If Biden wins then OUR country will be overrun by a communist tyrant. It goes without saying... kiss gun ownership, religious expression, and everything else that defines this country goodbye .

(Sigh)

Biden has already been squatting in the White House for almost two years. He's been steadily shooting himself in the foot every day until we've reached the point where we are now: the Repubs are poised to take over both the House and the Senate if they play their cards right.

McCarthy is demanding accountability for the weapons rather than insisting on shutting off the pipeline to Ukraine, and the USDoD already has personnel in Ukraine monitoring where the weapons go.

The US has staked an enormous part of its prestige and international influence on getting the Euros (and others) to stop feeding Putin cash and computer chips and keep feeding weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainians. You can reverse that - if you didn't get enough agita out of the way we stumbled out of Afghanistan.

Catch up, man.

quote:

Originally posted by Carpentermaass84:
If Biden wins then OUR country will be overrun by a communist tyrant. It goes without saying... kiss gun ownership, religious expression, and everything else that defines this country goodbye .

What does that mean? If Biden "wins" what?

Who is monitoring the weaponry Brandon gave to the Taliban?

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by Carpentermaass84:
If Biden wins then OUR country will be overrun by a communist tyrant. It goes without saying... kiss gun ownership, religious expression, and everything else that defines this country goodbye .

What does that mean? If Biden "wins" what?

Powerball!! Come on man! It’s up to $1.5 billion. He wins that he will buy twitter back and take all our stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by Carpentermaass84:
If Biden wins then OUR country will be overrun by a communist tyrant. It goes without saying... kiss gun ownership, religious expression, and everything else that defines this country goodbye .

What does that mean? If Biden "wins" what?

He didn't win the first election but if he "wins" this one then we are in for a world of hurt.

The 2024 election?

OK, mark this post- I am telling you that Joe Biden will not be the nominee for the Democratic Party in 2024. Not only will he not be the candidate, there is a decent chance that the man will not finish out his first term.
And all this stuff about "if he wins, we lose everything"- let's take it easy with the exaggerations. We still have a Constitution.

OK? No Joe next time around, and feel free to call me on it if I'm wrong.

We should start reducing aid to Ukraine as soon as we can in a responsible manner. A blank check to fight a proxy war is morally reprehensible and not even necessarily in our best interest. Realpolitik and a quick cessation to the hostilities is really in every ones best interest, but as always War propaganda has twisted this into a good versus evil drama.

All the leftists are on to their next moral crusade. War turns out to take a long time, and it gets boring, you know?

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
Realpolitik and a quick cessation to the hostilities is really in every ones best interest, but as always War propaganda has twisted this into a good versus evil drama.

Actually, Putin's behavior since 1999 has consistently shown that "Realpolitik and a quick cessation to the hostilities" would simply (and inevitably) lead to yet another and even bloodier Russian attack on Ukraine within a few years.

By the way, what have we done that constitutes writing a "blank check to fight a proxy war"?

We've trained them for years - including under the Trump Administration - so there are standards the American government can hold them to. We didn't start supplying them with weapons until they'd proven that they could and would stand and fight effectively. There have been multiple reports citing Pentagon sources saying the weapons we sent them are being used effectively, efficiently, and within the agreed-to geographical constraints. While the US has backed Ukraine's ambitions to reclaim the entirety of its seized territories, Ukraine is clearly aware that the US won't support any adventurist jaunts into Russia itself, and Ukraine hasn't made any strikes in Russia that weren't close to the border and limited to military personnel and material being sent into Ukraine. So where's the "blank check" you speak of?

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
Realpolitik and a quick cessation to the hostilities is really in every ones best interest, but as always War propaganda has twisted this into a good versus evil drama.

Actually, Putin's behavior since 1999 has consistently shown that "Realpolitik and a quick cessation to the hostilities" would simply (and inevitably) lead to yet another and even bloodier Russian attack on Ukraine within a few years.

By the way, what have we done that constitutes writing a "blank check to fight a proxy war"?

We've trained them for years - including under the Trump Administration - so there are standards the American government can hold them to. We didn't start supplying them with weapons until they'd proven that they could and would stand and fight effectively. There have been multiple reports citing Pentagon sources saying the weapons we sent them are being used effectively, efficiently, and within the agreed-to geographical constraints. While the US has backed Ukraine's ambitions to reclaim the entirety of its seized territories, Ukraine is clearly aware that the US won't support any adventurist jaunts into Russia itself, and Ukraine hasn't made any strikes in Russia that weren't close to the border and limited to military personnel and material being sent into Ukraine. So where's the "blank check" you speak of?

