The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Do you approve of Putin bombing civilian targets in Ukraine?

I don't think they can respond to this.  They have not in prior requests by you and Matt.

[Matt Allison]

3 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

I don't think they can respond to this.  They have not in prior requests by you and Matt.

Of course they can't.

[W. Niederhut]

1 minute ago, Ron Bulman said:

I don't think they can respond to this.  They have not in prior requests by you and Matt.

Yes, it's weird.  None of us would hesitate to express outrage about Hitler bombing English civilians with his damned V-2 rockets in WWII.  But that's, essentially, what Putin is doing to the Ukrainian people right now.

The man is a homicidal psychopath with a morbid hatred of Western democracy.

[Benjamin Cole]

34 minutes ago, Matthew Koch said:

Lololololols
Ben, I think you're going to enjoy this!
Matt and William what's the cope going to be? 


 

 

MK--

Like any sane person, I have reservations about the US getting involved in military operations, seemingly in every square inch of the planet, from Vietnam, to Afghanistan to Iraq, to Syria, to Ukraine, to Grenada, and various adventures in Africa and South America, the Caribbean.

US foreign-military-trade policies are run by globalists, for the benefit of multinationals and financial elites. 

It is not clear whether US policy in Ukraine is being made by the Deep State or the elected US president, or whether some elements within the security state baited Putin into Ukraine. 

As pointed out in a recent WaPo article, the US signaled it would not oppose a Russian occupation of Ukraine, and the Obama and Biden Administrations have been flaccid in responses to Russian aggression, particularly in Crimea. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/12/baltics-poland-russia-warnings-nato/

OK, water under the bridge. Hindsight is 20/20. 

What now?

What are US aims in Ukraine? Eviction of Russian troops rom Ukraine, or regime change in Moscow? The latter goal could entail a very long stalemate---a Russian quagmire---in Ukraine. In fact, this may be the US goal in the war. 

All that said, Putin has proven himself a monster in Ukraine, in a volitional war against people he claims he regards as countrymen.  

I believe, as an occupying power, Russia will incur losses for years and then settle for some version of peace---if the US allows it. It may be that US Deep Staters wants to perpetuate this war.  

The longer this war goes on, the more resolve and smarts the Ukrainians will evolve. That is always the way of occupied nations.

Putin bombing Ukrainian cities? Now, the Ukrainians will never, never give up. 

 

 

 

 

[Matthew Koch]

35 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

I don't think they can respond to this.  They have not in prior requests by you and Matt.

I don't think I need to respond to the begging the question adhomim, because it's pretty obvious I'm against civilians dying in a military conflict.  

 My position is these people died because of YOUR no settlement policy with Russia which caused this. The 600lb Gorilla in the room is that if Donald Trump was still President none of those people would have died and Putin would not have invaded. 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

Just now, Matthew Koch said:

I don't think I need to respond to the begging the question adhomim, because it's pretty obvious I'm against civilians dying in a military conflict.  

 My position is these people died because of YOUR no settlement policy with Russia which caused this. The 600lb Gorilla in the room is that if Donald Trump was still President none of those people would have died and Putin would not have invaded. 

 

Setting aside partisan politics, why did the Russians invade Crimea when Obama was president, and then invade Ukraine when Biden was president? 

Was Trump's unconventional, unorthodox diplomacy actually effective in dealing with Putin? 

In terms of results---well, the results are there. 

[Matthew Koch]

1 minute ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Setting aside partisan politics, why did the Russians invade Crimea when Obama was president, and then invade Ukraine when Biden was president? 

Was Trump's unconventional, unorthodox diplomacy actually effective in dealing with Putin? 

In terms of results---well, the results are there. 

Give this a watch it starts at the 35:00mark with Scott Ritter 

 

[W. Niederhut]

10 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Setting aside partisan politics, why did the Russians invade Crimea when Obama was president, and then invade Ukraine when Biden was president? 

Was Trump's unconventional, unorthodox diplomacy actually effective in dealing with Putin? 

In terms of results---well, the results are there. 

"Setting aside partisan politics..."   Posted without intentional irony, eh, Ben?

Trump's "diplomacy?"

Are you referring to Trump's embarrassing press conference in Helsinki, after Putin dressed him down behind closed doors?

Certainly, our EU allies had no illusions about the fact that Trump was, obviously, a compromised Kremlin asset.

The only people on the planet who still haven't figured that out are the Republicans in the Trump cult.

My hunch is that Putin didn't want to undermine his Orange Asset by annexing Ukraine while Trump was POTUS.

He miscalculated, because Trump would have rolled over for Putin on demand.

