So I enjoy another point of view, but I think you've missed the boat on why people in this country don't want war, and it's not that we don't know ourselves. I think we've gotten too good a picture of ourselves.
Last night on Tucker Carlson, he showed a few clips of our politicians defending intervention in this mess, of which two struck me. The first was Lindsey Graham, who told us that we had to "defend democracy." Lindsey Graham is the same man who won't say a word about censorship, who won't go visit the people in the DC jail who have been kept in solitary confinement for nearly a year, and who has not said a word about Fidel Castro Jr to the north of us freezing bank accounts for people who were peacefully protesting. If Lindsey Graham won't defend our own democracy, his calls to defend Ukraine's so-called democracy fall flat. And then after him was Nancy Pelosi, so spitting mad she could barely keep her teeth in her mouth, talking about how Putin was an evil rich man who only got wealthy exploiting his own people. This is the woman who, with her husband, has used her position in Congress to amass a fortune of nearly a half a billion dollars. Talk about exploiting people.
So here is what people have started to recognize. We need to "fix" America before we go telling other countries what to do. Over two years of COVID and even before we have watched as large corporations have, with our politicians and bureaucracy, taken over the running of this country for their own benefit, increasingly squashing any complaints as "fascism" (irony of ironies), white supremacy, racism, the list goes on and on. We don't have a democracy here anymore and we're starting to recognize it. In other words, we know exactly who we've become, and we don't like it one little bit and we're not going to be distracted from our own problems by a bunch of elites that start a war in Europe. For two years, we've been mandating that people wear ineffective coverings on their faces, get vaccines that don't work, locking people in their homes, tearing children away from schools for no reason, forcing people to die alone. Nothing was "democratic" about that much less humane. So when people tell us, OMG, Russia will take over, we shrug. Right now, the authoritarianism of Russia and the authoritarianism of the West is just a matter of degrees and we have no room to go pointing fingers. *That* is why there is no appetite for war.
This article was absolutely hilarious... can anyone tell me what the point of writing, or worse, reading that, actually was? Nowhere in the entire article did he make any rational argument whatsoever regarding what our costs will be and what our benefits will be. We literally now view politics as a "I say, you do" equation, as a opposed to a "you tell me why, I decide, and vote accordingly based on my willingness to trade that cost, for that benefit."
When America "fought" the cold war, it was on the rational basis of illustrating that freedom and liberty create more value for citizens than communism does. We all agreed on that, and we won simply by being more free than they are. You'll have to forgive the citizens of the United States, who watch their freedoms be stripped every day, if fighting for principles our leaders no longer believe in in the first place is just a step too far.
Today, I'm MUCH more worried about the communism on our northern border, on our airplanes, and in our schools than I am about Putin doing EXACTLY what we did during the cold war and trying to eliminate threats on his border (Cuba, anyone?)
Regardless, our gender studies professor (why is he writing an article on war in Russia/Ukraine?) are going to have to explain exactly what they think we're fighting for before any rational person is going to listen. As ridiculous as it is, at least when we went to Iraq most sane people accepted it was for oil. A ridiculous reason, and a war CANNOT be won without occupation following that war (it has never happened in human history) so we knew we weren't going to win, but at least we could rationalize the economic principles back home. It was a disaster, we all know it (and most knew it at the time), but at least we pretended. Biden CHOSE to give up energy independence, the single most important stabilizing factor for a country in the global hierarchy (can you taste all those coal plants burning in China?) and now is pretending we need a war to stabilize energy markets? The biggest problem we have in waging war (which we only do as a means for laundering our ridiculous debt anyway...) is that half the American people are no longer quite so uneducated on why exactly we're doing what we're doing. And no one seems to want to have to a rational discussion about that as they scream "we must go to war to project strength for the world." Strength in what exactly? Strength in promoting gender studies? I just need anyone to say this in a way that makes sense and doesn't scream of hypocrisy.
