Stabbed in The Back Returns from the Dead

I was going to right about the Polish Army treatment after WW2, but then got this unhinged piece from a reputable right wing Canadian blog my friend sent me a free month of.  I do not fit there when it comes to the Ukraine War.  Apparently pointing out the facts makes me Putin’s Stooge.

So, I never joined the Military. That is a bit of a story for another day.  But I have studied military history for over 25 years.  I have been published.  I also have played 100s of different wargames over that time and thus I am bloody subject matter expert.

So, Im going to try my best to respond to deranged lunacy below.

Well, you can’t say Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t try. With a new U.S. aid package for his country frozen by a Republican filibuster, the president of Ukraine made a last-ditch visit to Washington to plea, as he has done so often, for help against the Russian invasion. But unlike previous visits, he was treated more as yesterday’s annoyance than a global statesman fighting for the cause of freedom.

--Trusting the USA.  You would think people would learn to stop that.  After Thieu, Samosa, the Afghan president, the British and French at Suez.  The Americans have a long history throwing losers under the bus.  But as they say there is a sucker born every minute.

The wheels came off the bus of Western support for Ukraine gradually, then suddenly. The slow distancing from Ukraine has been underway since last summer, but it was finally pushed off the cliff in the wake of the barbarism of Hamas on October 7. Since then, the world’s attention, effort, and in important cases, arms, have been focused on the Middle East. But also, the intensely polarizing character of the Israel-Hamas war has hardened political divisions in almost every country, in a way that has largely destroyed what had been, in many countries, a cross-partisan consensus on Ukraine.   

--When the attack happened, I totally got it. People kept joking that Ukraine was the 51^st state.  Especially after Hawaii and Ohio disasters.  But no Israel is the true 51^st state.

But for all its slow-motion inevitability, it is still shocking to see just how quickly support for Ukraine evaporated, how hollow the promises have been revealed to have been, how ugly the finger pointing has got, and how unprepared NATO, the EU, and the West as a whole are for the danger that is staring them in the face. 

--For those who actually study history this is not shocking at all. 1974-75 provides us with the clearest comparison.  In 1974 South Viet Nam looked like a permanent reality.  Certainly when the North invaded they did not expect to be so successful, they had to modify their plans to conquer the entire country in 1975.  Much as Russia is doing now in Ukraine, with their constant call ups and expansion of the fighting army.

Let’s start with a basic fact: the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began in early summer with so much dramatic hope, has failed. The goal was to drive to the Black Sea, split the Russian forces in half, and begin the work of retaking the sovereign Ukrainian territory that had been seized by Russia since 2014. 

--I said this to a friend of mine beforehand.  This is going to be a disaster.  He accused me of believing Russian Propaganda.  This is a guy who gets his new from the British Military.  Me I get my news from Military Summary and a bunch of guys I met on X.  Independent analysis from people who read books on military history and serving officers.

--My advice is that the Ukrainians withdraw back to the Dnieper River and use their newly equipped forces as fire brigades and hopefully exhaust the Russians till the political will back home gets tired of the stalemate.

--Instead, they sent barely trained (5 weeks!) army against the toughest defense lines since the end of the Korean War.  It was totally insanity and ended up being the total debacle I warned my friend about.

-Its like we totally lost any capability for deception operations anymore.  But that is a story for a different day.

It didn’t happen, and it didn’t even come close. Why that is the case has been, and will be, the subject of intense scrutiny and analysis, but what seems clear is that the Russians were given too much time to dig in and lay minefields tens of kilometres deep across the front lines. In the absence of sufficient airpower to achieve air superiority over the battlefield, the attacking Ukrainian forces became sitting ducks to Russian artillery, helicopters, and drones. 

--No. It was total stupidity.  Those of us who pointed it out were called Putin’s stooges.  The Ukrainians got their ass kicked because of delusional people like you who fed them a pack of lies.

So, the fight is at a stalemate. The commander of the Ukrainian army, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said as much in an article he wrote for The Economist at the beginning of November. President Zelenskyy has admitted it as well, as has the head of the Ukraine war cabinet. 

--No.  Last year the fight was at a stalemate.  This year the Russians are advancing on a front the size of half of Texas through trench lines.  It’s a war the Russians are clearly winning and were destined to win.  This was of far more importance to them than to us.  And now were getting to why this was always dumb.

