Donald (duck) Rumsfeld once said "you go to war with the army you have".

[Augiedog]

He also said other stupid stuff, but that’s for another day.

I would like to modify that, actually correct it to more accurately reflect truth. ‘You go to war with the country you have” . If your country isn’t on board your army isn’t going to be either, in general.

Putins invasion of Ukraine is a classic example of a joke of an oppressive country going to war with reluctant, at best, army. Killing non combatants in lieu of fighting other soldiers is a recipe for disaster.

Putin is reaping the rewards for starting a war of choice against, primarily, the civilian population of Ukraine. His country is being vilified and cut of off from the rest of the civilized world.

Our president, Joe Biden, has acted brilliantly in orchestrating the worlds response to the naked aggression of Putin. Going forward, Russia is going to suffer for years because of this.

Putin will have turned his nation from something people grudgingly respected to a a laughable pit of oppression. Ukraine on the other hand has launched itself to the forefront of respect and shown what a real leader is and can do.

Putin has shown himself to be a sociopath with megalomaniacal tendencies. His army seems less capable than people feared and his citizenry is not on board. His posturing with nuclear war threats, while concerning, are unlikely to deter western nations actions. Bullies should never be allowed credence. His countries populace is being gaslighted, they are being being held incommunicado from truth and when they ask questions they are arrested and possibly sent to the front of a war which Putin says isn’t occurring.

It’s heart breaking to watch the news from Ukraine and the civilian slaughter. Putins invasion must end and he must be held to account. I’m not naive enough to think he will be, but his country and the oligarchs who enable him to act must be.

Putin went to war with an, apparently, ineffective army and a country gaslighted into thinking nothing was going on. Not a good formula for military success.

I wish the best for Ukraine and it’s citizens and the worst for Putin. The bill will come due for this and Russia isn’t gonna like it.

[BeyondGeography]

1. Zelensky is going to take down Putin

And Trump, for good measure. Life is interesting.

[gab13by13]

2. The reason that Rummy said that,

was because our troops didn't have proper body armor, didn't have the proper equipment and vehicles. Parents were shipping body armor to their sons and daughters in Iraq.

[Abnredleg]

3. It's a little more complicated than that

The armor that they are referring to is Kevlar armor that will stop a bullet. The plates had been around for awhile before the 2003 but were essentially handmade and incredibly expensive, and thus only used by special operations soldiers. Right before the war the technology to mass produce the plates was perfected but the plates couldn’t be mass produced until a facility to produce sufficient raw material came on line, a facility that hadn’t been built up until then because there was no need for large quantities because the technology to mass produce plates hadn’t been perfected. As far as I can tell, the initial shortage of plates wasn’t due to mismanagement or incompetence, but rather that the war began just as production was ramping up and it took time to get them to troops.

Developing and deploying equipment is a lengthy process, and it may take years for the military to be fully equipped with the latest and greatest. That means at any one time some units will have more modern and effective equipment than others. Would everyone having the latest and greatest result in lower casualties? Perhaps, but the realities of military procurement will always result in units with different levels of equipment.

Given that procurement cycles may last a decade, you will never be fully equipped with the latest equipment, and thus have to “go to war with the Army you have.”

[Calista241]

9. Yeah, Rumsfeld did and said a lot that was more egregious than this statement.

The fact was we were going to war, and our troops were well equipped, but the realities of innovation and production happened at the exact wrong time here.

The same thing happened years later, when humvee's were being destroyed in quantity by IED's. The MRAP and other vehicles were being developed at an accelerated pace, but it would take several years to fully equip forces that were deployed in the field.

[FakeNoose]

4. For Ukraine, a "win" is getting the Russian army out of their country

For Russia, a "win" is the total submission and annihilation of Ukraine. Putin wants Ukraine to become another state in the Russian Federation, completely under Putin's control of course.

There's no middle ground, nor is there negotiating between the two. We can't sit by and watch Ukraine lose this, because it's obvious to all of us that Putin won't stop there. I believe there's a limit to what the oligarchs will go along with. Some of them are already revolting against Putin because they aren't crazy ... they're businessmen. The smart ones can see that Putin has turned the world against Russia, and that's bad for business. I believe this will end soon.

[uponit7771]

5. K&R, the Putrids shelling of Kyiv is the most naked punk move in this century. It's naked ...

... military aggression against unarmed people because Putrid can't win against the UKR regulars

[Towlie]

6. My take on witty quotes:

Donald Rumsfeld also said this:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

Voltaire said this:

"A witty saying proves nothing."

I agree with Voltaire here, but a witty saying is often not meant to prove anything or appeal to authority but is simply a humorous and appealing way of saying something presumed to already be known.

For example, In the book A Universe from Nothing by cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss, he used the above Rumsfeld quote as his introduction to Chapter 2. This didn't mean that Lawrence Krauss admired Rumsfeld or considered him an authority, it only meant that he liked the saying, presumably because it applied well to cosmology. He attributed the saying to Rumsfeld simply because he recognized his obligation to do that.

This also illustrates that the usage of a witty saying doesn't have to apply to the subject intended by its author. Another example, returning to Voltaire, is that he wrote (in French):

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Even though the Web consensus is that Voltaire believed God does exist and he meant this to be taken at face value, the saying is popular among atheists as a sort of tongue-in-cheek way of suggesting that God doesn't exist and mankind did invent him (several thousand times, in fact).

[eppur_se_muova]

7. A related quote: "If Voltaire had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him".

Can't remember who said that, but I sort of recall it was someone important.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Putin wasn't listening. Putin, like TFG, believes he is smarter than his generals. nt

[CentralMass]

10. If i recall it was in response to a question from a specialist on why they were having

to scavenge metal from scrap yards to weld to their Humvees to protect them from IED's. I can also recall at the time thinking Rumsfekd was implying that Bill Clinton had left the army ill prepared
When in fact he and the other neocon sons of bitches who lied us into their war of choice had dismissed the advice of the Generals who knew the region and that of the US Army War College. Rumsfeld said that it would be a "cake walk" and that we would be in and out in weeks and that we would be welcomed and thst Iraqi oil would pay for it all.
He said this "some time you go to war..: while our men and and women were being killed and having their limbs blown off due to he and the other sons of bitches lying us to an elective war