The best sanction we have is to ramp up energy production . We do it better and cleaner than Russia. It will also put us in a better position with the Iran negotiations. The climate alarmist know it but they don’t care. Time to stop listening to children - the world is a dangerous place . If we don’t, expect Taiwan to be next and for Biden to sign a weak agreement with Iran (for oil) and then war in Mideast . 2024 is too far away .
Trump had all of this under control via economic leverage - the best weapon ever invented - which is why the Cabal - Molly Ball at Time(Feb 5th 2021) - had to unseat him.
Tariffs were killing China, 52 cruise missiles crippled Syria, he made the U.S. into a net energy exporter crippling Iran and Russia, he killed Soliemani - the one man most responsible for killing Americans thereby neutralizing Iran further, created the Abraham Accords instigating true peace in the middle east, secured our southern border(for once), and on and on and on... Stability in the world defined.
Biden has undone all of this and here we are. As someone who has been to war for these United States I am here to tell you that our resolve has never wavered for this country, but our leaders have been bought off(Biden family purchased by Burisma(Ukraine) and China) and we will not support them in any way.
We wouldn’t want China plopping a military base with strike capabilities on the Rio Grande. Why would Putin want one on his border? This wouldn’t have happened if we just treated Ukraine like Finland as neutral and stopped with this nonsense of letting them in NATO which wouldn’t happen anyway. Or if Clinton accepted Russia’s offer to join NATO in 1999 in order to counter China. Or if Orange man had won.
Obama also organized a coup in 2013 to throw out the democratically elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine and put in power the current pro-west authoritarian dictator of Ukraine. Our coups have consequences. The pro-Russian, Russian Orthodox, Russian speaking people of eastern Ukraine became separatist starting in 2014 because, shocker, they like Russia better than us. In North America we go around locking up political opponents of the left, we have a biased lying media, we hurt working people with political policy. Why would the people of Eastern Ukraine pass up the culturally similar authoritarians in Russia in exchange for the not culturally similar authoritarians in the west?
Next, there are military skirmishes in disputed areas around the world all the time. Our media ignores most of them. The vast majority of Americans had no clue Brandon was using drones to bomb North Africa in July 2021 just before the Afghan debacle. We don’t pay attention to constant fighting in countries starting with a K bordering Russia. But with Covid ending, and an administration desperate to blame inflation the administration’s policies have directly caused on an external cause, here we go fanning the Russia flames, pretending we want Ukraine in NATO, causing global geopolitical instability. Idiocy is how we stumbled into WWI - which was pointless. We do not want to stumble into WW III!!!!
If a bunch of oil and natural gas leases hadn’t been cancelled by Brandon we’d still be energy independent. Putin wouldn’t have leverage over us. I guess leftist want to be enslaved by the WEF because they keep voting for this predictable bs.
Before I permanently deleted Facebook I predicted the following if Brandon won. Not because I’m a super genius, but because it was predictable. Remember that - this was known and predictable and discussed and those voting for Brandon ignored the warnings because mean tweets birth their feelings and Covid scared them. Please don’t do it again in 2022 and 2024.
Here were my predictions in fall 2020 (I wish I had been wrong):
“1 - We are going to have inflation either way, but if Biden wins it will be much, much worse. He will institute policies
to cut oil and gas production here when there is no alternative. It will make climate change worse because countries like China and India will increase coal usage. It will drive up the prices of everything here and most hurt the poor and middle class.
2 - Covid won’t end in 100 days under Brandon. Masks might come off for summer, but back on they’ll go when seasonal cases tick up in the fall. It won’t end until some other crises can be used to fear monger. There will likely be a vaccine this year, but our first attempt aren’t usually all that great. It took over a century to get the smallpox vaccine down. Hopefully a great tool for the actually vulnerable, but kids aren’t and they are sitting at home for no reason in every school district controlled by Democrats today. How long will you put up with this?
3 - Geopolitical instability. Biden is weak. Putin and Xi are not. Putin will take a land grab. I don’t know if it will be eastern Ukraine, some pro-Russian K country, or part of Finland’s frozen tundra, hopefully not thriving Poland, but he won’t miss the opportunity to take something as he always does under weak US presidents. Where the pain here begins is if Xi takes Taiwan. Let’s pray that doesn’t happen.
