Posted on 10/21/2016 10:52:37 AM PDT by Lorianne
Putin doesn't give a crap about the people of Russia. They can't even voice their opposition to him without fear of being thrown in prison or ending up dead. He's like any other dictator, he does what he has to to stay in power.
Understand what you are saying, but I disagree with most of it. especially concerning Crimea. Russia losing that is like the US giving up Texas.
We missed a historic opportunity with Russia following the collapse of the USSR as we set up oligarchs instead of supporting a transition to capitalism. auctioning off state enterprises for kopecks on the ruble was a travesty.
The capitulation now is just about a done deal. If you haven’t noticed, there’s a no fly zone established in Syria with S-3&400s. We are not going in without starting wwIII. Ezekiel 38-39 seems all to real and around the corner.
So?
Doesn’t make our foreign policy smart.
The Soros-supported Obama "screwed up" intentionally in order that KGB Putin be given the opportunity to move in and ultimately seize control of the Middle East as part of their big picture agenda to basically restore the evil empire. The O admin went out of their way to help Russis build up their strength, while, at the same time, the treasonous SOBs decimated our own.
And what exactly led you to believe that I think 'our' (the O admin's) policy was/is "smart"? I said it was treasonous.
“When Donald Trump and I observe that, as I’ve said, in Syria, in Iran, in Ukraine, that the small and bullying leader of Russia has been stronger on the world stage than this administration, that’s stating painful facts. That’s not an endorsement of Vladimir Putin — that’s an indictment of the weak and feckless leadership of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.”
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Also from the Oct 5, 2016 first VP debate...
QUIJANO (Moderator): I want to turn now to Syria. Two hundred fifty thousand people, 100,000 of them children, are under siege in Aleppo, Syria. Bunker buster bombs, cluster munitions, and incendiary weapons are being dropped on them by Russian and Syrian militaries. Does the U.S. have a responsibility to protect civilians and prevent mass casualties on this scale, Governor Pence?
PENCE: The United States of America needs to begin to exercise strong leadership to protect the vulnerable citizens and over 100,000 children in Aleppo. Hillary Clinton’s top priority when she became secretary of state was the Russian reset, the Russians reset.
After the Russian reset, the Russians invaded Ukraine and took over Crimea.
And the small and bullying leader of Russia is now dictating terms to the United States to the point where all the United States of America — the greatest nation on Earth — just withdraws from talks about a cease-fire while Vladimir Putin puts a missile defense system in Syria while he marshals the forces and begins — look, we have got to begin to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership.
It begins by rebuilding our military. And the Russians and the Chinese have been making enormous investments in the military. We have the smallest Navy since 1916. We have the lowest number of troops since the end of the Second World War. We’ve got to work with Congress, and Donald Trump will, to rebuild our military and project American strength in the world.
But about Aleppo and about Syria, I truly do believe that what America ought to do right now is immediately establish safe zones, so that families and vulnerable families with children can move out of those areas, work with our Arab partners, real time, right now, to make that happen.
And secondly, I just have to tell you that the provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength.
And if Russia chooses to be involved and continue, I should say, to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.
There’s a broad range of other things that we ought to do, as well. We ought to deploy a missile defense shield to the Czech Republic and Poland which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pulled back on out of not wanting to offend the Russians back in 2009.
QUIJANO: Governor, your two minutes are up.
PENCE: We’ve just got to have American strength on the world stage. When Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, the Russians and other countries in the world will know they’re dealing with a strong American president.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/us/politics/vice-president-transcript.html
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And....
PENCE: What we’re dealing with is the — you know, there’s an old proverb that says the Russian bear never dies, it just hibernates.
And the truth of the matter is, the weak and feckless foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has awakened an aggression in Russia that first appeared a few years ago with their move in Georgia, now their move into Crimea, now their move into the wider Middle East.
And all the while, all we do is fold our arms and say we’re not having talks anymore.
To answer your question, we just need American strength. We need to — we need to marshal the resources of our allies in the region, and in the immediate, we need to act and act now to get people out of harm’s way.
Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence tells voters in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania that a Trump-Pence administration would reverse the “weak and feckless” foreign policy of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
He also included details of the now Democratic presidential nominee’s failed “reset” with Russia.
After recognizing the men and women who have served in the U.S. military, Pence spoke of visiting the fields in Gettysburg with his daughter and laying a wreath where “the 27th of Indiana lost 40 percent of their soldiers in one charge up a small hill.”
“What we have inherited, is freedom,” said Pence who spoke of the “price of freedom.”
Pence, running mate to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, called Clinton the “architect of America’s foreign policy” as he said that the leadership of Clinton and President Barack Obama has, “weakened America’s place in the world.”
“History teaches that weakness arouses evil,” said Pence. “That the weak and feckless foreign policy of [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has created an environment on the world stage, of an America leading from behind, of moving red lines in Syria.”
In August 2012 Obama set a red line for Syria. “We have been very clear to the Assad regime — but also to other players on the ground — that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” he said according to CNN. Assad crossed that line in 2012 and 2013 when Sarin gas was used to kill Syrians, including an August 2013 attack that killed 1,400 according to Bloomberg. Obama had promised airstrikes, but didn’t follow through.