This failure need not have been a disaster. Success in battle is never guaranteed, the enemy always gets a vote, and there is nothing stopping the Ukrainians from tending their wounds, burying their dead, and trying again.

--Yes.  You could have done the strategy I outlined above.  Wow what a bunch of useless cliches.

--Actually, there is something that is preventing the Ukrainians from trying again.  They lost to many men in pointless counter attacks.  This is not some computer game.  A country only has so many people. They are putting pregnant women on the front lines now.  Its nuts. 

Nothing, that is, except the fecklessness, the division, and the bad faith of Ukraine’s partners in the West. Instead of sitting down to figure out what went wrong, adjusting and increasing their aid accordingly, and recommitting to the fight, the whole so-called alliance has degenerated into infighting, blame shifting, and ass-covering. The Washington Post recently had a whole series devoted to giving anonymous American “senior officials” plenty of acreage to underbus the Ukrainians, who were, allegedly, too slow to start the counteroffensive, too cowardly when it finally began, too incompetent in their execution, and too stubborn to listen to the Americans advising them. 

--And here it is.  The stabbed in the back narrative.  Its just the 1920s all over again.

--They cannot recommit because they ran out of stuff!  We never expected to have to fight a war like this ever again.  We had stockpiles and we used them.  We should have spent the last two years rearming.  But we didn’t.  Europe has a two-week missile supply now.

--We always assumed a ground war in Europe would go Nuclear after a month.  We did not plan for the industrial war that the Russians planned for.

This all may be true. But something else is also true: The West, for all its promises to back Ukraine to the hilt, to stand by it through thick and thin, to do whatever it takes as long as it takes, has not done any of this. Support, in the form of arms deliveries, training, aid, ammunition, what have you, has been slow, grudging, performative, and inadequate to the task. 

--Of course, they are.  We sold off our capabilities and shipped it all to China years ago.  WE DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO GIVE.

This has been the case since the full invasion started in February 2022. Around this time last year, it was possible — just barely — to attribute the slow-rolling of aid to fears of escalation. Putin did a great job of pretending to be an insane, genocidal madman, threatening to nuke Ukraine, to destroy a nuclear plant, to scorch whatever earth had to be scorched, in order to get his way. He succeeded magnificently, to the point where the West was terrified; so terrified in fact, that when Putin actually did do insane, genocidal, madman-like things — the blowing of the Kakhovka dam, the mining of a nuclear power plant, the daily murder of random civilians — the West felt relatively comforted. At least he did not nuke anyone, so we could call that a policy success. 

--Wow.  Where did Putin ever threaten to Nuke Ukraine.   How about NEVER.  Maybe it’s because he knows the fallout would hit his country.  In fact, the Russians have been super restrained.  Amazingly so.  Its like they want to occupy the country or something.

--I believe the US has already admitted they blew up the Kakhova dam as part of the offensive months ago.  The international nuclear committee was on site and confirmed the Russians mining a nuclear plant.  I mean why mine a plant you control when you have theatre ballistic missiles at your control.  As to civilians dying.  It’s a war.

It is no longer possible to take this seriously as an explanation. It has been clear, since the summer anyway, that the consequences of Ukraine winning have been a bigger worry for the West than anything Putin might do to Ukraine. The Americans and Germans in particular have denied Ukraine the sorts of arms — German Taurus missiles, American ATACMS, NATO’s huge fleet of F-16s — that would have enabled Ukraine to take the fight to the Russians, on Russian soil. The upshot is that Ukraine failed at an impossible task, and for their failures, they are being abandoned. 

--Hahahahahahahaha.

--Ok seriously I can’t even at this point.  We do not have enough of these weapons.

--This person is military ignorant.  Lets talk the F-16s.

--It takes years to train an F-16 pilot from scratch.  You cannot just walk over from a Mig or a Sukhov and become a fighter pilot. American trainers said they would rather blank slate Ukrainians to train that existing pilots cause when it comes to a high stress environment, you revert to your original training.  You know like combat?

--The F 16 has a range of five hundred miles.  The front lines are about 1200 miles.  So you got to rebase your airplane from one side of the country to the other, while the Russians are trying to intercept your airplane with pilots who spent the last years learning how to shoot planes out of the sky, while your pilots barely know how to operate the damn things.

