Posted on 03/28/2024 9:19:58 AM PDT by Kazan
The mistakes of the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars appear lost on many. Today, we hear stirring calls to arms against Russia from a totally corrupt and dangerous media supporting a rogue American regime. Unfortunately, several establishment Republicans stand in support. Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are at the forefront of the Republican establishment’s support for confronting Russia. I would include Senators John Cornyn and John Thune in the mix, along with House members like Dan Crenshaw and, certainly, former House member Liz Cheney.
Even if the United States were to win such a war on the battlefield, we would lose. At best, it would be a Pyrrhic victory.
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In a war with Russia, American soldiers will be forced to fight with horrendous casualties. When this happens, Americans will relive the Vietnam War.
Also, as our Afghan withdrawal displayed, we have no Pentagon leadership. That leadership will also direct a war against Russia. Moreover, today’s woke military will not fare well against battle-hardened Russian troops. Many fighters have been forced out because of their Judeo-Christian values. Others are gone for refusing to surrender their right not to take an experimental vaccine that has unknown efficacy and side effects. Woke troops will not get the job done.
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Moreover, a war with Russia would be worse than the Vietnam quagmire. People alive then remember that the war so badly damaged our nation’s society that all faith in government and the inherent belief in the moral fiber of our society was wiped out for almost 20 years. President Reagan restored it.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Ask the author of the article
Understatement
What led you to the opinions that you have on the Russo-Ukraine war? Is it a belief that the US should not be involved in any way, or that the Ukrainians are undeserving of US support? Or some other line of analysis?
Are you generally of the view that Europe is not relevant to US security interests? Or that Russia should be courted and deferred to by the US in preference to our traditional allies in NATO?
I am sincere in this. Please, take the soapbox.
NATO should of disbanded the day after the Warsaw pact ended. That was it’s mission. After promising Russia they wouldn’t expand, they added dozens more countries. We’ve broke every promise while allowing our countries to be ovverun by commies. I’m Albertan. My country has no borders that matter, nor does yours. Our rights and freedoms have been subjugated without a fight, everyone is too comfortable to be men. I’m a 3 tour infantry vet. I learned a lot during my first two tours in Bosnia. A) the media only knows how to lie. B) the Serbs weren’t the bad guys, yet we unleashed on them. We haven’t been on the right side of things in a long time.
I spent time in Ukraine, trying to help combat the child trafficking. I have nothing against the Ukrainian people, but that country is a playground for the morally bankrupt evil denizens of this world. It should be enough for a person with working brain cells to see who supports Ukraine and then ask why. I oppose with every fiber of my being anyone and anything trying to subjugate my people (I count real Americans as my people as well). We’re broke, we’re overrun, we have nothing, yet we’re supposed to help them fight to the last Ukrainian. That itself is vile and evil. Instead of torpedoing the peace deal, we should of been pushing for the negotiating table.
Nothing our govs have done since WW2 minus a very short time has been in our favour. It’s a demonic agenda.
The debate over NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union was extensive but ultimately came down to that NATO had been a success that ought not to be discarded until Russia's ultimate direction and attitude toward the US and Europe had become clear.
As it was, post-Soviet Russia's economic and political chaos led to the near dissolution of its military for lack of funding. NATO military spending also declined due to a lack of apparent need. In effect, NATO had become almost a dead letter until 9/11 and Putin's rise.
Ukraine was persuaded to give up its nuclear weapons inherited from the Soviet era in return for security guarantees from the US, NATO, and Russia. As it was, those guarantees proved useless when Putin came to power.
My understanding of the Balkans war is that Serbia was the aggressor. The Serbs had dominated the artificial amalgamation of nationalities and cultures that was Yugoslavia and wanted to recover control over them, especially against Muslims resident in areas that were geographically and historically significant to Serbia. The shorthand for this was that they wanted to build greater Serbia.
Similarly, Putin aims at the building of a modern Russia that would dominate her immediate neighbors like Ukraine and intimidate NATO and historical opponents like Poland and the Baltic republics and the Nordic countries. In Putin's plan, Germany was to be bought off through cheap oil and gas.
Putin wanted control of Ukraine but the Ukrainians mostly did not want to be had by Russia. Poland and Great Britain -- genuine and essential US allies in Europe -- support Ukraine as a buffer against Russia.
Where we come close to agreement is on the catastrophic effects of mass immigration. The Europe of today and European civilization itself are dissolving away under its impact, with the US and Canada also in grave danger. Soviet Communism failed, but the Left may yet destroy Europe, the US, and Canada through mass immigration.