4 - For all the demands to tax people “like me” more, the reality is my tax bill will probably fall with any tax change. The rich already pay the most proportional in taxes here, unlike Europe where individual taxes are flat, VAT are regressive, and corporate taxes low. I’ll most likely get my SALT deduction back on 100% of my income and pay 2% more on a small portion. My overall tax bill will drop. Even if I don’t get SALT back, the inflation tax will hurt you under Biden way more than a 2% increase on a small portion of my income plus the proportional effect of inflation on me. Inflation increases the asset values of those who own them already, and expenses for all.
5 - Our schools will excelerate their long decline and continue focusing on ridiculous neoracist theories, sexualization of little kids will expand, that the teacher’s unions, not the children, matter will become very obvious. The left thinks only wealthy parents should have a say in schools. They tell you as much when they say “send them to private school if you want a say” all the time. If the left is smart they will stop saying this out loud, but they aren’t, so I suspect every few weeks there will be more stories about more Dem politicians and teacher’s unions telling parents who don’t want their kids taught to judge others based on skin tone or don’t want sexual orientation, of any type, discussed with their 1st grader, to go pound sand.
I get people hate Trump personally, but Presidential elections involve voting FOR policies and candidates. They aren’t a popularity contest on “do you like orange man?” Forget this at your own risk. Regardless of what you tell yourself or narrative sounds pretty, we are all going to have live with the actual policy outcomes. I hope I’m wrong, but if Biden wins, remember the bad was predictable even if I’m only right about one of these things. Can you even imagine if they all happen? Is that a risk you want to take because you hate Trump personally?”
Not a word from Zoe about what Europe would or should do, after all it is a European problem, but just like Yugoslavia they expect the U.S. to do all the heavy lifting. Maybe Blinken should send Putin his Spotify music.
For many Americans post-Iraq, it boils down to one question: whose child is going to be sent to war?
Would you tolerate your son or daughter sent to the front lines of Ukraine or Taiwan?
It’s relatively easy to send arms, but this won’t stop a motivated invasion by a superior force; the kind of deterrence that the author, or McMaster are talking about requires boots on the ground.
Putin may be a bad guy, but before you pound the drums of war, reflect on whether you’d send your own child to defend these faraway countries. No, you wouldn’t. You’d assume that’s the work of some military family down south, or in your own working class suburbs. Probably people who voted for Trump.
Wrong. If you really believe in shoring up the international order with actual deterrence, then you’ve got to have skin the game.
Democrats don’t want to exert American power because they think exerting power is evil white imperialism. They just want to stand unified in feckless disappointment with Europe because it makes them feel sophisticated.
Republicans no longer want to exert American power because they know that the aforementioned people who hate America will be in charge of the effort.
Basically everyone who went to Harvard and Yale hates the United States because they were trained to hate the United States by ‘intellectuals’. They control the permanent government. That’s why we are here.
My go-to for war expertise is always an intimacy and gender “expert!” Zoe’s piece simply adds to the entire theater this Bad Russia vs The Biden-exploiting Urkraine really is. No sane individual trusts anything that is being reported about this conflict by our Regime propaganda machine. Biden’s puppet masters desire nothing more than the collapse of America and the dollar and our military. Defending the “democracy” of Ukraine via a Biden regime who hates democracy (the same one who applauded Trudeau’s tyranny) is dangerous and moronic.
The invasion of Ukraine is a disaster for US foreign policy and credibility abroad. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. It was only persuaded to surrender its arsenal based on accords signed with the United States, UK and Russia that its borders would be respected. It was widely assumed that the US would act as the guarantor of that agreement. What lesson does an Iran or North Korea take from all of this?
This is actually a very even handed article even though I disagree with the author's belief that the United States should go to war over Ukraine. I suspect my disagreement stems from the fact that I study the history of military and political science, while the author studies "the history of intimacy and gender". The irony of a gender studies professor advocating war halfway around the world (which his/her/zirs/its sons/daughters/demiboys/non-conforming offspring will never fight) is just too rich to pass up.
