That's the first line of an article in The Sun called "VANCE SHAME/Fury as Trump’s No2 JD Vance mocks UK for ‘not fighting a war in 30 years’ – forgetting Afghanistan & Iraq."
That calls our attention to something Vance said on Fox News: "If you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine. That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years."
I don't know if that "random" refers to the UK, but apparently some people in the UK are hearing it that way. And the UK is hardly a random country. But "random" is bandied about humorously these days. In America. Do the Brits know that?
Insulting him back, the random Brit who is the source of this quote doesn't seem to know that Americans don't say "wind his neck in." The effort at an insult strikes me as funny because, not being used to the phrase, I'm forced to try to picture it concretely.
The source of the quote is a Former Veterans Minister who served in Afghanistan, and the full quote is: "Vance needs to wind his neck in. Show a bit of respect and stop making yourself look so unpleasant."
Vance looks especially unpleasant in my mental image, where he has an extremely long and thin neck attached to a fishing reel.
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75 comments:
I stand with Monte Carlo.
Leftists fervently wish for Herblock to come back to life and illustrate this.
Americans tend to think of “random countries” in the blue-helmeted U.N. Peacekeepers sense, like West Togo or Gadzookistan. Troops from places you’ve never heard of who are more likely to trade food and aid for sexual favors than to do anything useful.
England is toast. They surrendered to Islam.
Since Vance's comment requires interpretation, his paraphrasers should consider the qualifier "without the US taking the lead role" as part of his unsaid train of thought.
Have France or the UK fought any wars in 40 years that we were NOT leading and in command of?
‘Ey, guvnor! If you’ve fought in a bleedin’ war in the last 30-40 years, then ‘e obviously wasn’t talkin’ about you, mate!
Trump's not the problem anymore, have you noticed?
The hatred has already switched to Musk, to Vance, to Rubio, to anybody who might be the Republican nominee in 2028.
I've never seen people so angry with a vice-president before. Who the hell got mad at Mondale? Or Quayle?
"Have France or the UK fought any wars in 40 years that we were NOT leading and in command of?"
The Falklands War was 40ish years ago.
The problem is Britain is NOT saying they're going it alone. Starmer has said explicitly that the US must get involved in his scheme.
The Falklands War was 40ish years ago.
True. Not like fighting Russia would be, but a solid example almost within the window I stipulated.
Vance looks especially unpleasant in my mental image,
…and that's why the community invests so much time and energy and (your) money in propaganda- it’s effective. It might take a ton of fails to find something that lands, but when you do it brightens your whole day!
The phrase fought a war deserves a lawyerly Altparsing. Give me ten minutes and I can make a case they haven’t…
England? is that still a country?
i can never their names straight
Did England become part of the United Kingdom of Islam?
Or are they part of Great Caliphate?
to wit: what DO the people of Europe think about supporting a war against one of Iran's allies? Obviously, i mean the Actual People, not their infidel "leaders"
Carly Simon responded…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT7I40wWYAQ
"I've never seen people so angry with a vice-president before."
I'm old enough to remember Agnew.
What’s a former US intelligence official to do without his or her security clearance? Work with the globalist elite running other western countries to undermine Trump administration foreign policy?
The problem with that information strategy is that after you establish a false inference in the headlines of compliant media, you eventually trigger a debate in that “random” country about sending their troops to fight in a corrupt globalist meat grinder without the US there to do the heavy lifting.
…so Vance never referred to the UK by name but the wankers assumed he was referring to them specifically? Now THAT’S propaganda!
Bear in mind that Starmer’s saber rattling about boots on the ground and planes in the air is a hypothetical contingent upon: 1) an agreement for peace, that 2) allows for U.K. peacekeepers as part of a security guarantee for Ukraine. Until both of those things happen, he doesn’t have to do squat to back up his promises. The real “heavy lifting” will be in getting Ukraine and Russia to make peace.
Vance in that same interview said that the money the Euros gave to Ukraine was a loan and that it was a secured loan to boot.
"I'm old enough to remember Agnew"
Spiro who?
He also blessed us with the immortal phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism"
His enduring, endearing legacy, for sure.
He also blessed us with the immortal phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism"
That was a coinage of his speechwriter, William Safire.
