917 Comments

No one called anyone a Nazi. Rather, your opinion recalls similar appeasement attitudes of the past. This includes an exaggeration of the long term effects on our economy, the same tact taken by America Firsters in the 1930s.

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I'm going to ignore your offense of my "attack" on your religion and chalk it up as blind faith. I could direct you to read books like "Apocalypse Never" by Michael Shellenberger, But I won't waste my time. It's like telling a Christian that God doesn't exist. All of the studies you are referencing were funded by someone with an interest in the "data", that's a fact. You go on believing what you will and virtue signalling as you please, I know what the actual science says and that's what matters to me. The difference is, like Shellenberger, I have lived on both sides of the debate, my change of mind came from combining data that came without an agenda with a desire to be a better thinker, you can go on enjoying your wilful ignorance, it is of no consequence to me.

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We wish it were so simple... good guys and bad guys, good nations and nations that need to be rebuilt. The US was never intended to be the policeman of the world. And, its handiwork in Vietnam and later across Africa and the Middle East, the latter using "Arab Spring" killed millions.

And, remember the country of Yugoslavia that the US using all sorts of false flags bombed into six new counties just twenty years ago. So much for border integrity.

Kiev was once the capital of Russia. And, it was US Senator McCain with Obama's Secretary of the State on the ground exhorting the West's rioters to run the elected President out of Ukraine because he was Russia leaning.... so a thousand Hunter Bidens could fly in to suck the country dry.

And, the authors laid the groundwork to drive Russian out of Ukraine. Removing Russian language from Ukraine society, NGO's buying up Ukraine TV stations, outlawing political parties, etc.

The US tens of billions "spent" on Ukraine is driven by war mongers who pocket essentially all the money to deliver death to Eastern Europe. Repeating US failure in Syria and Afghan... just wash, rinse and repeat in Ukraine.

US Army Draftee 1969

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No....... The Nazi loving and Democracy Hating Ukrainians are not winning.......End the propaganda bull. It's not our fight. Biden is dangerous. Seriously dangerous because he thinks he is a tough guy. This ends in another Failure for the USA. Haven't won a war since WW2 ( Granada? ). Enough with with war mongering articles....no war.

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Good explanation of Ukraine’s success in achieving its military objectives, which are also US military objectives in this conflict. In fact, the only reason it is not called the Russo-American War is because Ukraine does the fighting while America and its European allies supply weaponry, strategy, intelligence and money. Talk of an American land war in Eastern Europe might raise concerns about potential consequences of fighting and winning such a conflict, so maybe that is another reason to characterize the conflict as Ukraine vs. Russia. The recent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline is an act of war. We don’t know who did it or what its ultimate effects will be, but someone saw it as a winning tactic. Wars tend to expand unpredictably.

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It's pretty clear, and should have been beforehand, that Russia ceased to be a great power when the Soviet Union dissolved. Putin did put up a lot of Potemkin-like smokescreens to fool everyone to think otherwise, then made very good use of skills leftover from the KGB and the Cold War to bamboozle the "paleo-right" and some on the far left as well with so many rationalizations and "what-about-isms" and "hey, we're opposed to genderism too!". That's the Russian forte at this point. Its life as an imperial power is long gone.

Meanwhile, we've hearteningly seen a new nation (old people, but fairly new state) being born. Nationalism beats imperialism. Keep that foremost.

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1. Zelensky should be in a category of his own. That man’s shear will has held that country together. Ukraine is far from the bastion of unity some make it out to be. They have some serious internal drama.

2. Yea, America has her own problems. She always will. Abandoning Ukraine won’t fix those problems.

3. This isn’t a war of politics. Plenty of Republicans would have provided aid. And before the screams of “RINO” start, a reminder: the GOP is not homogeneous. Just because you don’t like what a particular Republican says does not make you right and them wrong.