“if Ukraine were to join NATO, it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia.”
Putin's rhetoric about Ukrainian Nazis is pretty comical and obviously a lie, but this line is 100% true. This is how nations warn each other of red-lines (existential threats), and it is the one consistent demand Putin has made: get NATO off our doorstep.
The United States entered WWI when Germany attempted to make a military alliance with Mexico. Yet we castigate Russia for invading a neighbor who seeks a military alliance with us. We nearly went to war with the Soviets when they stationed missiles in Cuba, but declare unjustified Russia's concern about missiles 250 miles from Moscow. Putin is certainly a thug, but his demands are hardly without historical precedent. Has anyone heard of the Monroe Doctrine?
America isn't afraid of war. We're tired of our incompetent generals and politicians getting us into wars they won't win in places that don't matter to us. It's not fear; it's prudence.
"Putin is a much bigger threat than most Americans believe... He will support anyone and anything that can disrupt the liberal world order that has allowed the U.S. and other free nations to thrive."
And why shouldn't he? That "liberal world order" was hardly innocuous; it was constructed to contain and fight his own country. In as much as that order is an American empire, we should expect other nations to not comply with it. China is using its Belt and Road initiative to attempt to build a new global order centered in Beijing. We are justifiably concerned about that, and seek to damage that effort. It escapes me how Putin's challenge to the "US global order" is any different.
"The longer we pursue policies of retrenchment and withdrawal, on either humane or self-interested grounds, the more ground we cede to our enemies—and the more blood that will be ultimately spilled."
This is categorically false. Vladimir Putin leads a very large but essentially 3rd world country with a military budget the size of France. While he certainly wants influence over his neighbors (particularly his fellow Slavic neighbors), he lacks the political or military capability to take over Europe. Comparisons to 1938 Munich are overblown. Most countries aren't the 3rd Reich. Most leaders aren't Adolph Hitler. We should stop treating every border dispute in the world as if it's the Rhineland.
It was well within the power of Biden / Macron / Scholz / Zelesky to solve this diplomatically. They categorically refused. It's as if they just couldn't believe that someone (other than the US) would really use force when a neighbor refused to comply with words. They still can solve it, but the conditions on the ground now mean the solution will be a more bitter pill to swallow.
To paraphrase Queen Amidala from Star Wars (those prequels that don't actually exist): "sometimes negotiations with blasters are more effective." Putin understands that. We don't.
“Moyn mocked the war on terrorism. ‘More people die slipping in the bathtub than from terrorism, and far more on the roads,’ he said.”
We should be able to expect more from a Yale professor than this tired cliché. I am a retired CIA officer who spent much of my career working the counterterrorism (CT) mission. The statistic he so blithely and unthinkingly repeats doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is the result of the sacrifices of, and hard work carried out by, dedicated national security professionals across the globe, often in harm’s way, since 9/11, not to mention the sacrifices of the families of those personnel. It’s not because there weren’t credible threats and groups capable of carrying out such attacks, casualties from which would have far exceeded deaths in bathtubs.
It is a positive that our CT success allowed Americans to live with little to no worry and in peace, pursuing happiness on their own terms, and certainly able, as this piece suggests, to focus on and address other problems. Unfortunately, we became victims of that success, as Americans came to believe terrorism is no longer a significant threat. With us pulling back from our forward deployments, and as we still haven’t started to fight the ideological battle required to denigrate the terrorists center of gravity, I predict it won’t be long before this threat resurfaces in a visible way. I hope I’m wrong about that.
Good. I hope we stay "afraid", which is another word for SANE.
Fact: Ukraine is part of Russia.
If Putin bombed NYC or Texas, we'd be justified in responding, because those are part of OUR nation. Ukraine is not part of OUR nation, so it's none of our fucking business.
So I enjoy another point of view, but I think you've missed the boat on why people in this country don't want war, and it's not that we don't know ourselves. I think we've gotten too good a picture of ourselves.
