Apparently it still needs to be repeated. Putin invaded Ukraine. The warmonger is Putin not Biden not Hillary Clinton.
Putin invaded Ukraine because of Biden's bellicose actions of expanding NATO -- which Biden has NOW ADMITTED. Keep up please. This war was avoidable. Democrats and the 4th branch of government, the Administrative State, benefit from endless war. Elect Republicans to stop billions of US taxpayer dollars from going towards this unwinnable war.
Ukraine wasn’t and still isn’t part of NATO. Also I seem to remember a certain character who bragged about dining with Mexican industrialists supporting wars started by Republicans for years.
Okay. Russia invaded their country and continues to attack. Ukrainians has to fight fire with fire....or lose their country to Putin. When did the Republican Party change from Ronald "Mister Gorbachev tear down this wall" Reagan to fellating Vladimir Putin and other dictators?
2016. You can pretty much time it to around the time Manafort - on Putin's payroll - and the rest got involved with Trump's campaign and Putin began intervening with the election. Like, some things are long evolutions, but this was "oh, corrupt Russian dictator wants to commit crimes against our country to give us money and power - "if it's what you say, I love it!" (literal quote from Don Jr. in response to this idea). They basically just "flipped the switch" in response to an offer of assistance. And that was that, all the rest pretty much fell in line. (Although to be fair, Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz etc had been writing Vladimir Putin fanfic for a few years prior)
What has gone past stunning to mind-numbing is how easily people can be led by the nose. No critical thinking at all.
The case for Ukraine to join NATO. Perhaps most of us have been thinking about this the wrong way. Should Ukraine join Nato? | Open letter | The Guardian Should Ukraine join Nato? Open letter We don’t agree that Nato membership for Ukraine would provoke a conflict with Russia Ukraine that day, killing more than 40 people, wounding numerous others, and demonstrating yet again that there are no legal, political or moral lines it won’t cross in its determination to conquer Ukraine. As Ukrainian doctors, rescue workers and volunteers evacuated child patients, many of them still in hospital gowns and attached to IVs, from the bombed-out hospital, heads of state from Nato’s 32 member countries arrived in Washington DC to discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine and how to strengthen Ukraine’s defense. Although they affirmed that “Ukraine’s future is in Nato”, and that the country’s path to the alliance is “irreversible”, Ukraine’s potential membership was once again deferred: the Washington summit declaration stated that an invitation for Ukraine to join Nato would come “when Allies agree, and conditions are met”. The allies do not yet agree. Nato membership for Ukraine is supported by some European member states – in particular, the Baltic and Nordic states and Poland. At the same time, key powers like the US and Germany remain opposed. The arguments against Ukraine’s Nato membership, which have been proffered repeatedly since Russia’s attack on Ukraine began in 2014, ultimately reiterate the same concern: that any step, however small, would be seen as threatening Russia’s security, and would therefore provoke greater conflict. In reality, Russia’s calm acceptance of Finland and Sweden, two of its neighbors who joined Nato in 2022, has put the lie to the claim that Russia is on a hair trigger about Nato drawing any closer. It is time to acknowledge that Russia opposes Ukraine’s Nato membership only because it would obstruct Russia’s continued aggression against that country. The focus on Russia’s alleged “Nato expansion anxiety”, and attempts to appease it, ignore Russia’s genocidal propaganda and systematic war crimes in occupied territory of Ukraine, including massacres, mass rape and torture. Russia’s actions demonstrate a clear intent to destroy Ukraine as a nation, rather than to alleviate its own security concerns. The idea that extending security guarantees to Ukraine would further incentivize Russia’s brutal prosecution of this war is unfounded, since Russia is fully determined to destroy Ukraine and needs no additional motivation to do so. Secondly, it is a fact that Russia has not attacked a single Nato member. Instead, it has threatened, invaded and occupied non-member countries: Georgia, Moldova and now Ukraine. The territorial boundary between Nato and non-Nato countries has so far proved the only red line that Russia has (however warily) respected, even as it breaks numerous other international treaties and agreements. Russia’s resurrected imperialist militarism can only be contained by the existence of a much stronger military alliance. Finally, attempts to appease the Kremlin fail to