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Ukraine will win this war. I am a vet. I studied army organization and tactics as an information specialist with The First Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas under the command of Gen. Ralph E. Haines, one of the Army’s greatest intellects. It was just before Vietnam heated up to a major military engagement. Our involvement was then counter-insurgency (Green Berets) and it should have stayed that, but the hunger for rank among the officer corps made a major inevitable. I grew up during WWII and the war was all around me. I became a newspaper reporter but did not avoid the draft. I was nurtured in the Hemingway ethos and felt that being tested in the military was a necessary part of my development as a male. At Fort Hood I made the first helicopter tactics training film. At the time the flew “nap of the earth” flying at a hair-raising bush-high altitude and down rail tracks and tank trails. I crashed once and walked away laughing. (The Army does that to you; it’s not that you’re fearless, it’s that violence is just part of the day).

I also made a feature length documentary about ROAD, all while being an editorial staffer onm the The Fort Hood Armored Sentinel, the weekly post newspaper.

The US Army is the greatest educational institution in the world. They can teach anybody anything by breaking down everything into its constituent elements (by-the-numbers) and repeating the functional application until you can do it in your sleep. More importantly, do it in the field, with the world exploding around you. Much of the Ukrainian Army is US trained.

Russia is a mess. The creation of the Soviet Mind broke down any individual initiative that existed in the Russian population over seventy years of totalitarianism. Its idea of tactics is to throw massive amounts of personnel and artillery at an enemy and presumably crush them with its weight. An agile, fast moving army can dodge this weight, circle and flank at will: the US trained Ukrainian Army. Ukraine has always resisted being Sovietized. Ukrainians are self-motivated.

Before WWII flared, Russia invaded Finland, a country of five million people facing a behemoth of more than 125 million. Russia was repelled by the Finns and finally relented.

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I wish I more encouraged by the authors' arguments, but...

Taking nothing away from the skill, courage and recent accomplishments of the Ukrainian military, one must still reckon with the sheer scale of military resources in Russia. Putin will just throw more bodies and artillery at Ukraine, and he has lots of both. Better soldiers may TAKE territory, but larger numbers of soldiers (and artillery) are needed to HOLD territory.

My main worry is that Putin, having left himself no other way to exit this fiasco, either escalates the pain (bombing cities/civilians) or settles in for a long war of attrition where the only real objective would be to keep him in power.

The nuclear option carries obvious international deterrents, but I wonder if using nukes would make him more politically vulnerable at home where he holds power now more through intimidation and corruption, and not so much by popular mandate anymore. For Putin, it's the high life of Russian dictator, or death - he really has nowhere else to go and live.

So Putin is "all in" but with an almost endless supply of chips. Theref, as much as I might wish otherwise, recent Ukrainian military successes don't easily extrapolate into overall victory as things sit today.

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This is a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity for the US to field test all the weapons and tactics it has developed over decades to counter Russia. What we learn here will pay dividends for decades to come. And regarding recession, it might be just what we need to instill a better work ethic and give a glimpse of what real hardship is to our younger generations.

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Having spent considerable time perusing the comments section of this post, I have to say I'm amazed at the level of self-deception being engaged in by people who can fairly be described as national conservatives or natcons.

Broadly the characterize these comments, they assert (1) that Ukraine is a corrupt neo-Nazi state, (2) that NATO is an aggressive alliance with designs on Russia, (3) that President Biden is a "warmonger," and (4) that V. Putin is a much-maligned, misunderstood Russian nationalist who was driven to invade Ukraine by an existential threat to his country's security. Not every comment embodies all four points, but most of them touch on two or three.

Not one of these assertions is true. To believe in them is to stand reality on its head; Mr. Orwell's Newspeak word "blackwhite" comes to mind.

