Med to lunatics.
You have failed the "show your work" phase of your brief back.
Bracken's analysis is wizard if Biden was the CNO. But he's not, and in the actual trade, not everyone - and more importantly, neither of two carrier group commanders - is going to sail around in circles, fat, drunk, and stupid, and lurch into a lose-lose scenario without a care nor a clue.
Thinking Russia was 20 feet tall and we were stumblefucks was good for goosing the military-industrial complex funding, but it's never been how the actual military operates when we're a hair's breadth from going weapons free.
And both Vlad and his admirals know that, even if his fanboys have forgotten it. The last think they need is another hunk of their dwindling fleet converted to permanent duty on the sea floor.
20:1 someone sends the Russian naval force commander some periscope-view pics of his entire command, captioned "You really ought to stay home, Boris." and that's the end of this pipe dream, before it ever casts off.
@Aesop 5:18pm
That last line is brilliant…but there you go again thinking strategically with righteous purpose, whereas this administration is reactive and does not want that sort of show of strength solution. They constantly flash their weak underbelly to the world crazies to take advantage, appearing beholding to everyone else except their first charter, America.
PDJT would do exactly as you suggest, although this mess would never be happening under his “screw with us or our friends and you’ll find out” leadership. This bunch of amateur political hacks don’t want to keep the lunatics in check, instead they intentionally sow chaos around the world then act all magnanimous when forced to get involved, like they are there to actually help.
That may be the most absurd and naive war plan I've seen yet.
Are you channeling Vicky Nuland and Paul Wolfowitz?
As retired boxer Mike Tyson said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth".
Come on now, Pat, compared to Putie-poot's "Three Days To Faltten Kiev" abortion, it's positively Napoleonic.
Besides, it isn't a war plan, it's a war avoidance plan.
Turkey gets appropriately spanked, and Russia is left all dressed up and no place to go.
A war plan would be to simply sink the entire Turkish Navy and the Russian ships in Latakia and Tartus before they even get out of port, and then let it slip quietly that US intelligence has noted that Syrian rebels may have acquired sea mine capability, and leave the aggrieved parties to suck their thumbs and stew on a fait accompli.
As it is, the whole thing may be overtaken by events, as the armed forces in Gaza appear to be in a state of civil war, and actively hunting Hamas down and killing them themselves, with no love lost over their rump state's current predicament.
Gaza is likely Hamas-free for the next forty years within a week, either way, and there's nothing they nor anyone else can do about that.
Why does Greece stop with Cyprus? "Next year in Constantinople".
Admittedly out of my league here, but you lost me at: "One "hypersonic ship killer missile" flies and our reply lands in Moscow in about 30 minutes," --- so? - loss of say a US Destroyer is going to trigger a full on nuclear exchange? You sure about that?
The Guns of August . . . next front?
he problem is that in this "war" there is a large group of people who actually want to die in a terribly violent way and would do it eagerly IF their enemy also died in a terrible violent way. The entire concept of mutual assured destruction depends on adults in charge who actually want to live. This simple truth changes everything we think we know about the possibility of a nuclear war.
@RegretLeft,
Paddle harder. You'll get to shore.
"One hypersonic ship killer missile flies..."
1) You seriously figure Moscow would attack a destroyer with one of those?
2) Even if they did that by accident, you figure they'll sit still for having the response sink their entire fleet, and just suck it up, because they like the taste of shitburgers so much?
3) Short answer: Look any ten moves ahead. Russia shoots anything at us, this ends in ICBM conversations.
4) Russia is playing Tic Tac toe, not even checkers.
As Joshua warned them in 1984, "The smartest move is not to play."
Within 5 years of that warning, they tapped out.
Vlad is simply an idiot trying to get a new game going.
He's going to get introduced to the Makarov Retirement Party if he keeps it up, and there have already been reported attempts in the last year and a half over just the debacle in Ukraine.
@Anon 7:32,
Re: "A large group of people who want to die in a terribly violent way..."
You figure that includes the leadership of Russia, playing with their country as a poker chip?? Explain.
Russia sticking their fingers in this pie complicates things for Jihad Inc.
It's been that way for 60 years. Not so much for us.
Russia throttling their Arab lap dogs in 1973, before we let Israel conquer their capitols (specifically Cairo and Damascus, which were a few miles ahead of advancing Israeli tank armies when the cease-fire was announced) and lay waste to their defenseless countries, was why the war in '73 didn't end in ICBMs flying east and west.
No one on either side wanted Russian re-supply planes getting shot down by Israel, and/or US planes risking a confrontation with MiGs flown by anyone.
You could look it up.
Much like the main reason we have the 2d ID in Korea is to keep South Korea from going north, not the other way around.
Jihadis being jihadis is how we got here.
Them getting their asses kicked around the block is how it always ends.
Calling Russia for help (and mischief) has been their m.o. for half to three-quarters of a century, and it hasn't worked once for them in all that time.
Moscow isn't going to commit suicide for the fuck-ups in Gaza, nor any other part of the Arab world.
That hinders them, not us, because we know it, and they know we know.
Trump explained this to them twice in Syria, and they did nothing except bleed.
No. That includes all of Islam and more specifically those Islamic states which are involved in supporting terrorists. IF they get a nuke they will use it. It does not matter if it is Iran developing nukes or some small terrorist group buying them on the black market. IF they get a nuke they will use it. They won't play the "MAD" game. You would expect them to use a nuke in Israel BUT Israel is physically very small and the nuke would have spill over effects on Arab/Islamic states. So I would bet there is a slightly better than even chance they would pick an American city or venue if they had one nuke with no delivery method. That is they would sneak it into our country or a harbor and set it off in a way to maximize death and destruction.
Pushing Turks out of Cyprus is a great idea.
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