My mind goes in two directions: 1) the various strange foreign business connections you can find by digging a little deeper into the political class leads one to wonder how much of this would, properly investigated, make Corruption Scandal of the Century, except everyone's in on it; and 2) When something's "Europe's war to fight".... well, the US has been undertaking Europe's wars for how long now? And I'm not glibly saying that it's wrong, but it's not like we had any kind of concerted plan or consistent messaging (publicly at least) about what the relationship is like now.
Not that that changes or helps with anything. Right now I feel like our country is in the midst of a profound "we reap what we sow" period, no way around it. And I really don't want the aggressors in the conflict to win, either.
Yea, if we had a decent journalism industry, or Glenn Greenwald had a few million to spend on a massive investigative staff, we would probably be very unhappy with how much of that money goes to paying off campaign contributors and family members of politicians.
You are right of course that we have been enabling Europe to just not bother fighting anything for quite some time now. Still, I think it is a fair argument that they could pony up money just as well as the US since we are not sending troops or our own equipment. I expect General Dynamics does in fact have a catalogue they could buy from to send things to Ukraine :)
And yes, we sowed a lot of very stupid seeds over the past 40-50 years, and I expect we are going to have a very bitter harvest indeed.
I'm assuming that the low low prices for Ukrainian black market munitions are just the usual steep discount for hot merchandise, so probably we wouldn't be saving money by buying weapons from Ukrainians in practice.
It does however point to a probable unintended (?) consequence of all these munitions flooding into Europe's most corrupt cesspit in the midst of a chaotic war: it's very likely quite a bit of it will end up on the black market, probably finding its way into the hands of terrorists and gangsters. A late 2020s security environment featuring Chechen mobsters, Azov revanchists, and our old buddies from ISIS, armed with MANPADs and operating inside Western Europe will be an interesting place for law enforcement and civilians.
Yea, that seemed to be largely Greenwald's take, that we can expect a lot of higher end military hardware sloshing around the back ends of Eastern Europe and the Middle East for a while now. That's not going to be pretty for the locals, that's for certain :(
But look, I either want less corruption, or more opportunity to engage in it. Why should terrorists have access to the best discounts on weapons?! The terrorists are winning! Come on, Ukraine, step up your commerce game and let us at least buy back some of the fun weapons at a discount. I want a recoilless rifle to mount on my F-150, damnit! :D
>when you're at Thanksgiving dinner and you say the Second Amendment shall not be infringed and your liberal cousin asks if the Second Amendment means that everyone should be allowed to have nukes
Hey, all I am asking is to be allowed a fleet of vehicles on par with the Chad army in the Toyota War. We can discuss keeping a Polaris missile under my pool once I buy a pool. :P
If the Founding Fathers smiled at private citizens fitting out their privateering vessels with grapeshot, they surely intended their posterity to have access to APCs with 50 cals and mortars with HE and incendiary rounds.
In all seriousness, I rather think they would. Especially if they saw the riots of the past 30 years, and the state's seeming ambivalence towards restoring order and protecting citizen's. Every roof top Korean would be issued a Ma Deuce and 10,000 rounds.
I still can't get over how apparently city governments aren't sure if their duty is to protect local business and homeowners from having their property burned down or not. Why even have a government at that point?
Indeed. Force monopolies only make sense when they result in lower levels of social violence. When they amount to effectively holding one group down to allow the other group to use them as a punching bag, it's a rather different cost-benefit analysis.
The other question of course is whether reducing the number of violent deaths is a good trade-off for tyranny, or if on the other hand accepting a higher background rate of violent death is a cost worth paying to make tyranny impossible. No scientific answer to that question; really comes down to societal preferences.
My mind goes in two directions: 1) the various strange foreign business connections you can find by digging a little deeper into the political class leads one to wonder how much of this would, properly investigated, make Corruption Scandal of the Century, except everyone's in on it; and 2) When something's "Europe's war to fight".... well, the US has been undertaking Europe's wars for how long now? And I'm not glibly saying that it's wrong, but it's not like we had any kind of concerted plan or consistent messaging (publicly at least) about what the relationship is like now.
Not that that changes or helps with anything. Right now I feel like our country is in the midst of a profound "we reap what we sow" period, no way around it. And I really don't want the aggressors in the conflict to win, either.
Yea, if we had a decent journalism industry, or Glenn Greenwald had a few million to spend on a massive investigative staff, we would probably be very unhappy with how much of that money goes to paying off campaign contributors and family members of politicians.
You are right of course that we have been enabling Europe to just not bother fighting anything for quite some time now. Still, I think it is a fair argument that they could pony up money just as well as the US since we are not sending troops or our own equipment. I expect General Dynamics does in fact have a catalogue they could buy from to send things to Ukraine :)
And yes, we sowed a lot of very stupid seeds over the past 40-50 years, and I expect we are going to have a very bitter harvest indeed.
Ha. There's Pro-Publica, but they're nakedly partisan, and, looking at their page right now, opt for the racial angle when they can.
I'm assuming that the low low prices for Ukrainian black market munitions are just the usual steep discount for hot merchandise, so probably we wouldn't be saving money by buying weapons from Ukrainians in practice.
It does however point to a probable unintended (?) consequence of all these munitions flooding into Europe's most corrupt cesspit in the midst of a chaotic war: it's very likely quite a bit of it will end up on the black market, probably finding its way into the hands of terrorists and gangsters. A late 2020s security environment featuring Chechen mobsters, Azov revanchists, and our old buddies from ISIS, armed with MANPADs and operating inside Western Europe will be an interesting place for law enforcement and civilians.
Yea, that seemed to be largely Greenwald's take, that we can expect a lot of higher end military hardware sloshing around the back ends of Eastern Europe and the Middle East for a while now. That's not going to be pretty for the locals, that's for certain :(
But look, I either want less corruption, or more opportunity to engage in it. Why should terrorists have access to the best discounts on weapons?! The terrorists are winning! Come on, Ukraine, step up your commerce game and let us at least buy back some of the fun weapons at a discount. I want a recoilless rifle to mount on my F-150, damnit! :D
Reminds me of the ancap meme:
>when you're at Thanksgiving dinner and you say the Second Amendment shall not be infringed and your liberal cousin asks if the Second Amendment means that everyone should be allowed to have nukes
*radioactive grin*
SHALL. NOT.
Hey, all I am asking is to be allowed a fleet of vehicles on par with the Chad army in the Toyota War. We can discuss keeping a Polaris missile under my pool once I buy a pool. :P
If the Founding Fathers smiled at private citizens fitting out their privateering vessels with grapeshot, they surely intended their posterity to have access to APCs with 50 cals and mortars with HE and incendiary rounds.
In all seriousness, I rather think they would. Especially if they saw the riots of the past 30 years, and the state's seeming ambivalence towards restoring order and protecting citizen's. Every roof top Korean would be issued a Ma Deuce and 10,000 rounds.
I still can't get over how apparently city governments aren't sure if their duty is to protect local business and homeowners from having their property burned down or not. Why even have a government at that point?
Indeed. Force monopolies only make sense when they result in lower levels of social violence. When they amount to effectively holding one group down to allow the other group to use them as a punching bag, it's a rather different cost-benefit analysis.
The other question of course is whether reducing the number of violent deaths is a good trade-off for tyranny, or if on the other hand accepting a higher background rate of violent death is a cost worth paying to make tyranny impossible. No scientific answer to that question; really comes down to societal preferences.