And per the WEF, the Russian economy will grow this year and next year. The sanctions have been a complete failure as we just made Russia and our peer competitor, China, stronger and wealthier, while hurting Europe with higher energy prices.
It is impossible to underestimate what a strategic error it was to try and put NATO on Russia's doorstep. That had no benefit to us. And then rejecting peace negotiations because, as Lloyd Austin famously said, they thought they could hurt Putin. Quite the opposite.
Link: Our DOS says Putin is stronger than ever
For the record, I believe that some of what is written is accurate. What the article fails to mention is the fact that Russia is replenishing equipment with old shit. Quantify over quality. It’s comparable to the immense losses that the Russian military has endured the last 3 years. The command and control is still a Soviet style of leadership. The mobilization has lead to shitty training and a rush to get poorly trained troops to the battlefield. Again, quantity over quality.
I guess you could call that “Reconstituted”.
Link: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12606#:~:text=Recruitment%20and%20Mobilization,official%20size%20to%201.32%20million.
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This is what I hate about war cheerleaders when we reach this point where you know and I know and everyone paying attention knows that there is no going back to the time that it was hip to be for our latest, glorious war to "spread/protect democracy." The cheerleaders then have to declare a second war on everyone who notices what's happening and contort and/or lie to pretend that it isn't.
One thing to note: the smarter folks here who once weighed in with their support have curiously disappeared from these threads, defending our involvement. Speaks volumes. Same thing happened here during the Iraq years. Same thing will happen with our next escapade.
You’re a pacifist, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You have no stomach for war no matter what the reason. Again, not necessarily a bad thing. Luckily you have people like me to protect you in case the shit hits the fan. Don’t worry, my people will do our best to ensure you and your family don’t die.
In the past, I’ve called you a Putin supporter. That label was inaccurate based on my statement above.
What you fail to understand is that supporting Ukraine hardly makes someone a war junkie. Western aid has made a difference. Now, if we stopped our aid and NATO stopped their aid, do you believe that the war would magically stop? Do you think the Ukraine would stop fighting?
require a slap to the head. I also think the death penalty is morally legitimate in the proper cases.
But as I said a while ago, there is no virtue in fighting a fight that you cannot possibly win, especially not when hundreds of thousands of your countrymen will needlessly die. This is like throwing your ten year-old into the ring with the heavyweight champ and saying, "Go get 'em, champ! We're right behind ya!" Others have said this: there has never been a modern war where there was less drive by the leaders who matter to negotiate some sort of peaceful resolution. Here in the U.S., that was primarily driven by TDS. Trump is synonymous with Putie and Russia, therefore we should spend until we spend without limit on Ukraine, not because anyone really believes that Ukraine will win this, but because it is a magnificent virtue signal and another way to stick it to Big Orange.
You honestly believe that's why NATO and the US aids the Ukraine? That's ridiculous and you know it. Your other comment about "fighting a fight you can't possibly win when hundreds of thousands of your countrymen will needlessly die" is nothing less than pacifism. Ukraine is fighting for their very existence. Imagine if our founders used this train of thought. "Sorry, George...the mighty English Empire is too strong and invincible. You can't possibly win, so NO STATUE OF LIBERTY FOR YOU"...Sincerely, General Lafayette.
Oh and the old fallacy that Putin offered to broker a peace deal was recently revealed as nothing more than a totalitarian's demands. Is this something you'd agree to if you were Zelensky? I highly doubt it, unless of course, you're willing to succumb to an autocrat.
Link: https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-ukraine-peace-deal-2022-document-6e12e093
Why else? The same people who crucified for Iraq are now cheerleaders for war with Russia? How do you explain that complete reversal on a principle? Because they just love "democracy" so much (chortling)? It's precisely due to their TDS. I'm willing to listen to serious explanations or hypotheses. Shoot, I have a friend who is an actual pacifist, and he tried explaining to me why we should be sending weapons to Ukraine. After I summarily dismissed the "protect democracy" piffle, steam came out of his ears when I explained that it's because of the Trump=Russia equation, because he knows it's true. It's his TDS. He would take any position, even those that contradict what he believes to his core, if it means opposing Orange. It's that simple. And there are tens of millions more like him. I can think of a few here like that, and so can you.
