Yes but every modern tech, they're also AHEAD. That's it. They have the most advanced drone tech.
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Yes but every modern tech, they're also AHEAD. That's it. They have the most advanced drone tech.
I was wrong again to anticipate immediate interaction between the general market and macro political events. Judge Kimba Wood has kicked the can into the future with her decision yesterday. A less hysterical account than CNN is found in today's NYT:
Judge Says Trump and Cohen Can’t Yet Review Materials Seized by F.B.I.
Further, the general market seems unruffled but our beloved TSLA is at this writing down over two percent. Cricky!
Judge Says Trump and Cohen Can’t Yet Review Materials Seized by F.B.I.
Further, the general market seems unruffled but our beloved TSLA is at this writing down over two percent. Cricky!
One holds out hope that at some point in the future we (people) will be a more discerning consumer of information.
This constant "breaking news" might have been good for market share at some point but no it is just sad...and counter productive.
I don't watch TV...but whenever I am at the gym or airport I never fail to see a screaming headline about BREAKING NEWS!!!!
Bona fida Soviet specialists, not kissing up to the likes of the government, were not in the category above. We who were distant from government, in contrast to Kissinger, had a much greater success rate in analysis because we could more fairly apply power theories to both sides of the equation. Insofar as Soviet leaders were smarter than ours it was because they had more experience with powerful neighbors and had to think more clearly as ours did at the time of our founding. We hardly made a mistake until the Spanish American War and then onward as our imperialism was foisted on others. William A. Williams connected the Turner Thesis (slogan: "Go West Young Man if you can't make it in the East") to interpretation of the Open Door notes of Secretary of State John Hay. That, combined with Wilson's moralistic foreign policy has clouded US diplomacy ever since. (I can ad more if queried.)
Incidentally, according to a CIA student in one of my classes, he chose our Soviet Studies minor because the Agency rated it among the top six in the nation, after Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and I would guess John Hopkins and perhaps Indiana as the fifth, I don't remember. We are located near many military bases and have lots of nuclear material in storage by our abandoned nuclear power reactor (a target because the fallout would reach deep into Utah). That's why he was located here.
I'll give you a favorite example of clouded thinking. At a meeting of the American Committee on U.S.--Soviet Cooperation, a business oriented group as a kind of spin-off of the Trilateral Commission (which was meeting at the same venue as the Commission), a titan of Dressler Industries embarrassed us as he got into the face of a Soviet diplomat, our guest speaker. "What an immoral regime you have, look at the Nazi-Soviet Pact leading to the invasion of Poland!" I rose to correct the story but was shushed from the podium before I could correct that piece of fog. Early conflict with a moderator.
I wanted to say according to the second book in the two part series of Max Beloff's widely respected Soviet Foreign Policy, 1929-1941, in the lead up to the Munich Conference Stalin wanted a deal with the West and opened negotiations. He had an agreement with the Czechs to come to their aid, but there was a perfectly logical stipulation, the French should come into the country as well. Hungary was asked for transit rights for Soviet armies, but that was refused, and as a reward from Hitler, Hungary received a part of Czechoslovakia, Teschen.
Western negotiators were sent to Russia, by slow boat, and when they arrived they had no plenipotentiary powers, diplomatese for independent action. Reluctantly, to buy about two year's time, Stalin called Berlin. Ribbentrop flew to Moscow and signed the deal on the spot. Beloff goes on to say Chamberlain was under pressure from the press Lords Londenderry and Lothian who urged playing off Hitler and Stalin, hoping to avoid war.
I take issue also with your use of redneck. I had an experience learned from a black woman with whom I once contemplated marriage. She taught me a lot, from her first experience with racism as a child, "I'm not inferior, I can pick more cotton than you" to my surprise to learn from our first encounter, as an adult she has always made more money than I, especially many multiples of my highest when she worked as a lobbyist for a defense manufacturer in Washington.
Salient here: After spending much of a day building a fence in my friend's back yard one summer day she exclaimed after looking at my neck, "Richard, it's almost scarlet!" My reply, "that's why we are called rednecks." I could offer alternative to your usage, which conveys part of a message I agree with, but that would be P.C. Those in Appalachia missed an opportunity to elect Bernie, but some may have voted so.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
The Syria attack may have been a mostly ineffective show Israeli intelligence reportedly says Trump's Syria strike failed, didn't take out much of anything
Nope. We lost in Iraq. Don't you remember?
Bluntly: Bullshit. Google Millenium Challenge 2002.
The US military is *completely worthless* at invading and conquering foreign countries. We've had a long list of quagmires, but precisely *zero* successful invasions since the end of World War II.
Obviously, if we ended up defending our home turf, we'd win -- eventually. After the existing military was proven to be a paper tiger, we'd improvise something which would work. The US is very good at this, and the current balance of military power is heavily in favor of people defending their homeland.