The blank check is the commitment to support Ukraine until the end of hostilities and through the eventual rebuild. If we can start reducing aid today, then fine...no problems. Nothing factual to suggest Putin can't be negotiated with and a resolution reached. Putin's behavior since '99 isn't really applicable here...in Ukraine he's taking tremendous losses and facing a coalition funded adversary that he can't roll over quickly. He has every reason to negotiate a settlement. Kissinger could wrap this thing up in one visit. The Ukrainians are being incentivized to fight a proxy war for the west...this could drag on for years with several possible outcomes. It's not a good versus evil showdown and Ukraine is not the first domino...it's a dispute between neighboring countries.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
The 2024 election?

OK, mark this post- I am telling you that Joe Biden will not be the nominee for the Democratic Party in 2024. Not only will he not be the candidate, there is a decent chance that the man will not finish out his first term.
And all this stuff about "if he wins, we lose everything"- let's take it easy with the exaggerations. We still have a Constitution.

OK? No Joe next time around, and feel free to call me on it if I'm wrong.

I honestly think there is going to be a sudden shift starting November 9th that we are going to see from the MSM and Democrats; they're going to start talking up "Biden should retire", "should he step down?", "is he up for the rigors of the job?".

I think it's coming.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
Realpolitik and a quick cessation to the hostilities is really in every ones best interest, but as always War propaganda has twisted this into a good versus evil drama.

Actually, Putin's behavior since 1999 has consistently shown that "Realpolitik and a quick cessation to the hostilities" would simply (and inevitably) lead to yet another and even bloodier Russian attack on Ukraine within a few years.

By the way, what have we done that constitutes writing a "blank check to fight a proxy war"?

We've trained them for years - including under the Trump Administration - so there are standards the American government can hold them to. We didn't start supplying them with weapons until they'd proven that they could and would stand and fight effectively. There have been multiple reports citing Pentagon sources saying the weapons we sent them are being used effectively, efficiently, and within the agreed-to geographical constraints. While the US has backed Ukraine's ambitions to reclaim the entirety of its seized territories, Ukraine is clearly aware that the US won't support any adventurist jaunts into Russia itself, and Ukraine hasn't made any strikes in Russia that weren't close to the border and limited to military personnel and material being sent into Ukraine. So where's the "blank check" you speak of?

U.S. to Support Ukraine for ‘As Long as It Takes,’ Biden Says

https://www.wsj.com/articles/r...in-warns-11656582672

Soo, according to POTATUS, we're in it 'for as long as it takes'...That pretty much sounds like a 'blank check' commitment to me!

Really? Because it sounds to me like the effort is working towards a defined goal and comes with limitations on what weapons are available and where they can be used.

Or is there a reason why the US should never intervene (including in Europe in two word wars) beyond the point where the aggressor might be willing to negotiate if we beg hard enough?

And, yeah, that's why Putin's behavior since 1999 is relevant. If he's been forced to back off, it's only temporary - despite whatever the West in general and the US in particular has done and is willing to do. We aren't in any more of a hurry to police an agreement that we know Putin will ignore (sooner, rather than later - Putin's history also shows us that) than we are to get in a war with Russia. Is he taking terrific losses? Sure - that's why he wants a negotiated settlement, so he can recruit, train and resupply for the next attack on Ukraine. We know that's true because this is just one of a succession of attacks on Ukraine, and because Putin has repeatedly and publicly defined his goal as eliminating Ukraine as a nation.

By the way, that's why the only way that this conflict can "drag on for years" is if we force a negotiated settlement on Ukraine (assuming we can, since partisan warfare is always an option, and Ukraine's Eastern European support isn't simply going to go away). Even then, it won't be with "several possible outcomes" - we'll have essentially condemned Ukraine to defeat for no reason at all. If we're just trying to negotiate an end to the war, there's no reason for Putin to stop doing precisely what he's been doing for 23 freaking years.