address Russia’s determination to secure anti-western global power. Russia already fully controls Belarus and has been actively forming its own alliances with China, North Korea and Iran, which stand for the destruction of the democratic order. Russia bombed Syrian cities to keep Bashar al-Assad (a dictator who used chemical weapons against civilians) in power. Russia supports terrorist organizations globally, including the Taliban and Hamas, and may soon send missiles to Yemen’s Houthis. Assuming that appeasing Russia’s demands will resolve the war, or somehow de-escalate it, is naive. Impunity for Russia’s war crimes in Syria, Georgia and Ukraine has only emboldened the Kremlin. The question of Russia’s escalation is thus not “if”, but “how far?” How far will its escalation be allowed to go before democracies muster the political backbone to halt it? Western democracy must stand in unity and determination against the growing threat to global security represented by the Kremlin. There is still time for the most powerful military alliance in the world to make a historically and politically justified decision to neutralize the existential threat posed to Ukraine by Russia. Sacrificing Ukraine in the interest of avoiding a Nato-Russia war only increases the likelihood of such war, and of further wars, as Russia will conclude that Nato’s vaunted article 5 may be negotiable, if a broader war can be averted. Inviting Ukraine to join Nato would mark a definitive step away from the politics of appeasement and back to the rule of international law and protection of human rights. A decision to extend security guarantees to Ukraine would not only safeguard the Ukrainian state, via the only means yet shown to be successful, but would also reassert Nato and the western democracies as effective political agents on the world stage. ---------------------- Signed by 160 scholars
This feels like half baked Twitter Diplomacy where the letter's tone implies we're too chicken to declare outright war with Russia in order to get what we want (NATO "annexation" of Ukraine) and too weak individually to have confidence in our current response to Russian aggression. These 160 scholars, thinkers, pundits, randoms from social media, etc... really want to force a backdoor war because they know the public from almost all non-border NATO signatories will reject kinetic action but are more pliant if Russia fires the first shot. Blinken already floated the idea of soon-ish NATO membership to the open forum, so it isn't like our best minds at the Biden admin aren't rejecting the idea. I have problems with it. These scholars forgot how Article 5 worked. They can call Russia every name in the book, but it requires a brokered peace between Russia and Ukraine for Ukraine to be considered for UN ascension. Even if peace was brokered tomorrow, Ukraine needs at least a generation (~20 years) of reforms before it meets the bottom line requirements of being stable EU member in good standing. There's corruption, lack of institutional and cultural support for free press, free elections, and free markets. Just because we want pipelines of leaky gas to Make the EU Greener doesn't mean we forget grounding principles for NATO membership. Then there's Hungary. It's a hard right quasi-authoritarian state that makes Poland look sensible. They can reject every vote that requires unanimous approval and have done it from time to time. There aren't many official mechanisms to boot Hungary from the EU or NATO, so unless every other country takes their ball and forms a different group without Hungary, it's not like Ukraine would be joining either even if peace was brokered tomorrow. With Ukraine messed up from war plus 1-2 generations removed from cultural Soviet indoctrination, it's totally possible Ukraine would become another headache like Hungary in 10 years if they were fast tracked tomorrow. Old Europe is mostly broke, and openness for Leftist values have been declining for the past 20 years. I guess it'd be easier to reach their hearts and minds and we would be hailed as liberators, but it's highly dubious any (non-Ukranian) American would want to risk thermonuclear war over it.
Russia, the United States and several other countries on Thursday were engaged in an extraordinary, 24-prisoner exchange, the largest of its kind since the Cold War and one in which President Joe Biden was directly involved, the White House said Thursday. The swap allows the two wrongfully detained American citizens held by Moscow -- Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan -- to return home. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rus...shkovich-paul-whelan-multi/story?id=112446743
So, Sam, you still think Ukraine is winning? Even the NYT is expressing doubs occasionally. Can we assume you thought the US was winning in Afghanistan up untill the day our troops got on the planes to evacuate?