"Wind his neck in" could be interpreted as Green mockery, specifically of the wind turbine gauntlets that blight land, sea, and air.
@Saint Croix: "I've never seen people so angry with a vice-president before. Who the hell got mad at Mondale? Or Quayle?"
Quayle was ridiculed as an incompotent nothing (i.e., visually ghosted in the Doonesbury cartoon) and attacked over his alleged DRUG USE in 1991! How times change, Bill, Barack, and Hunter, how times change. "Quayle is one heartbeat away from the presidency and he's not ready for the job."
That holier-than-thou generation of Watergate and Vietnam Democrats successfully froze the reactionary right and also gave birth to the Woke totalitarians of today.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-11-06-mn-959-story.html
The British military has a well-earned reputation for professionalism, but the politicians have let it degrade to pitiful levels. Recently, I read that their Army only has from 29 to 40 combat ready tanks. That’s roughly comparable to a single US Army armored battalion. That’s freaking sad. They’ve built two new aircraft carriers for their Navy but they seem to be having trouble with mechanical issues. When they first deployed one, half of the F-35s on the ship belonged to the US Marine Corps. Their Air Force isn’t in much better shape.
Vance's comment doesn't make sense anyway because very few countries have been at war in the last several decades. Most countries haven't been. Based on his statement, a country would have to be at war fairly continuously to be consider prepared and capable and not just 'random'. And no country can sustain that either.
I also don't like the idea that appeaing to our economic interests is the way to go either, sounds too much like blood for oil. Maybe it's truthful, I don't know, to say that we are going to be a country that is prepared to fight because there's an "economic upside" in it for us but I doubt most Americans will find that rationale very inspiring and be eager to sign up.
Vance is starting to remind me of the super bright kid who's always got something to say in class and after awhile the rest of us kids just kind of snicker when he starts waving his arm around trying to get the teacher's attention.
Self-defense is something. Controlled deescalation is, too. Mitigating progress is critical. That said, [Elective] Abortion! What is it good for? Close the planned personhood fields.
No blood for rare earth elements. No environmental carnage for the Green blight. Abort the ethnic Springs that are first-order forcings of catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform.
I agree he needs to wind his neck in a little. His extremely effective arguments end up being overshadowed with the insults, especially with the MSM narrative we need to counter.
I could do something with this If Donald Trump looked hot in black lingerie.
"Vance looks especially unpleasant in my mental image, where he has an extremely long and thin neck attached to a fishing reel."
Metaphors aren't meant to be taken literally. "Literally."
I also thought immediately of the Falklands. 40+ years ago! (sigh)
rehajm said...
"…so Vance never referred to the UK by name but the wankers assumed he was referring to them specifically? Now THAT’S propaganda!"
Throw a stick into a pack of dogs, and the one that barks the loudest is the one you struck.
I'm really surprised at the seeming transparency of these efforts, the UK trying to mollify Zelensky and smooth things over for the sake of the minerals deal. This leaves me confused: Which minerals deal? The one they were supposed to sign in DC last week, or the one with the UK that is rumored to be already signed? Together with soothing platitudes that 'yes, of course we're behind you 1000% and we'll support the peace with security guarantees from our friends over there, who simply must be part of it'. It's all very confusing right now, this assumption that we're eager to be part of it, whatever it might turn out to be, but I have a feeling it's not going to last long. Promises are being made for things that must eventually be produced.
"I could do something with this If Donald Trump looked hot in black lingerie. "
There's this little kiosk in the Galleria, in Houston......
Almost all countries in West have been waging war against own people so why not count that?
When your first thought is you when someone says, "random country", you've already lost. You just raised your insecurity flag. Not one American would think of America as a random country - we're not that insecure. Far from it.
I don't know if that "random" refers to the UK, but apparently some people in the UK are hearing it that way. And the UK is hardly a random country. But "random" is bandied about humorously these days. In America. Do the Brits know that?
I assumed he was referring to France. Weren’t the Brits shoulder to shoulder with our grunts in the early days of Afghanistan and in Iraq?
@Big Mike: "Weren’t the Brits shoulder to shoulder with our grunts in the early days of Afghanistan and in Iraq?"
Yep. See PM Tony Blair and his eloquent wrongness on Iraq and WMDs circa 2003. JD Vance needs to wind his neck in.
