Or get the intel out to some russian buddies...? Releases pictures when he was told not to and now info he probably got from that zoom meeting. Maybe he is really dumb. IDK...
We support whatever is most politically advantageous to us. Just take a look at Iran and Iraq. We fully supported and helped Iraq invade Iran. Then we turn around and sell arms to the Iranians. Now I fully support Ukraine and Putin's BS about NATO on his doorstep is just that, BS. If he takes Ukraine he will be even more surrounded by NATO. However, trusting us (The U.S.) is a double edged sword and it always has been.
US oil production fell by about a million barrels from the peak in 2019 because of Covid and dropping oil prices. We can make up rather quickly what we lose in imports from Russia. The problem is it would put pressure on Europe to do the same and they need Russian oil and gas a lot more than we do.
I wonder if we are about to do that. Did you see he now says putting sanctions on Russia is a declaration of war?
This is a human tragedy, not a chess game. My heart is so broken, and I will never be the same after this.
Invading sovereign countries is a political issue versus a human rights one. China invade India by encroaching on its territory but it did not target civilians. The US invade Iraq but did not target civilians. The US invaded Afghanistan as well. My issue with Russia is not that they invaded Ukraine, it's that they are committing atrocious crimes against humanity while they are at it.. I do think they should face penalties for doing that from both a political and a human rights standpoint. I do think we need to discourage countries from invading other nations but our war with Iraq made the US lose a lot of credibility - this is why the US was stupid to go at it alone without the world's support. How can you say we have the right to invade Saddam but Putin can't invade Ukraine? some will argue that Ukraine was a democracy. But what they forget is that from a tyrant's perspective that means squat. Democracy's don't have greater sovereignty than other types of countries just because their political system aligns with what we believe to be the righteous system. With that, I agree with you. We don't lift a finger to do anything to the Uyghurs. People twist it by saying, well they aren't a country just passive victims - as if that makes a ****ing difference. Taking their organs out and experimenting on them? Slaughtering them like cows. What the Chinese are doing to them is beyond atrocious and one of the most disgusting and inhumane things when you consider we're more than 20 years into the 21st century. So yeah, when people say we need to risk nuclear war to save the free Ukrainian people, I am just dumbfounded. But where you are very wrong is in the seizing of assets. If someone is involved in criminal activity, you have every right to freeze and eventually seize their assets. The people are not innocent. It does not matter that they were allowed to move money through the US financial system before and we didn't do anything about it. When you commit a crime you can be punished at that moment or later on. The criminal doesn't get to choose. We should punish Russia to the extreme in every non-violent way possible. But we should go further as a global society. Much further. We don't need to use war to bring about change. But we do need to use power. Any nation that has a knowing an active hand in genocide or ethnic cleansing should be 100% ostracized. If we had that standard - and we truly cared and gave a damn - it could be stopped - I believe it. Too many nations that have that blood, not just Russia. You'd have China, you'd have the Congo, You'd have Saudi Arabia, and yes you'd have Israel - and many others. That's how bad it is and how f'd up humanity is. Meanwhile people make excuses and point their fingers or find ways to look the other way or put up mild protest. It is disgusting. We all share it in and it is all our failure. Anyway, that's my rant for the evening.
I'm going to remind everyone that the US cannot unilaterally admit Ukraine to NATO. It requires consensus of the rest of NATO.
