Ya Know, For A KGB Genius, Putin Is Kind Of A Moron!

I turned 65 today, which means that alla y’all gotta be nice to me, since I’m old and I’m gonna die soon! lol But seriously, I mention my age for a reason. I’ve seen a lot. But since Vladimir Putin is 4 1/2 years older than I am, I can’t for the life of me figure out why he’s being so fucking stupid!

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I’ve seen a shitload of history, and so has Vlad the Imp. I was in high school and Putin was probably just starting university as he gleefully watched the USSR’s mortal enemy go through the death spasms of trying to exit the endless morass of Vietnam.

Putin would have been a junior agent in the KGB in 1979 when His government made the disastrous decision to go to war in Afghanistan in order to prop a friendly, but inherently corrupt government. And he would have had a front row operational seat to the resulting 9 years of useless Soviet flailing against an entrenched guerilla foe.

He would have been well up the food chain in February of 1998, when NATO and President Bill Clinton went into Kosovo in order to try to stop Serbian ethnic genocide against minority Croats and other ethnic minorities. And seen the bloody stalemate that ensued until a NATO bombing war finally reduced the Serbians ability to bomb the minority ethnic communities.

And he was right at the top of the food chain when Bush Lite decided to invade first Afghanistan, and then Iraq, starting America’s two longest lasting ground wars. He made trouble wherever he could, including offering the Taliban bounties for the heads of dead American soldiers.  He even teased Bush and Trump into self defeating forays into Syria by letting his homicidal maniac Assad slaughter his own people.

Now, i never went to KGB finishing school, hell, I never finished college. But even an untutored moron like me can see a common thread weaving through every one of those previous examples that a geo-political savant like Putin should be able to recite in his sleep. Never get involved in a foreign ground war without a clear, well thought out exit plan at the end. 

And that is the one common thing that all of the above examples share. In each case, governments got involved in foreign conflicts in order to allegedly protect their national interests, without a clear vision of what those goals were, and how to get the fuck out afterwards. That way lies to an endless morass of useless bloodshed, with neither side being willing to take the steps necessary to stop it. And Putin is doing it right now.

Yesterday Putin signed executive orders recognizing two breakaway Ukrainian provinces that Russia has backed and supported, and sent peacekeepers in to maintain order. Bullshit. Putin is leading with his balls. And as a card carrying male, I can tell you from experience that when you lead with your balls, they tend to end up in a sling. But Putin’s explanation for his provocation of sending in troops makes no sense.

Look, you don’t need 195,000 troops amassed on 3 of Ukraines borders to send in peacekeepers to pacify the breakaway provinces. And Putin has already unilaterally expanded the borders of those provinces far beyond the area the Russian separatists actually control. But even if the Ukrainians fall back, and the Russians pacify the area, the burning question is, What next?

What excuse is there for keeping tens of thousands of Russian troops in the breakaway provinces? And what do you do with the rest of the 190,000 soldiers massed on the borders? Putin has more in mind here. But again, he’s thinking with his balls, and leaving himself no exit strategy.

My personal feeling is that Putin wants to invade further in in order to overthrow the current government, and install one friendlier to Russia. The problem is that it won’t work. Because he already had that! And in 2014 the Ukrainian people rose up en masse, and sent the Putin puppet packing. And they have had 8 years of democratic freedom. Is their government corrupt? Yes, but at least they get to pick the corrupt politicians that rip them off. They won’t tolerate another Russian puppet government.

And worse yet. Even as tense as things are in Ukraine, there are no mile long lines of cars waiting to get gasoline. The shelves in the stores are fully stocked. People are going about their business. But you know who’s having supply problems? Gun stores. Gun stores are reporting grave shortages, they’re running out of both weapons and ammunition. A recent poll showed that 65% of Ukrainians are willing to take up arms to defend their country.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now. Putin has the troops to invade Ukraine, and even siege Kyiv, but he doesn’t have the manpower to control and pacify it! He would need at least 500,000 troops to do that. And he doesn’t have them ready. And without them, or even with them, he would face the kind of brutal partisan uprisings that made the Wehrmacht’s life a living hell on France and the Low Countries.

I sincerely believe that in the next couple of weeks, Putin will strike deeper into Ukraine. His goal is to ensure that Ukraine never joins NATO. And once he does, he has bitten off far more than he can chew. The populace will resist. And Biden and NATO can simply cordon off and control the borders, supply the Ukrainians, and watch Putin bang his head against a brick wall. Welcome to your Vietnam Vlad!