Last night on Tucker Carlson, he showed a few clips of our politicians defending intervention in this mess, of which two struck me. The first was Lindsey Graham, who told us that we had to "defend democracy." Lindsey Graham is the same man who won't say a word about censorship, who won't go visit the people in the DC jail who have been kept in solitary confinement for nearly a year, and who has not said a word about Fidel Castro Jr to the north of us freezing bank accounts for people who were peacefully protesting. If Lindsey Graham won't defend our own democracy, his calls to defend Ukraine's so-called democracy fall flat. And then after him was Nancy Pelosi, so spitting mad she could barely keep her teeth in her mouth, talking about how Putin was an evil rich man who only got wealthy exploiting his own people. This is the woman who, with her husband, has used her position in Congress to amass a fortune of nearly a half a billion dollars. Talk about exploiting people.
So here is what people have started to recognize. We need to "fix" America before we go telling other countries what to do. Over two years of COVID and even before we have watched as large corporations have, with our politicians and bureaucracy, taken over the running of this country for their own benefit, increasingly squashing any complaints as "fascism" (irony of ironies), white supremacy, racism, the list goes on and on. We don't have a democracy here anymore and we're starting to recognize it. In other words, we know exactly who we've become, and we don't like it one little bit and we're not going to be distracted from our own problems by a bunch of elites that start a war in Europe. For two years, we've been mandating that people wear ineffective coverings on their faces, get vaccines that don't work, locking people in their homes, tearing children away from schools for no reason, forcing people to die alone. Nothing was "democratic" about that much less humane. So when people tell us, OMG, Russia will take over, we shrug. Right now, the authoritarianism of Russia and the authoritarianism of the West is just a matter of degrees and we have no room to go pointing fingers. *That* is why there is no appetite for war.
This article was absolutely hilarious... can anyone tell me what the point of writing, or worse, reading that, actually was? Nowhere in the entire article did he make any rational argument whatsoever regarding what our costs will be and what our benefits will be. We literally now view politics as a "I say, you do" equation, as a opposed to a "you tell me why, I decide, and vote accordingly based on my willingness to trade that cost, for that benefit."
When America "fought" the cold war, it was on the rational basis of illustrating that freedom and liberty create more value for citizens than communism does. We all agreed on that, and we won simply by being more free than they are. You'll have to forgive the citizens of the United States, who watch their freedoms be stripped every day, if fighting for principles our leaders no longer believe in in the first place is just a step too far.
Today, I'm MUCH more worried about the communism on our northern border, on our airplanes, and in our schools than I am about Putin doing EXACTLY what we did during the cold war and trying to eliminate threats on his border (Cuba, anyone?)
Regardless, our gender studies professor (why is he writing an article on war in Russia/Ukraine?) are going to have to explain exactly what they think we're fighting for before any rational person is going to listen. As ridiculous as it is, at least when we went to Iraq most sane people accepted it was for oil. A ridiculous reason, and a war CANNOT be won without occupation following that war (it has never happened in human history) so we knew we weren't going to win, but at least we could rationalize the economic principles back home. It was a disaster, we all know it (and most knew it at the time), but at least we pretended. Biden CHOSE to give up energy independence, the single most important stabilizing factor for a country in the global hierarchy (can you taste all those coal plants burning in China?) and now is pretending we need a war to stabilize energy markets? The biggest problem we have in waging war (which we only do as a means for laundering our ridiculous debt anyway...) is that half the American people are no longer quite so uneducated on why exactly we're doing what we're doing. And no one seems to want to have to a rational discussion about that as they scream "we must go to war to project strength for the world." Strength in what exactly? Strength in promoting gender studies? I just need anyone to say this in a way that makes sense and doesn't scream of hypocrisy.
The best sanction we have is to ramp up energy production . We do it better and cleaner than Russia. It will also put us in a better position with the Iran negotiations. The climate alarmist know it but they don’t care. Time to stop listening to children - the world is a dangerous place . If we don’t, expect Taiwan to be next and for Biden to sign a weak agreement with Iran (for oil) and then war in Mideast . 2024 is too far away .
