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I study warfare and am a pilot. The doctrine of the US Air Force is that they will have the best airplanes at any cost to achieve air dominance. They literally

I study warfare and am a pilot. The doctrine of the US Air Force is that they will have the best airplanes at any cost to achieve air dominance. They literally don't care about price as long as they get the lethality and qty. they want. Hence they will never look at low-cost fighters like the F-5, A-10 or A-29 for their own use, except as maybe trainers or Marine use. The F-22 is no longer made. Around 189 were built and there's about 150 left. It's a great plane, but the low count is a great concern in case of war (with China.) You can lose 150 planes in a couple of days in a kinetic war. The F-35 has numerous show-stopping problems, plus even more numerous irritating problems. The US needs about 1,000 operational ones, plus another 1,000 for our allies, to be an effective deterrent to China. (Since the US has 11 carriers, that's enough F-35s to populate them.) The reason we need so many planes is that China has almost 18,000 ships, which can be used to blockade (defend) the S. China Sea (a tactic they accidently discovered in the last Taiwan Strait conflict.) So that leaves aerial/ICBM attacks. The US MIC has prioritized pork instead of results, so we need to work on qty. The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. (WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940. Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.) During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. The only reasons the CCP hasn't successfully invaded Taiwan yet are: - the Taiwan Strait is about 80 miles wide at the narrrowest. Considering Germany couldn't invade Britain, which is only 20 or so miles from France, you can see how 80 miles is a very strong deterrent. - Russia told the CCP to stop saber-rattling on previous attempts - The US came to Taiwan's aid in the last two attempts, and has a policy of including Taiwan under its umbrella (like half the world's countries.) So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
You made a bunch of good points, which you undermined with partisanship. As a result, everyone is missing the 70% truth into which you've mixed pro-Trump nuggets. For example: > Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa. You're right that internal division is a major geopolitical liability, but you're missing half the story. Yes, when rival powers see BLM-themed looting they lick their chops, but they also do that when they see a QAnon-themed "capitol insurrection". It takes two or more to tango. If you had talked about division more generally it would have been better-received. But yeah: Can you imagine the US having a draft? Very few people would get shot at to defend "America as an idea" any more. Pretty sure that millions of Angry Youth have more conviction in their cause than Americans have in theirs. > The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally [...]. [...] So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own. First of all, I'm not convinced that Biden's administration is perceived as weak, relative to Trump. Yes, he's more conciliatory on the surface with China, just like Obama was -- but it was Obama/Biden who started the Pacific pivot. And Trump, while more "hard on China" on the surface, could well have been perceived as inexpert and flatterable/manipulable. (And Biden's physical state is mostly irrelevant. FDR was in a wheelchair and Timur was lame. Whatever. Dude doesn't go out and punch geopolitical adversaries with his fists.) But when you say > [The US] is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. ... you're right. You were also right with your first six paragraphs. And your observations about strategy and tactics were interesting. These are areas where you could educate HN, if you toned down the Trump/Biden stuff. > During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. This is the most interesting tidbit. A quote from [1]: > William Hyland, the author of this paper, was a Soviet analyst at CIA's Directorate of Intelligence before he was recruited for Kissinger's NSC staff. In this memorandum, Hyland critiqued an interagency study on Sino-Soviet relations that Kissinger has requested in National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 63. In the course of the analysis, which Kissinger characterized as "1st rate," Hyland acknowledged that a limited Sino-Soviet war was "by no means a disaster for the US." For example, implying that a war would involve Soviet strikes to destroy Chinese nuclear facilities, Hyland observed that it might be a "solution" to the China nuclear problem. The relevant Wikipedia article is also interesting [2]. [1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/ https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  It's not partisan to say that the leader of the free world is senile. What I said is not "interesting", it's well-known, just not on HN. It's also only the tip of the iceberg on how close to war we are. The CCP is a gang of thugs with nuclear weapons.
snypher 5y ago
>The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. >Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. >So here we are, on the brink of war There seem to be some wildly conflicting points here? Are you advocating for the use of nukes and also complaining about warmongers?
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Perhaps you're not a native English speaker, or you did not read my post carefully. I'm saying, as all knowledgeable people are saying, that the US needs to stay strong, and be perceived as strong, to act as a deterrent to war. Nobody wants nuclear war, but we're literally on the brink with the CCP. They have been in a Cold War with us since the first Taiwan Strait conflict and Korean War in the 1950s, but US leaders just didn't listen to their rhetoric. (If you follow news from China, their current leaders have publicly suggested sending two ships for every US one, and ramming and sinking the US ships.) This is not well-known, but Xi was the mid-level leader behind the Scarborough Shoals (Philippines islands) takeover in 2012 under the Obama administration, and is now General Secretary. That was the beginning of the 9 dashed-line issues, but could have been stopped by Obama. Now some of those islands have missile batteries, so there has been escalation. Xi got away with it then, and none of the trade deals or WTO rulings have been honored. So CCP perception is that the US is a paper tiger at this point, and usually that requires war to sort out, as with Hitler in WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal_standoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal_standoff
robert_foss 5y ago
> (WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940. Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.) Surely protesting against racism is what is makes the US weak. Not income inequality or the almost complete lack of social security net or poor access to education. </sarcasm>
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
  It is hypocritical for China or Russia to care about us inequality without considering their own.. Likewise, both countries stances on sexuality, identity, and race/heritage are quite a bit worse than domestic US policy.
- tlear 5y ago
  It’s the trashed/smouldering streets, riots, CHAZ. Optics are very bad. For a country that went through what China did this sort of internal unrest is an indicator of massive weakness. I am not even sure they are wrong. If they had naval lift capacity they could probably land on Taiwan and US government would do nothing. We will see what happens in US as weather warms up.
