He did have a choice... It took a lot of balls to give that a go. Sent from my LG-LS720 using Tapatalk
If the Bin Laden raid fails Obama turns into Jimmy Carter overnight and nothing anybody at the Pentagon, CIA or elsewhere says in his defense would have changed that. People acted like Jimmy Carter was the only guy involved in the hostage rescue fiasco. In fact the only thing he had to do with it was he gave the go order when the guys who should have been able to figure out you needed sand filters in the desert planned it and screwed up in the process.
This is true Bradyway BUT you can also argue that Carter's cut in the military increased the likelihood of operational failures. I certainly agree that something simple like that shouldn't be overlooked, but cutting organizational experience and institutional knowledge is a dangerous thing. You never know when the guy you've fired/retired/relegated to other duty was the one who would normally cover that sort of information in a given setting. This is why the US Armed forces has OPS centers all over the planet, right? It allows us a to assimilate local data to determine logistical needs. So everything like what the current political situation is, to who the players are, terrain, weather, and so on. This is how it isossible to use global forces in a local setting: you take guys with general combat training, let them train on the mission, and also give them access to people who can support them with local information. The problem with all of this is that by the time of the raid into Iran Carter had cut into the military pretty badly. New vehicles and parts were being delayed, but also personnel were being trimmed. I'm not old enough to know the very fine details like which unit lost which people, that's very detailed info, but I do know that the US armed forces at the end of the Carter admin were much weaker than they had been prior to his taking office. There are arguments to be made that this was a reasonable path, but I do think there were consequences to this. As an aside, the armed forces have often lost some of its best people during these periods of cutbacks. This is a substantial problem and represents a geometric loss of talent. So cutting, say, 10% of the army will often cost us as many have 1/3 of the best people! So we have a smaller force with a substantially less talented, qualified, experienced group of people. It then takes years to accumulate a new group of people and cycle the mediocrity back out.
Erdogan is such a fool. I still need to do some more reading, but quite a few articles have hinted that the Russian jet didn't so much cross into Turkish airspace as it APPROACHED the Turks airspace. Nevertheless, if you look at the area in question, I find it questionable why the Turks chose to shoot this plane down. Right now people are forgetting that there is a centuries long competition between the Turks and Russians that has largely been in some sort of remission for nearly a century. But before the end of the First World War those two nations hated each other and had for four centuries. Given Erdogan's delusions of grandeur I suspect that he is harboring some thinly veiled desires to reignite the Russo-Turkish rivalry. This is bad news for the Turks IMHO. Although the Turks are much more an up-and-coming nation compared to the Russians right now, Russia still has a vast technological lead over the Turks in what they can produce and to what extent the Russian armed forces can extend strategic reach. Despite this sabre rattling, the Turks have some gaping holes in their armory.....
Good for Turkey. The ruskies support the fucking muslims anyway. Might as well take out one of the enemy.
No. Russia is looking to block a potential natural gas pipeline that would start in Qatar, run through Syria, and end in Turkey. Haliburton has already built the infrastructure in Qatar and Turkey. Russia is the #1 supplier of natural gas in the European region and surrounding area. Such a pipeline would take a lot of shirtless hunting happybucks out of Putin's pocket. ISIS is the manufactured reason for the "Allies" invading Syria, and it will happen the moment a GOP candidate gets into office. Not that I'm pining for Hillary.
We'd just fought the longest war in US history and it ended right before Carter took office. That's how things work. You have war time mobilization and then you have peacetime cuts afterwards. Every war in US history has had that pattern, including WWII when we were in full empire mode in the aftermath. So again, that's not on Carter that's on western culture and how it works.
We came out of Vietnam in 1973 but Carter came into office in January 1977. Also keep in mind that the attempted rescue in Iran doesn't occur until 1980. So the military that tried to effect this rescue was the one that had been molded by Carter's policies. This doesn't mean your point doesn't have merit, nor does it mean that Carter made the wrong choice. The in is that we were bound to lose institutional knowledge of all sorts coming out of the Vietnam war. The Second World War is a magnificent example of how we built a stellar, top notch military only to totally bullocks up everything we built by the time of the Korean War. However, Carter's cuts went further than the the post-Vietnam cuts envisioned. In effect, the post-Vietnm military was cut to make it leaner for a post-war period. Carter's cuts began to effect logistical areas, R&D, acquisitions, training. To put it another way, he started to cut beyond the fat and into the muscle of our military deterrence. This was part of the excuse Reagan used to spend like a madman in the '80s when, in fact, it would have been better if the spending levels had not been tinkered with at all! As an aside, why do you think demobilization issues are a Western culture thing?
No President makes the level of mobilization/demobilization decisions that you are positing. When they try we get disasters likes the budget-busting 600 ship navy in an era trending towards the high frontier instead. Demobilization issues are a western culture thing because we tended (until recently) to go with a fairly light military and then ramp up rapidly in war time to meet the circumstances in play. So a war ends and we make a lot of cuts. When we don't make cuts we wind up outfitted to win the last war instead of the next one.
I know this issue is pretty much yesterday's news but Russia has sent their warships to Mediterranean earlier against Turkey. Today NATO declared they would send multiple warships along with war planes to Mediterranean very close to Turkey. Let's see how far Putin will take this issue.
Do you ever do anything but support what your political party does? I'm asking this seriously. Do you?
Honestly I don't blame the Turks for shooting down that plane because they had warned Russia multiple times and the Russians are also bombing the Turkmen in Syria who are allies of the Turks flighting Assad but not part of ISIS that Russia says they are bombing. Russia has been playing both sides of this. as has that bastard leader in Turkey who's son apparently is giving ISIS funding because they are fighting the Kurds.
I don't have a political party at this point. That ship sailed when Howard Dean and Jim Webb and the blue dogs were de-prioritized by the Democrats. The Democrats squat all over too much of the political spectrum and they've been doing that since the 60's. They should have just gracefully moved to the right and marginalized the Republicans in the process. Instead they cut back to the left and snuffed the Greens and prevented the Working Family Party from getting off the ground, which is a big part of the gridlock we're in right now. The Republicans would be on the ash heap of history by now if the Democrats had just kept the Clinton move to the right going. We'd have a real party on the left and a loud much smaller party on the right.