For the theory behind the US "improvising its way to victory", you can look to George Marshall, who explained that the US did not have standing professional armies; that the US improvised a new army for each war, one suitable for exactly that war; and that the US therefore won by avoiding the "fighting the last war" problem. He was correct about all US wars *prior* to World War II....
...and then the miltary-industrial complex appeared, the standing army solidified, and the US military has been equipped to fight World War II ever since then. Unfortunately for the US's WWII-era strategies, the rest of the world has moved on.
Which means, for all subsequent invasions, our military has *sucked*. It's no good at them. Does them all the time, but it's really really bad at them.
The US has failed at its goals in every single war after the Korean armistice except Kosovo (Wesley Clark's brainchild) and perhaps Grenada. We've outright lost most of them.
Serious military analysts have concluded that aircraft carriers are obsolete, as are the entire strike groups associated with them. You can google this. China has a completely perfect missile/drone defense against an aircraft carrier strike group, and it's so cheap that they are just selling it to third-world countries.
The US keeps blowing money on aircraft carriers, though. Very Maginot Line.
The old rule of thumb when I was teaching was the US had the best equipped military, Britain the best led military, and the USSR the army with the best morale. The last might have been true of Russia during WWII where that was clearly so. It makes a helluva difference when you are fighting on your own soul and have great incentive to kill as many Germans in sight after you left it. They had a moderately
dissimilar fate in the Afghan occupation.
As usual I applaud almost everything neroden has ever posted here. I would quibble with a few points and he might agree.
We could have won in Afghanistan, but that involved CIA operatives rather than brute military force which was wasted by Cheney's diversion to Iraq. Further, and this just occurred to me, CIA may have been so successful since they were neck deep in assisting counter-insurgents there against Soviet occupation.
I have one caveat about another post, not neroden. There's a famous quotation I guess with one of our generals in Vietnam and General Giáp, his counterpart after the fall of Saigon. The American pointed out, we won almost every battle, to which Giáp responded, "so what?" If your strategy and tactics are wrong, and you back a corrupt regime with a terrible connection to the general population, what difference does it make to win all skirmishes?
Giáp was trained, along with many others, by the OSS (CIA predecessor) during WWII in the art of insurgent warfare against the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh could not understand why a country that produced a Jefferson could have a President like Truman who returned Indo-China to France just to fatten NATO's prospects. Even then France refused to fully integrate its forces, if I remember correctly.
I don't fault the military, except a number of its brass. We have so much capacity for destruction we fail to understand, as we once did and I again quote Bertrand Russell "power is the capacity to produce intended effects.'"
I think it was Leo Szilard who wrote a small book called The Voice of the Dolphins. Somehow researchers cracked the code and intellectual collaboration among much brainier dolphins and humans is established. Using the resultant inventions a lot of money was earned and put into a Dolphin Foundation for International Peace. The Directors of the Foundation were the prime ministers, defense and foreign ministers of the Great Powers who promised never to fill their vacancies at home. That was the major accomplishment of the Foundation. [I've screwed up the scenario, but the punch line makes my point.] Szilard was an absolute genius. Contracted cancer, became an expert, cured himself, but then died of a heart attack before he could learn nutrition or surgery.
dissimilar fate in the Afghan occupation.As usual I applaud almost everything neroden has ever posted here. I would quibble with a few points and he might agree.
We could have won in Afghanistan, but that involved CIA operatives rather than brute military force which was wasted by Cheney's diversion to Iraq. Further, and this just occurred to me, CIA may have been so successful since they were neck deep in assisting counter-insurgents there against Soviet occupation.
I have one caveat about another post, not neroden. There's a famous quotation I guess with one of our generals in Vietnam and General Giáp, his counterpart after the fall of Saigon. The American pointed out, we won almost every battle, to which Giáp responded, "so what?" If your strategy and tactics are wrong, and you back a corrupt regime with a terrible connection to the general population, what difference does it make to win all skirmishes?
Giáp was trained, along with many others, by the OSS (CIA predecessor) during WWII in the art of insurgent warfare against the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh could not understand why a country that produced a Jefferson could have a President like Truman who returned Indo-China to France just to fatten NATO's prospects. Even then France refused to fully integrate its forces, if I remember correctly.
I don't fault the military, except a number of its brass. We have so much capacity for destruction we fail to understand, as we once did and I again quote Bertrand Russell "power is the capacity to produce intended effects.'"
I think it was Leo Szilard who wrote a small book called The Voice of the Dolphins. Somehow researchers cracked the code and intellectual collaboration among much brainier dolphins and humans is established. Using the resultant inventions a lot of money was earned and put into a Dolphin Foundation for International Peace. The Directors of the Foundation were the prime ministers, defense and foreign ministers of the Great Powers who promised never to fill their vacancies at home. That was the major accomplishment of the Foundation. [I've screwed up the scenario, but the punch line makes my point.] Szilard was an absolute genius. Contracted cancer, became an expert, cured himself, but then died of a heart attack before he could learn nutrition or surgery.