We had the League of Nations before the UN and it was a big fat nothing burger when Euro interests wanted nothing to do with it as it interfered with its own ambitions. Americans hated it because it wasn't "their concern", which is true because Colonial powers ran the show and Americans received nothing in return for their "investment". The current World Order is mostly set up by the victors of WW2. If Germany won, they'd have their own international system of standards that benefits them and their allies. And while it's showing signs of stress, China benefitted greatly from it in the last 40 years. They love dollars so much that they had excess of a trillion dollars in USD reserves, and they'd likely continue what they've done with it if the Dollar Reserve system isn't showing its age as well. BTW, I'm well aware of the flaws of democracy, where as scale grows you can half the "winner-takes-all" system by proxy. It's how founding families of corporations like Fox or Viacom/Paramount can retain control, or how dominating the primary process in the US nets polarizing screwball candidates. Democracy has always been a process that isn't only earned, but also vigilantly maintained in order to sustain for future generations. It's just that without an urgency or thirst for it, our vigilance plummets. We took it for granted to the point of exporting it to former USSR, Afghanistan, and Iraq and assumed they'd pick it up in an instant. That what-aboutism or "what's so great about democracy" premise doesn't discount how much the CCP takes from people in the form of taxes and the outright theft and corruption to fill their provincial needs. You might think it's justified as a security/prosperity measure, but the amount of fear driven policies in the form of extreme censorship/state media, detainments, and the threat of violence at the highest levels to keep that "prosperity" is very shaky. When times are great, they get theirs but you get (some of) yours. When times stall, they still get theirs, you...better STFU if you know what's good for you. The press needs to sell papers and entice readers to consume their products. I mentioned earlier wrt media racial bias that their presentation relies on compelling the readers to protect rather than compelling them to subjugate/eradicate. It's because the West is weary of interventions and wars in general after 2 decades of Middle East and Afghanistan. As a matter of consistency, pose these same questions whether the media would sell it the same way 2-3 decades ago. They didn't, rather they sold those wars with the most emotionally compelling reason. In diplomacy/war, you still need Legitimacy at a high level. Most people consider Game Theory with anonymous actors or events inside a vaccuum. Nations are mostly permanent with a record of history and consequences for future dealing. It's why diplomats carefully word the **** out of everything even when the event itself is some savage war crime. This is why leaking details of Russia's false flag plans weeks before invasion (one that I questioned in principle for it's sources by an official, and one that could've been almost as sufficient as an anonymous high level leak) was crucially important in derailing Russia's plan. No one would believe Ukraine deliberately struck first, but it would've given more grey for them work with and more time to delay actions like cutting off SWIFT or enabling people like Tucker Carlson to keep cashing in checks a wee bit longer for just "asking questions". I honestly don't get your democracy rant here. There's always hypocrisy involved but are you advocating alternative systems like the CCP or unfettered totalitarian control is better? It just sounds like a talking point to constrain democracies while authoritarian/totalitarian regimes abuse the spirit of the recognized rule of law (I assume we'd both agree should at least be "don't invade sovereign nations without just cause") To answer your hypotheticals...If the Saudis invade Kuwait, occupy them for almost a decade, then invade them again in fear they've sufficiently re-armed themselves for retaliation/liberation, then I most likely would approve economic intervention such as cutting off SWIFT. If Saudis wanted nukes, they can probably arm themselves within half a year, and no way would I want to invade even if they didn't. So what else do we got...question ourselves of our moral hypocrisy, let them do what those bad bad sovereign nations want, and call it a day? This economic siege is unprecedented, but what are your concerns for Russia and Ukraine? The West did not cut them off from SWIFT and the international banking world when Russia invaded Georgia and "independent state" Crimea. The West's actions were so constrained, that they became even more dependent on Russia's gas imports. Did that period make you feel better about the international Rule of Law? Or maybe it's another critique against corrupt democracies... There is no doubt Ukraine has several "regressive" tendencies that would make even Hungarians blush. Many Ukrainians lived in/still remember USSR-era repression where they were taught to snitch their neighbors and families, and where supression of mind was tantamount to the supression of the soul. You can't always shake that off in a generation or two much like you can't always build democracies in the same time span. The liberal success stories of some former Eastern bloc nations like Estonia doesn't guarantee liberal success all the time. Especially when you have a nation like Ukraine that isn't only strategically important to several powers but has enough resources to become a self-sufficient petro state. So I don't get the questioning the freeness of Ukraine outside a pedantic level. Maybe it's meta analysis about how our allies are painted as "more free" when they can be nasty sumbitches (Saudi). Okay, freedom IS relative, and Ukraine WAS/STILL IS more free than Russia.
Well I do have a problem with Russia invading another sovereign country on very flimsy pretexts. I had a problem with the US invading Iraq also on flimsy pretexts. I agree deliberately targeting civilians is terrible but the reality of war is that civilians are going to be killed. We killed many many civilians including just recently getting out of the Afghanistan. Even with the best intentions and the most precise weapons noncombatants will be killed which is why war should be avoided as much as possible.
Yeah I do too, I poorly worded that. I just have grown very cynical about the value of war as a tool. Even when the war seems to be a righteous cause, it doesn't really seem the end result was worth it. Was South Korea worth all those lives lost? Was Vietnam? Maybe the action in Yugoslavia worked - the Serbs didn't come to the table until NATO started obliterating their forces. But the US can't do that to Russia. So the take away is that you can't really stop the dark side of humanity - the killings of civilians, unless you have the power to wipe out the military advantage of one side.
NATO could do that, very easily could do that - the problem is the Nukes, not their poorly trained and equipped military. DD
Why? And question for you. What do you now feel about Republicans who took money from Russian Oligarchs?
Russia has been at war with us for a long time. Click the link and you can see all the Fox stuff that is suddenly no longer in the top DD
