I have never regretted my support for President Biden since his second run for the presidency in 2008. He is a statesman who knows how to work the levers of power and diplomacy.
Irredentist? I love how the Bulwark improves my vocabulary. And thank god for my digital dictionary. I'd probably be too lazy to look up all these new words in my "analog" dictionary.
Things have definitely turned out much better than almost anyone could have envisioned given that Ukraine has had to stand alone on the battlefield. Though, to me it seems like Biden has had to poked and prodded along almost every step of the way.
Good job, Joe. except for the part of abandoning the people of Afghanistan to a living hell. We had succeeded in creating a decent world for the vast majority of Afghans who live in Kabul. Trump-hating Euros have completely erased that Biden completely ignored their advice as well as that of his advisers.
Can we rethink how we have judged Biden all along? Re the Europeans and the US, it seems fair to credit Biden with the perfect personality (and experience set) to accomplish what he has with Ukraine. Partly his is not a dick like the last guy. But our allies truly seem to "get" Biden. (Most the GOP play this as a team sport?)
And re the legislation, maybe Biden does have some intangible skills - listening, not antagonizing. Obama for all his eloquence did not click with Congress. And maybe Schumer and Pelosi are not just bad people.
And maybe the press should stop acting like a teenager who constantly whines about every little thing. So... gas is too expensive, I can't get my infant formula, the airline industry treats us like shit, oh it is hot out! The president is not really responsible for every bad thing. But with 24 hour news, we get endless questions. tonight a reported asked Schumer why they didn't get the deal done earlier - really? Can't let the man take a win?
The challenge for the west -- including the US -- is do we provide an exit ramp for Putin or do we let him grind it our until every city in Ukraine is destroyed or the disaster of the Russian army forces regime change. There is no reason for the Ukraine to agree to anything with the Russians without believable guarentees against the Russians trying again in a year after they rebuild their army. Suppose Ukraine agrees to take NATO membership off the table and recognizes Russian control of the Crimea -- what could Russia offer in return that would be of any value to Ukraine. Zilch is the answer that I calculate.
The "convoy" north of Kyiv is a disaster in the making for the Russian Army, for several reasons:
1. Fuel. Military vehicles consume extraordinary amounts of it. Tanks get about 3 gallons to a mile (that's not a misprint) Even stopped, military vehicles have to keep their engines running, to recharge batteries, to keep weapons systems active, and to keep vehicle occupants from freezing to death. The situation will quickly consume any fuel stocks in the convoy. And, since the convoy occupies/blocks the road, no new fuel can be brought in. Any fuel trucks trying to operate off-road will bog down.
2. Deployment. Unless the Russians were absolutely brilliant about convoy order, this is nothing but a 40 mi. hodgepodge of heterogenous military units, each with its own orders about how to get to Kyiv, and each under a different commander. Necessary support units like engineers and bridgebuilders are snarled in the mess, unable to get forward (the Ukrainians have blown the bridges the convoy has to use). At the end of their travel, this conglomeration will have to sort itself out into discrete commands and form up for battle, while under fire. Good luck.
3. Readiness. Every day troops and tanks sit waiting degrades their usefulness. What we are seeing is a 40 mi. stretch of starving, freezing, and sleep-deprived soldiers. Further, they were in bad shape when they started; they had just finished three days of maneuvers with Belorussian troops. They were tired, hungry, and worn before they even crossed the Ukrainian border. Modern armored vehicles require an extraordinary amount of maintenance; modern tanks usually require an hour of maintenance for every hour in the field. They are probably now suffering a high rate of breakdowns.
4. Loss of initiative. Stalled convoys are an opponent's dream, easily taken apart and destroyed. In convoy, these forces cannot maneuver; and maneuver is essential in modern combat. Undoubtedly, the Ukrainians are starting to pick off those vehicles one by one. This happened in the Finnish-Soviet Winter War, where the Finnish sliced Soviet military convoys into smaller and smaller sections ("motti", chopped logs), and destroyed them in detail.
The huge convoy north of Kyiv is an invitation to a Russian disaster. Unable to move, deploy, and resupply, running out of provisions, the convoy is a target far more than a threat.
I have to give Biden credit. He managed to unify a fractious coalition of Western countries, in the face of the isolationist leanings of both major political parties. It was an amazing lift. Could a POTUS have averted the crisis with a more forward deployment early on? Possibly, but those guys, except maybe Mitt Romney, aren’t on the national stage anymore, and they couldn’t get elected in today’s toxic environment anyhow. Hopefully, this will be the event that turns Americans away from the isolationist abyss.
Lest we forget the most apt of descriptions.....upon meeting Vladimir Vladimirovich for the first time, Madeleine Albright described him "small and pale" and "so cold as to be almost reptilian." Putin is the lizard our world has come to utterly despise, including many more than "many" Russians. Let us hope beyond hope there becomes a clone of Night of the Long Knives awaiting the iniquitous beast.
Spectacular article and analysis, thank you. From the far left perspective here, I was very reluctant about voting for Biden, but did so as an expression of solidarity with my fellow (mostly) sane Americans. I couldn't be happier with the way he's handled this--for all the reasons you mentioned.
