Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
FLBear5630 said:
Sam Lowry said:
FLBear5630 said:
Harrison Bergeron said:
Just curious ... asking for a unicorn I know .. who can make the affirmative case that artificially funding Ukraine's economy serves what national interests of the U.S.?
Maybe I am a Reagan Cold War guy, but I agreed with Scott and Haley last night on Ukraine. Anything we do to weaken Putin is good for US.
Reagan couldn't disagree more. Biden is undoing everything that he accomplished.
Reagan would stand by and let Putin invade Ukraine? Grenada/Iran-Contra Ron would have said, we are out let Russia have Ukraine? After he worked to get Ukrainian independence. Yeah.
I served why Ronnie was President. You know how many times we (82nd Abn) got ready to deploy and sit at Pope Air Field so the satellites could get a good look? You think he was bluffing? I don't, the officers and AF personnel managing our aircraft didn't. Sitting in a stick on a tarmac for 8 hours is no fun. This happened that I can remember with Libya and Poland. Every EDRE was a satellite opportunity to show strength and he used it. Reagan also supplies Afghan Rebels and Solidarity in Poland. Reagan would not stand by and let Putin do this.
...and we were smuggling small satellite dish receivers into East Germany so they could catch western TV broadcasts......smuggling same plus money to Polish unions....etc.....and dogging Soviet Bloc diplomats balls to walls.....and flying/sailing warcraft provocatively to send messages, etc......
I mean, the obtusity of the peace-at-all-cost crowd here is mind boggling.
1. I don't think anyone on this thread has advocated "peace-at-all-costs"
I don't know one person on this website who has NOT said we should wipe Russia out if they attack a actual NATO member.
Or that we should not fight China if they attack say Japan or S. Korea
So that is not really a fair criticism.
2. Waging a decades long struggle to undermine the Soviet Union and its political/military domination of central and eastern Europe was of course justified. Communism was (and is) one of the most evil ideologies of all time. Killed at least 100-200 million people during the 20th Century.
And Soviet troops were right there...mere miles from Austria and inside East Germany. The Red army used to have 75,000 troops in Wunsdorf Germany.
That is all gone...its ideological & military empire totally collapsed.
The modern Russian state is nothing like that. Its a declining regional power with no control over central Europe or the Balkans...and now not even control over the Baltic region (right on its door step), its declining in population, has a stagnant/non-dynamic economy, and its a oligarchy without much of an ideology in general and has to rely on old Russian nationalism to give it any legitimacy at all.
Disagree. The criticism is spot on. Look at the bleating, here and everywhere else, about how we must cut off all aid to Ukraine in order to force the war to an end so Ukrainians will quit dying....how our support is prolonging a war which will demographically destroy Ukraine win or lose....how we're keyboard warriors who'd not be advocating support for Ukraine if we'd ever seen a battlefield casualty (implications being that we must let Russia roll over Ukraine to avoid battlefield casualties.)
And your point #2 undermines your case. It tacitly accepts the premise that proximity of Russian armies to a Nato country (Germany) justifies a decades long Cold War, then ignores the reality that Russian occupation of Ukraine will
place Russian armies along the border of not one, but FOUR additional Nato countries (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania)
. So it's not all gone. It's one country away. And your policy would guarantee that it moves back adjacent.....to the entire Nato eastern flank!
Re your last para: we see a priori thinking rendering your argument chaotic. You are correct that Russia is a declining power with serious long-term problems, but ignore the manifestly obvious fact that allowing Ukraine to be subsumed back into Russia will increase Russian population and resources (and simplifying Russian logistics by moving Russian armies 1250km closer to Nato borders....increasing Nato border frontage with Russia-controlled space by 790km). Then, you simultaneously argue that we are wasting money supporting a Ukraine which cannot win because Russia is too much larger and more powerful, AND that Russia has no ability to control anything in its area or beyond.
The a priori part is that what's really driving your thinking is that you're angry over deficit spending, so geopolitical analysis flows from there - cut the funding
(Ukraine doesn't matter anyway.) Hate to break it to you, but what happens in Eastern Europe does matter to us, given that all of it is in Nato. We have a treaty obligation to defend it from Russia....who you are arguing we should allow to move its armies and nuclear weapons ADJACENT to our allies.
Just speechless at the insanity being argued...... For a nominal amount of money, Ukraine is methodically destroying the Russian military. They WILL their country back win if we stay the course, and nothing could do more to keep our boys & girls out of war than that.