Random is stochastic is unenumerated and inclusive. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
The Brits sent almost 50,000 troops to Iraq, so Vance should have been more careful with his timeline. Germany/France sent zero. Tony blair was an even bigger warmonger and globalist then Bush.
And I disagree with Vance, we shouldn't even be discussing "The security of Ukraine". We shouldn't be involved in defending them in any way, no more than Russia should be talking about how to defend Panama or Mexico from the USA.
Think of how much better off we'd be if Putin had simply taken all of Ukraine in 2022. We wouldn't be talking about it now, or getting a new "ally" that we have to spend billions forever to defend.
Reading some Brit papers and listening to some podcasts, its amazing what warmongering globalists they are. The Brit elite still thinks its 1930 or even 1950 and they can dictate what most of the world does or doesn't do.
No one in the UK is going to fight for Ukraine. And the UK can't afford a real war and a real army. Massive gap between the desires of the UK elite and their actual power.
Somewhere, Tony Blair is beginning to wonder if being "Bush's lapdog" was worth it. One has to say, though that he was a very good, very yappy little lapdog.
Vance was welcomed because he was livelier - and frankly, more alive - than sleepy Mike Pence. At this point, he needs to be more ballast than sail or steam. The administration has enough ... er ... um ... rudderless vessels.
Random is one of the favorite words uttered by millennials. For Gen Z they have two words... Low key.
I'm old enough to remember Agnew.
I'm old enough to remember Dick Cheney, but now a days, you'd think he was the hero of the world when he was VP instead of a man wanted for imagined war crimes across the globe.
I’m hurt and offended. Arrest that man!
I’d fit right in teh UK. Tea ‘n biscuit?
JD is being a Low Key douche
The British et al joined with Americans to end the war in Iraq, birthed after conception of a transnational conflict, and progressed under don't ask policy of the subsequent administration.
Vance was being generically ambiguous in his criticism of shared responsibility, which guilt-laden people perceived as a microaggression. Throw another baby on the barbie, it's over.
Vance also criticized diverse national progression of curbed civil liberties. Brit, is that you? Chilling
"And the UK is hardly a random country."
How do you figure? Put 'em all in a hat, pull one out, could come up Britain. What is it, one chance in 193?
Of course, Britain is the only country that has dragged us into two disastrous wars in the last 120 years.
Shorter Vance:
"America doesn't have friends. It has interests. America defends its interests. And we currently have none in Ukraine."
The monetary interest represented by the minerals deal creates an interest for the US to defend.
This is excellent gamesmanship on Vance's part. I'm afraid that Ukrainians aren't educated enough to understand this.
"England is toast. They surrendered to Islam."
Not so fast there. It rather appears to me as if a small, evil group of Brits somehow managed to gain control of the British government (and the Scots, and the Irish), and is actively replacing the English with third-world rapists. But one may still hope that the English will begin to hate.
He didn't say "UK"
So the left left are lying again.
The only quibble I have with what Vance is doing here is that he needs to single out the globalist tyrants like Starmer that currently lord over Europe.
But I fear that just like Hamas in Gaza the people of Europe support their leadership. The only thing that will bring them to their senses is most likely defeat and humiliation.
The only thing that will bring Europe to reality is to be cut off from US tax money and support. Europe is not an adult civilization and they do not act like adults in this context.
We need to be more involved with countries that act in a more morally mature manner.
UK leftists whored out to radical Islam - making a deal with the males. You do want you want, we leftists will look the other way - just please vote for us.
Howard - stay on your leftist plantation. You belong there.
Low IQ fruit smoothie.
"They are all actors - ready from a script."
Britain is on its way to becoming a Muslim majority country with nuclear weapons. Then, by God, Vance will have to take them seriously, not before.
This is they key to the rare earths deal. Attacking Ukraine in the future directly threatens American strategic interest. That is a real deterrent. It seems the revenue sharing proposal is fair. Z should jump on it.
Amazing how delicate leftists are. Ah - poor babies.
"But I fear that just like Hamas in Gaza the people of Europe support their leadership. The only thing that will bring them to their senses is most likely defeat and humiliation."