--You know what let me do a separate post on why this is a bad plan.

Earlier this year, the EU pledged to provide Ukraine with a million artillery shells by March. They won’t come anywhere close to that. Meanwhile, North Korea — with a per capita GDP of about $1,000 — has provided more shells to Russia this fall than the EU has to Ukraine over the entire war. Iran continues to ship drones by the thousands to Russia. The Western sanctions regime on Russia is Swiss cheesed with loopholes and corruption. Russia continues to earn billions in hard currency through its oil and gas exports.

--We should have, you know taken that into account.

All of this against the backdrop of relentless political sabotage within the political and security institutions of the Western alliance. In the United States, MAGA Republicans, fattened on a diet of endless Russian propaganda (and in some cases, likely rubles) have blocked further aid to Ukraine under the flimsy pretext of demanding changes to President Biden’s border and immigration policies. In Canada, the opposition Conservatives inexplicably continue to vote against aid to Ukraine, and against a Canada-Ukraine trade agreement that Zelenskyy himself has begged them to support.

--No. Wow.  Look Viet Nam was a ten-year process of epic stupidity that led to the Democrats cutting off foreign adventures.  The problem for Ukraine is that’s part of a larger narrative that started on Sept 11^th, 2001.  Americans have sacrificed thousands of men, tens of thousands of wounded and trillions of dollars in the War on Terror and all the veterans of that criminal foolishness are now taking power.  Ukraine is rightly scene as an extension of that policy.

In the EU, Hungary has come out as a direct friend to Putin and enemy of Ukraine, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban vowing to veto any attempt at Ukraine beginning accession talks. And within NATO, Turkey, led by the very pro-Putin president Recep Erdoğan, has been working against the alliance for years, and is now blocking Sweden’s NATO membership while systematically undermining the sanctions regime against Putin and his cronies. 

--Wow countries are doing what is best for their national interests.  Imagine if more countries did that.

In February of this year, the Americans went all-in on Ukraine, at least rhetorically. Biden took a 10-hour train trip from Poland to Kyiv, where he walked the streets with Zelenskyy, then gave a speech at Mariinsky Palace where he declared: “Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

--Except the world does not stand with the West.  Most of them hate it and are cheering the Russians on.  I suggest Mr. Paxton read about the IMF some time to figure what that might be about.

These words, it turns out, were as empty as Europe’s arsenals. While many European countries — the Baltics and the Nordics in particular, along with Poland — are doing what they can, and pleading with the U.S. and the allies to stay the course, the Americans are clearly preparing to cast Ukraine loose, much to the delight of Russia, and the pro-Putin factions in the West.

--Yes, because Russia is more important than Ukraine.

It is folly, but this is the context in which a desperate Ukraine now finds itself. Zelenskyy, to whose bunker door Western leaders once beat a path, is now a supplicant, flying around the world begging for help from increasingly skeptical audiences. Even the people back home seem unconvinced. 

--Of course.  The people in Ukraine have watched themselves lose.

Ukraine faces a dark winter, and a dark reckoning. As the lights go out in Kyiv and Kherson and Odesa and Kharkiv in the face of yet another long night of Russian bombardment, they might well wonder where many of their so-called friends went. 

But things are no less bleak for the West. For starters, this is NATO’s second major strategic defeat this decade. While the Afghanistan fiasco can be chalked up to a failure to understand the fundamental character of the country, and the difficulties of counterinsurgency fighting more generally, the Ukraine conflict is exactly what NATO was created to deal with. The problem is not just that our leaders seem genuinely unaware that the democracies face an alliance of hostile authoritarian states devoted to, if not their destruction, at least their disruption. Nor is it simply that we have allowed our militaries and to wither and our production capacities to vanish.

--Yeah, that is not what happened in Afghanistan but that is also another post for another day.

The problem is much deeper, and it is about the moral rot that has sunk deep into the foundations of the West. What is so frightening is not that the barbarians are at the gates; it is that so many of us appear anxious to let them in.

--I will agree about the moral rot in the West.  But really its 1975 all over again.  We survived that and came back pretty quick.  We will survive this.

—I initially thought of softening this post a little think the original writer was some young man. But he has a PhD. This is the state of modern academia. Its almost as bad as talking to DeSantis fan boys.

--Mr. Patton needs to take a chill pill and read some books.