Listen to Victor Davis Hanson with cohost Sami Winc examine Alvin Bragg’s pending indictment of Trump, Trump and DeSantis fight, and an update on the Ukraine War.
Your remark (53:00) on the fate of the 1st generation of Western-trained officers in the Ukrainian army after a year of battle, “they’re dead, they are all dead”, is sobering. But it leaves unsaid, what would their fate have been had the Russians seized the entire country after a successful decapitation of the government in Kyiv a year ago. In my view, they would have suffered the same fate, only kneeling on the edge of a freshly excavated pit in a remote forest with their hands tied behind their backs. Some choices are between bad and even worse. Which is the lesson you so often remind us of, that history is a tragedy and not a melodrama. The Soviets killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s by the slow process of starvation and hypothermia. At the very moment these poor souls were desperately hoping to find tiny amounts of grain in previously harvested fields, the Soviets were exporting the grain to raise foreign exchange so they could send their agents into the US as students in places like MIT. Like the Chinese today, these “students” paid the full tuition and were welcomed with open arms. Blood money extracted from the Blood Lands.
Evidently the heroes didn’t agree with Uictor’s classical logic that it’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion. I keep getting the impression that Uictor wishes they had been a tad less effective before they died so that he could continue his war with Progressives without the inconvenience of the cash drain and small but real threat of someone getting nuked.
I also read enough to know that his Kassandra complex could be cured by 20 minutes spent reading Politico, Rand Institute, and the much-damned National Review Online. Many see what he sees. Some come to his conclusions, some differ. Some even see certain data that Uictor always fails to mention as important too.
James, actually I agree with Victor’s fundamental points that: (1) a messy, somewhat ineffectual negotiated settlement that costs the Ukraine territory is preferable to a leveling of every city in the Ukraine; (2) historical claims of territorial rights dating back centuries have nothing to do with present realities. But I would add the proviso that the Ukraine must remain armed and formidable to prevent further Russian adventures. History is a tragedy. Delusions of universal peace and harmony are very dangerous when they become foundational principles as we are now learning with the Woke madness.
Robert, I hear you, but those are points too vague to have any real content. Who is arguing for such things? We can get as angry as we want or simply as passionate as we want, but absent workable solutions it’s just ranting. That’s the point of my post: Uictor is strong on passion and fury, but he hasn’t posted any concrete solutions since August, ignores vast swaths of data, and vilifies with every ounce of civilized wit he can manage, anyone who disagrees with him as foolish utopians more concerned with virtue signalling than the lives of Ukrainians or fellow Americans. He works with people that oppose his position and care a great deal about Ukrainian lives -just listen to H.R. McMaster’s most recent “Battlegrounds” podcast for one instance.
The three articles in Strategika were interesting, but they miss a critical point. McMaster, for example, doesn’t seem to appreciate that each technological innovation to make tanks once again safe from new precision weapons increases the complexity and thus the logistical tail required to keep these complex weapons operational. This imposes great demands on the quality and performance of the the personnel who occupy these REMF positions. It also makes the target space that much greater, as any disruption of any feature of this logistical tail will necessarily criple downstream opperations, especially if that “tail” is designed to achieve maximum efficiency. This implies that the “tail” will require increasing redundancy which will increase complexity, which will require an even bigger logistical tail as well as increased protection for these disparate activities. And worse, redundancy will create new problems of overlapping authority and duplication of effort. FUBAR^2
If the average graduate of our high school system knew just a smattering of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, then one could train this person to be that highly functional REMF. But that has not been the case for three decades. I have tutored high school student with the goal of increasing their numeracy to the point where they could achieve a “D” in algebra and thus graduate with their classmates. I was successful with all but one. I know of what I speak.
Victor and Sami,
I have a growing uneasiness about the war in Ukraine. Part of it is that our political and military leaders have chosen sides in this war, often along political lines, and I don’t know who to trust. A big concern of mine is the media giving us partial or inaccurate information. I so appreciate your honest analysis of these events. Thank you for a great podcast.
There’s plenty of media offering a range of positions. If you want Conservative, check out National Review Online. If you’d like to see Liberals going over the same positions and numbers, try Politico. If you want raw data in short, easy to understand form, try Institute for the Study of War.
Or go to Bitchute and see the reality of the war. That reality is not portrayed here or anywhere else in American media. Ukraine is a killing field for Ukrainians. We are being lied to. Hundreds of thousands are dead.
Um, I found plenty of that stuff in my everyday reading. No one’s lying to you, Wes. It’s all right out there. You can find Politico articles on all sides of the issue. You can find The Hill article on all sides of the issue. You can find NRO articles on all sides of the issue. The evil empire of Google will hand deliver to your feed Bulgarian Military Times, BBC, Times of India, The Economist, Japan Today, Forbes, Institute for the Study of War. You could also check out Bellingcat, which has been crowd snooping out Russian Military atrocities in Ukraine since they downed the Malaysian airliner. No conspiracy. All the stuff you want: collate and decide.
