It is difficult to respect Russian military procrastination — and that's likely to become a problem for Russia and rest of us

18 July 2023

Tiresome, no?

The Ukraine War has bogged down into a World War 1-like slugfest of essentially unmoving geographic lines.

Pro-Russia advocates claim this is not a 'stalemate' because Russia continues killing tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.

However, body counts are less meaningful in an essentially ideological war like this one. The people left behind make new babies. And the whole incompatible ideology thing just resumes down Time's road.

That is, unless one clears the problematic wider land of its currently annoying ideologies.

This means that one has to move the 'bastids' geographically (not body count-wise) back.

Far enough, so that these Adam Henrys cannot so easily reach one's existentially necessary assets.

For example — the Crimean bridge and Zaporozhye nuclear power plant

Ukraine can still reach and continues to target both.

And Russian keeps doing nothing effective about this. Other than blabbering that attacks on the bridge, power plant and Russian homeland constitute terrorism.

How terrorism fits into this picture beats me.

Russia invaded Ukraine. Admittedly in self-defending fashion. But nevertheless, this is a war between nations.

Ukraine should be expected to lash back at whatever targets are convenient. Wherever they are.

Russia terror-based remonstrations remind me of the United States' reflexive claims that 'brown' people — who are defending themselves against American aggression, occupation and/or influence — are terrorists.

Paul Craig Roberts wonders what the heck is wrong with Putin

He wrote that:

This morning Russian media sources reported that a Ukrainian followup attack to the one on the Crimea bridge by 28 drones was defeated by Russian air defenses.

In response, Russia destroyed the manufacturing sites of the drones and fuel storage facilities that provide fuel for Ukraine’s military.

The two words, “in response” tells us what is wrong with Putin’s conduct of the war.

Why did it take a Ukrainian attack on Crimea for Russia to do what any other country at war would have done a long time ago—destroy its enemy’s armaments factories and fuel depots?

It is as if Russia is not at war. The offensive initiatives are with Ukraine. All Russia does is to retaliate to Ukrainian attacks.

This is a mindless way for the Kremlin to conduct a war.

It encourages the US neoconservatives to continue and to widen the conflict. Russia should have shut down Odessa long ago.

It was mindless to leave Ukraine with bases on the Black Sea from which to launch attacks on the Crimea bridge.

If Putin was conducting war as war should be conducted, the young girl’s parents would still be alive.

As Prigozhin said, the Russian Ministry of Defense is asking his Wagner troops to die without offering them a prospect of victory.

Putin’s refusal to fight a war is going to cause the Russian people to tire of it.

Why is Putin playing so totally into Washington’s hands?

I agree

Reportedly, Russia knows of two NATO-Ukraine command centers (in Ukraine) that it has not yet blown up.

Idiot Zelensky is still running around shooting his provocatively asinine mouth off.

Nazi-prone Ukraine general Zaluzhnyi keeps advocating destroying civilians in Russia with American weapons.

Just how that will benefit Ukraine, no one knows. (Nobody sensible claims that Zaluzhnyi is a great anything.)

And Western leaders continue arriving in Kiev to further meet, radicalize and puppetize Zelensky the Fool.

Russia, strategically and morally incomprehensibly, allows all this to be.

Genghis Khan would laugh at such ineffectualness.

One can, therefore, understand why neocons think that Putin is a wimp

The guy's risk averseness, in the face of genuine threat, irritates even me.

And that's because his noodle-like behavior is allowing the West's plentiful supply of warmongers to keep escalating a very dangerous situation.

My cop sense has always been that one shuts down the Adam Henrys, before they make things explode.

It is generally safer to throttle a 'street' problem early, rather than later — when too many people and too much time escalate the possibilities for grossly widened violence and much worse outcomes.

Putin, evidently — and despite his supposed martial arts credentials and experience — does not recognize this. Which means that he allows Risk to intimidate him into doing too little in the face of what he calls existential threats.

Putin recognizes some of the threat, but not the scope of the actions required to expunge it.

Russia's most competent generals must be angry.

And God only knows what the Red Army's most capable generals would have thought of Russia's current passivity morass. Can we bring Stalin back, their ghosts must wonder.

A genuine leader in genuinely existential times . . .

. . . would have mobilized the Russian Federation long ago.

Russian tanks would now be parked along Poland's border.

Kiev's government centers would be in ashes.

Odessa would be Russian property.

And Russian military units would be surrounding Nazi-population enclaves in western Ukraine and starving them to death or surrender.

Ugly, but efficient.

Russian ally China would have to suck this ugly appearance up, recognizing that getting in Russia's way would merely allow the West to target the Chinese, then alone, next.

And further, there would be no doubt in European and US minds that Russia is perfectly willing to obliterate all of them, if they keep their provocative tactics in play.

Nuclear war might still result. But it would not (probably) be due to a lack of accurate Western perception.

The problem with wily politicians like Putin . . .

. . . is that they lack the spirit-based fire necessary to seize troublesome moments and Bessemer process something useful out of them.

They lack the insight and emotional strength necessary to seize Risk and strangle Ambiguity's waffling colon-drool out of it.

They take too much confidence from their past, wiles-based successes to recognize that sometimes raw force is what — of necessity — structures History.

There is such a thing as being too cute for one's own good.

The moral? — This is going to end badly for bunches of us

Meaning that we will either get fried or be revisiting the same darn problem in just a short span of time.

Purtin's having sat on his behind for 8 years, while 14,000 Russians were killed by Ukro-Nazis probably tells us everything that we need to know about his not-so-impressive Tough Times leadership capability.

I suspect that China and Xi might eventually prove to be tougher, in spite of China's lack of militaristic philosophy.

Perhaps it takes a pseudo-racial component to make Existentiality believably real.

Compare, for instance, the effectiveness and determination of North Vietnam's leadership —during North Vietnam's self-defending war with the United States — as compared to the Putin regime's current record.

No one rational ever doubted president Ho Chi Minh or general Vo Nguyen Giap's determination, competence and risk-taking courage.

Those men, and their colleagues and troops, seized History and bashed it into the shape that their vision of the future demanded.

There is quite a difference between the Vietnamese group and Putin's continually procrastinating, risk-avoiding and sub-optimal (arguably ineffectual) clique.

One can observe the same Russia-critiquing contrast with Mao Zedong's successful takeover and molding of China. Meaning History's single most astonishing example of dragging a nation into a prosperity-inviting future, despite appalling mistakes having been made on the way.

We will see.

There is a marked difference between good and great.

PeteFree.com

It is difficult to respect Russian military procrastination — and that's likely to become a problem for Russia and rest of us