Prediction Thread: When Will Ukraine Conquer Russia

[Berzerker]

What facts? Here's one: I didn't vote for Trump

[Dinner]

A good video.

https://youtu.be/Iibs7buNwxQ

[Dinner]

How unsurprising.

[BeBMan]

Getting tough on warcrimes, Putin-style:

A Russian soldier who confessed to killing a civilian in Ukraine last year has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison by a military court in Russia’s far east on charges of spreading “fake news” about the army.

In an interview with the independent news outlet Istories last August, Daniil Frolkin, 21, said he shot and killed a male civilian in Andriivka, a village near Kyiv that was occupied by Russian forces shortly after the start of the invasion.

(snipsnap)

full: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...daniil-frolkin

[dannubis]

Don't get me wrong. I applaud the effort. I learned a lot from your posts, However, I don't see why you would think a conspiracy MAGA nutcase would ever change his mind in the face of facts...

[Geronimo]

The main reason I'm gathering all this up is to try to get a handle on why you believe the US uniquely drives all evil on the world stage and spin every problem as the intentional result of Neocon machinations.

[Geronimo]

In other news, remember when Trump assassinated an Iranian general at the Baghdad airport? Turns out Shia Iraq was trying to broker peace between Iran and the Saudis and the general was bringing a deal to the Saudis via Iraq. Israel didn't like that, the allegation is Trump had the guy killed for Netanyahu.

Now China is stepping in to make peace between the Saudis and Iranians. Hell, all China has to do is follow us around if they want allies.

USA is the biggest terrorist in the world.

I really hope this extrajudicial killing of the head of Quds with 5 of his Iranian attachés and 4 bystander Iraqis doesn't form a large fraction of your opinion that USA is the biggest terrorist in the world.

The post cold-war US collection of dirty terrorist laundry consists of overt military operations and covert operations. If you want to call the US the biggest terrorist in the world (presumably not just the biggest state that is a terrorist but the state with the largest output in number of terrorist victims) then we should first take stock of what's been done since the end of the Cold War.:

Lets start with relatively straightforward overt military operations.

20th century

Middle East

1990-1991 Gulf war I - the cold war was barely over and the problem with labelling this operation as a terrorist operation is that everything about it occurred the way international law was designed to allow these "police actions" to occur. On the ground they barely even entered Iraq apart from open desert near the border and the "occupation" ended up being almost entirely "liberated" Kuwaiti territory. I'll take a leap here and assume you won't claim that sort of operation constitutes a terrorist operation. Let me know if you disagree.

1991 - Iraq continued... a huge nationwide uncoordinated revolt of Suni Kurds and of Shia's against Saddam in anticipation of help from the US+allies and help from Iran. In a few short weeks, the revolts began to fail spectacularly leading to 10's of thousands of civillian casualties and bad optics. A no-fly zone over the Kurds with delivery of food assistance was established as some kind of response. Was this terrorism?

1992 - Iraq again. Iraq was failing to deliver all of the demands of the treaty forced on it in the wake of a the previous years vast invasion and the US responded with military exercises. I guess treaties imposed by force tend not to be popular with the victim state. Of course this treaty had UN security council mandate behind it. Do you suppose that Minsk I or Minsk II had some kind of UN mandate? Were these US military exercises terrorism?

1992-2003 northern Iraq no-fly zones were continually enforced. Iraq would eventually lose 4 military aircraft and several SAM sites attempting to defend its own airspace from foreign aircraft imposing an interpretation of UNSCR 688 which Iraq had no means to challenge or have reviewed. Was this terrorism?

1996 Operation Desert Strike in northern Iraq deployed cruise missiles to destroy Iraqi air defences to shore up the no fly zone and stop Saddam from continuing to interfere in the Kurdish civil war. The KDP continued to win without Iraqi government help anyway and US made no effort to expand the targets beyond air defences which the Iraqis stopped turning on. I suppose this is really only terrorism if the nofly zones were.

1998 Operation Desert Fox, the US uses airstrikes and cruise missiles to kill a few hundred to a couple thousand Iraqis near former WMD sites that Saddam has thrown WMD inspectors out of. Ironically several inspectors were still present in Iraq and the operation resulted in their complete expulsion. Whether this is terrorism or not hinges at least partly on far you think the vague UNSCR verbiages allow it.

1999 Yemen. After AQ tried to sink the Cole some troops were setup in Aden. Do you suppose they started the civil war there?

Balkans
1992-1996 Bosnia and Herzegovina the US took part in the longest humanitarian airlift in history. I really hope you don't call this terrorism Berz.