From that perspective, my support for Ukraine is a matter of national security strategy against Russia and Putin. The larger problem of uncontrolled mass immigration remains. And if feeding Ukraine to Russia would solve that, you and I would have little to disagrre about.
Serbia was not the aggressor. There are far larger things at play, but I can tell you won’t be and to have your worldview challenged to that extent.
As it was, Slovenia and Croatia made it out as new nations after a brief struggle, as did Macedonia later, but the primarily Muslim sub-states of Bosnia and Kosovo came into prolonged conflict with Serbian military and paramilitary forces. Everyone engaged in ethic cleansing and atrocities to some degree, but the Serbs got the blame for being the aggressor and doing more of it than their adversaries.
Other powers and forces were involved, of course, but I am not sure what you mean by "far larger things at play." I am willing to hear your views.
That goes way back to that part of the world fighting against the ottomans. Wherever moslems go, death and chaos follow.
All too true. The Ottomans pillaged the Balkans for many generations. The Serbian hatred of Islam and Muslims is understandable even if it cannot sensibly be endorsed as a basis for atrocities and ethnic cleansing in the Balkan powder room.
Remember the first thing to go down in a war will be the internet—followed by the electrical grid. Only news will be on the radio and Newspapers. But the first thing to go—and is gone now, is the Truth. All is propaganda, all the time. Ukraine is winning! Russia’s nuke will not work. They are too stupid to fight or build any proper tanks, warplanes or ships.
Russia will be crushed in two months. WW III will be like WW II. We win and Putin shoots himself in his bunker when American and Europeans storm Moscow.
That massacre the media loves to croon about wasn’t exactly that.
No one was hurt or died, or just a not-so-big massacre, too small to care about?
***Let’s get this right — YOU have no problem with illegal coups that drive out democratically-elected leaders from office? That doesn’t surprise me in the least.***
Many members of his own party voted to remove him from power. He called on the Armed Forces to support him but they refused, so they must have seen him as too tainted by the killings of all those protestors to be worth protecting.
I do agree with you about one thing though. He was not given due process. They should have used the proper impeachment process to remove him before having a new election. By failing to do it that way they gave ammunition to the Kremlin who were then able to claim that he was the victim of an illegal coup and his enemies were now coming to get his pro-Russian supporters in the east. (The Kremlin’s propaganda caused pro-Russians in Donetsk/Luhansk to go out and attack Police Stations, government buildings etc, which set them on the course for civil war.)
***And, I have ZERO problem with Russia intervening in Ukraine on behalf of the voters who were disenfranchised and ended up being persecuted and killed by the rogue Ukrainian nationalist government that took over.***
By invading the whole east of the country? Don’t be absurd.
It looks like the pro-Russians in the Donbass were stirred up into a frenzy by Kremlin propaganda and given material support by the Russian state via mercenaries (notably the Wagner Group). They then started fighting the Ukrainian state with a view to becoming independent and received retaliation from right-wing Ukrainian paramilitaries (like the Azov Brigade). Azov started out as a volunteer group of ultra-nationalists, it was not under the control of the Ukrainian government.
It is hardly surprising that Ukrainian skinheads would travel to a region which is trying to secede from their country and start attacking people who they regard as traitors. We have had exactly the same here in Britain, where members of the National Front and Combat 18 travelled to Northern Ireland to help the Loyalists fight Sinn Fein/IRA. I am sure that something similar would happen in the USA if Hispanics in Texas tried to start a civil war there to allow Mexico to absorb a large chunk of Texas.
***In fact, I’m quite pleased those in the recently annexed part of the Russian Federation finally live in a free country and under a government that respects their rights as citizens.***
Russia, a free country! HaHaHa. Men of all ages in the Russian occupied Donbass are now being conscripted and sent to the front line. Putin couldn’t care less about their lives. Putin is a murdering gangster. Have you forgotten about Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol? Forgotten about Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Nemtsov? Already forgotten about Navalny?
***That annexed territory will never, ever be part of Ukraine again***
IMHO, they should let them keep Donestsk and Luhansk as they are full of pro-Russian traitors who were always loyal to Russia not Ukraine. However, the south (which mostly fell due to the treachery of paid-off Army officers) still has many people in it who hate the Russians, so I cannot join you in your eagerness for them to suffer.
***that is if Ukraine even exists after the war is over.***
So peace for Russia, a loss of country and culture for Ukrainians and God knows how many thousands disappear into Putin’s gulag system, never to be seen again. That on top of the 10s of thousands of already stolen Ukrainian children.
***NATO should of disbanded the day after the Warsaw pact ended.***
The only time Article 5 was ever invoked in NATO’s history was when the USA did it after 9/11. That’s why troops from all the NATO member states were stationed in Afghanistan for years afterwards.
