9 Comments

It should've been obvious after a month that Putin's biggest mistake was thinking that making a half hearted commitment to a "special military operation" with ambiguously defined goals was going to resolve the situation quickly. Paul Craig Roberts was one of the first to point out this blunder.

Of course anyone who believes the MSM is even more deluded than 5D chess believers. Putin has finally began attacking Ukrainian infrastructure and committed to a wider engagement which will probably tip the scales in Russia's favor in the coming months. We'll see though.

Expand full comment

WW II began in 1939 and the decisive Battle of the Ardennes didn't take place until 1944 - 45. While we enjoy knowing where all our tax dollars are going, it is not necessary for the public to be updated on the war every day. All it will take is one decisive battle or the addition of one aggressive and creative leader (on either side) to negate today's news.

Many of us remember the Tet Offensive - a failed assault by North Vietnam that was portrayed by the US media as a giant success. Thanks to the Walter Cronkites of the sixties, it turned the tide of the Vietnam war by triggering anti-war protests in the USA that led to our eventual defeat.

During the Crusades, were the Templars or Suleman playing "5D Chess" when they repeatedly tricked one another by escaping besieged cities - only to trap and kill their enemies?

Many battles have been lost & wars won.

Since the media does not report on wars, anymore, preferring to report whatever the various CIA/NSA/FSB/MI5 agencies tell them to print.

We won't know what is currently going on in Ukraine until far in the future.

Expand full comment

Thanks for calling out the 5D dunce grifters! We need more sober voices out there providing analysis of the situation!

Expand full comment

someone else mentioned the tet offensive; that's been my personal analogy for a lot of the ukie "we threw thousands of bodies into the meat grinder to gain a few small villages" tactics. in any case, i've also been annoyed at people who don't have the basic knowledge that wars take years and not weeks.

i'd also caution against going the other way and seeing every strategic retreat and/or feint as a "loss". they pulled all their soldiers and most of the civilians out without a single casualty and cleared the possible flood area should the ukies hit the dam. sounds like competent work to me.

Expand full comment

I have hard time trusting neoliberal Pasha Putin. I think he would do nothing about Ukraine and the Russians being slaughtered there if it were not for the Russian people pushing him to do something. I wish Kadyrov was in charge of this "SMO". I don't like having the fate of the free world relying on Putin. I don't say that out loud too much because then I upset his fan base.

Expand full comment
Nov 14, 2022·edited Nov 14, 2022

You are quite right, the AMCs that swarm on Telegram and Twitter did not even understand the lesson of the Chinese fiasco after Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan and insist on feeding the narrative that Russia and the BRICs will soon dominate the world. Not to mention that many of their channels, such as Lord of War and Entre Guerras constantly discredit themselves with their insistence on advertising and selling cryptocurrencies that suggest fraudulent schemes like the ones in the recent FTX case.

However, this narrative has been fed before by very good journalists turned propagandists with little room for self-criticism, such as Pepe Escobar, who now reluctantly accepts that "the triumphal march to Kiev in two weeks" is a myth with very little support in reality.

We must not get carried away by the ideological sympathies and confusion that often places the alt-right on the side of Russia, when their racism, their xenophobia and their inability to understand the changing world in which we live brings them much closer to the side of the ukronazis, the European Union and their masters in Washington.

I believe that no one who is habitual in this type of spaces does not want that in the end there will be the triumph of the sovereignist multipolarism that Moscow and Beijing uphold today, but it is good to remember that - as in other key episodes of Russian history - the path is very difficult, multi-edged, and full of setbacks and victories.

Expand full comment