Why is it that he wants the entire aid bill squashed? You can't deny that Trump has affection for autocrats like Putin, Xi, and Un. I'm sure there are some lefties that back the Ukraine bill to spite Trump, but the true believers/Patriots like me want to stop or slow Russian aggression. We realize that Russia truly is the enemy. Stopping the aid now will not magically stop the war or broker a peace deal. Putin's plan all along was to neuter the Ukraine. Unacceptable in my book.
but where most people work for a living and ask them if they support giving $40 billion to Ukraine and tell me what most have to say about that. Then go into rural areas and ask. Ordinary Americans are hurting and they find it personally offensive to be pouring tens of billions into a place they can't even find on a map (and, in fairness, most people with Ukraine flag avatars can't either). Up in the rarified air, this war is still popular. Not among working class people, and that is Trump's base. Throughout our history, the working class usually gets it right.
Not by the aid bill. Trump doesn’t want the bill passed because he thinks it would be a victory for Biden. I couldn’t care less about political losses or victories. I do care that the GOP congress is holding up this bill because Trump says so. Seriously, do you really take people like MTG seriously? She’s threatening to oust Johnson if he authorizes a vote on the bill.
The less educated on the process may be pissed about the Ukraine and Israel aid. I think they’d be less concerned if they knew that the money allocated to the bill doesn’t affect them one iota. In fact, appeasement would cost us more…
Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/benritz/2023/12/18/ukraine-aid-costs-pale-in-comparison-to-the-price-of-appeasement/?sh=73b122a11583
It's the America Last principle that drives them nuts. The Ukraine wealth transfer is symbolic of how these people view their own country and their own people. "Shut up and get in line, you rubes!"
The regime for which you will vote not only tells these people that they're too stupid to understand that they're paying less for food/energy/rent/most else, who tells them that they're too stupid and uninformed to understand that their streets are safer, who tells them that if they're upset about an open border it's because they're xenophobic racists (excuse me, "white supremacists"), who tells them that if they pull their kids out of crappy public schools into charter schools (or, God forbid, homeschool them) then they're leaving behind other people's kids (and they're too stupid to understand how the charter schools are taking them for a ride), who tells them that if they do stay in those public schools and have a problem with bros changing with and competing with their daughters then they're hateful "transphobes," and if the working class stiffs don't like being told that as white dudes they should probably just shut up and listen to what the angry schoolmarm college-educated white and black women with no discernible skills in anything and problem glasses tell them to do. That sort of stuff grates on "normals."
See, what has never worked and what can never work and sustain itself is a civilization led by people who fundamentally hate their country and hate the people who make it work. They love giving money to Ukraine and moving out American school kids or veterans from a building to fill it with illegals. It's the perfect expression of how they feel about slob Americans. See, those Ukrainians and illegals, they're noble. Listen to them venerate and tearfully laud the unsurpassed perseverance of our migrants. They're better Americans than we are! And then they can rattle off 20 ways, easy, that America really sucks and, how, well, you proles are the reason it sucks, you ungrateful, privileged bastard deplorables! But, uh, hey, you're still gonna put food on my table and getting up at 3 a.m. to fix my power lines for me and everything, right?
You've changed in the past 20 years, That's a good thing. If you think all the same things 20 years later, you haven't been thinking much. But as far as foundational values, this is the crew with whom you want to cast your lot? Do you think the fact that they ape the words "protect democracy" means they hate their country and their people any less? Or that because they take such a brave stand against Trump and crap on little people and praise the elites that they're serving some admirable cause? And be honest, if you're grilling and you have to pick a stranger to join you, who are you honestly going to want to have for the evening your average Joey voter or your average Trump voter? Mind you, the Biden vote trends up to almost 60% female, and not some of the wives of your friends who have stable lives, but the unbalanced single women who are the true core of the Democrats right now. Who's going to "correct" you about things? Who's accustomed to keeping his mouth shut when someone goes on about their political beliefs versus who is the overly sensitive and fragile one?
I don't think you put on the uniform for ungrateful bastards who crap on the country that gives them everything and the ability to whine like that, at least I hope you didn't. I want to believe it was for something more worthy than these losers. And, by the way, out of the two groups, which one is likely going to respect you more taking on that responsibility? I mean, the one group believes you were just extending colonialist, systemic racism, among other things.
and I don’t necessarily disagree with some of it. To simplify my stance…I’ve always been a champion of the underdog. The innocent among us, hence my philanthropic activities at my firm. I feel the same about Ukraine’s struggles. We, the USA, are the leader of the free world. We have a history of helping nations fight tyranny. I don’t feel as if we should stop now.