And, for all the crap going on, this is a very hopeful time.
A little over a century ago there were a lot of folks who thought they were in control, had it all figured out, were so attuned to the facts they believed to be true about their adversaries that they knew that if X happened, Y would surely follow. And what happened was that one guy with one gun pulled the trigger on one bullet, and BOOM, a large piece of the world was on fire. And when the flames were finally doused, the firemen didn't do a very good job of eliminating all the hotspots, soon leading to another huge and horrible conflagration, which ended up being extinguished with a whole new kind of boom.
I have my criticisms of Joe Biden. How he is going about his duties as Fireman in Chief at the moment isn't one of them. Who'd have thought that, to paraphrase a notion from the past, he'd be the guy to rise so aptly to the occasion and walk not silently but quietly and thoughtfully and carry a huge bucket of water, a bucket that has filled remarkably quickly due in no small part because of how he has done his job so far.
We should all be glad of this, and be supportive of his efforts. And thank God or our lucky stars or whatever totem in which we may take comfort that it is, in fact, this man now who is, if not in control, at least competently at the wheel and steering into the skid. If things had gone a bit differently not all that long ago and it had been up to his predecessor to answer this alarm, I shudder to think of the results we'd get from a guy who not only doesn't know the difference between the brakes and the gas, but wouldn't show up with anything more than a cracked and leaky teacup, if he even bothered to show up at all.
So, good on you, Sleepy Joe. I think so far you're a bit more awake than a lot of people give you credit for. And if we're lucky, really really lucky, maybe a few more folks will wake up along the way because of it.
I think that the most likely of the "really REALLY bad" scenarios is:
Russians use thermobaric munitions on civilians -> direct NATO attacks on Russian forces in Ukraine -> retaliatory Russian strikes on NATO forces outside of Ukraine -> all-out war between NATO and Russia -> ?? Who the f knows.
That Biden was able to do this without making this about himself does more than help depolarize the debate (to the degree that’s possible these days). It shows how dangerous it is to elect a rank egomaniac/megalomaniac to office. Trump is literally, physically, incapable of achieving such a feat. His mouth would have started involuntarily spouting word salad, detached from the remnants of his “very large buh-rain” saying how he managed to pull off this most amazing deed.
Here is a compelling article I wrote last year about why the battle over Ukraine is so important:
https://www.getcivil.org/articles/ukraine
I have never regretted my support for President Biden since his second run for the presidency in 2008. He is a statesman who knows how to work the levers of power and diplomacy.
Irredentist? I love how the Bulwark improves my vocabulary. And thank god for my digital dictionary. I'd probably be too lazy to look up all these new words in my "analog" dictionary.
Things have definitely turned out much better than almost anyone could have envisioned given that Ukraine has had to stand alone on the battlefield. Though, to me it seems like Biden has had to poked and prodded along almost every step of the way.
Republicans who oppose helping Ukraine take note: Neville Chamberlain, Hitler, and appeasement.
Putin won't stop at Ukraine, Poland is tempting, then Germany ...
Good job, Joe. except for the part of abandoning the people of Afghanistan to a living hell. We had succeeded in creating a decent world for the vast majority of Afghans who live in Kabul. Trump-hating Euros have completely erased that Biden completely ignored their advice as well as that of his advisers.
Can we rethink how we have judged Biden all along? Re the Europeans and the US, it seems fair to credit Biden with the perfect personality (and experience set) to accomplish what he has with Ukraine. Partly his is not a dick like the last guy. But our allies truly seem to "get" Biden. (Most the GOP play this as a team sport?)
And re the legislation, maybe Biden does have some intangible skills - listening, not antagonizing. Obama for all his eloquence did not click with Congress. And maybe Schumer and Pelosi are not just bad people.
And maybe the press should stop acting like a teenager who constantly whines about every little thing. So... gas is too expensive, I can't get my infant formula, the airline industry treats us like shit, oh it is hot out! The president is not really responsible for every bad thing. But with 24 hour news, we get endless questions. tonight a reported asked Schumer why they didn't get the deal done earlier - really? Can't let the man take a win?
The challenge for the west -- including the US -- is do we provide an exit ramp for Putin or do we let him grind it our until every city in Ukraine is destroyed or the disaster of the Russian army forces regime change. There is no reason for the Ukraine to agree to anything with the Russians without believable guarentees against the Russians trying again in a year after they rebuild their army. Suppose Ukraine agrees to take NATO membership off the table and recognizes Russian control of the Crimea -- what could Russia offer in return that would be of any value to Ukraine. Zilch is the answer that I calculate.
Ukraine is showing images of a thermobaric launcher that they have captured.
The "convoy" north of Kyiv is a disaster in the making for the Russian Army, for several reasons:
1. Fuel. Military vehicles consume extraordinary amounts of it. Tanks get about 3 gallons to a mile (that's not a misprint) Even stopped, military vehicles have to keep their engines running, to recharge batteries, to keep weapons systems active, and to keep vehicle occupants from freezing to death. The situation will quickly consume any fuel stocks in the convoy. And, since the convoy occupies/blocks the road, no new fuel can be brought in. Any fuel trucks trying to operate off-road will bog down.