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    > It’s the trashed/smouldering streets, riots, [...] For a country that went through what China did this sort of internal unrest is an indicator of massive weakness. Have we already forgotten Hong Kong?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- simonsarris 5y ago
  > complete lack of social security net or poor access to education I don't know what leads Americans to be consistently misinformed other than memetic doomsaying but the USA is 5th for education expenditure per capita, and 10th in per capita social welfare spending, both far ahead of OECD average and ahead of Japan, Switzerland, AUS, NL, UK, etc.
deleted 5y ago
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weakfish 5y ago
> So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own "Brink of war"? Doubt. Also, bringing BLM and Antifa into a discussion about the F35 shows your intentions with this post.
tlear 5y ago
Would not expansion of submarine fleet be a much safer alternative? Or sell some subs to Taiwan, I know US helped brocker sole deal to help them build indigenous boats with MHI help, but this might take too long
EliRivers 5y ago
Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.) They're symptoms so obvious that even we can see them. I suspect that the CCP was well aware of the divisions without needing to have it pointed out to them by BLM and Antifa.
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
Goodness gracious. Your rhetoric is reminiscent of 2003 when the US portrayed Saddam and Iraq as being beyond reason, and that the West HAD to attack lest Western civilization be toppled. >..nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. I'm not sure this statement paints the CCP as the villain you imagine it does. No country with options is going to stand by while the largest hydropower dam in the world is attacked, and possibly millions of their citizens are killed due to flooding and famine.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Hussein was beyond reason, and had to be removed. You can quibble about when or why, but he attacked client states of the US. (KSA paid the US to defend them.) In fact, he did use "weapons of mass destruction" - poison gas on Kurds, which is well-documented. So get your story straight. The back story behind why Hussein thought he could rampage through the Middle East while ignoring the US is: 1) He thought that since the US "lost" in Vietnam, that he could duplicate that. That's why perception of strength is so important, even when you're a nuclear power. 2) France and Germany told him that the US wouldn't invade, to advance their trade status with him. (soothsayers) 3) A contributing factor was that there was no way to communicate to him the seriousness of US resolve - the US sent a last-minute envoy, but the Iraqi leadership would only accept formal diplomacy.
scolby33 5y ago
I think you'll find that the president who led America through WWII couldn't climb a flight of stairs on his own. Whether or not your assertion about Biden is true, it doesn't seem to matter one way or the other when it comes to leading a nation.
- skystarman 5y ago
  I mean given this person's American history seems to be pieced together from Prager University Youtube clips and OANN I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know FDR was in a wheelchair.
  - 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
    Their comment sounds like it was generated by a right-wing AI.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    See my post just below. I know that Roosevelt was in a wheelchair from polio, but you don't seem to know that Biden is senile - yet other countries are reporting on that. Nothing I posted is from PragerU, but it's a better source than cnn.com.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  You missed the point about why Biden can't climb a flight of stairs. Roosevelt wasn't senile, but Biden is, which does matter to leading a nation. This has been widely reported since 2012. Is this news to you? If so, watch his speeches. (Also, Roosevelt went to great lengths to hide that he couldn't walk, because perceptions.)
bigbillheck 5y ago
I've got a number of concerns with the accuracy of your historical analysis here, but I'll limit myself to a couple: > (WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940. In 1940, Hitler's actual words, which presumably were not too different from the rest of the Nazi leadership, were "WHAT is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records and Hollywood?" That doesn't sound much like bumpkinism to me. (Not to mention the Henry Ford connection, or the IBM one) > Considering Germany couldn't invade Britain, which is only 20 or so miles from France, you can see how 80 miles is a very strong deterrent. How do you explain June 6th 1944? The Nazis didn't do Operation Sealion because it was too far, they didn't do it because they didn't have air and naval superiority.
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  China does have a ton of sealift capability and for practical purposes can deny us access to the strait. On the flip side, their ships would be highly vulnerable to anti-ship missiles from ground-based, air-based, sea-based, sub-based, and potentially even space based systems. Once there, Taiwan is fortified and ready to fight with a large army. China will be unable to establish air superiority due to Taiwanese 4th gen fighters plus air support from American and Japanese assets, along with the ANZACs if they have any gumption left in them.
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    > On the flip side, their ships would be highly vulnerable to anti-ship missiles The PRC's been pushing hard on anti-ship missile capabilities and I don't know if I'd say they're any worse off than we are.
    - captainredbeard 5y ago
      That is correct. I'm talking about Taiwan defending itself. US air would come from Okinawa, Guam, and aircraft carriers parked outside China's hypersonic missile defense range (which, BTW, can travel that far only if they have a firing solution, which at such distances will be difficult to establish).
skystarman 5y ago
>So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own. I seem to remember a major conflict in the last century where we had a POTUS that similarly couldn't climb a flight of stairs on his own and we seemed to do just fine... But great to have some diversity of thought from MAGA facebook here on HN, it does get a bit echo-chamber-ish
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Roosevelt had polio, Biden is senile. See the difference?
captainredbeard 5y ago
Historical quibbles aside (I agree, BTW), this is a very accurate take on the modern day situation.
bigbillheck 5y ago
> During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. Are you trying to tell me that Leonid Brezhnev, in 1969, was going to let Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger dictate foreign policy to him? > The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. At attack on Three Gorges would be a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions (Protocol I, 1977). The US has not ratified Protocol I, but the PRC has. In the event of such an attack, what would you consider a reasonable level of retaliation?
- deleted 5y ago
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chalcolithic 5y ago
Thank you for such a detailed reply. Couldn't the show stoppers be resolved with some work on the current plane? It's not like they've found out that the airframe is no good and they have to literally start from scratch, right?
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
> I study warfare > WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism ... you may want to start reading non-US-centric books

