{"id":40624,"date":"2014-03-25T09:25:08","date_gmt":"2014-03-25T13:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=40624"},"modified":"2014-03-25T09:25:08","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T13:25:08","slug":"why-i-oppose-a-show-of-force-towards-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=40624","title":{"rendered":"Why I oppose a “show of force” towards Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The other day, I posted an article<\/a> about NATO leaders advocating for a “show of force” in regards to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. On it’s face, it looks like a good idea. I agree with those who say that we HAVE to do SOMETHING to stop the Russians from annexing a bunch of other countries like Germany did in the century, but having been on some of those “show of force” operations, I know the untenable position in which the troops are placed.<\/p>\n

For example, of the East German border, I was armed with just a .45 as the Border NCO. It was unloaded and the ammo was locked in a box in the jeep. My troops who were patrolling the actual border were in the same position – they had a minimum amount of ammo that was locked in their patrol vehicle. We weren’t allowed to drive our armored vehicles within sight of the opposing troops, so as not to provoke them. We kept our unloaded rifles (we couldn’t even have an unloaded magazine in the rifle) slung over our shoulder so we wouldn’t accidentally point it at the opposition while on patrol. <\/p>\n

The East German and Soviet troops we saw weren’t under the same restrictions. They stuck their rifles through the firing ports of the towers and observed our patrols through the rifle sights. Once, when I was with just my driver and my unloaded pistol, they sort of surrounded us and tried to influence me to cross the border. <\/p>\n

Even during Desert Storm, we weren’t allowed to load our weapons until we crossed the Iraq border. We were a few hundred meters from the border and had unloaded weapons to patrol the perimeter of our forward base. When we were in Iraq before the ground war, they made us stop before we crossed back into Saudi Arabia and unload our weapons – while we were still in Iraq. WHile we parked in a coil to unload our weapons, a tank company that was attached to us was attacked with a single FROG missile from the Iraqis.<\/p>\n

Remember just a few months ago, the troops in Afghanistan weren’t allowed to have their loaded weapons around our “allies” so they wouldn’t be offended – resulting in a spate of “green-on-blue” attacks and the deaths of more than 60 US personnel. It took the Pentagon months of that before they finally decided that the troops could have their weapons loaded in a combat zone.<\/p>\n

A show-of-force would really be nothing but a show, no force involved. And the Russians aren’t Iraqis or East German border guards. <\/p>\n

While I agree that there needs to be some sort of response to the Russians, a hollow force parked between them and Poland or the Baltic States is not the answer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, I posted an article about NATO leaders advocating for a “show of force” … Why I oppose a “show of force” towards Russia<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}