Trump had all of this under control via economic leverage - the best weapon ever invented - which is why the Cabal - Molly Ball at Time(Feb 5th 2021) - had to unseat him.
Tariffs were killing China, 52 cruise missiles crippled Syria, he made the U.S. into a net energy exporter crippling Iran and Russia, he killed Soliemani - the one man most responsible for killing Americans thereby neutralizing Iran further, created the Abraham Accords instigating true peace in the middle east, secured our southern border(for once), and on and on and on... Stability in the world defined.
Biden has undone all of this and here we are. As someone who has been to war for these United States I am here to tell you that our resolve has never wavered for this country, but our leaders have been bought off(Biden family purchased by Burisma(Ukraine) and China) and we will not support them in any way.
81,000,000 votes!! Most secure election ever!!
On the one hand, $6 gas, 8% inflation, two embassies evacuated, the entire post World War 2 order dissolved, and China ascendant.
On the other hand, NO MEAN TWEETS.
Let's keep it all in perspective.
The US military can't be committed since it's already fighting global warming and extremism. That would make it a three front war.
We wouldn’t want China plopping a military base with strike capabilities on the Rio Grande. Why would Putin want one on his border? This wouldn’t have happened if we just treated Ukraine like Finland as neutral and stopped with this nonsense of letting them in NATO which wouldn’t happen anyway. Or if Clinton accepted Russia’s offer to join NATO in 1999 in order to counter China. Or if Orange man had won.
Obama also organized a coup in 2013 to throw out the democratically elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine and put in power the current pro-west authoritarian dictator of Ukraine. Our coups have consequences. The pro-Russian, Russian Orthodox, Russian speaking people of eastern Ukraine became separatist starting in 2014 because, shocker, they like Russia better than us. In North America we go around locking up political opponents of the left, we have a biased lying media, we hurt working people with political policy. Why would the people of Eastern Ukraine pass up the culturally similar authoritarians in Russia in exchange for the not culturally similar authoritarians in the west?
Next, there are military skirmishes in disputed areas around the world all the time. Our media ignores most of them. The vast majority of Americans had no clue Brandon was using drones to bomb North Africa in July 2021 just before the Afghan debacle. We don’t pay attention to constant fighting in countries starting with a K bordering Russia. But with Covid ending, and an administration desperate to blame inflation the administration’s policies have directly caused on an external cause, here we go fanning the Russia flames, pretending we want Ukraine in NATO, causing global geopolitical instability. Idiocy is how we stumbled into WWI - which was pointless. We do not want to stumble into WW III!!!!
If a bunch of oil and natural gas leases hadn’t been cancelled by Brandon we’d still be energy independent. Putin wouldn’t have leverage over us. I guess leftist want to be enslaved by the WEF because they keep voting for this predictable bs.
Before I permanently deleted Facebook I predicted the following if Brandon won. Not because I’m a super genius, but because it was predictable. Remember that - this was known and predictable and discussed and those voting for Brandon ignored the warnings because mean tweets birth their feelings and Covid scared them. Please don’t do it again in 2022 and 2024.
Here were my predictions in fall 2020 (I wish I had been wrong):
“1 - We are going to have inflation either way, but if Biden wins it will be much, much worse. He will institute policies
to cut oil and gas production here when there is no alternative. It will make climate change worse because countries like China and India will increase coal usage. It will drive up the prices of everything here and most hurt the poor and middle class.
2 - Covid won’t end in 100 days under Brandon. Masks might come off for summer, but back on they’ll go when seasonal cases tick up in the fall. It won’t end until some other crises can be used to fear monger. There will likely be a vaccine this year, but our first attempt aren’t usually all that great. It took over a century to get the smallpox vaccine down. Hopefully a great tool for the actually vulnerable, but kids aren’t and they are sitting at home for no reason in every school district controlled by Democrats today. How long will you put up with this?
