Let’s have a war!

[ousdahl]

for tbe long term sake of the fate of the world, that sounds about as sustainable as capitalism itself.

[zsn]

The US Government will never stop selling arms to other countries. Way to profitable. And, honestly, if you can remove the emotions from it, they shouldn’t stop selling arms.

Not to mention it is the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman “bread and circus” MO. It’s how the MIC enables elected officials to claim that they have actually done something. Another way of looking at it is akin to creating glazier jobs by giving a bunch of kids some rocks to play with.

[DrPepper]

Isn't it an astonishing coincidence that everyone I know that works for the MIC are ALL working on safety features for arms? I mean, they don't even know each other, but they all tell themselves they are working on "safety features."
When I got my first degree, my peers were going to work for big oil or tobacco companies. I could not do either.
To each their own. I like sleeping at night.
I don't have the answers.

[DrPepper]

Fear sells

[DrPepper]

scared people vote

[Cascadia]

Getting mad at the US Government for selling arms is as useful as getting mad at the moon for appearing at night.

There are some things that can be changed and some things that cannot. This one is the latter.

And @ousdhal, you said something earlier about the US not wanting to provoke Russia? For the record, I don’t believe that.

[jhawks99]

Didn't we start arming Ukraine about the time Russia invaded and annexed Crimea?

I feel like this is deja vu all over again.

[ousdahl]

Finally, a Qusdahl alert you guys might like

[zsn]

Isn't it an astonishing coincidence that everyone I know that works for the MIC are ALL working on safety features for arms? I mean, they don't even know each other, but they all tell themselves they are working on "safety features."
When I got my first degree, my peers were going to work for big oil or tobacco companies. I could not do either.
To each their own. I like sleeping at night.
I don't have the answers.

My daughter is a recent graduate with an engineering degree and she has given up at least $30k/year in salary for the last 3 years because she has refused to work for a defense contractor. Her work does involve making parts which end up in satellites, some of which have military applications. It is almost impossible to be a manufacturing engineer and not be connected to the MIC. A lot of my classmates in grad school were supported by DoD grants.

[japhy]

If I may begin a reply with a question of my own - could I ask if you are either aware of, or maybe just indifferent to, the fact the US has been weaponizing Ukraine for years already?

and if you were aware of that, then how do you frame that as some kinda diplomacy or otherwise good faith foreign policy? Or as something about which the region affected should have to just put up with it? As something that shouldn't wouldn't couldn't possibly be met with negative consequences? Or as anything BUT something meant to escalate and, yes, perhaps even brazenly provoke?

Yes, and we have helped Poland and the Czech Republic and numerous other Soviet satellites arm themselves as a deterrent to what is currently happening in Ukraine.

When you say "provoke" exactly what does that mean? How is arming independent nations in their effort to protect their sovereignty "provocative" unless you acknowledge that Putin's long game has always been to take away their sovereignty? Ukraine was never going to invade Russia and remove their government and give control of their natural resources and economy over to their ruling criminal class. Poland is never going to invade Russia, nor the Czech Republic or Finland. So the only "threat" was that it could keep Putin's imperialistic ambitions, which he has been showing for decades, at bay. So calling it "provocative" is naive at best, the only other option is it swallowing the Putin propaganda like a rube.

The only thing that escalated the situation was Putin's realization that time was running out on the window for his ambitions. He thought that trump had weakened NATO and EU resolve and unity to the point that they could not muster a unified response to his aggression at this point in history. He fucked up, he played his trump card and it wasn't enough. He never feared Ukraine or anything about the US arming of them. This was made obvious by the lackadaisical way he invaded and assumed they would fold in less than a week.

This is not a legitimate use of the word "provocative".

[ousdahl]

oh man. There's so many directions we could take this!

if you really wanna go full swallowing Putin propaganda like a rube about the semantics of "provoke," let's consider this most notoriousest of Kremlin spambots:

Barack Obama

Let's double down on the Russophile rhetoric and post a link straight from this big scary Russian state-sponsored website:

congress.gov

The White House announced a new $53 million aid package for Ukraine, which includes counter-mortar radar, radios, vehicles, patrol boats, body armor, helmets and night-vision goggles. But it stopped short of providing weapons or other lethal aid the Ukrainians have been seeking.
The decision reflects the Obama administration's long-standing concern that arming Ukraine would provoke Moscow into a further escalation that could drag Washington into a proxy war.

https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/ho ... -SD994.pdf

[TDub]

[japhy]

Barack Obama

Let's double down on the Russophile rhetoric and post a link straight from this big scary Russian state-sponsored website:

congress.gov

One word, "Crimea".