Meanwhile, Ben, did you and Mathew Koch watch the historic J6 Congressional hearing today?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Do you approve of Putin bombing civilian targets in Ukraine?

 

28 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

I don't think they can respond to this.  They have not in prior requests by you and Matt.

 

25 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

Of course they can't.

 

24 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Yes, it's weird.  None of us would hesitate to express outrage about Hitler bombing English civilians with his damned V-2 rockets in WWII.  But that's, essentially, what Putin is doing to the Ukrainian people right now.

The man is a homicidal psychopath with a morbid hatred of Western democracy.

This really is a forum low point. Do you really think this is a difficult question to answer?
 

I would suggest that the obvious reason it has not been answered is that it wasn’t relevant to debate. It wasn’t contrary to a position that I have taken. William and Matt certainly can’t comprehend that there can be any other position than theirs in regard to Russia and the horrific conflict that we are witnessing. ie that it is more nuanced than a simple heroes and villains comic book story. Of course this has been laid out and ignored, repeatedly. 
 

The big issue in your comprehension is that, nobody I have seen here is pro-putin, or war crimes. So, to ask if we are pro the bombing of civilians, is beyond ridiculous, whoever the perpetrator is. We are not even pro war. In fact I have openly said I seek detente, rapprochement and peace. Its not acceptable when the US, Russia, or Ukraine does it. I don’t recall much outrage of your parts when Dugin’s daughter was car bombed (assassination is a war crime). Unless I have missed something; your compassionate, humanitarian selves were taking a break that day. 
 

Perhaps there is another explanation aside from pure innocent naivety? If you guys think you can keep malevolently asking questions that suggest people might be pro-war crimes, or anything else heinous, to slur or stigmatise members, when the persons are clearly not pro those things, then it really sets an insidious precedent. And it works both ways. Given this forum is public, searchable on google, I would question if the shoe were on the other foot, how much you’d like your own names associated with questions that suggest you are pro something that is morally reprehensible? It can work both ways gentleman. Of course my recommendation is that everyone stops doing this particular thing, before it really gets out of hand. 

[W. Niederhut]

      Incredibly, Chris Barnard doesn't seem to realize that there are a number of people on the forum, and in the right wing media, who have been directly or indirectly blaming Joe Biden and/or the U.S. for Putin's decision to invade and bomb Ukraine this year.

    Chris, himself, has repeatedly blamed the U.S. for Putin's bloody debacle, quoting Mearsheimer, and accusing Putin critics of projection and mass psychosis. 🤥

    On this very page, we can observe Ben and Mathew Koch claiming that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if his Orange Asset Donald Trump were still POTUS.  

    The only thing consistent about Ben's shifting 2022 opinions on Ukraine is that, whatever happens, it's Biden's fault.

     Ben had argued for much of 2022 that Biden and NATO should have been more aggressive militarily in supporting Ukraine, but now his narrative has shifted to implying that Biden is a militant globalist lackey who baited Putin into further expansion of his neo-Soviet police state.

    Meanwhile, I hope that Ben and his MAGA-verse associate, Mathew Koch, listened to the damning Congressional evidence today about Trump's criminal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

[Matthew Koch]

1 minute ago, W. Niederhut said:

    Meanwhile, I hope that Ben and his MAGA-verse associate, Mathew Koch, listened to the damning Congressional evidence today about Trump's criminal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Nope, I watched this clip about today's nothing burger in the morning and skipped it ..

 

[Pamela Brown]

It is my thinking that Putin wants to resurrect the USSR at any cost. I also think he is ill and suspects he does not have all the time in the world to do this.  I also think the US and the West have agendas about Ukraine, to perhaps put it into NATO and the UN, to give it higher status, which is infuriating Putin.

But I agree that the lack of outrage at what is happening before our eyes makes no sense. Putin wants scorched earth...to start from scratch...and has destroyed everything those living there have built, along with their lives and futures.  

Everyone seems to be tiptoeing because of the fact that it is generally acknowledged Putin is reckless at best, or, at worse, will stop at nothing to get what he wants.  And so we are left with a dangerous quagmire.  Or an unknown...

[Jeff Carter]

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

John,

      Where to begin?  You're wrong about Russian history, and about the "projection" misdiagnosis.   To deny Putin's goal of re-incorporating former Soviet republics into his fascist police state is to deny 21st century reality.  To accurately perceive what he is up to is no "projection."  Look at what he has done in Chechnya and Ukraine.

      Stephen Kotkin is a professor Russian historian at our highly prestigious Princeton University here in the U.S.  He has written a number of acclaimed books about Russian history.  You have simplistically misrepresented his thesis and accurate criticism of Mearsheimer's Putin apologetics.

