Posted on 01/29/2023 9:58:53 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that a lot of the U.S.’s military aid to Ukraine “could have been done sooner.”
“I think the only thing I would have said is that a lot of this could have been done sooner,” Gates said when asked by Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he would have advised President Biden to do anything differently.
“And, you know, they’re talking about potentially being six months, a year or more before the Abrams tanks get there,” he added. “I think the key thing about the Abrams tank decision was that it unlocked the Germans.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Gates is 100% a POS.
You took it exactly the opposite way it was intended. “Germany’s finally learned the lesson that it can’t be dependent on Russia for energy”. I’m saying that Germany has learned the historical lesson that Russia cannot be trusted as a reliable partner for anything, much less as a supplier of energy, the lifeblood of the economy.
Yes, that’s basically it. But we’ll have huge production capacity for weapons of all kinds. We’ll have continued inflation but few body bags so it will be a price Americans are willing to pay.
Puke with money destroying the world and the country that made him rich
Check
Indeed Gates is more concerned more about the Ukraine border than ours needs to remove his tin foil hat.
I’m saying that Germany has learned the historical lesson that Russia cannot be trusted as a reliable partner for anything, much less as a supplier of energy, the lifeblood of the economy.
You still aren’t making sense. Russia hasn’t done a single thing to show it is not a reliable supplier of energy. 100% of the German gas shortages are because of German decisions not to allow gas to flow through the completed Nordstream, to cut off methods of payment, refuse delivery of compressors, seizure of Russian owned infrastructure, bank accounts and gold in Germany.
Germans did everything. How does that make Russians untrustworthy as a reliable partner. If you go into McDonalds, refuse to pay, smash the place up and threaten the staff.... McDonalds refusing you the next day does not make McDonalds an “unreliable supplier”.
Without Germans boycotts, theft, sanctions and our attack on the pipeline, the Germans would have all the gas they wanted same as always.
No, I am not willing to have massive inflation (a heavily regressive stealth tax) to build a giant retarded military machine so neocons can fight wars of convenience on WWII eastern front battlefields.
That does nothing for me as a citizen or taxpayer.
I see you’ve been keeping up with their economic and military build up over the last 50 years......
So? The only thing I'm afraid is their nukes. Other than that, they have nothing.
We just need our nukes and the navy. Our army and the marines should all be reserves. They just need to practice every now and then so we can make them active duty quickly when we need to mobilize our armed forces.
Germany being ‘unlocked’ is dangerous tomfoolery. If the jeauts want to get wasted again, then I spose the tomfoolery might have a silver lining
Krauts I should say
in the pecking order of trust, Germany is near the bottom. The loathsome teutons, are still the same megalomaniacs inside, who wanted Germany to be uber alles. Guck the Fermans. Keep them on a leash.
True that, but it's beside the point. The vast majority of American voters are low information, and they won't care until American boys start coming home in body bags. The Deep State knows this. I'm saying that this is the plan - bleed Russia out, make billions on munitions, hone all military skills by proxy, and basically fight it out to the last Ukrainian. Sort of like Verdun in WW1. Bleed them dry, and then NATO swoops in and takes all the chips. I'm certainly not saying it's moral, quite to the contrary. I am saying I think it's the Big Picture Plan for NATO and probably has been from the beginning.
>”American boys start coming home in body bags”
But that is not what is happening at all. Ukrainians empathically do not want American troops in danger or dying there. This would be extremely counterproductive to their goals of liberating their country.
They ask for weapons and ammo. They have proven they can use these well.
Biden is far too slowly donating some weapons, but I don’t suspect a deep conspiracy. Biden has always been timid. He even opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Oh, I think that if Germany had kowtowed to Russia regarding Ukraine (which probably would have fractured NATO, Russia would be sending every cubic milliliter of gas and oil to Germany that it possibly could.
Yes, I think that (viewpoint of the average Ukrainian) is not totally unlike most FReepers’ outlook regarding their own homes:
Speaking at least for myself, I don’t want to need cops crawling all over my property for my “protection”. I’d rather be well enough armed to deter and if need be ward off attackers myself, because the cops are going to be too late to arrive in most cases anyway.
Back to the original discussion, “arms slow to arrive”, is in this day and age part and parcel of the whole big / liberal gov’t penchant to gum up its own works.
Although I don’t like Gates, he is correct on this point. Biden’s (and let’s not leave out DOD, either!) “timid”, to use your word, approach, is heavily compounded by our bureaucratic gunk, which is allowed and even promoted to flourish. Comparison with the Poles is just plain an embarrassment, of us...
Well, I thought so too, and then I watched the interview of Lockheed-Martin's CEO (they make the HIMARS rockets (ie., ammo) on CBS 60 Minutes. That 60 Minutes segment was last September: At that point Lockheed-Martin was "doing similar analysis" to see what would be involved to "potentially" increase production from it's then apparently nearly static 7500 rockets / year to 12-14k. (I'm unclear when analysis was done to ramp up to the 10k / year mentioned fairly confidently by the CEO, and equally unclear as to whether any increase was at that time in process.) Worse, it would take "on the order of 18 to 24 months, to make any significant changes in the production quantities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUEDRKLbKZU
One does not even have to read between the lines to be aghast at the lack of foresight and/or advance planning.
In the long, run, yes, the West "can" produce far more and superior weapons to Russia. No question about it, especially if we get most of the present ditherers and bureaucrats out of the way. (A big if.) But for the rest of this administration?
The Poles have figured this out, and made big time orders from the South Koreans.
Can the Ukies hold out 2 years? How much will Russia's now* (and likely to continue for a few years) diminishing energy revenues diminish their ability to "sustain"?
*Best guess would be that Russia's energy revenues in 2023 will be half or less of 2022 (a very good year for them).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.