This is a good primer on Putin and his imperialistic ambitions. Seriously, read it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26769481

Now answer me three questions, at what point after Putin came to power was there a threat of Ukraine invading Russia?

At what point since the USSR dissolved has there been a threat of the US or NATO invading Russia?

How many smaller Soviet satellites has Russia invaded since Putin took power?

There has never been a physical threat of invasion to Russia during Putin's regime. The economic threats have all been self inflicted wounds. Russia has always been a threat to invade neighboring satellites that Putin has viewed as historical Russian territory. Putin has had a policy of spreading disinformation and disruption oof democratic countries and their processes for years.

So as I stated before, there was no provocation that caused Russia to believe their sovereign country was threatened with violence. There has only been a threat to Putin's ego due to the lack of control of sovereign neighbors.

Stopping a bully from bullying you is not provoking the bully. If you believe that bullshit, then the only recourse to not provoke a bully, is to let them rape and pillage and control you?

[twocoach]

oh man. There's so many directions we could take this!

if you really wanna go full swallowing Putin propaganda like a rube about the semantics of "provoke," let's consider this most notoriousest of Kremlin spambots:

Barack Obama

Let's double down on the Russophile rhetoric and post a link straight from this big scary Russian state-sponsored website:

congress.gov

The White House announced a new $53 million aid package for Ukraine, which includes counter-mortar radar, radios, vehicles, patrol boats, body armor, helmets and night-vision goggles. But it stopped short of providing weapons or other lethal aid the Ukrainians have been seeking.
The decision reflects the Obama administration's long-standing concern that arming Ukraine would provoke Moscow into a further escalation that could drag Washington into a proxy war.

https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/ho ... -SD994.pdf

So which administration decided to move from a policy of avoiding provocation of Russia to arming Ukraine with lethal weapons?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-tru ... -1.6371378

"Yet in 2018, with Donald Trump as president, the U.S. reversed course and agreed to provide Ukraine with $47 million worth of lethal weapons, which included 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 launchers."

[ousdahl]

yea, I was gonna ask -

how'd we go in the span of 8 years from avoiding giving weapons to Ukraine cuz we didn't want to
"provoke Moscow into a further escalation that could drag Washington into a proxy war," to not only giving Ukraine more and more and more weapons, to the tunes of tens of bajillions of Mich's tax dollars, but also to the point even words like "provoke" became some boogeyman in itself.

what changed?

- we went from Obama to Trump to Biden
- we actually ended our Endless War in Afghanistan, which you know must've made the MIC thirsty (speaking of freedom and democracy, how's that US-installed Taliban rule of Afghanistan going these days?)
- we watched 8 years of post-coup Ukraine unfold, including details like Azov, and Crimea (good post Japhy, I'm responding to you next)
- Merica, through some presumable complacency and/or ignorance, collectively got totally cool with the thought of a (yet another?) proxy war...and not only just cool with it, but totally on bored with the rah rah pro-war rhetoric we've been spoon fed #StandWithUkraine
- Putin's getting older and sicker and presumably senilerer

but what else has changed? How did we go from our on executive branch avoiding provocation, to the world "provocation" not even being legitimate to use as a word any more?

[jhawks99]

Crimea.

My boss is in town this week and I got to spend a couple hours with him. He lives in Budapest. He's pretty happy that we're sending weapons to Ukraine.

[japhy]

And for a guy that hates Nazis, Putin sure likes to host Nazi conventions.

https://www.thebulwark.com/meet-the-tex ... by-russia/

https://thenewamerican.com/putin-regime ... ssionists/

So maybe the invasion of Ukraine to get rid of Azov Nazis was just kabuki theater? If Azov's goal was to get California to secede from the union he would be sending them support.

[ousdahl]

Barack Obama

Let's double down on the Russophile rhetoric and post a link straight from this big scary Russian state-sponsored website:

congress.gov

One word, "Crimea".

This is a good primer on Putin and his imperialistic ambitions. Seriously, read it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26769481

I read it. Yea, Putin seems like another power hungry nut job. I can't decide if the article title may be misleading tho, cuz is he really trying to rebuild Soviet Russia, or just the Russian empire?

Now answer me three questions, at what point after Putin came to power was there a threat of Ukraine invading Russia?

Ukraine was and is not likely to be a threat to invading Russia any time soon. But the whole Crimea, Luhansk Donetsk people's republics, and eastern Ukraine generally all seem to be issues. Why did Luhansk and Donetsk wanna be independent republics? Don't they know Ukraine good Russia bad, so why not just stick to being part of Ukraine? Exactly what have they been up to, anyway?

