AS the conflict in Ukraine continues there are those here in the US that are calling for US troops to intervene…..Congresspeople, pundits, and retired generals….and there is the latest war hawk calling for US troops…
Former NATO top commander Gen. Philip Breedlove is the latest big name to come out for putting troops on the ground in Ukraine. Breedlove, who has been angling for weeks for a more muscular policy against Russia, told The Times of London that it’s time for real action. And he may have the ear of the White House: the article says he’s named as one of “several high-ranking retired commanders advising the Biden administration on Ukraine.”
“So what could the West do? Well, right now there are no Russian troops west of the Dnieper River. So why don’t we put Nato troops into western Ukraine to carry out humanitarian missions and to set up a forward arms supply base?”
Of course it wouldn’t stop there. Most likely Russia will react aggressively, if not explosively, since setting up “a forward arms supply base” would be fully entering this war on the side of Ukraine. NATO would be a co-belligerent in every way, with its 40,000 troops now stationed on alliance’s eastern front considered future enemy combatants. At the end of April, the Pentagon mobilized some 14,000 troops, along with F-35 strike fighters and Apache helicopters to Poland, Hungary, and the Baltics. A total of 100,000 U.S. troops now spread across Europe would no doubt be on some level of alert if NATO entered the fray.
Former US-NATO commander wants to put troops on the ground in Ukraine
Seriously?
Old soldiers never go away…they hide behind national security to get the rest of us killed.
Why are troops always the answer for these people?
This ‘solution’ has seldom ended well for the US and its troops. The attitude that “we are the US and we are here to help” has seldom worked out the way it was planned….but yet it is always the answer for these people.
When will we stop continuously looking for as military solution and start trying to find ways to solve conflict without the use of US troops?
Just wondering.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In Saner Thought 
I agree diplomacy is always the best solution… but I am not always certain that using diplomacy as a measure of “kicking the can down the road” instead of dealing decisively with a problem head on is a better solution either. You might (and that is a big “might”) get Putin to stay committed to a truce/treaty for now…. he’s still a demonstrated belligerent, and without a doubt very likely to do it all again, if not in Ukraine then somewhere else. That should be part of any consideration for a peace agreement.
If I were making policy I would want at least one “hawk” at the table providing opinion. If nothing else, that person provides an illustration of what we DON’T want to do. Sometimes an answer to a problem is working backwards toward a solution. I’m reminded of the movie, “Thirteen Days”… the Costner depiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis. At a point in an early crisis meeting Kennedy was going around the table asking for possible scenarios toward getting the Soviets to withdraw and most present were of various opinions that a strong message and strong measures should be used. UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson apprehensively suggested offering to the Soviets removing the missiles we had in place in Turkey at the time… to at least give Khrushchev a face-saving compromise to back down. Stevenson was pretty much shunned as an weak-spined appeaser. In the end that’s exactly what solved the crisis.
The Israelis have a special unit nicknamed the “Devil’s Advocate”… where critical policy decisions are given once last chance of being proven “wrong” (the same concept as that almost fictional “Tenth Man Doctrine” mentioned in the movie “World War Z”… if a decision is unanimous by nine people, the tenth must take effort to prove the nine are “wrong”).
The whole point here being… no one really likes a “warhawk” but sometimes they can be correct…. or a compromise can come from them.
War is a failure……No amount of scenarios can change that…..besides talking about Ukraine….the US is not in danger….we could be with troops taking an active part…..chuq
I hate the idea of other people deciding whether I am going to live or die. Fire the war mongering son of a b**ch before he ignites a fire that can’t be extinguished.
He is retired but a closer look shows he has links to the M-IC chuq
Please – NO troops on the ground or it’ll be another 20 years till they come home!!!!!
AMEN! Be well chuq
Few soldiers want to put troops on the ground. Think about it. Would you want to be under President Joe Biden’s command and in Ukraine? After what Biden did in Afghanistan? The screwups in Afghanistan are major part of the stupidity that led to the mess in Ukraine.
Four-star generals are political appointees. They tend to be more politicians than soldiers. So, be wary of calling Breedlove an old soldier.
We cannot blame the whole Afghanistan thing on Biden because we do not like him…..that honor goes to the decisions made by Bush and the Boyz. Russia has had sights on Ukraine long before we invaded Ukraine….Pentagon controlled by lobbyists is the biggest problem. Be well chuq
@lobotero
Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was criminally inept. He should be impeached just for that alone. We have 13 dead soldiers because of that man.
However, what makes me most sad are the people who voted for Biden and still defend him. There is a point where the ignorance required to do so become indefensible.
It Afghanistan is your metric then every president since 2005 should have been impeached….and how many dead because of the others?
No more so than the ignorance in defense of Trump…..that borders on stupidity.
Our British Foreign Secretary, the hopeless Liz Truss (favourite to succeed Boris as PM) has stated in a speech that ‘Russia must be driven out of all of Ukraine’. (meaning the inclusion of The Crimea) The Defence Select Committee of parliament is calling on NATO to draw a ‘red line’ that Putin must not cross or NATO aircraft will deploy to destroy every tank and military hardware Russia has inside Ukraine’s borders. The head of the Select Committee is a retired army officer who is happy to state that he feels NATO should fully deploy openly on the side of Ukraine against Russia. He has stated that any use of ‘battlefireld nuclear weapons’ by Russia should be regarded as an act of war against all of Europe.
Seems to me like there is solid agitiation to fight Russia on both sides of The Atlantic. WW3 could be closer than we think.
Best wishes, Pete.
And it draws closer with every word spoken by idiots. chuq