3 - Geopolitical instability. Biden is weak. Putin and Xi are not. Putin will take a land grab. I don’t know if it will be eastern Ukraine, some pro-Russian K country, or part of Finland’s frozen tundra, hopefully not thriving Poland, but he won’t miss the opportunity to take something as he always does under weak US presidents. Where the pain here begins is if Xi takes Taiwan. Let’s pray that doesn’t happen.
4 - For all the demands to tax people “like me” more, the reality is my tax bill will probably fall with any tax change. The rich already pay the most proportional in taxes here, unlike Europe where individual taxes are flat, VAT are regressive, and corporate taxes low. I’ll most likely get my SALT deduction back on 100% of my income and pay 2% more on a small portion. My overall tax bill will drop. Even if I don’t get SALT back, the inflation tax will hurt you under Biden way more than a 2% increase on a small portion of my income plus the proportional effect of inflation on me. Inflation increases the asset values of those who own them already, and expenses for all.
5 - Our schools will excelerate their long decline and continue focusing on ridiculous neoracist theories, sexualization of little kids will expand, that the teacher’s unions, not the children, matter will become very obvious. The left thinks only wealthy parents should have a say in schools. They tell you as much when they say “send them to private school if you want a say” all the time. If the left is smart they will stop saying this out loud, but they aren’t, so I suspect every few weeks there will be more stories about more Dem politicians and teacher’s unions telling parents who don’t want their kids taught to judge others based on skin tone or don’t want sexual orientation, of any type, discussed with their 1st grader, to go pound sand.
I get people hate Trump personally, but Presidential elections involve voting FOR policies and candidates. They aren’t a popularity contest on “do you like orange man?” Forget this at your own risk. Regardless of what you tell yourself or narrative sounds pretty, we are all going to have live with the actual policy outcomes. I hope I’m wrong, but if Biden wins, remember the bad was predictable even if I’m only right about one of these things. Can you even imagine if they all happen? Is that a risk you want to take because you hate Trump personally?”
Not a word from Zoe about what Europe would or should do, after all it is a European problem, but just like Yugoslavia they expect the U.S. to do all the heavy lifting. Maybe Blinken should send Putin his Spotify music.
America is afraid of the common cold.
For many Americans post-Iraq, it boils down to one question: whose child is going to be sent to war?
Would you tolerate your son or daughter sent to the front lines of Ukraine or Taiwan?
It’s relatively easy to send arms, but this won’t stop a motivated invasion by a superior force; the kind of deterrence that the author, or McMaster are talking about requires boots on the ground.
Putin may be a bad guy, but before you pound the drums of war, reflect on whether you’d send your own child to defend these faraway countries. No, you wouldn’t. You’d assume that’s the work of some military family down south, or in your own working class suburbs. Probably people who voted for Trump.
Wrong. If you really believe in shoring up the international order with actual deterrence, then you’ve got to have skin the game.
Most Americans don’t, and won’t.
Democrats don’t want to exert American power because they think exerting power is evil white imperialism. They just want to stand unified in feckless disappointment with Europe because it makes them feel sophisticated.
Republicans no longer want to exert American power because they know that the aforementioned people who hate America will be in charge of the effort.
Basically everyone who went to Harvard and Yale hates the United States because they were trained to hate the United States by ‘intellectuals’. They control the permanent government. That’s why we are here.
My go-to for war expertise is always an intimacy and gender “expert!” Zoe’s piece simply adds to the entire theater this Bad Russia vs The Biden-exploiting Urkraine really is. No sane individual trusts anything that is being reported about this conflict by our Regime propaganda machine. Biden’s puppet masters desire nothing more than the collapse of America and the dollar and our military. Defending the “democracy” of Ukraine via a Biden regime who hates democracy (the same one who applauded Trudeau’s tyranny) is dangerous and moronic.
The invasion of Ukraine is a disaster for US foreign policy and credibility abroad. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. It was only persuaded to surrender its arsenal based on accords signed with the United States, UK and Russia that its borders would be respected. It was widely assumed that the US would act as the guarantor of that agreement. What lesson does an Iran or North Korea take from all of this?