Pence continued in his speech to the Pennsylvania crowd, “Hillary Clinton actually said that the number one priority during her tenure as Secretary of State was the reset with Russia.”
“She posed for a picture, she pressed the button and Russia invaded Ukraine,” said Pence. “And Russia has inserted itself along the brutal regime in Syria. As we stand here today threatens to bring its incredible violence against defenseless civilians in Aleppo.”
Pence talked about the Obama and Clinton decision to withdraw all combat forces from Operation Iraqi Freedom forces and the resulting “vacuum after 2012 in which the terrorist organization ISIS was able literally to be conjured up out of the desert sands and overrun vast areas of Iran.”
He criticized Clinton for her part in the nuclear deal with Iran, of which Pence said, “all we did was delay their nuclear ambitions.”
He spoke of Clinton’s State Department under which four Americans died during a terrorist attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. He criticized Clinton for telling the families of the fallen that a video was to blame, but emails sent before she spoke with the families revealed that she knew it was terrorist attack virtually from the beginning.
Donald Trump slammed President Obama Thursday on TODAY for failing to take a stronger line against President Vladimir Putin in dealing with Ukraine, saying he feared Obama would now make up for lost time with imprudent moves to "show his manhood."
The real estate mogul and reality-TV star, who has criticized Putin for sending military troops into Crimea, said Obama must now take fierce steps to prevent the situation from escalating further.
"We should definitely do sanctions and we have to show some strengths. I mean, Putin has eaten Obama's lunch, therefore our lunch, for a long period of time," Trump said. ..."
http://www.today.com/news/donald-trump-putin-has-eaten-obamas-lunch-ukraine-2D79372098
I agree with Pence in general, but I reject that it is our sole responsibility to protect ‘civilians’ in Syria.
Yes, we could open up and defend an escape route ... but to where? Europe? I don’t think Europe wants that and I know we don’t want to take all these people in.
Where is the UN. Useless as usual. There should be safe zones inside Syria. We COULD defend by air if we wanted.
But again, our military should be protecting US, not everybody and his dog whose religion turns toxic on them. This is Islam vs Islam. I don’t really see why we should be involved. This is not the same as Hitler vs the Jews (and even there we did not enter the war to save Jews). This Islam vs Islam. Why are we responsible for that?
QUIJANO (Moderator): I want to turn now to Syria.
Two hundred fifty thousand people, 100,000 of them children, are under siege in Aleppo, Syria. Bunker buster bombs, cluster munitions, and incendiary weapons are being dropped on them by Russian and Syrian militaries.
Does the U.S. have a responsibility to protect civilians and prevent mass casualties on this scale, Governor Pence?
MIKE PENCE: The United States of America needs to begin to exercise strong leadership to protect the vulnerable citizens and over 100,000 children in Aleppo. Hillary Clinton’s top priority when she became secretary of state was the Russian reset, the Russians reset.
PENCE: "...about Aleppo and about Syria, I truly do believe that what America ought to do right now is immediately establish safe zones, so that families and vulnerable families with children can move out of those areas, work with our Arab partners, real time, right now, to make that happen.
And secondly, I just have to tell you that the provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength.
What provocations?
Why?
The Russians are taking advantage of stupid people having a religious civil war over arcane differences in Muslim religious doctrine.
Why do we want a piece of that action?
We tried in Afghanistan and Iraq and made a mess of it.
Let the Russian precede us (as they did in Afghanistan and got their butts whipped).
“Why do we care if Assad is brutal?
Why is this our problem?”
“Who cares about the Armenians?”
“Who cares about the Jews?”
Sometimes an evil comes along that is so vile and foul and vicious that its stench reaches to heaven and the collective conscience of the world can’t tolerate it.
The “people” of Syria can’t take him out when he controls the military. They have tried as much as they could.
Its not a religious war in Syria, its a geopolitical one.
It’s an Islamic religious civil war.
Putin is just taking advantage of that for his own ends. The stupid Sunnis and Shias are too stupid to figure that out and have lost their country.
Again, why is this our problem?
“Sometimes an evil”
What is the difference between the Syrian Rebels, ISIS and Al Nusra?
Seems like we have thrown in with some unsavory evil types and defended pure evil along the way. Didn’t ISIS sell oil to Turkey for almost 2 years before the Russians put a stop to it by hitting their tankers? Bottom line I don’t trust most of what we hear reported.
The only ones I would support are Kurds and that has its own set of problems with Turkey. After we abandoned them to Sadam Hussein following the 1st gulf war, I’m not sure why they would trust us though.
You ever read moonofalabama.org?
IE Trump would be reasonable rather than difficult and counterproductive as the west has been toward Russia these last 30 years.
Russia has earned and deserves better.
As I’ve said many times before, I cannot understand why the likes of people like you are allowed to be here and push your (pro-Russia, pro-Putin) bullshit.
Very, very interesting. Thanks to all posters.
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