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Russian Invasion of Ukraine

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  • Russian Invasion of Ukraine

    I thought for sure there'd be a thread about this already. Where's Kohm?

    The world was already afraid that Russia might invade Estonia, this triggering war with the US — then this happened.

  • #2
    I know I've avoided it because it's simply too damn depressing. We lack both the will and means to stop Russia from doing whatever they please in Ukraine. Europe has even less will and means to do so. It's rare that I agree with the present administration, especially relative to the idiot running State, but sanctions are about the only card we can play. And while those might hurt Russia, if Russia really wants to continue down this path, it's certainly not going to stop them.

    Edit to add: But it is improving bi-partisan cooperation - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5754098.html
    Last edited by chancellor; 09-05-2014, 01:19 PM.
    I'm just here for the baseball.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Jefe View Post
      I thought for sure there'd be a thread about this already. Where's Kohm?

      http://www.vox.com/2014/9/5/6110037/...icer-kidnapped
      Hasn't the U.S. done stuff like this many, many times in the last decade ? Maybe there is something unique about this that I'm not understanding.
      ---------------------------------------------
      Champagne for breakfast and a Sherman in my hand !
      ---------------------------------------------
      The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
      George Orwell, 1984

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      • #4
        This aggression will not stand
        "You know what's wrong with America? If I lovingly tongue a woman's nipple in a movie, it gets an "NC-17" rating, if I chop it off with a machete, it's an "R". That's what's wrong with America, man...."--Dennis Hopper

        "One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real." -- Klaus Kinski

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        • #5
          Want to know what I see as the central irony of the current situation with Russia? Vladimir Putin, who was a serving KGB officer during the Reagan years, is perfectly playing back what we did to the USSR with Reagan as President.

          The Soviets were terrified of Reagan because they perceived him as an unintelligent egomaniac, a wildly reckless leader who had no regard for the international system and couldn't understand the complex diplomatic relationships between nations even if he was interested in them. The Soviets were so spooked by him tat they bought into the SDI bluff and enacted the hugely dangerous VRYAN program, looking for secondary and tertiary indicators of the American first strike they were sure Reagan would launch. This kind of stuff allowed us to spend the Soviets into permanent recession and ultimately the collapse of their Empire.

          Enter President Putin. When he gets caught doing the "wrong" thing, he doesn't apologize-- he doubles down. His people took out the Malaysian airliner and the world "holds him responsible", so what does he do? He invades Ukraine. Russia has a huge problem with Muslim extremists and it makes perfect sense long term to team with the Euro-centric Americans to deal collectively with the mutual threat, but instead he supplies the Iranians with nuclear materials and knowledge and pours resources into Syria. His strategic air forces are a joke and everyone knows it... so he makes headlines by buzzing the US & Canada with propeller driven Bear "nuclear" bombers like it's 1982 and Tom Clancy is writing about stolen subs. Couple that kind of behavior with all of the idiotic bare-chested macho pictures (hmm.. didn't the Sovs always refer to Reagan as a "macho cowboy"...?) and you get a guy who is busily convincing the West that he's... wait for it... an unintelligent egomaniac, a wildly reckless leader who had no regard for the international system and couldn't understand the complex diplomatic relationships between nations even if he was interested in them.

          Putin understands that we have a nasty habit of making out our enemies to be unhinged-- does anyone beyond Netanyahu really believe that the Iranians are just dying to get themselves obliterated by American nuclear weapons in return for nuking one of our cities?-- and what could be more frightening to Americans than an unhinged dictator with a huge nuclear arsenal? Are we really going to actively challenge a "madman" over strategically unimportant places like Donetsk? Transnistria? Even in this forum with so many intelligent people, I challenge you to find them on a map Can a "madman" totally break NATO, perhaps, by waiting until we engage fully in a war with ISIS and then grab a land route to Kaliningrad by carving it out of NATO member Estonia in the same way he's grabbing an overland route to the Crimea? If we believe he's an insane throwback to the Cold War-- and hell, he just staged an ICBM test yesterday after making news last week by reminding the world of the Russian nuclear arsenal-- aren't we just going to give him free reign to do as he pleases as long as he isn't threatening traditional US allies like Germany and Italy? Where's the third rail? Would we (or the French... or the Germans..?) be willing to die for, say, NATO member Poland? If he threatened Poland, would we be willing to turn a blind eye if he went after a non-NATO member like Moldova, instead? The rest of Ukraine? The rest of Ukraine on the way to Moldova?

          The Soviet Union failed miserably to escape its paranoia and call Reagan on his "madman" act. The result was the end of an Empire. Kennedy managed to successfully can Kruschev on his own "madman" routine. What are we going to do now?
          "There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed. I say this in order to impress upon you, if you are not already so impressed, that no small matter should divert us from our great purpose. "

          Abraham Lincoln, from his Address to the Ohio One Hundred Sixty Fourth Volunteer Infantry

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          • #6
            The Soviet Union failed miserably to escape its paranoia and call Reagan on his "madman" act. The result was the end of an Empire. Kennedy managed to successfully can Kruschev on his own "madman" routine. What are we going to do now?
            Nothing, other than sanctions.
            I'm just here for the baseball.