1992-1995 after UNSECR 781 NATO imposed a nofly zone over Bosnia which UNSECR 816 expanded further. The enforcers lost 8 aircraft the Serbs lost 5 aircraft, 4 SAM sites and several SAM vehicles. The Bosnian war had many thoroughly documented cases of ethnic cleansing. 62K Bosniaks, 25K Serbs and 8K Croats would be killed or disappear. Of those, 31K Bosniaks, 21K Serbs and 6k Croats could be identified as soldiers. Was this US terrorism Berz?

1993-1994 The US deployed 350 troops to North Macedonia as part of a UN Protection Force in 1993 and 200 more in 1994. Terrorism?

1995: In Bosnia in response to escalating Army of Republika Srpska on the so called UN "Safe areas" UNSECR 836 was passed and NATO operation Deliberate force began. NATO spent 3 weeks dropping and firing various munitions to lift the siege of Sarajevo and attack threats into the "safe areas". The munitions included some depleted uranium rounds which the IAEA later investigated for heatlh impact and found unlikely to have had a detectible effect on civillian health in the area. Was this terrorism?

1996: frequently helpless IFOR replaced by SFOR established by NATO as part of operation Joint Guard. Terrorism?

1997: operation Silver Wake used US forces to evacuate US citizens from Albania. Terract?

1999: NATO operation Allied Force. For 2 and a half months NATO launched airstrikes into Yugoslavia without any new UN security resolution. China and Russia both promised to veto any such resolution. There was also no self defence, or imminent need for self defence, by any NATO member against Yugoslavia. The strike was ostensibly to halt ongoing ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The operation killed 489 (NATO estimate) or 2,000 (Yugoslav estimate) civilians and 1008 Yugoslav soldiers. In additional to destroying hundreds of military vehicles the operation destroyed a huge Yugoslav radio tower and damaged 19 hospitals, 20 health centers, 69 schools, 176 monuments, 25,000 homes and dozens of bridges. NATO applied some of its strongest pressure by continually dropping carbon fiber munitions on the Yugoslav electrical grid which were designed to short it out for weeks at a time while not permanently destroying the expensive and difficult to replace infrastructure. Russian troops were first to arrive for the peace keeping, paratrooping in and seizing Slatina airport. I certainly can't see how this NATO operation was legal under international treaties and it definitely violated the UN charter. Notably, the sources that were reporting Albanian ethnic cleansing before the operation reported even more afterwards. Was this one of the huge act of US terrorism Berz? How do these numbers compare to Russian involvement in Donbas? How do those numbers compare to Russian special operations to de-nazify Ukraine? You're claiming that the biggest terrorist spot goes to the US right? Certainly not Russia.

Africa

1991 Zaire, US planes transported a few hundred European troops and a few hundred evacuees

1992 Sierra Leone for operation Silver Anvil involved a few hundred troops and US C-141s evacuating a few hundred evacuees.

1992-1993 Somalia. UNSCR 794 provided for a major US peacekeeping mission which initially led to humanitarian operation restore hope but later resulted in "black Hawk Down" infamy and withdrawal in 1993. If this is terrorism its hard to see what the terrorist US was trying to get from it. It probably goes a long way to explain why nobody was willing to do jack in 1994 when the largest genocide in decades hit the fan.

1996 Central African Republic operation Quick Response - another evacuation involving a few planes and a couple hundred evacuees. I've got to say I'm not seeing this tactic featuring prominently in most self respecting terrorist states today.

1997 Sierra Leone evacuation again

1998 Liberia - another evacuation. I've got to say I'm not seeing this tactic featuring prominently in most self respecting terrorist states today.

1998 operation Infinite Reach in response to two al-qaeda two attacks on US african embassies blows up about 600 people near two AQ camps and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory which I am sure Berz knows was in fact not blown up for connections to AQ and nerve gas precursors but rather because the big pharma bosses who gave Clinton his marching orders were terrified Sudanese pharmaceuticals production would soon ruin their business in Africa. I'll grant you that was pretty dastardly. (yeah I know some targets were in Afghanistan).

1998-1999 deployment of a few dozen personnel to coordinate the medical and disaster assistance related to the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. That should further terrify them.

2000 Sierra Leone - naval craft for more evacuations

2000 Nigeria Special forces are sent to lead a training mission. I'm sure that's just a cover. Maybe Berz can explain what they were really up to there?

