WayeeCool [comrade/them]

The US kill-death ratio is also telling.

During the Global War on Terror less than ten thousand US citizens killed in the conflict but around a million Afghans and Iraqis directly killed along with around 4 million people across the region indirectedly killed. Even the Vietnam war was something like 40,000 US citizens killed in exchange for around 3 million killed on the Vietnamese side. Hell… the US kill-death ratio in the World War 2 Pacific theater, some of the most brutal fighting the US has engaged in, was only 70,000 US citizens killed in exchange for 2.5 million Japanese soliders and somewhere around 1 million Japanese civilians killed.

The US has amazing kill-death ratios across all its wars excluding its civil war when busy fighting among itself. It’s disgusting really. The US will lose a few thousand while killing millions on the other side. Even in total war engagements the US loses thousands while the other combatants lose many millions. Since 1775 the US has only lost around 650,000 even when including both the US civil war and World War 2.

People always make the mistake of assuming during colonial adventures the US is doing anything other than smashing everything up (immediately wiping out the opposing military) then sitting back and milking any insurgency for as long as it is profitable to maintain a low intensity conflict. The US has really only ever fought two conflicts on a total-war footing (Civil War, World War 2) but managed to have hundreds of colonial adventures and so-called police actions throughout its entire history. For most of its history the US has been fighting one or more military actions somewhere, starting with westward expansion across North American then the so-called banana-wars advancing US corporate interests across Latin America and various colonial or cold war adventures across the entirety of the eastern hemisphere.

The Washington Post is whatever its owner Jeff Bezos wants it to be.

but at what cost?!

Russia secured the border between Ukraine and the break away regions where Ukraine had been massacring civilians. It has been mission accomplished for Russia starting at the point they expelled the Ukrainian military from those regions and fortified the borders to prevent Ukraine from retaking them. For almost a year now Russia has been using the Ukrainian military for live fire training exercises.

I’ve personally enjoyed watching all the admin meetings for the project on their YouTube Channel because it really gives an understanding of the insane inefficiency of the US system of private property rights and public-private contracting.

I laughed reading this because it reminded me about how bad the US was at building anything in Iraq and Afghanistan. At one point US contractors charged almost 50 million dollars to build a single gas station and it never actually got completed. To be fair, US contractors are just as bad when hired to build infrastructure in the US.

Everyone always forgets that modern warships are mobile missile shield systems. They provide a few hundred miles of interceptor coverage. China has assets in the region and over the past week there are multiple groups staging missile or rocket attacks on everything from infrastructure to military bases in a half dozen countries.

China undoubtedly remembers how the US dropped five JDAM guided bombs through the roof of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.. Unlike decades ago, China has a modern navy and can position ships to prevent such US antics.

As long as no one hits one of the two US carriers on station in the area there should be no worry about the US resorting to nukes. It’s something like an aircraft carrier getting sunk that would cause the kind of psychic damage required for US leadership to have an irrational knee jerk response involving nuclear weapons.

on a side note: does anyone else hate how because the people of the US are uniquely fkd in the head and have enough nuclear weapons to leave the earth lifeless, the rest of the world has to keep in mind what kinds of events might cause the US to have a complete collective freak out? In recent years I keep thinking about how throughout all of human history hegemonic empires would rise and fall but never before has the decline of an empire come with the very real danger that as they destabilize it could result in them killing everyone on earth rather than just themselves and their neighbors. It feels like being locked in a room with another individual who is experiencing deteriorating mental health and is in possession of a hand grenade no one can take away from them without risking setting it off.