This is actually a very even handed article even though I disagree with the author's belief that the United States should go to war over Ukraine. I suspect my disagreement stems from the fact that I study the history of military and political science, while the author studies "the history of intimacy and gender". The irony of a gender studies professor advocating war halfway around the world (which his/her/zirs/its sons/daughters/demiboys/non-conforming offspring will never fight) is just too rich to pass up.
“if Ukraine were to join NATO, it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia.”
Putin's rhetoric about Ukrainian Nazis is pretty comical and obviously a lie, but this line is 100% true. This is how nations warn each other of red-lines (existential threats), and it is the one consistent demand Putin has made: get NATO off our doorstep.
The United States entered WWI when Germany attempted to make a military alliance with Mexico. Yet we castigate Russia for invading a neighbor who seeks a military alliance with us. We nearly went to war with the Soviets when they stationed missiles in Cuba, but declare unjustified Russia's concern about missiles 250 miles from Moscow. Putin is certainly a thug, but his demands are hardly without historical precedent. Has anyone heard of the Monroe Doctrine?
America isn't afraid of war. We're tired of our incompetent generals and politicians getting us into wars they won't win in places that don't matter to us. It's not fear; it's prudence.
"Putin is a much bigger threat than most Americans believe... He will support anyone and anything that can disrupt the liberal world order that has allowed the U.S. and other free nations to thrive."
And why shouldn't he? That "liberal world order" was hardly innocuous; it was constructed to contain and fight his own country. In as much as that order is an American empire, we should expect other nations to not comply with it. China is using its Belt and Road initiative to attempt to build a new global order centered in Beijing. We are justifiably concerned about that, and seek to damage that effort. It escapes me how Putin's challenge to the "US global order" is any different.
"The longer we pursue policies of retrenchment and withdrawal, on either humane or self-interested grounds, the more ground we cede to our enemies—and the more blood that will be ultimately spilled."
This is categorically false. Vladimir Putin leads a very large but essentially 3rd world country with a military budget the size of France. While he certainly wants influence over his neighbors (particularly his fellow Slavic neighbors), he lacks the political or military capability to take over Europe. Comparisons to 1938 Munich are overblown. Most countries aren't the 3rd Reich. Most leaders aren't Adolph Hitler. We should stop treating every border dispute in the world as if it's the Rhineland.
It was well within the power of Biden / Macron / Scholz / Zelesky to solve this diplomatically. They categorically refused. It's as if they just couldn't believe that someone (other than the US) would really use force when a neighbor refused to comply with words. They still can solve it, but the conditions on the ground now mean the solution will be a more bitter pill to swallow.
To paraphrase Queen Amidala from Star Wars (those prequels that don't actually exist): "sometimes negotiations with blasters are more effective." Putin understands that. We don't.
“Moyn mocked the war on terrorism. ‘More people die slipping in the bathtub than from terrorism, and far more on the roads,’ he said.”
We should be able to expect more from a Yale professor than this tired cliché. I am a retired CIA officer who spent much of my career working the counterterrorism (CT) mission. The statistic he so blithely and unthinkingly repeats doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is the result of the sacrifices of, and hard work carried out by, dedicated national security professionals across the globe, often in harm’s way, since 9/11, not to mention the sacrifices of the families of those personnel. It’s not because there weren’t credible threats and groups capable of carrying out such attacks, casualties from which would have far exceeded deaths in bathtubs.
It is a positive that our CT success allowed Americans to live with little to no worry and in peace, pursuing happiness on their own terms, and certainly able, as this piece suggests, to focus on and address other problems. Unfortunately, we became victims of that success, as Americans came to believe terrorism is no longer a significant threat. With us pulling back from our forward deployments, and as we still haven’t started to fight the ideological battle required to denigrate the terrorists center of gravity, I predict it won’t be long before this threat resurfaces in a visible way. I hope I’m wrong about that.
Good. I hope we stay "afraid", which is another word for SANE.
Fact: Ukraine is part of Russia.
If Putin bombed NYC or Texas, we'd be justified in responding, because those are part of OUR nation. Ukraine is not part of OUR nation, so it's none of our fucking business.