Americas

1994–1995: Haiti: Operation Uphold Democracy, Up to 20,000 U.S. military troops deployed to Haiti to reverse a 1991 coup. The coup leaders were on the payroll of the USA making this one especially embarrasing. This one probably does a lot to shore up the US reputation of a neocon terrorist in that it was to reverse a coup by defacto CIA agents in exchange for a written agreement from Aristide to bound Haiti to an IMF and World Bank set of structural adjustment policies which opened Haiti's protected domestic economy up to foreign trade. On the other hand, like Assad inviting Putin in to help with his Syrian enemies, Aristide as the internationally recognized government of Haiti could confer legality onto the US operation and the documents Aristide had to sign gave no special concessions to Washington. So while this chapter is dark and led to a still grossly impoverished Haiti of today, it's not like we can claim Washington established unique advantage for itself in this one. Is this the sign of the World's biggest terrorist state of of the World's clumsiest most profligate spycraft state?

East Asia

1997 Cambodia A task force of 550 spent one night in Utapao Air base in thailand just in case Cambodia needed evacuations. nobody pulled the trigger.

2000 East Timor a couple dozen US troops supported the UNTAET.

21st century

Africa

2002: Côte d'Ivoire, in response to a rebellion in Côte d'Ivoire, U.S. military personnel went into Côte d'Ivoire to assist in the evacuation of American citizens from Bouaké

2003 Liberia -US troops evacuation of Americans from Monrovia.

2007 antipiracy operations off of horn of africa

2007 Somalia - US uses AC-130 gunship in midst of somali civil war battle to attack AQ operatives.

2011 Uganda US combat advisors first deployed at Ugandan government request.

2012 Chad - 50 Us troops for evacuations again

2013 Mali US provides French forces with fueling and transport aircraft during operation Serval

2014 - 2017 Uganda a handful of US aircraft and soldiers for the unsuccessful international manhunt for Joseph Kony

2017 Cameroon - US 300 US troops on training mission for cameroon government

2021 Somalia more US airstrikes against al Shabab rebels

Americas

2001 United States The US grounds all flights into the US and flies air patrols to enforce it

2004 Haiti. Another decade, another coup against Aristide. The US joins UN force MINUSTAH to restore order.

2005-2008 Columbia, operation Willing Spirit rescue Americans held by FARC.

Asia

2001 PRC mid air crash involving US spy plane and J-811 Chinese fighter in international waters (that PRC claims). The US said it was sorry twice.

2002 Philippines - US deployment of counterterrorism advisors

2003 Georgia - US deployment of counterterrorism advisors

2013 Korea - US, South Korea and Japan spend several months responding to escalating gestures by North Korea.

Middle East

2001 -2021 Afghanistan - US operation Enduring Freedom in which the US invokes article 5 and a multinational NATO expeditionary force intervenes in the nearly totally decided Afghani civil war on behalf of the losing factions (especially Northern Alliance) and rolls up almost the entire Taliban in Afghanistan in about 6 weeks with no remaining Taliban control of cities. The operation heavily relied on NA for ground operations and NATO aircraft with overflights granted by almost everybody except Iran and China including Russia and Pakistan. Even Iran provided plenty of intel other indirect assistance against their unloved Taliban neighbors. Total casualties were something around 171K to 212K killed including some 50K civilians. Eventually a NATO ground force/advisor present settled into more than 20 years of $91.4 billion in military aid $20 billion in civilian aid and a whopping $2.26 trillion in US expenses and interest to finance the related debt along with veterans medical and disability. Even though the Taliban had come to have literally no allies at all (even Pakistan was through with them), it still could not really be considered the state sponsor of the attack so the operation would not have been self defense under international law so the application of article 51 was a debatable at best. Does this operation reveal the US as a big terrorist state? If it does I'm having even more trouble understanding your reluctance to recognize Russia's invasion of Ukraine the same way.

2003-2011 Iraq - US operation Iraqi Freedom where the US invokes vague threats found in previous UNSECRs about Iraq along with intelligence that seems to reveal an Iraqi WMD program to justify an enormous invasion with a "coalition of the willing" to help. This despite the fact that the US and several "coalition" allies tried and failed to get new UNSECRs passed to give extra legal cover for the invasion. The WMD intelligence turned out to be fabricated by the Iraqis to scare away hostile neighbors and this was not admitted until long after the occupation was underway. Regime changes and the associated chaos and destruction caused a demographic dip anywhere from 151,000 to 1 million Iraqis depending on who you ask and which methods you use. The subsequent insurgencies mad ongoing operations topped that with another 150,000 dip as well. Assuming no changes to fertility and worst case explanations for all data there may have been 1.3 million deaths. I don't buy those assumptions but I'm certain that you do Berz. On the other hand I have no problem taking the 3 trillion dollar price tag estimates at face value. That's the US taxpayer borne expenses alone. Insane. Sadly, the vast majority of that is in the form of lost treasure and not juicy government contracts to line the pockets of the neocons sugar daddies.