***Nonsense. The EU has only contributed $84 billion total to Ukraine. We’ve spent at least $113 billion on it.***
They were not matching US aid to Ukraine earlier in the war, but they are now. The problem they have is the Hungarians, French and Greeks have been holding it up.
***And, you know damn well the ONLY chance Ukraine would have “winning” would be with direct US involvement. NATO Europe would get its ass kicked the Russians.***
No one in the UK government is talking about going to war with Russia over Ukraine. Taking back Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk is not possible for the Ukrainians (and I would argue not desirable either). Even just holding the Russians back and maintaining a heavily fortified border based on the current front line would be a win for Ukraine.
***American citizens will [not] tolerate US troops on the ground. You can give up that idea.***
I never put that idea forward. In fact, I have explicitly ruled it out several times in this thread!
***the only course of action for Ukraine, if it wants to save what’s left of its country, would be to surrender. Continuing this war will only result in more dead Ukrainians and more lost territory.***
How will surrendering save their country? It would likely lead to a bloody insurgency and mass-murder/genocide by the Russians. The Russians are not reasonable people and their Army is well known for its brutality. They resemble Nazi Germany in many ways.
Only because conservatives in Congress refused to allow $61 billion more to Ukraine.
You don't seem to get, Americans are sick of funding a war that can only result in more dead Ukrainians and more lost territory.
Nothing but death and the destruction of Ukraine is being accomplished.
Because will take as much of it as necessary to end this war and there is NO chance of anything stopping that other than a Ukrainian surrender.
Russia never wanted to do anything more than to liberate the territory it has already annexed, areas where the largest ethnic groups are Russian and there were disenfranchised by the illegal coup that took place in 2014 that drove out a President the vast majority there voted for.
There is no question is WAS an illegal coup. One that CIA and, I'm sure, the MI6, helped foment.
And, after it was completed, the Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis went on to persecute those in eastern Ukraine. They tried to cutoff Russia from its naval base in Crimea, which has existed longer than the US Constitution has. They also cutoff the water to Crimea.
There is no chance in the world that those in Crimea and eastern Ukraine should have had tolerate that kind of abuse of their human rights.
We had no business there.
***You don’t seem to get, Americans are sick of funding a war that can only result in more dead Ukrainians and more lost territory.***
We in the UK/EU aren’t happy about spending 100s of billions to continue a brutal war either. But we, and the USA, made an agreement with Ukraine to help safeguard their borders in the case of attack by a nuclear power (Russia) after they gave up their nuclear weapons. Now that the thing we promised would not happen - has happened - it would be unethical to just throw them to the wolves.
I think the $300 billion in Russian assets frozen in Europe, the USA and Japan, should be used to support Ukraine’s war effort. (More money than that would be due to Ukraine as war reparations from Russia if there was any chance of making Russia pay out in the future.) It could allow the Ukrainians to escalate their attacks to the point where the Russians would be more amenable to a peace deal with fair terms for Ukraine.
***Nothing but death and the destruction of Ukraine is being accomplished. ...
Because will take as much of it as necessary to end this war and there is NO chance of anything stopping that other than a Ukrainian surrender.
Russia never wanted to do anything more than to liberate the territory it has already annexed***
That’s wishful thinking I’m afraid. Can you see into Putin’s brain? Besides, if that’s the case why did they try to grab the Kyiv region in 2022?
The idea that if we stopped assisting Ukraine that far less Ukrainian lives would be lost is naive. It’s much more likely that Russia would just opt to roll through Ukraine unchecked and loot, rape, torture and murder enmasse with impunity if this happened.
There is also a danger that Poland would see this outcome as a major threat to their national security and send in their Armed Forces from the west to halt Russia inside Ukraine and create a buffer zone between them and Poland. That could lead to escalation into a major war. (The west of Ukraine used to be part of Poland and if Ukraine were to collapse militarily the Poles might want to help the ethnic Polish Ukrainians on the other side of their border.)
In the case of a Ukrainian surrender millions of Ukrainians would head west as refugees which would be a huge problem for the EU. The Poles might decide that securing an area of western Ukraine would also be the best place to keep all those Ukrainian refugees.
We know Putin wouldn’t make any real motions towards genuine peace and non-interference in Ukraine. Hence cutting off Ukraine = forfeiting untold numbers of Ukrainian lives. Let alone making the USA/West look really weak after all their promises to Ukraine, which will likely encourage China to make a move on Taiwan when it is ready to do that.
***There is no question is WAS an illegal coup.***
Viktor Yanukovych was guilty of serious crimes against the Ukrainian people. He would have been removed using the correct legal impeachment process anyway and the Kremlin would still have complained bitterly about that.
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