Comments by "Comm0ut" (@Comm0ut) on "Sky News" channel.

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  8. Considering how Afghanistan worked out for the US that's not a compliment since H.R. McMaster did not succeed there. His reputation was build on a very different war in Iraq. Later in his career he became a very different person. That's been remarked on more than once by professional observers. The 2017 McMaster-engineered surge was ineffective. The US Army senior leadership failed in their duties as a class yet unlike WWII career consequences were few. There has been no military reform or accountability because those interfere with the Army being a self-licking ice cream cone. McMaster's book Dereliction of Duty was a masterpiece yet he and the rest of the Army demonstrated they thought those lessons did not apply to them. Progress reports bullshitted politicians and public alike while the troops on the ground knew (see videos of the era) the ANA and Kabul government were inept, corrupt and worthless. The US Army had free reign over their mission for two decades. They were not stabbed in the back. Gerasimov is situationally constrained by the internal decay of the Russian military where reforms were halted and no serious effort made to professionalize the service. Devoting resources to PMCs is fine for coup-proofing but debilitates the most important career professional military organizations. Russia lack the professional NCO core which preserves and transmits knowledge and skills to new troops, and as importantly keeps the junior officer class grounded in reality. Wise 2LTs seek both officer and NCO mentors. Gerasimov has no direct intimate control of Wagner etc. Continuity of command is damaged by relying on non-professional convict bullet sponges because modern combined arms warfare is far more complex than WWI/WWII. He has no time to reform his armed forces and few resources (Russian Federation GDP is less than California's). Gerasimov is an interesting fellow but has no opportunity to fully implement the "Gerasimov doctrine". The preference for using the army as a dumping ground for the economically disadvantaged, criminals and uneducated rustics far from Moscow doesn't help professionalize the force but the opposite. The officer class in particular should be drawn from the best educated Russians by paying them well, then they should have been truly nurtured at service academies and other professional schools. Sending a Chief of Staff to directly command the operation is not a promotion or even a lateral move but may permit the military to assert full control over the operation. In a sensibly organized operation PMCs would be unnecessary not jockeying for power. Letting Prigozhin get too big for his boots was a mistake.
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