That would be true for anyone, I suppose. And you could argue that it was Stalin’s paranoia that put the Red Army in the position it was in in '41–decimated officer cadres, paralyzed command structure, overly centralized control, and of course the sucking up to Adolf up until the Germans crossed the border, and even after for some hours.
Stalin’s one possible claim to an atta boy might be his forced industrialization of the country, but one could also argue that there were, um, better ways to go about that.
No argument from me that Stalin deserves an atta boy. Just noting that this particular war was for more than the usual stakes. It’s not like the Germans were there to install a sympathetic government and go home.
The vote marked the culmination of a targeted, 11-day information operation that was amplified by computational propaganda techniques and aimed to change both public perceptions and the behavior of American lawmakers.
Trump may not be willing to oppose the Russians in any way, but our commanders on the ground in Syria are. They bombed a Russian mercenary unit and then sent in Apaches to slaughter the survivors.
I’m not sure what to make of this. I don’t want us dragged into a new conflict in Syria, but at least we’re not following the old Cold War policy where we kill hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese but are careful to never hurt one precious Russian.
The interesting and potentially worrisome thing about this is the uncertainty about who is giving the orders. This sort of action, with possible high-level political implications, should be part of a conscious strategy or plan, or at the very least be something signed off on at a high level. If it is, that’s one thing, but if it’s something a local commander is authorizing because there is no effective guidance from above, or if the guidance from above is an unthinking “whatever you like, we can’t be bothered,” then that’s a big problem.
I agree that it’s hard to get worked up about a bunch of Russian mercs getting their comeuppance. OTOH, will someone do the same to our PMCs? Hmm.
From that article - there are no “Russian private military firms”. These are normal Russian soldiers, paid by the government just like they were in Ukraine. If they keep telling that little fib they hope people buy into it.
Yes, but they are soldiers on a leave of absence being paid by the government to be mercenaries not being paid by the government to be soldiers. This means they are not soldiers and Russia does not have a military presence on the ground. Therefore it is perfectly fine for us to bomb ground troops encountered in an ISIS area of operations.
Did this kind of wordsmithing exist 30 years ago? These shell games are sick and I just don’t remember this kind of effort in yesteryear. In the Korean & Vietnam war you had Russian soldiers in the represented countries uniforms. But that seems more honest than what’s going on now.
Sure, this kind of thing has happened many, many times in the past. Hell, Xenophon’s “mercenary” status was just a fiction to cover the Greek’s increasing involvement against the Persians.
More recently, the Flying Tigers are a good example. US military pilots carefully drummed out of their service branches and employed by an ostensibly international aircraft company to fight against the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor.
