so just what do you think our place in the world is? are we white hats or black? are we really trying to make the world a better place or are we just playing god for our own ends? step away from the propaganda machines, all of them, for a moment. look at history dispassionately and logically. observe human nature and its role in our societal evolution. recognize that difference, no matter how radical, is not necessarily evil. that evil is, in fact, just a convenient excuse for slaughter, more often than not.
Countries that were once part of USSR. As has been brought up a few times. Have you read any posts in this thread?
OK I thought you may have been promoting an isolationist stance. I agree we needed to get involved in WW1/2. And yes, we did start then becoming the aggressor in the world and invaded countries for unknown reasons.
How many NATO countries were forced to join by war? Or coerced against their will? Are you suggesting it's ok for Putin to wage wars to get those countries back?
I agree the world is not black and white. For that same reason, you have to take each conflict as a unique case. Vietnam may have been an inappropriate, even criminal, use of American force. Same for Iraq. But Ukraine is really not the same. Russia invading Ukraine is a return of imperialism which was always cruel and immoral. I know I'm kind of waving my hands and oversimplifying it here, but you really should acknowledge that the specific facts of the situation need to be considered. This is more like fighting Hitler for taking over countries than fighting Saddam for... having weapons. Sort of ironically it turned out Hitler actually declared war on us, but still that was a war worth fighting.
The relevant NATO country would be Ukraine. In 2008 NATO proposed adding Ukraine to the NATO alliance, against the advice of Germany but the time frame was long so the problem was not an immediate one. I don't have access to any information beyond what anyone else can get, but Wikipedia states that the President of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014 was Victor Yanukovych and claims he was pro Russia. If true that would mean he would not have been in favor of allowing NATO to move weapons into Ukraine nor to train an army there. So that leaves the time frame from the coup in Feb 2014 to Feb 2022 when the war changed from a low intensity civil war into a high intensity civil war on Feb 19th 2022 and then Russia moved forces in on Feb 24th 2022. Ukraine still is not, nor was it imminent that Ukraine would become a de jure member of NATO however it did become a de facto member as NATO supplied weapons and made them interoperable with their own. In mid 2021 the Biden administration and Democrat-led Congress sent 300 million dollars in weapons and 300 million dollars in army salaries, so they already had a large army by then. The forces Russia moved in on Feb 24th 2022 were small compared with the Ukrainian army so contrary to the news it was obvious Russia had no intention of doing any more than protecting parts of Eastern Ukraine, and sent a fast force down toward Kyiv and withdrew it as soon as a peace treaty had been agreed upon. Another reason for the fast force was Kyiv panicked and withdrew UAF forces from Eastern Ukraine which made it easier for Russian forces to move in to protect Donbass.
That seems to be the prevailing argument here- the democratic govt of Ukraine has the right to democratically oppress its minorities because yay democracy and boo autocratic Russia for getting in the way. Not a very good argument, but blind team-based partisanship rarely creates good arguments. I think maybe people hear Donbass wanting to secede and think they must be like slave states in the 1860s US or something equally asinine. But that is what we're doing, effectively, preventing Russia from helping ethnic Russian Ukrainian secessionists and protecting them from being able to secede from Ukraine. Cuz thats totally in the imminent interest of the US...
As you can see, I have to put together the few pieces we can be fairly sure of to get a bigger picture. The search engines have their own preferences, and things I saw months ago are no longer indexed. The 'democratic' govt of Ukraine does not allow elections whereas previously there were elections.
The Putin = Napoleon idea was IIRC created by the CIA and the test audiences liked it a lot, so it got spread around the US. I'm guessing it did well because it made the person stating that idea sound like he had a wide erudite knowledge of European history, but that's just a guess.
Post 7 does not say what you claim. And now you go to a different thread and poster to show some people might think what you claim. But no one in this thread said anything about taking over Europe.