2004 Pakistan - the US coordinates drone strikes against taliban and AQ allies and a humanitarian mission to pakistani Kashmiri villages hit by the earthquake

2006 Lebanon - US 24th Marine expeditionary unit finally departs Lebanon, but only to clear the way for Isreal to attack

2010-2021 Yemen - US intervenes in the civil war launching dozens of drone strikes against al-Shabaab rebels and ISIS rebels

2011 Libya - US and allies use UNSECR 1973 to justify intervening in the Libyan civil war.

2011 Pakistan OBL killed in operation with zero Pakistani notification

2012 Jordan requests 150 troops to assist with containing syrian civil war.

2012 Turkey 400 US troops deploy to Turkey to shore up defences

2014-2021 Iraq again, hundreds of US troops deployed against ISIS

2014 Syria hundreds of US troops operate in Syria against ISIS

2014 Yemen US launches a hostage rescue mission

2017 Syria - US attacks Syrian government forces ostensibly in retaliation for a chemical attack on Syrian civilians

2018 Syria - US attacks Syrian government forces ostensibly in retaliation for a chemical attack on Syrian civilians

2020 Iraq US blows up Iranian diplomatic plane on the ground in Iraq killing 6 Iranians and 4 Iraqis

2021 Syria another US airstrike in Syria this time against iranian millitias

2021 Afghanistan - US runs away with its tail between its legs. Afghanistan promptly becomes Taliban dumpster fire.

2021 Syria another US airstrike kills another AQ dude in syria.


What did I miss? I'll tackle covert operations in another post. and probably come back to edit this one a bit later.

[pchang]

I think they want to rebuild the Russian empire so they have control over those geographic choke points.

[Dinner]

That is certainly part of it and, BTW, if they were able to rebuild the Russian empire of 1917 then they would effectively control all nine geographic gaps. So maybe we have two different ways of saying effectively the same thing. Also reconquering those territories would help their population demographics assuming all the people do not flee.

[N35t0r]

Putin wants to control all nine of the major access points where geography limits access to the Eurasian plain. Ukraine is not the end goal; Ukraine is just on the way to two of those choke points. Russia feels that with it's demographic collapse it cannot win a war of movement on the Eurasian plain nor will it have the manpower so it wants to preposition static forces in geographic choke points. It feels this is existential to it's existence if it wants to be a great power and it is probably right.

So they are not going to stop unless they are forced to stop because they, correctly, believe their authoritarian system can't survive unless they do this. I would argue that a nuclear power shouldn't be so afraid for its defense but then Putin and authoritarians like him would eventually get over thrown by the Russian people and obviously he and his elite supporters don't want that to happen.

I think it's more wanting to rebuild the Russian empire. As you mention, they have nukes, so shouldn't be afraid of being invaded. That's why they're so annoyed by NATO expansion, not because they fear it's an offensive alliance, but because it's constantly closing off possibilities of the former.

[Dinner]

Putin wants to control all nine of the major access points where geography limits access to the Eurasian plain. Ukraine is not the end goal; Ukraine is just on the way to two of those choke points. Russia feels that with it's demographic collapse it cannot win a war of movement on the Eurasian plain nor will it have the manpower so it wants to preposition static forces in geographic choke points. It feels this is existential to it's existence if it wants to be a great power and it is probably right.

So they are not going to stop unless they are forced to stop because they, correctly, believe their authoritarian system can't survive unless they do this. I would argue that a nuclear power shouldn't be so afraid for its defense but then Putin and authoritarians like him would eventually get over thrown by the Russian people and obviously he and his elite supporters don't want that to happen.

[PLATO]

meh...you may be right. Just hard to fathom....

[N35t0r]

Keeping the Donbas in Ukraine was the rebuttal to the claim Putin wanted to take it

Putin wants control/influence over Ukraine. When the soft way failed, he invaded. Maybe he wanted to sow chaos for a while before invading. He was fine while Ukraine kept electing pro-russian presidents.

and Ukraine's motive for starving Crimea is irrelevant, thats what they did.

This is a really dumb argument. First, Ukraine didn't starve Crimea because Crimea didn't starve.

Second, it's like saying that parents are starving their kids if they stop providing them with food once they move on their own.

Or another example: New Mexico currently receives more money from the US government than it pays in taxes. If somehow it decided to secede from the US and join Mexico, according to you the US would be obliged to keep paying or be guilty of bankrupting it.

[N35t0r]

This is reductionist argumentative crap that kids grow out of in middle school.

[Geronimo]

The beatings will continue until morale improves!