If Russia invades Ukraine, It's in the Euros backyard. If they don't like
it, let them handle it. Same with Taiwan. Are we going to go to war with
China over Taiwan? Endless wars.

We’ve been the global policeman for many years.

But China, Iran and Russia are flexing their muscles since Barney Fife was made the police chief.

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:
We’ve been the global policeman for many years.

But China, Iran and Russia are flexing their muscles since Barney Fife was made the police chief.

Absolutely.

Corporations are transnational and they are in charge

quote:

Originally posted by Schmelby:
If Russia invades Ukraine, It's in the Euros backyard. If they don't like
it, let them handle it. Same with Taiwan. Are we going to go to war with
China over Taiwan? Endless wars.

Since we were founding members of NATO, and Article 5 of the agreement requires us to act if another member country is attacked (which is why NATO countries were deployed with us in Afghanistan.)

The UK has already pledged to support the Ukrainian government…so if something happens with them, we are bound by agreement to support them (broad interpretation what that support may be.)

Personally, i don’t think the Russians will go beyond Ukraine…but it will signal to China we won’t get involved.

quote:

posted February 20, 2022 09:42 AM
If Russia invades Ukraine, It's in the Euros backyard. If they don't like
it, let them handle it. Same with Taiwan. Are we going to go to war with
China over Taiwan? Endless wars.

I agree 100%, and that is rare for the internet. I'm isolationist all the way.

quote:

Why have we become the Worlds policeman?

If not us, then who?

Would you rather it was China? Or perhaps some muslim country? If we step back it's going to be.

We are pretty much the only force for good in this world. And the relatively peaceful world that we enjoy is because of us. I'd hate to think what it would look like if we were not the ones carrying the big stick for the past hundred years or so.

We only police part of the world. There were @5.5 million killed in a conflict in Congo not long back. We did nothing.

There's more examples.

Worse, people like me don't care.

One of the videos posted in one of the Ukraine threads said this:

Who do you want to be the dominant superpower? Russia, China, or the U.S.? If it's not the U.S. it will be one of the other two, so make a choice. But I guaranty you if the U.S. doesn't plat the dominant peacekeeper role, you will not like what happens with the other two in charge.

Sometimes you just have to cowboy up and do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do.

I have a wife n active duty and a son in the guard. I am prior af and not likely to be called back(too old). They both did several trips to the sand box. I don’t want them to go again. If it threatens us flatten it and then move on. Make an example of them so no one else threatens us.

When the sleeping giant was awoken, the giant realized it was the biggest and strongest in the world.

The giant also wanted to go back to sleep but, in order to accomplish that, there had to peace in the world.

So the giant took upon the mantle of the world's peacekeeper.

Since then, the smaller giants have always felt they could challenge and defeat the biggest giant, as a gang or as a flea, thereby preventing the giant from returning to its slumber and, hopefully, taking over the biggest giant's resources.

quote:

Originally posted by jimb888:
We only police part of the world. There were @5.5 million killed in a conflict in Congo not long back. We did nothing.

There's more examples.

Yup, if you don't have resources (oil) or nukes we typically don't care. Also, if your populace is mostly brown...tough luck.

It's more complicated than that I know, but damn if that doesn't seem to be the way it is.

Like the old saying goes,"With great power comes great responsibility", but it also depends who is leading that power. Those in power now, really hold/show no power. Also,unfortunately, some of those in power,if not most, are or are willing to sleep with the enemy. We have given so much away over the years to other countries-production, raw materials,etc.,that now it seems we have to bargain with those against us. It is unnerving that we are the ones to sacrifice the most, gain the least and to see how our actions in some places, are for naught. However,without us, what kind of world would we be in?

Things change. The ebb and flow. I remember reading at the beginning of WW2 we were the 19th largest military power in the world. And, as history has noted that changed really fast. We are an extraordinary people if properly motivated. And, history has a curious way of providing motivation.

There is a contrary opinion among a lot more people than the media is willing to admit. And that is because the media has been supporting one side far too long.

In the particular case of the conflict in Ukraine, who says we are the police at all? There is far more evidence of the US being the corrupting influence there - did not Obama overthrow that legitimately elected government and install his own handpicked leaders in 2014? That is just one issue in dozens now being uncovered and discussed.

It goes to the proposition that Russia is actually policing the corruption. Look at who is aligned with Ukraine at present, and ask yourself when has that group supported our freedoms here? Soros? Pelosi?

We aren't policing the situation, Biden is protecting his personal interests and those of his handlers. It's Russia cleaning out corruption and extreme political groups.