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago

You made a bunch of good points, which you undermined with partisanship. As a result, everyone is missing the 70% truth into which you've mixed pro-Trump nuggets. For example: > Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa. You're right that internal division is a major geopolitical liability, but you're missing half the story. Yes, when rival powers see BLM-themed looting they lick their chops, but they also do that when they see a QAnon-themed "capitol insurrection". It takes two or more to tango. If you had talked about division more generally it would have been better-received. But yeah: Can you imagine the US having a draft? Very few people would get shot at to defend "America as an idea" any more. Pretty sure that millions of Angry Youth have more conviction in their cause than Americans have in theirs. > The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally [...]. [...] So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own. First of all, I'm not convinced that Biden's administration is perceived as weak, relative to Trump. Yes, he's more conciliatory on the surface with China, just like Obama was -- but it was Obama/Biden who started the Pacific pivot. And Trump, while more "hard on China" on the surface, could well have been perceived as inexpert and flatterable/manipulable. (And Biden's physical state is mostly irrelevant. FDR was in a wheelchair and Timur was lame. Whatever. Dude doesn't go out and punch geopolitical adversaries with his fists.) But when you say > [The US] is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. ... you're right. You were also right with your first six paragraphs. And your observations about strategy and tactics were interesting. These are areas where you could educate HN, if you toned down the Trump/Biden stuff. > During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. This is the most interesting tidbit. A quote from [1]: > William Hyland, the author of this paper, was a Soviet analyst at CIA's Directorate of Intelligence before he was recruited for Kissinger's NSC staff. In this memorandum, Hyland critiqued an interagency study on Sino-Soviet relations that Kissinger has requested in National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 63. In the course of the analysis, which Kissinger characterized as "1st rate," Hyland acknowledged that a limited Sino-Soviet war was "by no means a disaster for the US." For example, implying that a war would involve Soviet strikes to destroy Chinese nuclear facilities, Hyland observed that it might be a "solution" to the China nuclear problem. The relevant Wikipedia article is also interesting [2]. [1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/ https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict

