Show me a MAGA politician, and I’ll show you a person bought and sold by Russian interference.
And I will show you how the second and third world wars started by a dictator doing a land grab and fucktard leaders doing nothing when they had a chance. If Ukraine does not win, WW3 is the inevitable outcome in the next 10 years. These are the people that cause the deaths of millions.
If only you thought the same about Turkey&Azerbaijan.
No, whoever wins, it’ll just show that brute force matters and everything else doesn’t, be it for the Russian leadership or for that of any Western country.
WWIII is already inevitable, in one way or another. And fuck everyone talking about realpolitik, because realpolitik is what got us here.
Other than that, Ukraine is going to win or make the conflict frozen against Russia, with or without more support. Russia is not going to be a participant in that WWIII, not a major one anyway.
They can read the polls and can see that a plurality of voters seem to be against more aid.
Edit: -72 is breddy good, I’m quite impressed at how resistant you guys are. It really IS the reddit experience.
a plurality
Yeah, about ten guys who were bought and sold by Russia and a couple thousand other folks that fell for their con. By no means a majority and also by no means a reasonable stance.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/cnn-poll-ukraine/index.html
Which sources: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23897329-cnn-ukraine-poll
No… page 10&11 clearly states that you’re wrong. It’s effectively a 50/50 split on Ukraine war with an actual majority 45/55 split saying no more funding.
“someone said something I don’t understand, they must be pro-Russian”
Flawless logic, kiddo.
?
More likely to be bought by the International Democrat Union than by Russians.
They’re more in support of right wing policy than they are of Ukraine, though.
Putin’s investment in U.S. conservatives pays off once again.
Everyone looking at the price tag vs the results knows a proxy war with a well-trained army, the side of the US and Ukraine, against formerly your biggest adversary is the least costly way to cripple your foe while hardly lifting a finger.
~$125 billion TOTAL, including humanitarian, in a sea of $800B+/yr is play money in war, and throwing Russia back with dollars is the largest blow to a man who thinks he’s militarily strong.
It even makes China hesitate. I’d pay a lot more just for that.
Edit to add: This is a sad justification to be involved in ending human life, regardless of merit.
It’s especially peanuts when you consider that the VA won’t have to take care of the veterans either. In the long-term, that’s where most of the funding actually goes after you put boots on the ground.
Edit to add:
The costs of caring for post-9/11 war vets will reach between $2.2 and $2.5 trillion by 2050 — most of which has not yet been paid.
Source:
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget/veterans
That is roughly 1/3 of the total estimated past/future costs of the wars.
Don’t worry, there’s still going to be plenty of vets who “hurt their backs” during training excersize and get lifetime disability pay. I got a cousin who brags about his.
Yes your cousin is still allowed to have a comfortable life after being hurt on military duty… That’s not “bragging”. That’s being recompensed.
I bet if you actually talk to your cousin about the stuff they miss out on in life due to their disability… You’ll find that the trade still isn’t worth it. Things like being able to play with their kids without worrying about debilitating pain. But you know… At least they don’t have to actively work to live a normal life.
Even if they’re 100% disabled. I don’t know anyone who “brags” about $45k a year. I have military associated hearing loss. The time I waste every day just trying to parse things other people are saying isn’t worth the ~$200 a month I’m given for it.
It’s not just that. It’s about oil & gas too. Ukraine is gar friendlier to the US and the EU. They also has the ability to sever Europe’s need for Russian energy.
Every dollar is worth it.
And it provides your weapons industry with real life data from a large-scale conflict with equipment from multiple origins.
And it advertises a competitors products as inferior, and yours as superior.
I despise all these things, but from a purely economic viewpoint, this is interesting for business.
True, but unclear what that implies. Some people say weapons kill people so we should not produce / supply weapons, expecting less people would die. Others point at aggressors using (their home made) weapons to kill people, pointing at the need to supply their victims, expecting less people would die.
Comparing the track records of Russia (frequently invading and killing neighbors) and Ukraine (not so much) it’s easy for me to take sides. But the tragedy exists, which is why I despise all these things.
proxy war: a war instigated by a major power which does not itself become involved.
Please don’t call it a proxy war, because it’s not.
Technically… this war was “kind of instigated” by the EU out-bidding Russia in 2013 for the investment in a commercial agreement with Ukraine. Everybody at the time knew that Russia had to keep Ukraine under its boot or risk getting fucked long term in the Black Sea, so buying-out Ukraine’s allegiance was sort of like poking a bear… and the bear reacted pretty much as expected, by instantly invading Crimea… which also worked as expected to fortify Ukraine’s allegiance towards the West… which ultimately lead to Russia launching its “special military operation”… which everyone kind of expected to end in a couple days with the loss of Kyiv… but instead turned out to spectacularly show off Russia’s hand and military weakness, allowing for a proxy war to begin.
The instigation was very tactful, playing the long game over 10 years, but it was there. Which is also expected when trying to start a proxy war against a nuclear power; even this low-key instigation, already got Russian crazies clamoring for nuclear retaliation, even when the war was obviously their own fail.
I wouldn’t call $125 billion “play money”, even if the US yearly military budget is $900 billion.
The US military budget is egregious, and this just shows how much war is about funneling taxpayer money to the MIC.