And while Ukraine might not be a threat if asked in the narrow context of "invade Russia," Ukraine still may be some threat, and is only more of a threat when armed to the tooth with all those fancy new weapons provided by you and me. Again, how can Merica freak the fuck out when Russia tries to put weapons in Cuba, but expect Russia to just have to deal with it when we put weapons in so many of their neighboring countries?

At what point since the USSR dissolved has there been a threat of the US or NATO invading Russia?

Again, when asked in the narrow context of "invading Russia," I don't exactly know.

But, according to your own pro-Putin Russian rhetoric site BBC: "Three former Warsaw Pact allies had joined Nato, bringing the Western alliance up to Russia's borders." That whole issue of NATO continuing to expand further and further east, even though there's some controversy over whether NATO said they wouldn't as a condition of dissolving the Soviet Union, (even though I know we're not even allowed to ask now about what was actually agreed to then), and even though NATO all along was an anti-Soviet alliance that very well may have been rendered obsolete after the Soviet union was dissolved. But they kept inching closer and closer anyway!

How many smaller Soviet satellites has Russia invaded since Putin took power?

I dunno. The article you provided doesn't really touch on it, and I'm not really sure off the top of my head either. How many is it? Is it as many as there were that since became pals with NATO? And subsequently got armed by NATO? Or, in the case of Ukraine, got shitloads of weapons from NATO even thought they aren't even part of NATO?

There has never been a physical threat of invasion to Russia during Putin's regime.

again, this seems like saying "there has never been a physical threat of invasion to Merica during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The economic threats have all been self inflicted wounds.

not to go full guttermeter, but is it fair to expect all the "free market" nations to suddenly refuse to do business? Russia dissolved the big scary Soviet Union and since embraced sweet sweet Capitalism, right? What more did the western world want?

Russia has always been a threat to invade neighboring satellites that Putin has viewed as historical Russian territory.

Yea, exactly. These countries have been fighting with one another and redrawing borders for centuries now. So why is it so imperative now for Merica to be pouring weapons in the region too?

Putin has had a policy of spreading disinformation and disruption oof democratic countries and their processes for years.

yeah, it's so gross, when other countries do it, at least.

(for real has it even occurred to you that so much of your perception here is inevitably influenced by a whole lifetime of Cold War propaganda?)

So as I stated before, there was no provocation that caused Russia to believe their sovereign country was threatened with violence. There has only been a threat to Putin's ego due to the lack of control of sovereign neighbors.

sorry, but this may be little more than an argument in semantics. Or, if it's not just semantics, then it just may be pretty oversimplified.

Stopping a bully from bullying you is not provoking the bully. If you believe that bullshit, then the only recourse to not provoke a bully, is to let them rape and pillage and control you?

if you only respond to one question I've post here for you, please let it be this one:

if Putin called you personally today and said, "I'll knock it off with this whole Ukrainian invasion bullshit, if you can get your country to knock it off with the whole pouring weapons into Ukraine thing," would you make that deal?

[ousdahl]

And for a guy that hates Nazis, Putin sure likes to host Nazi conventions.

https://www.thebulwark.com/meet-the-tex ... by-russia/

https://thenewamerican.com/putin-regime ... ssionists/

So maybe the invasion of Ukraine to get rid of Azov Nazis was just kabuki theater? If Azov's goal was to get California to secede from the union he would be sending them support.

Like I've said all along, the "de-nazify" rhetoric from Putin is bullshit. It's more about power and hegemony, or maybe even just good old fashioned imperial ego battles.

This is interesting, though. It seems the whole supporting of extremists things is a two-way street, go figure.

But this illustrates quite the double standard, don't it?

I wonder if there's some Russian Qusdahl over in Moscow or whatever getting all sorts of shit from his "freedom and democracy" loving fellow countrymen about how it's sooo inappropriate to even suggest Russia is supporting far right national extremists on the other side of the world. You're just parroting DC propaganda again!

Or, if there ISN'T a double standard, and there is some difference to distinguish, it's this:

"Fortunately for us, secessionists aren’t killing people—they’re not “there, yet” "

Contrast that to what Azov has been doing with our weapons.

[japhy]

[/quote] So as I stated before, there was no provocation that caused Russia to believe their sovereign country was threatened with violence. There has only been a threat to Putin's ego due to the lack of control of sovereign neighbors.

[/quote]

sorry, but this may be little more than an argument in semantics. Or, if it's not just semantics, then it just may be pretty oversimplified.

Occam's razor, look it up.