The working-class whites, who presumably support Labour, have had a hefty helping of defeat and humiliation. I am more and more inclined to suspect vote-counting hanky-panky. I cannot imagine how craven you would need to be to vote for people who allow vermin to rape your daughters, then lock you up for complaining about it, just because they give you back half of your own money in "welfare".
The United Kingdom isn’t a country. Neither was the Soviet Union. England is a country. Russia is a country
Mike (MJB Wolf),
NATO == "Needs Americans To Operate".
Both Mikes,
Sometime during the Falklands festivities, I was at a picnic lunch with a number of our expat colleagues working in South Sudan. I would guess at least half of us were Americans.
Somebody said something to a British colleague about the Falklands, which at the time (and our remoteness) wasn't exactly clear how it was going. He replied with some musings, ending with the statement that the British had lost a war since 1066.
Well, the Americans all boggled, and somebody demanded, well what about that thing in America in the late 1700s?
Oh, he replied -- we didn't lose, we just stopped fighting.
JD Vance is an extremely intelligent man. But a part of intelligence is knowing when to speak and when to not speak. Trump is the one-off of all one-offs. The rules don't apply to him. Vance seems to be trying to be his idea of the best version of a Trump VP, but if he wants to help Trump, he'd be better to be less corrosive one, the one the nations of the world will look forward to dealing with after Trump. Not so much Good Cop, Bad Cop, but more of a man who backs Trump 100% but has a different way of presenting his case.
He needs to learn to throttle back at times.
A country that has let its military wind down to not much more than a constabulary force may have "rabbit ears" and hear a statement about random countries not directed at them as an insult. I visit my daughter and grandkids in London at least once a year. The British Army has a purpose built museum in Chelsea. When it first opened--maybe 8 or 9 years ago, it was set up as a historical walk through. You walked up a sort of wide spiral staircase with dioramas on each side showing the uniforms and equipment of a particular era. Well I got to the era that the USA would recognize as the French and Indian War. It was nice. Then suddenly I was in the Napoleonic era. By the time I got to the end of it, I realized that the museum had entirely omitted the American War of Independence. Talk about amnesia! When I was back the next year I went to the museum again--just to make sure that I hadn't missed the diorama. Well the museum was closed for repairs and remodeling for the next two years. And when it reopened it had entirely changed.
Vance was being too nice. All he is doing is politely describing reality.
Europe is a pathetic continent led by a corrupt globalist front with weak lazy people who do not defend themselves or their culture. They have been living in a welfare state funded by US taxpayers.
The governments of the EU are morally retarded and corrupt. They are trying to start world war 3 so they can profit off more US taxpayer money while contributing nothing that would actually help win the war they are trying to start.
Nobody should care what any of the current EU leadership thinks or says and those governments should be treated with contempt. The people who allow them to be in elected positions should feel shame.
I take the view that what we may be stumbling towards is a recognition--belated but hopefully not too too late--that the global situation will eventually require the West--definitely including mostly white, mostly European, mostly Christian Russia--to recognize and act on our clear superiority against the shitiologies of the East and South.
Does anyone think that Russia will accept a deal that allows troops from a NATO country into Ukraine? Any troops will indeed be from random countries like Kenya, Bolivia or Fiji.
mccullough said...
The United Kingdom isn’t a country. Neither was the Soviet Union. England is a country. Russia is a country
******************
Now do the United States.
@Wilbur said...
"I've never seen people so angry with a vice-president before."
I'm old enough to remember Agnew.
I seem to remember Dick Cheney getting some hate in the day.
@Leland -- Sorry, didn't see your comment before posting mine.
The United Kingdom has an army of 73,000 men today. That's less than half the size of the US Army in 1938--when its army was smaller than Portugal's at the time. While the UK also has 200 main battle tanks, only 20% of them are ready for combat.
Just how much military help can the UK give Ukraine out of that very limited pool of resources?
Does anyone think that Russia will accept a deal that allows troops from a NATO country into Ukraine?
It's entirely possible. Russia's in a world of hurt if Europe stops buying its oil and gas. It's not like the EU has no leverage. Pro-Ukraine people should call on the EU to boycott Russian oil and gas. Zelensky should call on the EU to boycott Russian oil and gas. Now is a great time for Zelensky to call on the EU to boycott Russia's oil and gas. The EU says they love Ukraine and hate Putin. So they should be on board with this, right?
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