In December of 2021 the UN held a vote on an anti Nazi resolution and only two countries in the world voted against it - Ukraine, and the United States of America.

America now supports Nazis. Simple as that.

I’ve been thinking about this question since I first heard it at least 50 years ago, and probably before that. The simple and facile answer is, “It’s not our problem, let someone else worry about it.” The fact is, however, that human beings are social animals that live and work together in communities. That’s why we are the dominant life form on the planet (the big ones, anyway, we’ll ignore the bacteria). And as a consequence, it is our problem—and especially when we stop making it our problem.

Living and working together most effectively requires that the members of the community observe certain rules and practices. Without that, things quickly descend into anarchy and chaos, as we see happening in areas where outside society as a whole prevents enforcement of those rules and practices. A current example is the situation in Seattle. But that’s not the normal state of human communities and societies. Very soon people start demanding and working toward stability and the observance of certain rules.

That doesn’t mean, however, that they are always enforced by men wearing badges and blue uniforms. Sometimes it’s enforced by a dictator or warlord and his gang of thugs. But enforcement always happens sooner or later because even if it’s a guy in a black uniform and death’s head insignia on his hat who is keeping the rapes and robberies down to an acceptable degree, at least we can live our lives without the constant fear of being raped or robbed. And sometimes when there is no guy with a badge and uniform, the rest of the people get together to straighten things out. The local newspaper in my small western community reran an article a couple of years ago about two bad men who were hanged in the late 19th century by a group of town residents because the law was ineffective at controlling them.

Such enforcement of the rules and accepted practices for living in a society extends back to the earliest human history. In fact, it’s part of what “civilization” means, but it has always existed even in the most primitive societies, otherwise they wouldn’t have been societies. At its most effective it’s associated with the most powerful and stable societies, such as the Roman empire’s. There was even a term that described part of it: The 200 or so years of Pax Romana is described as peace between nationalities within its area, but it also affected life at the individual level.

Even though policing has been called by that term only recently in human history, it’s something that has been demanded and used since the beginning. Many of the most important “commandments” in the various Bibles we have today were originally intended to ensure that certain people got along with each other: don’t kill members of your own tribe or steal from them or covet their possessions or slaves, and don’t have sex with someone else’s wife or husband were all intended to ensure that a small, tight-knit group maintained its cohesion in a hostile world. (It was okay to do all those things to members of other tribes, and was even sometimes commanded, but not to members of your own group. Why? Because doing those things pisses off people and when they fight among themselves the group’s security is affected.)

Like it or not, the world really is a community of nations and what happens at certain national levels affects us all, and that’s the point of this dissertation. Things like wars and other massive upheavals don’t occur because of overnight events. World War II in Europe was the result of what was done and not done for the previous 20 years, and that doesn’t include what was done and not done that led up to its predecessor, World War I.

WWII in Europe provides some of the most obvious examples such as the failure of any of the Allied signatories to the Versailles Treaty to resist Hitler’s aggressive actions. Hitler himself admitted that if any of France’s 100 divisions had forcibly resisted the three or four German battalions’ occupation of the Rhineland, that almost certainly would have been the end of him, the Nazis, German rearmament, and would have prevented events that have filled history books to this day. Did that failure of will and action have an effect on us in America? Yeah, duh: And that effect didn’t end with what happened to the men on Omaha Beach. The fact that we’re facing the threat of a megalomaniac’s using nuclear weapons in a conflict today can be traced back through a direct line of events that could have been interrupted at least as early as March 1936.

All those examples pertain to a world that was in effect much larger than it is today and the US was much less likely to be affected by events outside our borders. Yet because of what was done and not done for decades, if not centuries, before, we were affected in profound ways that couldn’t be ignored. The same is true today. At the moment it’s possible for most of us to believe that events in the rest of the world will have no significant impact on us. As countless people throughout history have learned, however, the day may come when that’s no longer possible for even the most obtuse.

Lawless behavior affects more than the person whose house is being broken into at a particular moment. This has been demonstrated countless times from the international to the neighborhood levels, as we see in places like Seattle today. The way that lawless behavior is controlled is through policing by those who are not the criminals—and who are they? The Russian special forces’ motto is reportedly “If not me, who?” and that could be the question we ask of why the US is the world’s “policeman.” Policing even on an international level is vital and if not us, who?

Added (yeah, just what we need ): All this is mostly generalities, and there’s a lot more I could say, and perhaps I could express it better. This is the best I can do at the moment, though, and if for no other reason I’m posting to get it off my chest, even if it has no effect on anyone else’s thinking.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sigfreund,