Moscow Mojo!!! Putin is one of the richest man in the world… he ain’t elite? Or he’s the good kind of elite? Your kind of elite?
He's wrong and right. The news said he would pull out of NATO. There is a low risk the US would get involved with no more NATO. Maybe Putin has something on him or it's just his bone spur type of personality. Who knows. And again, Trump and pro-Putin wing of the GOP won't blame Putin for causing war but will blame everyone else.
Sounds like Trump wouldn’t have supported the Ukrainians. We know he held up aid to get dirt on a political rival and weakened US alliances.
I've been one of the more cautious voices in this thread about us taking military action in Ukraine. I've said I'm not willing to risk WWIII on Ukraine. What I'm not going to do though is justify Putin's actions or view them through a partisan lens of just seeking to blame our current administration for all the ills of the World. The fact is that Putin chose to launch this invasion. This wasn't forced upon him. As much as the US and NATO should've been cautious in the approach of expanding NATO and dealings with Ukraine Putin also had the choice to seek diplomatic and other means to address that expansion. He had plenty of other leverages he could've used such as on Europe's reliance on Russia for energy to address the situation. He didn't choose those avenues but instead chose to invade. An invasion that has now cost thousands of Russian lives and is wrecking its economy. What this shows to me is yet another example of how dangerously divided this country is. It's understandable there is disagreement upon the course of action that our country to take when the risk are very high but it is very troubling that in the face of clear aggression by a country that has been a geopolitical rival of us that so many are willing to excuse or justify that.
One guy and a segment of that party trying their best to position for maximum politician win even at the expense of the US and the West. The other guy just wants to win for America and the West. For the most part, the division has been kept down to a minimum, relative to the covid crisis for example. Hopefully, it stays that way. Here is a good article about the other guy. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/biden-answered-3-am-call/626976/ Biden Answered the 3 a.m. Call It’s hard to imagine that any of his rivals from the last election could have matched the president’s performance in this crisis. By Franklin Foer When Hillary Clinton sought to sow doubts about Barack Obama, her rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, she ran an attack ad tarnishing him as dangerously inexperienced. As the screen shows images from a suburban house, a husky-voiced narrator intones: “It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep, but there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing.” There’s clearly been a terrible international incident. The narrator asks, “Who do you want answering the phone?” As the Russian invasion of Ukraine has unfolded, the narrator’s question has rattled around my head. The invasion is a moral test, because Putin has committed atrocities that demand the strongest possible response. And it is a strategic test, because the strongest possible response could very plausibly escalate into a nuclear conflict. Joe Biden hasn’t received the full credit he deserves for his statecraft during this crisis, because he has pursued a policy of self-effacement. Rather than touting his accomplishments in mobilizing a unified global response to the invasion, he has portrayed the stringent sanctions as the triumph of an alliance. By carefully limiting his own public role—and letting France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz take turns as the lead faces of NATO—he has left Vladimir Putin with little opportunity to portray the conflict as a standoff with the United States, a narrative that the Russian leader would clearly prefer. He’s shown how to wield American leadership in the face of deep European ambivalence about its exercise. His handling of the domestic politics of the crisis has been just as savvy. Although he could justifiably have portrayed Republicans as the party of Putin apologists, he refrained from dinging his political enemies. During his State of the Union address, he actively encouraged Republicans to feel as if they were his partners in a popular front. This is surely redolent of the bipartisan foreign policy that Biden nostalgically yearns to revive. But it’s also an important tactic. By depoliticizing the issue, he has made it likely that Congress will quickly fund aid and arms for the Ukrainian military. And as gas prices spike, it will be rhetorically harder for Republicans to effectively pin the blame on him, because they have been fully supportive of sanctions. Even as Biden has built a bipartisan consensus, he’s resisted pressure to pursue a more hawkish course. As a Democrat who lived through the 9/11 era, he remembers