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I do think that Europe needs to stop relying so heavily on the USA to do everything for them. They have the money, the means and the tech to take care of their own problems.
They are the way they are because that is just the way The Pentagon wants it. The Joint Chiefs would collectively stroke out if Europe made more out of its military than what is presently in force. This constant disconnect between the will of the people and the desires of the people in charge would be amusing if it didn't have such dire implications for our future. To wit, one Donald J. Trump speaker for the people. Heir apparent to the Republican nomination and openly derisive of every sacred cow of the 1% of which he is a member. If you get from that that I don't think Trump would fulfill a single campaign promise he has made in the last year you would be right. And, you are correct, Europe has the means and the tech to take care of their own problems. And would. And do. What makes you think that the U.S. is actually needed there? More disconnect I suspect.
It was provocative. Just as provocative as us having ships in that location.
In any case, the Navy should have painted those Russian birds with a target lock. They would have left fast enough. The Navy no doubt has orders not to.
Of course, if we had real leadership in the White House, these sort of situations would never happen. But alas, the "community agitator" is simply out of his league on the world stage. The Russians no longer respect the US Military.
This was the statement from the Pentagon regarding the strafing of an American warship by Russian fighter aircraft in the Baltic Sea. "We have deep concerns about the unsafe and unprofessional Russian flight maneuvers,". If the captain of the American DDG USS Donald Cook was concerned about the malicious intent of the Russian aircraft or safety of his/her crew they would've been ordered to general quarters and not standing on the weather decks watching the Sukhoi Su-24 fighters strafe the ship.
I couldn't tell you how many times our ship got buzzed by Soviet aircraft when I served on USS Garcia (FF-1040) in the Med during the height of the Cold War. Soviet AGI's would sail so close to us that we could make out the faces of the Russian crewman. Our watches gave the Russians names like "Ivan" and "Sergei" and if they got too close we'd moon them. What's the difference between 1979 and 2016? These incidents were rarely disclosed to the media nor did armchair warriors sitting at their PC keyboards suggest starting WWIII over this posturing.
As others have pointed out, our guys do the same thing to the Ruskies. That's why they call it the Cold War. Political and cultural differences aside the Russians are a more honorable and worthy opponent than grimy and cowardly terrorists that exploit children and women as suicide bombers and human shields. This incident with the Donald Cook is as much of a crisis as some "Beltway Bandit" at the Pentagon wants to spin it in their press release. The Navies of the world have been engaging in such testosterone fueled shenanigans since the days of Lord Admiral Nelson.
To those suggesting that the CO of the Donald Cook should have ordered that his crew fire on the Russian Sukhoi's; If that occurred two things are certain; the aircraft would been destroyed and it's quite likely that the Russian fast attack submarine trailing the Donald Cook would've retaliated by firing torpedoes at our warship and likely sinking her. In my humble formerly seagoing opinion the captain of Donald Cook and his chain of command made a good call. A good example of how hostilities can escalate in modern Naval warfare is the classic film "The Bedford Incident". It's fiction but illustrates how the Cold War can heat up if cooler heads don't prevail.
My question as an American that served for 22 years in the Navy is why did the jackasses at the Pentagon acknowledge that this incident even occurred and then over react to it? No doubt, crewman on the Cook video taped it with their iPhones and might have posted it on YouTube but so what? The current regime in the White House has an agenda and it's not our national security.
Barack does not have the balls to pull the trigger. Putin does this because Barack is a wimp.
Sigh... what will you do when you no longer have Obama to use for lame posts like this. Barack wasn't on that destroyer. The trigger(s) were not in his hands. The destroyer captain didn't have the balls to defend his own vessel. Let's lay the blame where it belongs.
Sigh... what will you do when you no longer have Obama to use for lame posts like this. Barack wasn't on that destroyer. The trigger(s) were not in his hands. The destroyer captain didn't have the balls to defend his own vessel. Let's lay the blame where it belongs.
You seem to have no understanding of the chain of command. That destroyer captain had his hands tied behind his backs by the higher ups. The statements from the Pentagon prove this.
Sigh... what will you do when you no longer have Obama to use for lame posts like this. Barack wasn't on that destroyer. The trigger(s) were not in his hands. The destroyer captain didn't have the balls to defend his own vessel. Let's lay the blame where it belongs.
You have absolutely no idea how the chain of command works or what you are talking about. Decisions about opening fire on Russian military assets are not made in the CIC or bridge on that ship. That kind of decision literally goes all the way to the top.
And I can guarantee you the commander of that ship has more balls than you'll ever dream of having.
Of course, if we had real leadership in the White House, these sort of situations would never happen. But alas, the "community agitator" is simply out of his league on the world stage. The Russians no longer respect the US Military.
You're right of course. But if Obama made something out of situations like this and escalated tensions into all out WWIII then we might all be losing our hair to radioactive fallout and vomiting up our last meals on this earth. Tough talking Ronnie Reagan got Carter hauled out of the White House because he was The Man and was going to take names. As you can see, he was just as reasonable as anyone else with the lives of 300M people in their care. Obama gets away with Abu Graib, Guantanamo, Okinawa, and the U.S. dollar as world reserve currency, so please, sell the wisdom that he is a pacifist wimp who is in over his head somewhere else. Trump won't be any tougher, believe me. And Trump doesn't even have community organizer experience. He has not spent even one full year as a full time politician.
Takes no balls at all to pull a trigger when it's not your ass on the line, the poseurs who led us down the wrong path into Iraq proved that. And just WHO would be in the wrong pulling the trigger on an aircraft in international airspace?
Or should we follow the:
READY!
FIRE!
AIM!
script that's worked so well in the past?
John Kennedy probably saved us from WWIII by not pulling any triggers.
You have absolutely no idea how the chain of command works or what you are talking about. Decisions about opening fire on Russian military assets are not made in the CIC or bridge on that ship. That kind of decision literally goes all the way to the top.
And I can guarantee you the commander of that ship has more balls than you'll ever dream of having.
I know how the chain of command works and I know that the destroyer captain to get where he is could not possibly be a wimp. Nor could our POTUS.
John Kennedy probably saved us from WWIII by not pulling any triggers.
I was thinking of Kennedy when I wrote my last post. I've never heard Kennedy called a wimp.
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