(My personal opinion is that he shall always be Bradley Manning, precisely because a traitor like him doesn't deserve to have his preferences respected. In this I suppose I reprise Kant's opinions, expressed in Metaphysics of Morals 6:334, in which he discussed two Jacobites one of whose preferences about punishment deserves respect, and the other not, because the better man was "acquainted with something that he values more highly than life, namely honor, while the scoundrel considers it better to live in shame than not at all." Ironically this meant assigning death to both men, also an appropriate punishment for Manning. But I digress.)
Of these, the most significant in terms of the outcome in Ukraine is that their air defenses are about to be exhausted. Russia would have won this war on the first stroke if they had been able to establish air superiority in the American way. They reportedly lost two companies of paratroopers to having their planes shot down en route to the drop zone, and their advance was on all sides bedeviled by not being in control of the skies. If that changes, Ukraine is not going to win -- regardless of the outcome of their spring offensive, which now has to be reshuffled at the last minute because the details were exposed.
The skeptics have often overstated their case, sometimes because they are leaning on pro-Russian sources in order to find anyone independent of the groupthink that has overtaken all American and prominent Western media. Unfortunately, that means absorbing also some of the Russian messaging, which finds its way into such sources even where they attempt independence. The fog of war has been itself here, as always, but there is no getting around the fact that the war has been fought mostly on Ukrainian territory, and it is Ukrainian infrastructure that has suffered. To some degree the West can backfill munitions, if it has factories or stockpiles (which it doesn't for Soviet-era air defense missiles); it can't replace the power grid.
Discuss, if you like. I suspect things are far more dire even than these leaked reports suggest, as the pressure to produce positive thinking in US intelligence is higher than ever (witness Afghanistan).
6 comments:
One item out of the many:
...their spring offensive, which now has to be reshuffled at the last minute because the details were exposed.
Or not, since the barbarian knows the plans, would expect them to be changed, and will realign their forces to meet the expected changes. Or not, again. It's possible to overthink such things in both directions, by both sides, to change or not to change.
It's also possible that any change by the Ukrainians will be physical rather than a complete rethinking: I'd expect the Ukrainians have a number of Annexes to their OPLAN, along with some Parts 2 in their Annexes to consult as events unfold in real time.
It's also helpful to know what the barbarian knows, and that's the flipside of an exposed leak. That puts a premium on DoD and our intel crowd to learn the extent of the leaks and what specifically was leaked.
What's especially critical in such a situation is to know the key personnel of the enemy, how they think, what their values are, what their imperatives are--that would be the generals in the Kremlin and those on scene, not just the hordes in general.
Wrt Ukrainian air defense systems, I'd also be amazed if the barbarian hasn't had, all along, a good idea of the stock levels of Ukraine's S-300s and Buks. Also, according to the New York Post, at least one of the reports noting the impending exhaustion of air defense systems was dated for the end of February; it's not a current status. Air defense replenishment (to what level of replacement wasn't clear) is included in the resupply packages from the US over the last month.
It's a dangerous situation, but I'm not as ready to cry disaster as the pundits desperate for attention are.
Eric Hines
Who benefits from the leak (however manipulated the reports were)?
Perhaps somebody wanted some part of this leaked, and leaked the rest to muddy the waters and because they had access.
Speculation from another knowledgeable person I spoke with, James, is that only part of the leak is genuine. Some of the information circulating may have been modified or added by the Russians or other parties. If so, at least part of the benefit follows.
Some of it is clearly genuine though. The leaker’s motives are not yet known.
We know that the Pentagon has been trying to slow the roll of the WarWar crowd, not least by announcing that the US' own supply of weapons is bare-pantry.
Maybe this is another chapter in the same book.
As for the naming, there is this lyric from "Streets of Laredo," perhaps not accidentally a Scots-Irish song, in light of our parallel discussion: "Don't mention his name and his name will pass on."
Also a worthy punishment, inverting the Havamal:
'Cattle die, kin die, men die too;
I know one thing that never dies:
The memory of the honored dead.'
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