well how he and other leaders of his party adopted chest-thumping policies to defuse accusations of weakness. For decades, Democratic aspirants attempted to demonstrate their own steel in order to avoid evoking the politically fatal image of Michael Dukakis in a tank. The same dynamic could have easily transpired with Ukraine. But Biden’s faith in his own foreign-policy chops leaves him unconcerned about proving his bona fides. He knows the dangers of bluster and has steadfastly avoided them. When Putin announced that he was putting his nuclear arsenal into “special combat readiness,” Biden quickly made clear that he wouldn’t reciprocate. He has brushed off calls to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. From the start of his administration, he has tried to telegraph his thinking to Putin, so that the Russian leader could never misunderstand his intentions, and would never mistakenly assume that an American strike against Russia was imminent. After Afghanistan revealed a failure to imagine the worst-case scenario, Biden’s response to Russia’s war has been marked by its creativity. In advance of the invasion, the administration surreptitiously hastened its shipments of arms to Ukraine, bestowing on it an armament well suited to the eventuality of urban combat. By preparing a suite of unconventional sanctions long before Putin’s troops crossed the border, the administration avoided the need to cobble together policy and the scramble to inform allies of its plans. The legwork was already done. Most impressively, it broadcast its intelligence about Russia to the world in anticipation of an invasion. (Having a veteran diplomat as CIA chief helps.) Because its assessment of Russian intentions proved to be painfully accurate, the maneuver has helped reclaim the lost trust of allies and the global public. It’s a quietly bravura performance—and it’s hard to imagine that any of Biden’s rivals from the last election, not just Donald Trump but also the Democrats, could have come close to matching it. If anything, it is reminiscent of how George H. W. Bush led the world through the end of the Cold War, a similarly chaotic moment that could have easily exploded into nuclear conflict. In the middle of Joe Biden’s 3 a.m. call, I find myself grateful that he’s the one answering the phone.
I was thinking the same thing. Naturally Putin is going to make a fuss about it. What's fascinating is that people like @MojoMan actually take the man at his word and try to use it to suggest we don't send ukraine weapons. It's obvious he's part of the pro-Russia wing of the GOP.
Yes it's been heartening to see many Republicans including leadership in Congress willing to work with the Biden Administration and also act seriously about the threat but also with restraint. Too many though are not. As we see not just here but including from people in Congress and people in Rightwing media either justifying Putin's actions or giving shrill partisan complaints that often not factual, contradictory or both. For example demanding that Biden cut off purchasing Russian oil and then when he does it criticizing him for the sudden spike in gas prices. How long though does most of the Republican party and it's leadership not give in to the voices within that party though is a question as this war looks like it will drag on for awhile and with an elections coming we will see where the base of the Republican party is. I will be even more blunt too and say that a lot of the rhetoric we're seeing can be classified as "Blame America First!" such as Putin was forced into this because we signed a security agreement with Ukraine last November. What is more galling about this is that some of these critics are now using the same language that Peaceniks have used such as "America has violated the sovereignty of many countries too!" Yet many of these same critics were also among the loudest voices supporting the invasion of Iraq and calling those who opposed that invasion as not patriotic or even "traitors!".
FACT: You hate liberals and are programmed to criticize everything they say or do. FACT: You are incredibly biased FACT: You think in right-wing cartoons FACT: People who want to have a "responsible, calm, rational, and above all realistic discussion" don't insult the people they want to have said discussion with in BOTH the FOREGOING and FOLLOWING sentence. You want people to take you seriously? Start showing you are serious.
Do you agree with Trump's statement? Does Trump's foreign policy protocols of a quiescent attitude to everything Putin desires count as a positive "keeping us out of war"
Of course he does because he's programmed. We all know the truth. Putin wanted to invade Ukraine during Trump's presidency - it wasn't Trump who stopped him, but Putin's advisors who wanted Trump to get a second term before doing the invasion. Putin was invading now Trump or no Trump. But these bozos will drink up whatever Trump says. They don't have the mind for critical thinking skills.