This basic failure to get on terms with reality leads to additional delusions. One is that so far, Putin hasn't really been trying to win his war on Ukraine. But now, with "mobilization," the Russian steamroller will really rumble into action. Of course this is hokum. Putin committed the elite units of the Russian armed forces to the initial invasion of Ukraine and, as we know, they failed to execute their mission, suffering a humiliating defeat north of Kyiv. In the process, many of these elite units suffered personnel and equipment losses that rendered them combat ineffective. Now they'll be filled up with sketchily trained, unmotivated, resentful conscripts and reservists, armed with older weapons. There's a term for units like that: cannon fodder. No, what Putin couldn't do with the best of his army he certainly won't be able to do with the dregs of it. We're not talking about Stalin and the Red Army here. Russian military power appeared formidable on paper, but it simply isn't up to the task of defeating a country the size of Ukraine.

Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, natcons cling to the myth of Russian might. It one of the modern wonders of the world—a delusion to rival Donald Trump's zany claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

And if you're not willing to take Mr. Spencer's and Mr. Collins's word for this, you can take it from me, a real soldier: I was a United States Army Supply Sergeant.

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Thank you for your service. The Ukraine situation and our involvement therein has clearly struck a nerve with you. I do not take the author's word for this. Nor, with all due respect do I take yours. I do not know what is going on over there. Neither do you. I see evidence that Ukraine is a corrupt state and it has a well-documented history of Nazi involvement. But for what it is worth the far-right regiment charged with being Nazis is putting up one hell of a fight. I give credit where credit is due. I have no reason to believe that NATO had designs on Russia nor do I recall comments to that affect. I do not recall comments that our President is a "warmonger" but I could have missed it. Plus I like to think that warmongers are that way because of military ability. I think Biden is weak and ineffectual to the point of embarrassment (thus the need for the tyoe of propaganda this post consists of).I do recall several comments that the Democratic party has gone from pretty much anti-military industrial complex to fully embracing it. I see validity to that point. I am of an age where I am opposed to all things communist (and Nazi for that matter) so I don't think Putin is much-maligned. I do think he has/had valid concerns about what was transpiring in his backyard with the support and encouragement of the US government. I find it incredibly foolish to dismiss those concerns. I have a lot of skepticism about the reportage on the war in Ukraine and US involvement there. I do not believe proxy wars are moral or just and I think morality matters. I have no delusions just healthy skepticism.

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Anyone interested in a different view on what led up to this conflict, go watch Ukraine on Fire (https://fos-sa.org/2022/03/04/oliver-stone-ukraine-on-fire/) and Revealing Ukraine (https://fos-sa.org/2022/03/11/oliver-stone-revealing-ukraine/). By no means am I suggesting that these two films are 100% accurate nor neutral. It simply presents information and ideas that go beyond what we're told by our media. Of particular interest is the leaked phone call where our State Department is discussing who we will install as president in the Ukraine before the coup began.

I am not suggesting that Putin is a victim. I am not suggesting that Russia's invasion was justified. It's simply about trying to look at this conflict from different perspectives.

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Have we learned nothing from our misadventures in Viet Nam? Iraq? Afganistan?

No good can come from this war either.

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Sorry, the Russian Army simply collapsed in 1917, after the February Revolution but before the Bolshevik seizure of power. Lenin & Co. sued for peace for the simple reason that they had no means of defense remaining to them. The old army was gone; the Red Army was yet to be raised. For the full story, you might check out Norman Stone's "The Eastern Front 1914-1917," which relates this tale of woe in grim detail. My advice would be not to buy into the myth of the Russian steamroller.

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Thats true, if Germany hadn't collapsed Lenin would have been in Moscow with Ukraine and the Baltics German vassal states as his neighbor.

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To those who scoff at the allegation I made that the left is trying to crash the economy, here’s another example. This is the title of an editorial in yesterday’s WSJ—

A Gore-Kerry Political Climate Hit

They want the World Bank to guarantee climate lending losses.

So when climate change motivated projects fail, losing millions of dollars, others pay. Hey, what can go wrong?

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Formidable analysis. Missing, however, is compensation for the "cornered bear" theory. Dated as the arsenal may be, it too is still formidable, or at the very least sufficient.

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