redis_mlc 5y ago
It's not partisan to say that the leader of the free world is senile. What I said is not "interesting", it's well-known, just not on HN. It's also only the tip of the iceberg on how close to war we are. The CCP is a gang of thugs with nuclear weapons.

snypher 5y ago

>The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. >Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. >So here we are, on the brink of war There seem to be some wildly conflicting points here? Are you advocating for the use of nukes and also complaining about warmongers?

redis_mlc 5y ago
Perhaps you're not a native English speaker, or you did not read my post carefully. I'm saying, as all knowledgeable people are saying, that the US needs to stay strong, and be perceived as strong, to act as a deterrent to war. Nobody wants nuclear war, but we're literally on the brink with the CCP. They have been in a Cold War with us since the first Taiwan Strait conflict and Korean War in the 1950s, but US leaders just didn't listen to their rhetoric. (If you follow news from China, their current leaders have publicly suggested sending two ships for every US one, and ramming and sinking the US ships.) This is not well-known, but Xi was the mid-level leader behind the Scarborough Shoals (Philippines islands) takeover in 2012 under the Obama administration, and is now General Secretary. That was the beginning of the 9 dashed-line issues, but could have been stopped by Obama. Now some of those islands have missile batteries, so there has been escalation. Xi got away with it then, and none of the trade deals or WTO rulings have been honored. So CCP perception is that the US is a paper tiger at this point, and usually that requires war to sort out, as with Hitler in WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal_standoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal_standoff

robert_foss 5y ago

> (WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940. Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.) Surely protesting against racism is what is makes the US weak. Not income inequality or the almost complete lack of social security net or poor access to education. </sarcasm>

Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
It is hypocritical for China or Russia to care about us inequality without considering their own.. Likewise, both countries stances on sexuality, identity, and race/heritage are quite a bit worse than domestic US policy.
tlear 5y ago
It’s the trashed/smouldering streets, riots, CHAZ. Optics are very bad. For a country that went through what China did this sort of internal unrest is an indicator of massive weakness. I am not even sure they are wrong. If they had naval lift capacity they could probably land on Taiwan and US government would do nothing. We will see what happens in US as weather warms up.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  > It’s the trashed/smouldering streets, riots, [...] For a country that went through what China did this sort of internal unrest is an indicator of massive weakness. Have we already forgotten Hong Kong?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
simonsarris 5y ago
> complete lack of social security net or poor access to education I don't know what leads Americans to be consistently misinformed other than memetic doomsaying but the USA is 5th for education expenditure per capita, and 10th in per capita social welfare spending, both far ahead of OECD average and ahead of Japan, Switzerland, AUS, NL, UK, etc.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

weakfish 5y ago

> So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own "Brink of war"? Doubt. Also, bringing BLM and Antifa into a discussion about the F35 shows your intentions with this post.

tlear 5y ago

Would not expansion of submarine fleet be a much safer alternative? Or sell some subs to Taiwan, I know US helped brocker sole deal to help them build indigenous boats with MHI help, but this might take too long

EliRivers 5y ago

Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.) They're symptoms so obvious that even we can see them. I suspect that the CCP was well aware of the divisions without needing to have it pointed out to them by BLM and Antifa.

