Have you read about the USS John McCain accident?
3 Likes
As a matter of fact, Russia has a history of provoking foreign military - at one point they regularly had their military aircraft enter other countriesâ airspace without prior permission, they âsimulatedâ nuclear attacks against Sweden and Poland, etc. So far these seem to be posturing and provocation, but itâs definitely fuckery with malicious intent.
9 Likes
Trump is not offering himself. He is offering the citizens of the US.
1 Like
6 Likes
Cuba shot down a US spy plane as well.
âŚexcuse me? Sorry, I donât get it.
Article headline:
Russian warship âaggressively approachedâ US Navy destroyer in Arabian Sea.
No doubt the Russians claim the precise opposite, and Iâm not going to take the unverified word of either side.
Wiki:
Francis Gary Powers was an American pilot whose CIA spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace.
That was my first second thought too. I know itâs an urban legend, but:
6 Likes
OK, thanks for the explanation. But how does that connect with what I wrote?
All the incidents I mentioned 1. happened after 2000, 2. happened in peacetime, 3. were done very openly with a very obvious intent of provocation. They werenât undercover missions being accidentally exposed.
FFS people, just because one country does shady things doesnât invalidate every other country doing shady things. All countries do shady things, and sometimes, just sometimes, itâs actually OK to believe that itâs not the US that is at the most fault. Especially in a situation where tensions are so high and some non-US-friendly countries would like to remind the world that theyâre not US-friendly.
4 Likes
Oh; right; I misunderstood your point. Sorry!
Absolutely, but itâs equally valid to challenge the headlineâs presumption that the US isnât at fault, particularly in a region where the US has, er, a bit of a history of making unwanted interventions.
[To be clear, that part of my previous post was in response to the original article, not your comment!]
3 Likes
There seems to be many games of I got a bigger dick than you going on right now.
2 Likes
They stopped the SR-71 overflights because (a) satellites do the surveillance job better these days, and (b) Russia was pretty much a shattered wreck at the time anyway.
As were all of the U-2 and SR-71 overflights of the USSR.
The U-2 and SR-71 werenât true stealth aircraft; they relied upon altitude and speed for defence, not undetectability. The Soviets were aware of every flight; the Americans knew this; the âscrew you, we can overfly you and thereâs nothing you can do about itâ aspect of the missions was not just incidental.
â
My point here is not that the USSR or modern Russia havenât also been guilty of doing obnoxious things. My point is that an attempt to portray Russia as an abnormally aggressive country without acknowledging the equal or greater aggression of the USA presents a misleading picture of the world.
5 Likes
So what? Again: just because the US spied (and continues to spy) on other nations doesnât mean other nations canât perform deliberate provocations against one another. I simply donât get what all this âbut the US does bad things as well!â is trying to prove here. If you apply Occamâs razor, taking into accunt Russiaâs behavior in recent times, I think itâs fairly obvious which option is the more likely here as far as us, random people talking on the internet, are aware.
And again: this might all be true, but itâs still not the same thing as flying your fighter jets in a way that very deliberately, very openly tresspasses on another nationâs airspace, in an act of very obvious provocation. Or very openly practicing nuclear strikes against another nation, again with a very obvious intent of provocation.
But who even is not acknowledging the USAâs aggression? Especially now when the USA just did a fairly serious oopsie in the Middle East? Pointing out that Russia is perfectly capable of and more likely than not willing to provoke the US in such a tense situation to posture and assert itself shouldnât need to come with a mile long disclaimer of âbut the US is also bad.â
Also, about this part:
Nobody is âportrayingâ Russia as that - theyâre in fact a country with an aggressive foreign policy, and itâs not âabnormalâ, itâs pretty much their modus operandi. Military posturing is an established part of their foreign policy, since showing off military strength and threatening with violence is pretty much the only way they can still assert themselves and claim to be an important player in the world - lacking any other significant way of exerting pressure, what with the state of their economy. This is something that theyâve been fairly open about. And for that matter, just because the world at large has pretended to forget about the Russian aggression on Ukraine doesnât mean it didnât happen and is still not happening. Might I remind you of the occupation of Crimea, or MH17?
Iâm not saying Russia is alone with doing incredibly bad shit, because no, every other country does incredibly bad shit, the more powerful or ambitious they are, the worse. That includes the US, China, etc. Hell, my own country spent most of the 20th, and so far the 21st century being on the wrong side of history, paying the price for it, and not learning from it. But this idea that the bad things one country has done or is doing somehow invalidates or cancels out the bad things other countries are doing is I think a really strange worldview.
At the risk of being called a racistâŚ
Was this intentional aggression, or was the crew just too drunk to pilot a boat gooder.
Those are your orders. Carry them out.
1 Like
Named after Farragut Jones.
But he ALWAYS submits to his Dom
I genuinely donât think so. Taking into account the USAâs behaviour in recent times, I think either side is equally likely to have been the aggressor.
Look, Iâm honestly not trying to appear anti-American, or even a devilâs advocate, but youâre describing US foreign policy.
ETA:
The BBC reports the incident as Russian and US warships almost collide, which is a bit more even-handed.
IMHO itâs impossible to judge from the short clip. We we see the Russian vessel approaching from the US vesselâs stern, but if they both kept constant speed and course, at larger range it could have easily been outside the angle defining it as an overtaker, and been at the US vesselâs starboard side. This would have made the Russian vessel the stand-on vessel which is obliged to keep a constant course and speed. Civilian vessels would have talked to each other to clear this up, but who needs to talk when they have gunsâŚ
4 Likes
Occamâs razor literally says to make as few assumptions as possible, but if you were to apply it like you suggest, you would be going from events in world history over ascribing a certain character to the question of responsibility in a particular incident between two vessels at sea of which we have seen only a few seconds. Sounds like a whole shipping container of assumptions to me.
1 Like
Of course there are. Thatâs what happens when you put a guy with a tiny dick in the white house.
1 Like