BTW, that was a great post and it definitely stimulated critical thinking. My apologies for the past insults sent your way, however I cannot promise that more won’t come. I am a “knee jerk” poster at times.
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Iraq, Afghanistan and now Ukraine are all driven by the military industrial complex. Blackrock owns both all of the major defense contractors (Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics) and politicians on both sides. The anti-war left has been co-opted. And a fair but falling percentage of the electorate is co-opted by one of the political parties. The phenomenon where you can ask someone their opinion on one issue (abortion, Ukraine, LGBTQ, immigration, etc) and can accurately extrapolate their opinions on every other major political position.
his mafia slowly bled out... just like it was under Andropov.
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It's nice that you sit over here and don't give shit about Putin's genocidal fantasy that he is a Czar.
We've been down the isolationist/autocrat sympathizer road before and we know where it leads.
Link: https://www.startribune.com/charles-lindbergh-little-falls-world-war-2-nazi-germany/600178871/
getting them out.
This line of argument really won't turn out well for you and you will look even more foolish and hypocritical than you already do. Get them out. Now. That's your responsibility, particularly as you live and stay here.
Now you can tell me all the tears you've shed and money you've advocated to be sent to all those war-torn African and SE Asian nations over the years. Heartless bastard.
I suppose if Putin knocked at your door you would turn, bend over and lower your pants. You are a gutless coward I know men who have died for freedom. You would rather SUBMIT to a small man with a small dick who seeks to compensate by committing genocide
You know that the longer this drags out, the more likely it will be that this will go beyond Russia regaining part of Ukraine.
This truly is insane. Ukraine could lose another quarter million people. Can't you see these people are pawns for geopolitical ghouls and profiteers?
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I do believe that Putin would never have dared to invade if Trump had been President.
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You tell a 70 plus year old guy that he should go to Ukraine and fight. Makes a lot of sense. This is like telling people that protest against the US government to get the fuck out if you don't like it. i used to think that way, then I remembered why I joined the military. I joined to PROTECT and DEFEND the constitution of the USA. Curly has family members that are Ukrainian. Imagine if he told his wife that her countrymen are foolish for "fighting a fight they couldn't possibly win".
You would tell your loved ones -- women and children -- to stay in a war zone? Interesting. Curly seems to have done well for himself in life. I seriously doubt that he lacks the financial means to make this happen.
I just posted that I believe in self-defense. However, in the course of any war, commanders on both sides make decisions about when to fight and when to retreat. I guess the latter makes them cowards? There also inevitably comes a time when a side must initiate negotiations to end a war. Does this mean both sides should fight and one side should fight until its soldiers and resources are completely depleted? I guess, anything less would make them Neville Chamberlain or some brilliance like that. All the decisions made in situations like this involve tradeoffs. Securing of boundaries or making gains are balanced against losses of human beings/$/arms/et cetera. From many, including some here, there is no expense of lives and dollars that could ever outweigh the obligation to continue fighting.
The same people who get everything wrong in foreign policy have, naturally, gotten this splendid little war all wrong. Too many proles have stopped buying the propaganda.
One of the biggest things that has set this war apart, beyond the utter disinterest in negotiating an end from so many leaders, is the pretending that this was anything but a grossly lopsided conflict. What has happened was inevitable, and if we continue to listen to the lunatics who push it forward, it may lead to something far worse than Ukraine losing part of its country.
Oh, and the "Let's put Ukraine into NATO" stuff is also insanity.
And commanders don't make the decisions to negotiate peace settlements. That's up to the politicians and one of the "politicians" errrrr autocrats feels he has the right to force a sovereign country to capitulate to his demands. And there are no tradeoffs. Seriously, what can Ukraine trade? More land? All of the rest of their black sea ports?
While I don't see a scenario where Ukraine wins, I don't think this is as lopsided of a conflict as you claim. Ukraine is in year #3 and Russia hasn't gained much ground from the initial assault. We shall see.
which it has lost already.
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