Great points, love your commentary.
Hillary and those who collude with her are Communists/Fascists who are all in for the Totalitarian New World Order.
Your remark (53:00) on the fate of the 1st generation of Western-trained officers in the Ukrainian army after a year of battle, “they’re dead, they are all dead”, is sobering. But it leaves unsaid, what would their fate have been had the Russians seized the entire country after a successful decapitation of the government in Kyiv a year ago. In my view, they would have suffered the same fate, only kneeling on the edge of a freshly excavated pit in a remote forest with their hands tied behind their backs. Some choices are between bad and even worse. Which is the lesson you so often remind us of, that history is a tragedy and not a melodrama. The Soviets killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s by the slow process of starvation and hypothermia. At the very moment these poor souls were desperately hoping to find tiny amounts of grain in previously harvested fields, the Soviets were exporting the grain to raise foreign exchange so they could send their agents into the US as students in places like MIT. Like the Chinese today, these “students” paid the full tuition and were welcomed with open arms. Blood money extracted from the Blood Lands.
Evidently the heroes didn’t agree with Uictor’s classical logic that it’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion. I keep getting the impression that Uictor wishes they had been a tad less effective before they died so that he could continue his war with Progressives without the inconvenience of the cash drain and small but real threat of someone getting nuked.
I also read enough to know that his Kassandra complex could be cured by 20 minutes spent reading Politico, Rand Institute, and the much-damned National Review Online. Many see what he sees. Some come to his conclusions, some differ. Some even see certain data that Uictor always fails to mention as important too.
James, actually I agree with Victor’s fundamental points that: (1) a messy, somewhat ineffectual negotiated settlement that costs the Ukraine territory is preferable to a leveling of every city in the Ukraine; (2) historical claims of territorial rights dating back centuries have nothing to do with present realities. But I would add the proviso that the Ukraine must remain armed and formidable to prevent further Russian adventures. History is a tragedy. Delusions of universal peace and harmony are very dangerous when they become foundational principles as we are now learning with the Woke madness.
Robert, I hear you, but those are points too vague to have any real content. Who is arguing for such things? We can get as angry as we want or simply as passionate as we want, but absent workable solutions it’s just ranting. That’s the point of my post: Uictor is strong on passion and fury, but he hasn’t posted any concrete solutions since August, ignores vast swaths of data, and vilifies with every ounce of civilized wit he can manage, anyone who disagrees with him as foolish utopians more concerned with virtue signalling than the lives of Ukrainians or fellow Americans. He works with people that oppose his position and care a great deal about Ukrainian lives -just listen to H.R. McMaster’s most recent “Battlegrounds” podcast for one instance.
The three articles in Strategika were interesting, but they miss a critical point. McMaster, for example, doesn’t seem to appreciate that each technological innovation to make tanks once again safe from new precision weapons increases the complexity and thus the logistical tail required to keep these complex weapons operational. This imposes great demands on the quality and performance of the the personnel who occupy these REMF positions. It also makes the target space that much greater, as any disruption of any feature of this logistical tail will necessarily criple downstream opperations, especially if that “tail” is designed to achieve maximum efficiency. This implies that the “tail” will require increasing redundancy which will increase complexity, which will require an even bigger logistical tail as well as increased protection for these disparate activities. And worse, redundancy will create new problems of overlapping authority and duplication of effort. FUBAR^2
If the average graduate of our high school system knew just a smattering of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, then one could train this person to be that highly functional REMF. But that has not been the case for three decades. I have tutored high school student with the goal of increasing their numeracy to the point where they could achieve a “D” in algebra and thus graduate with their classmates. I was successful with all but one. I know of what I speak.
See! Now that’s engagement with an author’s argument! Well done RS!
Victor and Sami,
I have a growing uneasiness about the war in Ukraine. Part of it is that our political and military leaders have chosen sides in this war, often along political lines, and I don’t know who to trust. A big concern of mine is the media giving us partial or inaccurate information. I so appreciate your honest analysis of these events. Thank you for a great podcast.
There’s plenty of media offering a range of positions. If you want Conservative, check out National Review Online. If you’d like to see Liberals going over the same positions and numbers, try Politico. If you want raw data in short, easy to understand form, try Institute for the Study of War.
Or go to Bitchute and see the reality of the war. That reality is not portrayed here or anywhere else in American media. Ukraine is a killing field for Ukrainians. We are being lied to. Hundreds of thousands are dead.
Um, I found plenty of that stuff in my everyday reading. No one’s lying to you, Wes. It’s all right out there. You can find Politico articles on all sides of the issue. You can find The Hill article on all sides of the issue. You can find NRO articles on all sides of the issue. The evil empire of Google will hand deliver to your feed Bulgarian Military Times, BBC, Times of India, The Economist, Japan Today, Forbes, Institute for the Study of War. You could also check out Bellingcat, which has been crowd snooping out Russian Military atrocities in Ukraine since they downed the Malaysian airliner. No conspiracy. All the stuff you want: collate and decide.