Pumpkinhead said:
I have seen some casualty estimates that Russia may be close to 600K dead or wounded at this point. Ukraine no doubt equally horrible numbers.
Accurate numbers not being reported by either side but even if just half that, Russia has already in just 2 and a half years blown by U.S.'s casualties in Vietnam over a decade back then (which was ironically a Soviet/Chinese proxy war against us…now the shoe is on the other foot).
And imagine if during the Vietnam war the Vietnam Cong had slipped over in some boats and invaded our West Coast grabbing like 500 square miles…
If Russia was anywhere close to a democracy with real elections and free press, Putin would be toast. Shows again that although Western governments certainly are flawed and no angels, how dictatorships are always the best at killing their own people.
This analysis neglects that the rulers in this war, on both side, could give less than a crap about the serfs they sacrifice. Biden (Zelensky)-Putin…just don't care, any more than Maduro or the mullah's really care about popular opinion. The Vietnam analogy that works would be the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which, while militarily insignificant, worked via propaganda to expand the war tremendously, despite it not being in American interests. Or perhaps on the other hand the Tet offensive, which while militarily disastrous for the NVA was a propaganda victory.
The analogy that
doesn't work is Rolling Thunder, which brought the North to its knees, and then the US didn't press the advantage to a real truce. Partially, that is because it involved real air superiority, something the UFA does not have in Kursk or anywhere else along the FBA.
America doesn't need to care about Russia, which isn't on our borders and isn't an economic competitor. If we could extract ourselves from the money laundering/graft/death that is Ukraine-Russia we'd be well served.