STARR X
Member
Man, Afghanistan or Iraq wasn't a " true war " ...
The US barely deployed 192 000 soldiers vs more than 1,2 million active personnel.
BTW, I'm not even American. But I find it fascinating how people believe the US isn't the best army in the world.
That is the definition of "full deployment". If a country has to use their entire active personnel to fight, then they're fighting for their very survival, not a war of conquest. You just don't send everyone out to take over another country and leave your home defenseless.
depends on what criteria you use to define "best"? Our equipment is made by the lowest bidder on a cost-plus basis, with limited stockpiles, and designed to fight another super-power. They suck in guerilla warfare like in Afghanistan. It amazes me how non-americans think spending more money equates to having better toys.
Be fascinated if you must, we certainly have the most powerful force available and, worldwide, more bases abroad for its projection, than Great Britain ever had at the height of its power. I certainly have never disputed that. The point of criticism here is that we can always do better just as Elon looks to do.
There are a lot of examples where our military is used in non-military ways for good. If memory serves a recent example is help for Africa in assisting the fight against ebola. A hoary example was provided by a fellow student of Hungarian extraction in a graduate seminar we took in the summer of '58 or '59. He was at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, assisting with aid for thousands of Hungarian refugees in '57. Our army staffed it entirely with Hungarian speaking soldiers, from kitchen workers to the commanders all the way up the line.
There are more advantages to being a nation of immigrants, my dear Horatio, than are spoken of by Mr. Trump.
The most impressive students in the Harvard seminar were two army captains who were about to become instructors at West Point. They were detailed to Harvard for two years to take whatever courses they wanted—no restrictions by the military! Once they caught the instructor, Hans Morgenthau, in an error. They referred to the Morgenthau plan for Germany. Hans interrupted, "I had no plan for Germany." Then they clarified their reference. Even as a recently minted mechanical engineer, a naïf at social science, I thought the exchange funny.
There are a lot of examples where our military is used in non-military ways for good. If memory serves a recent example is help for Africa in assisting the fight against ebola. A hoary example was provided by a fellow student of Hungarian extraction in a graduate seminar we took in the summer of '58 or '59. He was at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, assisting with aid for thousands of Hungarian refugees in '57. Our army staffed it entirely with Hungarian speaking soldiers, from kitchen workers to the commanders all the way up the line.
There are more advantages to being a nation of immigrants, my dear Horatio, than are spoken of by Mr. Trump.
The most impressive students in the Harvard seminar were two army captains who were about to become instructors at West Point. They were detailed to Harvard for two years to take whatever courses they wanted—no restrictions by the military! Once they caught the instructor, Hans Morgenthau, in an error. They referred to the Morgenthau plan for Germany. Hans interrupted, "I had no plan for Germany." Then they clarified their reference. Even as a recently minted mechanical engineer, a naïf at social science, I thought the exchange funny.
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Of course you can do better, way way better.
But I think my original point was to someone who was worrying if a war between Russia and the US starts or something like that.
I was just trying to say that the US shouldn't worry about anyone in terms of being invaded...
dc_h
Active Member
We spend about 30% of GDP on health care and 5% in defense. We tax ourselves for healthcare about 100% higher than Europe. We pay insurance companies and the government, but it’s basically a tax and it’s much bigger a burden then defense and defense does provide some dividends in trade and diplomacy. Our biggest problem with defense is confusing having it and needing to use it (in my opinion anyhow).
Of course our NRA and its supporters will argue "we are" the greatest homeland security. Maybe that's why the Russians set up a phony equivalent in Moscow as a conduit for Russian financial support to the U.S. mother. If Mueller's report ever materializes we may find that suspicion confirmed.
Edit: Cyber and psyops are war by other means.
Edit: Cyber and psyops are war by other means.
Americans are fat and make bad health choices, and crave medications to help fix bad choices, which can itself lead to more bad choices. I wanted to believe we are starting to get smarter and costs could start tapering down soon, but things like the opioid crisis aren’t helping. Did you know an estimated 3% of GDP is spent toward the opioid crisis? It’s also one that unfortunately hits very close to home for me.
In any case, the bad choices of other Americans will continue to be a large reason our healthcare costs are out of control, and is another area I wish my money didn’t have to be spent. That’s another topic outside of the military spending one.
Sorry to burden you with so many posts today, but the link below from a credible journal by a former general counsel of the NSA gives interesting context to war over leaks in the FBI.
The Low Tragedy of Andrew McCabe
The Low Tragedy of Andrew McCabe
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