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            • #7
              You know, these Russian guys are total dicks.
              More American children die by gunfire in a year than on-duty police officers and active duty military.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Bene Futuis View Post
                You know, these Russian guys are total dicks.
                But they look so sexy without their shirts on horseback!
                If I whisper my wicked marching orders into the ether with no regard to where or how they may bear fruit, I am blameless should a broken spirit carry those orders out upon the innocent, for it was not my hand that took the action merely my lips which let slip their darkest wish. ~Daniel Devereaux 2011

                Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
                Martin Luther King, Jr.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Bene Futuis View Post
                  You know, these Russian guys are total dicks.
                  Wait, TFG thinks they're just grand and total geniuses!


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                  • #10
                    Tucker Carlson just did a bit where he essentially says that Vladmir Putin is a fine fellow and the real enemies are your fellow Americans, the scary liberals. They are playing his bit on Russia state TV.


                    Look what the right wing has become.
                    More American children die by gunfire in a year than on-duty police officers and active duty military.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Bene Futuis View Post
                      Tucker Carlson just did a bit where he essentially says that Vladmir Putin is a fine fellow and the real enemies are your fellow Americans, the scary liberals. They are playing his bit on Russia state TV.


                      Look what the right wing has become.
                      If you brought a group of random Republican from 20+ years ago to present day and he looked at how the right-wing media machine and Trump et al talk about Putin and Russia, their heads would all explode. The cognitive dissonance would be too much to handle. It is truly baffling how they can totally flip the script and have the masses mostly go, "ok, Russia is cool now, sure, why not?"

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                      • #12
                        Looks like bad news from Ukraine. Fuck
                        ---------------------------------------------
                        Champagne for breakfast and a Sherman in my hand !
                        ---------------------------------------------
                        The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
                        George Orwell, 1984

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Dark days. I don't know if the Crimea response could have been stronger to avoid this, but it seems Putin will take as much as he is allowed at this point. Ukraine is way overmatched, and aside from indignant shouts from the sidelines and some support in the form of supplies from even less equipped neighbors, there seems to be no help coming. The "justification" given by Putin for the invasion is entirely without merit. The real reason is the loss of the Kremlin's puppet President in 2014 and the growing concern Russia has with Ukraine aligning more and more with the West and less with Russia. The rest of the world has already indicated a tolerance for this in 2014 and it seems the hope now is Russia will only take another chunk of the country, but it is possible they will take more, sensing they can. Or they may keep going until fear and desperation among the people lead to the fall of pro-Western government (who Putin is trying to claim is a Nazi regime, despite the current president being Jewish, moderate, and Democratically elected) and a pro-Russia puppet is put in power.

                          As an outsider, seeing the economic hits Russia will take from these actions, I don't really see the net positive for Russia, but clearly Putin does. They feared Ukraine becoming part of NATO, or at least that is their claim, but it didn't look like that was every really going to happen, so I don't know how much of that was pretense and how much of that is sincere concern from Russia about its security. NATO has expanded east since 1997, which I can understand being concerning to Russia, but Ukraine has never been under consideration for joining, and I don't think it ever would given Russia's threats. Either way, these are very dangerous times.
                          Last edited by Sour Masher; 02-24-2022, 11:21 AM.

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                          • #14
                            Sour Masher, please can you refer to the country as just "Ukraine"? Without "the".

                            I'm heartbroken over this as I have a lot of family still in Ukraine, most in the western half but apparently the whole country has seen attacks. Russia does not acknowledge that Ukraine exists. They do not care about lives lost or how this will hit economically. The oligarchs will find a way to hide their money, only the regular folks will truly suffer. Putin wants to secure his legacy as the one who restored Russia to its glory. I hope history shows he's just another evil dictator in the mold of Stalin and Hitler.

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by ironfist View Post
                              Sour Masher, please can you refer to the country as just "Ukraine"? Without "the".

                              I'm heartbroken over this as I have a lot of family still in Ukraine, most in the western half but apparently the whole country has seen attacks. Russia does not acknowledge that Ukraine exists. They do not care about lives lost or how this will hit economically. The oligarchs will find a way to hide their money, only the regular folks will truly suffer. Putin wants to secure his legacy as the one who restored Russia to its glory. I hope history shows he's just another evil dictator in the mold of Stalin and Hitler.
                              Sorry. No offense intended. I don't know where I picked up putting the article before its name. I edited my previous post to remove it. What is happening there is tragic and while I have no family there, I feel for Ukrainians made to suffer by Russia's invasion. I can only imagine what it must feel like to be there having to deal with this.

                              ETA: I do have to disagree with you on your last point. I am sure history will judge Putin to be a reprehensible stain on humanity, but I sure hope Putin's villainy is not as ambitious as Hitler's or Stalin's or the whole world is in for a whole lot of suffering. I don't know what the right move is for the internationally community in response to this invasion. On the one hand, no one wants to escalate things with Russia and potentially start WWIII. On the other hand, how can this be allowed to happen, and what is to stop Russia from continuing to take more and more of Ukraine and beyond? NATO has drawn its line at NATO member states, but that does nothing for Ukraine or its people. Sanctions don't seem like they are going to stop Putin. Even if there is a pause in the aggression, Ukrainians will continue to live in fear that another invasion will come, like it did in 2014 and again now. Russia knows that they are a major gas supplier to the EU, so eventually, those pipelines have to flows, so what kind of sanctions can last?
                              Last edited by Sour Masher; 02-24-2022, 11:39 AM.

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