Russia’s military budget in 2019 was $65 billion. It’s a waste of money that’s only practical because the US is literally swimming in taxpayer money (mostly because the US doesn’t invest in itself, but that’s another issue).
At the federal level, taxes don’t pay for anything. They literally used to be burned when we still collected actual dollars. These days a number in a digital ledger gets set to 0. Taxes are the primary anti-inflationary device that government has to maintain inflation.
Deficits don’t cause inflation, if they did Japan would be in hyper-inflation because of the massive deficits they have been running for 30 years. Instead they are barely able to hold off deflation of the Yen.
Interestingly China could still invade and expand their territory, without the rest of the world getting involved. Not Taiwan. Vladivostok. That peninsula was part of China till Russia took it, and a fairly large section of the population is ethnically Chinese. They would just be “looking out for the interests of ‘their people .’”
This allows Xi to take advantage of the current situation, expand territory to look strong at home, and maintain the status quo everywhere else.
Sometimes when I’m bored, I’ll do some google maps “tourism”, and just cruise the globe. One of those spots I’ve visited, is right at that tri-border with Russia, N. Korea, and China.
I always thought it was weird that China doesn’t have a direct shore/port on the Sea of Japan. It doesn’t really look like the Tumen River would cut it to give sea faring ships access either. Annexing Vladivostok would fix that.
Oh thousands of people are dead but at least it wasn’t me and all it cost was billions of dollars.
Yeah bro just roll over when you’re getting taken over and if you ask for help you should think of the thousands you’re going to kill.
Way to victim blame.
How are conservatives not widely declared as traitors? A few decades ago even the slightest hint you might be working for the Russians was enough to derail your career. But now it seems they can openly squash the best chance to disarm Russia, at a ridiculously low price, without sending troops. Why is the bar for them so low with everything?
They’d be traitors by their own standards. They would complain and run constant news cycles on Obama cozying up to the Russias and how weak he looks when he interacted with Putin.
OK but their standards aren’t the law. I’m asking specficially what would make any of their actions traitorous in regards to blocking money going to Ukraine.
I wonder if it would happen with NATO partners as well. If the US elects another (or previous) moron, the partnership could end on a similar whim.
Idk, I feel like the US not a very stable or trustworthy partner. Maybe Macron was right, maybe the EU does need it’s own army.
Honestly strategically, it’s stupid not to. But I sit here on my high horse, where we are used to sacrificing an enormous amount of tax dollars on military prowess and have the military wealth of like all nations combined. But hey we go bankrupt if we go to the doctors… so there is that.
I guess my rambling point is it sounds good in theory, but it’s a huge sacrifice.
Spending doesn’t mean quality or even quantity.
Americans get swindled big time by weapon manufacturers colluding with government contract drafters, and pharmaceutical companies colluding with medical insurance appraisers and hospitals to raise fictional treatment costs through the roof. All that, while having a taxation pressure pretty much on par with the average in the EU.
So far, the EU has managed to avoid the medical racketeering, it isn’t unthinkable that it could also avoid the weapons racketeering… unless it keeps buying overpriced shit from the US big bully in town, instead of investing in it’s own manufacturing.
An EU military, with weapons produced in the EU, would be a huge loss for the US, not necessarily much of a sacrifice for the EU.
The problem for the EU is they don’t exactly have a sovereign currency, at least not the way The US, UK, AU, CA, and China have. We can always pay more, because the government can just “print more money.” I don’t know if the EU can really do that with the Euro. They should be able to, but they don’t seem to function the way our Federal Government does.
America never was a trustworthy partner. They start wars and raise dictatorships all over the world. Trump just showed they werent trustworthy in economical treaties either.
It’s not all one thing or the other. People ascribe these kind of blanket generalizations to US foreign policy frequently but it’s as short-sighted as painting German foreign policy as imperial. Certain US presidents have started wars. Others the Marshall plan, WTO, IMF, the UN, NATO, etc.
Right now there’s a crisis in the US driven by the same fear of change that drove them into containment during the cold war. That isolationist populism certainly benefits some narratives but it’s no better than the worst elements of China-first economic coercion in the ACS that’s alienated a lot of Philippine fishermen in recent years.
Fact is the biggest threat to the human race is the dissension these isolationists/populists are selling. No meaningful action on climate, migration, or the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine can occur in that worldview and anyone should be suspicious of politicians who promote them.
Most US policy has been quite good when non-isolationists have occupied the white house, just like most non-reich based German leadership has strengthened European unity. The Nazis and Trump’s me-first exceptions prove the rule. Education, familiarity, and exposure should be the Rx for the US right now, along with all the countries dealing with the current wave of populist snake oil movements. In the words of a US propaganda film of the same name “don’t be a sucker”.
The problem is that politics do not stop at the border. Support for Ukraine has become yet another culture war, us-vs-them battleground. It doesn’t really matter what the issues are anymore, only that there has to be conflict over them to keep attention whores in the news cycle.
Everybody needs their own army. Otherwise they are too dependent on those who have, and that’s not just the USA, that includes also plenty of vermin.
If we disband alliances and rely on individual armies, you’ll very quickly see that we’re back to the middleages, where the smaller countries are eaten by bigger countries ad infinitum.
