by BoogerMan 62 Replies latest social current
@Corney - I suggest you read through this thread again because you've missed the point.
The point is this: the West sending Ukraine military hardware has prolonged the war.
You either want peace as soon as possible or you want Ukraine to win the war.
But you cannot have both.
This is the long tail of socialist policies and fellow travelers in the West (places like the NYTimes and various academia, suppressed the truth about Lenin and Stalin back in the day).
But yes, the truth is that Stalin completely eradicated the Ukraine people in Crimea and replaced them with Russians. The NYT and others in the left wing media knew about this and refused to report on it at the time. Moreover the people of the Donbas have ever since the October Revolution dreamed to be independent from either Ukraine or Russia.
Moreover Crimea is the only place the Russians have access to a waterway that connects to the oceans that isn’t controlled by NATO or frozen every winter.
The question is thus, given the past 10 years Ukraine has been fighting a civil war against independence in Donbas and given Ukraine can’t hold a majority Russian Crimea, what is the end goal. The best option could be to get out with a negotiated deal (by China, because Biden is too weak) where they give up claim to Crimea and Donbas and let the Donbas be an independent “new” buffer country.
Giving them F16s means they can fly into Russia, which Russia would see as an escalation. Then again, trying to re-take Crimea will be very bloody. At this point Ukraine hasn’t lost anything yet land. The Donbas was already opposed, Crimea was already lost.
To Russia, invading Ukraine cost them relatively very little Ukraine lost over 25% of its forces, they lost most of their gear that wasn’t donated by the US and another 20-30% of military aged reserves were lost to emigration and with that a generation of potential military recruits - the Russians lost less than 5% of their active military and gear, not even counting reserves. Russia thus eliminated the threat of having them invade through the Donbas or Crimea for the foreseeable future. Russia completed its goals, Ukraine and the Biden admin is refusing to end it.
No, LUHE, I didn't miss any point. The West must appease Putin and make peace for our time, cede the four regions Russia recently annexed (perhaps including areas under Ukrainian control), lift all the sanctions (how else to end this awful cost-of-living crisis?), expel Eastern Europe countries from NATO (because no way Russia will ever attack them AND they are not so important to risk a nuclear war), give Putin more time and resources to strengthen up Russian military and economy... This worked well in 2008-09 and 2014-15 when Russia was essentially allowed to get away with Georgia, Crimea and Donbas, so it certainly will be a viable peace. As Mr Medvedev said three days before the invasion,
Here, I will give my personal assessment – but after a while, with skilful management of the situation, and, I emphasise, I think we have learned how to do this under the leadership of the President – the tension that is now vibrating around our country will subside one way or another. Not quickly, not all at once, but this is how human history works: sooner or later, they will get tired of this situation and will themselves ask us to resume discussions and talks on all issues of ensuring strategic security.
Here, you know, it is like that line from the famous book by Bulgakov: never ask for anything, they will come to you themselves and offer everything. This is about how developments unfolded in 2008–2009. They came to us and suggested resuming relations across the board. Let us face it, Russia means a lot more than Ukraine for the international community and our friends in the United States and the European Union, and everyone understands this, including the Ukrainians.
So why not to make them happy and give them what they want?
I just want to say, "peace ASAP" and Ukraine's decisive victory are not the only options. What about peace on honourable and just terms -- which is impossible if "soon" is all you care about. After all, Putin and his clique are perfectly happy about continuing this war, it helps them to further solidify their power, enrich themselves, purge any dissent and disloyalty. They aren't under pressure to end it ASAP, so it's questionable whether a really good peace is even possible at this point.
That last comment wasn't what you said originally.
You originally said 'I can't believe that standing up to aggressors ... is prolonging the war'.
That was not my point. My point, again, is this: The West has given lots of military hardware to Ukraine, and this has prolonged the war.
How difficult is this to understand?
@ markweatherill - You may be right, then again I'm basing my opinion on what I've seen, and what I've seen are large crowds of Ukrainians following their team to European stadiums over the past year or two.
Perhaps they're neutrals who want to show their support.
The West has given lots of military hardware to Ukraine, enabling it to stand up to the aggressor; that's called collective self-defence. In your opinion this is why the war still continues. How is this not tantamount to saying that Ukraine's continuing resistance is what prolongs this war?
The sooner Russia pulls out the sooner the peace, is also true. Your choice to have Ukraine capitulate and give up their homeland to shorten the war makes you sound like a Putin backer. So much of this seeming pro-Russia talk from the right over the past year has been simply the result of the perceived necessity to oppose whatever a Democrat President does. If he says white, they have to say black. . If he supports something, you have to reject it. It's come to that.
@peacefulpete - disgraceful slurs in your last post.
For a start, it's not just the right that don't go along with the mainstream media's official narrative, there are left-wingers such as Corbyn and Diane Abbot, and even our very own SlimBoyFat, who I'm guessing is of the left - these people also refuse to swallow Western propaganda. It doesn't necessarily mean they, or me, are pro-Russian.
If you look at my posts, all I've ever really said is 'I want this war to stop and I want peace as soon as possible' <--- this would be a fair summary of my comments.
I have to admit I was getting worried about the arms industry and all the elites who make their money from arms industry lobbying when the US pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021. How were they going to manage now that their steady revenue from the Afghan forever-war had finally come to an end? Thank heaven for this new business opportunity that opened up just in time or else the poor dears would have been really out of pocket.
So now it makes sense. Evidentially, Putin is just a puppet of the US military industrial complex