We know this isn't just "a dispute between neighboring countries" for the same reason. Putin had no reason to dispute with Ukraine. Putin has pursued incremental invasion strategies in not only Ukraine but in Moldova and Georgia - and those are only the cases where a straightforward invasion didn't work, as in Chechnya. You can't simply wish real hard and make Putin's track record go away when Putin keeps invading Russia's neighbors in what Putin himself has stated is an effort to reassemble the Russian empire as it was in the Soviet era.

As for the eventual rebuild, we haven't even started talking about that yet. It's premature to simply assume the US is going to be stuck with the bill. Unless, of course, we feel compelled to offer to help with rebuilding if Ukraine accepts a negotiated settlement that Ukraine knows perfectly well will lead to further Russian aggression in the near term.

By the way, it's absurd to suggest that the Ukrainians "are being incentivized to fight a proxy war for the west" when they're fighting to keep their own homes and to protect their own people from an attack Russia launched on them. You honestly have to ignore reality in order to believe that the Ukrainians are fighting because they're "incentivized" or that they don't fight for their own perfectly legitimate reasons.

I believe Ukraine would have already negotiated a settlement if the west wasn't falling all over itself to fund this conflict. It's a regional dispute and no amount of cold war era rhetoric will make it a conflict that should involve the west and clashing super powers. Putin went into Ukraine because he could...he knows now that he actually can't. Make a peace and quit fighting a proxy war...it's really that simple. The big loser is always the U.S. taxpayer and while we're depleting the treasury in Ukraine, our actual enemy is preparing to take Taiwan. It's going to get very expensive paying to keep the world safe.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:

Again.

And at this point I don’t care what happens to the clueless if/when Russia succeeds with its latest crime against humanity and it becomes the norm because of their cravenness. I do, however, find a little gratification in the fact that at least a few people understand what’s at stake. When I become depressed by the state of my species, now and then I think, “Yeah, but ….” So thank you for making the effort to keep a candle of reason lit.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
I believe Ukraine would have already negotiated a settlement if the west wasn't falling all over itself to fund this conflict.

Likely correct. Ukraine would have negotiated a complete submission to Putin, a dissolution of the Ukrainian government, and a massive concession of land mass. Until Putin wanted more.

You know, WWII may have remained a "regional conflict" had the majority of the advanced world inserted themselves or their arms at an early enough time.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
It's a regional dispute and no amount of cold war era rhetoric will make it a conflict that should involve the west and clashing super powers.

Cold war rhetoric isn't the problem. Putin's cold war era behavior is.

quote:

It's going to get very expensive paying to keep the world safe.

Have you considered that it's simply expensive to have Joe Biden squatting in the White House?

We knew the vultures would smell weakness - that point was raised on this very forum several times. And we fully expected the vultures to attack in the expectation that Biden would do nothing, did we not? Now one vulture is taking a rather scientific and comprehensive beating in Ukraine while the other one is still dithering over whether it can keep the home scene stable, bring its military up to speed AND swallow up Taiwan before January 2025.

All things considered, that may not be all that bad a position to be in while we try to run out the clock until Biden has go back to Delaware.

Ukraine is beginning to manufacture weapons supplies on their own now. Ammo for artillary. Weapons which they do not get from the west, would these be restricted from use hitting inside Russia? Russia hasnt suffered a cracked window while Ukraine has more damage than a nuke produces. WTH are we doing back in Haiti now? Fuel blockades, military aircraft and armored vehicles? Those people really do not like us.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
It's a regional dispute and no amount of cold war era rhetoric will make it a conflict that should involve the west and clashing super powers.

Cold war rhetoric isn't the problem. Putin's cold war era behavior is.

quote:

It's going to get very expensive paying to keep the world safe.

Have you considered that it's simply expensive to have Joe Biden squatting in the White House?

We knew the vultures would smell weakness - that point was raised on this very forum several times. And we fully expected the vultures to attack in the expectation that Biden would do nothing, did we not? Now one vulture is taking a rather scientific and comprehensive beating in Ukraine while the other one is still dithering over whether it can keep the home scene stable, bring its military up to speed AND swallow up Taiwan before January 2025.

All things considered, that may not be all that bad a position to be in while we try to run out the clock until Biden has go back to Delaware.

I don't disagree with this and it was inevitable that Russia would make it's move under a Biden administration. My fear is that China fully intends to take advantage of this time frame as well. Even the beginning of a peace process in Ukraine would be encouraging.