2. Deployment. Unless the Russians were absolutely brilliant about convoy order, this is nothing but a 40 mi. hodgepodge of heterogenous military units, each with its own orders about how to get to Kyiv, and each under a different commander. Necessary support units like engineers and bridgebuilders are snarled in the mess, unable to get forward (the Ukrainians have blown the bridges the convoy has to use). At the end of their travel, this conglomeration will have to sort itself out into discrete commands and form up for battle, while under fire. Good luck.
3. Readiness. Every day troops and tanks sit waiting degrades their usefulness. What we are seeing is a 40 mi. stretch of starving, freezing, and sleep-deprived soldiers. Further, they were in bad shape when they started; they had just finished three days of maneuvers with Belorussian troops. They were tired, hungry, and worn before they even crossed the Ukrainian border. Modern armored vehicles require an extraordinary amount of maintenance; modern tanks usually require an hour of maintenance for every hour in the field. They are probably now suffering a high rate of breakdowns.
4. Loss of initiative. Stalled convoys are an opponent's dream, easily taken apart and destroyed. In convoy, these forces cannot maneuver; and maneuver is essential in modern combat. Undoubtedly, the Ukrainians are starting to pick off those vehicles one by one. This happened in the Finnish-Soviet Winter War, where the Finnish sliced Soviet military convoys into smaller and smaller sections ("motti", chopped logs), and destroyed them in detail.
The huge convoy north of Kyiv is an invitation to a Russian disaster. Unable to move, deploy, and resupply, running out of provisions, the convoy is a target far more than a threat.
I have to give Biden credit. He managed to unify a fractious coalition of Western countries, in the face of the isolationist leanings of both major political parties. It was an amazing lift. Could a POTUS have averted the crisis with a more forward deployment early on? Possibly, but those guys, except maybe Mitt Romney, aren’t on the national stage anymore, and they couldn’t get elected in today’s toxic environment anyhow. Hopefully, this will be the event that turns Americans away from the isolationist abyss.
Lest we forget the most apt of descriptions.....upon meeting Vladimir Vladimirovich for the first time, Madeleine Albright described him "small and pale" and "so cold as to be almost reptilian." Putin is the lizard our world has come to utterly despise, including many more than "many" Russians. Let us hope beyond hope there becomes a clone of Night of the Long Knives awaiting the iniquitous beast.
Spectacular article and analysis, thank you. From the far left perspective here, I was very reluctant about voting for Biden, but did so as an expression of solidarity with my fellow (mostly) sane Americans. I couldn't be happier with the way he's handled this--for all the reasons you mentioned.
And, for all the crap going on, this is a very hopeful time.
No one is in control...
A little over a century ago there were a lot of folks who thought they were in control, had it all figured out, were so attuned to the facts they believed to be true about their adversaries that they knew that if X happened, Y would surely follow. And what happened was that one guy with one gun pulled the trigger on one bullet, and BOOM, a large piece of the world was on fire. And when the flames were finally doused, the firemen didn't do a very good job of eliminating all the hotspots, soon leading to another huge and horrible conflagration, which ended up being extinguished with a whole new kind of boom.
I have my criticisms of Joe Biden. How he is going about his duties as Fireman in Chief at the moment isn't one of them. Who'd have thought that, to paraphrase a notion from the past, he'd be the guy to rise so aptly to the occasion and walk not silently but quietly and thoughtfully and carry a huge bucket of water, a bucket that has filled remarkably quickly due in no small part because of how he has done his job so far.
We should all be glad of this, and be supportive of his efforts. And thank God or our lucky stars or whatever totem in which we may take comfort that it is, in fact, this man now who is, if not in control, at least competently at the wheel and steering into the skid. If things had gone a bit differently not all that long ago and it had been up to his predecessor to answer this alarm, I shudder to think of the results we'd get from a guy who not only doesn't know the difference between the brakes and the gas, but wouldn't show up with anything more than a cracked and leaky teacup, if he even bothered to show up at all.
So, good on you, Sleepy Joe. I think so far you're a bit more awake than a lot of people give you credit for. And if we're lucky, really really lucky, maybe a few more folks will wake up along the way because of it.
I think that the most likely of the "really REALLY bad" scenarios is:
Russians use thermobaric munitions on civilians -> direct NATO attacks on Russian forces in Ukraine -> retaliatory Russian strikes on NATO forces outside of Ukraine -> all-out war between NATO and Russia -> ?? Who the f knows.
That Biden was able to do this without making this about himself does more than help depolarize the debate (to the degree that’s possible these days). It shows how dangerous it is to elect a rank egomaniac/megalomaniac to office. Trump is literally, physically, incapable of achieving such a feat. His mouth would have started involuntarily spouting word salad, detached from the remnants of his “very large buh-rain” saying how he managed to pull off this most amazing deed.