     I should mention that I have had a longstanding interest in Russian history, literature, and culture.  I have even served as a cantor in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROCOR) during the past quarter century.   And the man who wrote the definitive history of the ROCOR has been a personal friend of mine.

     Stephen Kotkin is quite correct about the history of Russian imperialism.  Obviously, the Russian Empire has been one of the great empires in world history-- spanning one-sixth of the world's land mass.  They played a decisive role in crushing Napoleon and Hitler.  We owe them a debt of gratitude for their defeat of the N-a-z-i  Wehrmacht in WWII.  80% of N-a-z-i military casualties in WWII occurred in Russia.

     As for Ukraine, Russia's imperialist aspirations for control of the Don Cossacks and the Crimea was first achieved by Potemkin during the reign of Catherine the Great.  But the Ukrainians have also had longstanding nationalist aspirations.  Petlyura's regime succeeded the 1918 Hetmanate before the ultimate triumph of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, and its incorporation into the U.S.S.R.'s police state. 

     In the 1930s, the Soviet government was directly responsible for the genocidal Ukrainian famine of the Holodomor.

     Then, voila!  Ukraine achieved independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

     So, like Kotkin, I tend to view Putin's aspirations to annex the Ukraine as part of a centuries-old autocratic, Russian imperialist tradition.  It's not a projection.  It's reality.

    The imperialism of the Romanov's Russian Empire was transmuted by the Bolshevik revolution into the "imperialism" of Stalin's U.S.S.R. and Comintern.    Eastern Europeans have had no illusions about it.  Recall that Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland before Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa.  

     Then, look at the fate of the Baltic republics and Warsaw Pact nations in the post-WWII era.   

    What is the attitude toward Moscow of people living on Russia's boundaries?  Estonia? Lithuania? Poland? Chechnya?  Georgia?

    As I said, I'm the furthest thing from an apologist for the atrocities of the CIA and U.S. military in the post-WWII era.  At the same time, I pointed out to you the contrast between the U.S. Marshall Plan in Western Europe and the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe after WWII.

     Would you have preferred to live in Dresden or Munich in the 1960s and 70s? 

     As for the present, what you think about Putin doing to Ukraine what Hitler did to England during WWII?

     Do you approve of Putin bombing civilian targets in Ukraine?

Kotkin’s “debunking” of Mearshiemer and the “Realists” in general consisted of little more than the assertion that Putin, in particular, and Russians, in general, are ruled by a flawed genetic structure which makes them inherently aggressive and unreasonable. This is the sort of essentialist racialist nonsense which has been rightfullly condemned by all humanist thinkers since at least the end of WW2 as not only absent of any quantifiable measurement but also representative of abhorrent genocidal policies. In the case of Russia / Russians, it is a view identified with the U.S. neoconservatives - who are entirely responsible for America’s Ukraine policy.  That this type of thinking would be endorsed on this forum by self-described “progressive Democrats” is appalling and yet oddly just part of the times we live in.

The neoconservatives have never been correct in analysis or prediction. Their policies have always led to carnage and disaster. Compare the year 2003 with 2022 and the names “Saddam” and “Putin” could be interchangeable in context of the presumed psychological projections.

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Matthew Koch said:

Give this a watch it starts at the 35:00mark with Scott Ritter 

 

MK-

I appreciate your alternative viewpoints and also those of Scott Ritter. 

But, jeez, how many times did the U.S. re-fabricate its war plans in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to no avail?

Indeed, forgotten today is President Obama's surge in Afghanistan:  

---

Obama's Afghanistan Policy - jstor

https://www.jstor.org › stable › resrep09346

End of 2009, President Obama, came up with his “Surge” policy, whereby, he decided to send 30,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan.

---30---

Well, the Obama surge flopped too.  Occupations are a losing proposition.  Why  did Obama compound a losing situation, and kill more people for nothing? 

To be sure, Russia will improve war plans, call up more troops. Maybe bombs away. 

But unless the Ukrainians are different from people everywhere, the Putin war-making will only deepen Ukrainian resolve.

Every Ukrainian killed is another Ukrainian family, group of friends, business associates, church group, or neighborhood galvanized to fight to the last person. Every Russian bomb dropped creates a neighborhood that will never surrender. 

Sure, some of the border regions may be conflicted due to ethnic Russian populations. 

This looks like a Russian quagmire. I hope for an armistice, or Russian withdrawal. What I hope for and what happens....

[Matt Allison]

4 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

the names “Saddam” and “Putin” could be interchangeable in context of the presumed psychological projections.

LOL

Try not to bomb any playgrounds today, ok?