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

Goodness gracious. Your rhetoric is reminiscent of 2003 when the US portrayed Saddam and Iraq as being beyond reason, and that the West HAD to attack lest Western civilization be toppled. >..nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. I'm not sure this statement paints the CCP as the villain you imagine it does. No country with options is going to stand by while the largest hydropower dam in the world is attacked, and possibly millions of their citizens are killed due to flooding and famine.

redis_mlc 5y ago
Hussein was beyond reason, and had to be removed. You can quibble about when or why, but he attacked client states of the US. (KSA paid the US to defend them.) In fact, he did use "weapons of mass destruction" - poison gas on Kurds, which is well-documented. So get your story straight. The back story behind why Hussein thought he could rampage through the Middle East while ignoring the US is: 1) He thought that since the US "lost" in Vietnam, that he could duplicate that. That's why perception of strength is so important, even when you're a nuclear power. 2) France and Germany told him that the US wouldn't invade, to advance their trade status with him. (soothsayers) 3) A contributing factor was that there was no way to communicate to him the seriousness of US resolve - the US sent a last-minute envoy, but the Iraqi leadership would only accept formal diplomacy.

scolby33 5y ago

I think you'll find that the president who led America through WWII couldn't climb a flight of stairs on his own. Whether or not your assertion about Biden is true, it doesn't seem to matter one way or the other when it comes to leading a nation.

skystarman 5y ago
I mean given this person's American history seems to be pieced together from Prager University Youtube clips and OANN I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know FDR was in a wheelchair.
- 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
  Their comment sounds like it was generated by a right-wing AI.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  See my post just below. I know that Roosevelt was in a wheelchair from polio, but you don't seem to know that Biden is senile - yet other countries are reporting on that. Nothing I posted is from PragerU, but it's a better source than cnn.com.
redis_mlc 5y ago
You missed the point about why Biden can't climb a flight of stairs. Roosevelt wasn't senile, but Biden is, which does matter to leading a nation. This has been widely reported since 2012. Is this news to you? If so, watch his speeches. (Also, Roosevelt went to great lengths to hide that he couldn't walk, because perceptions.)

bigbillheck 5y ago

I've got a number of concerns with the accuracy of your historical analysis here, but I'll limit myself to a couple: > (WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940. In 1940, Hitler's actual words, which presumably were not too different from the rest of the Nazi leadership, were "WHAT is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records and Hollywood?" That doesn't sound much like bumpkinism to me. (Not to mention the Henry Ford connection, or the IBM one) > Considering Germany couldn't invade Britain, which is only 20 or so miles from France, you can see how 80 miles is a very strong deterrent. How do you explain June 6th 1944? The Nazis didn't do Operation Sealion because it was too far, they didn't do it because they didn't have air and naval superiority.

captainredbeard 5y ago
China does have a ton of sealift capability and for practical purposes can deny us access to the strait. On the flip side, their ships would be highly vulnerable to anti-ship missiles from ground-based, air-based, sea-based, sub-based, and potentially even space based systems. Once there, Taiwan is fortified and ready to fight with a large army. China will be unable to establish air superiority due to Taiwanese 4th gen fighters plus air support from American and Japanese assets, along with the ANZACs if they have any gumption left in them.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  > On the flip side, their ships would be highly vulnerable to anti-ship missiles The PRC's been pushing hard on anti-ship missile capabilities and I don't know if I'd say they're any worse off than we are.
  - captainredbeard 5y ago
    That is correct. I'm talking about Taiwan defending itself. US air would come from Okinawa, Guam, and aircraft carriers parked outside China's hypersonic missile defense range (which, BTW, can travel that far only if they have a firing solution, which at such distances will be difficult to establish).

skystarman 5y ago

>So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own. I seem to remember a major conflict in the last century where we had a POTUS that similarly couldn't climb a flight of stairs on his own and we seemed to do just fine... But great to have some diversity of thought from MAGA facebook here on HN, it does get a bit echo-chamber-ish

redis_mlc 5y ago
Roosevelt had polio, Biden is senile. See the difference?

captainredbeard 5y ago

Historical quibbles aside (I agree, BTW), this is a very accurate take on the modern day situation.

bigbillheck 5y ago

> During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. Are you trying to tell me that Leonid Brezhnev, in 1969, was going to let Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger dictate foreign policy to him? > The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. At attack on Three Gorges would be a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions (Protocol I, 1977). The US has not ratified Protocol I, but the PRC has. In the event of such an attack, what would you consider a reasonable level of retaliation?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

chalcolithic 5y ago

Thank you for such a detailed reply. Couldn't the show stoppers be resolved with some work on the current plane? It's not like they've found out that the airframe is no good and they have to literally start from scratch, right?

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

> I study warfare > WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism ... you may want to start reading non-US-centric books