There’s a lot we can agree on. Neocon adventures, thoughtless foreign policy, globalisation, short term carpetbagging doctrines leading to offshoring/ outsourcing to China...
Fifty years of treaties like the Budapest Memorandum, which lock the USA into answering calls for help that many would rather stay out of...
Ill considered open-ended promises that were totally unenforceable even at the time they were made - like James Baker reassuring the Soviet Union that NATO wouldn’t allow Warsaw Pact countries to apply to join the alliance (unenforceable once the USSR was disbanded by its constituent republics and the Warsaw Pact agreement got torn up).
All of which doesn’t contradict the clear danger to the world presented by Putin unilaterally breaking binding international treaties, sticking his nukes in npt countries, invading other countries, threatening to launch preemptive nuclear strikes, and using grain oil and gas to blackmail Eastern Europe and Africa.
The USA took the right approach when Saddam invaded Kuwait. It’s taking the right approach now with Ukraine.
That’s not to say it’s an ideal situation. Ideally America wouldn’t need to get involved. Because ideally, Saddam wouldn’t have been a cruel despot intent on invading Kuwait, and ideally Putin wouldn’t be a totalitarian thug intent on invading other countries that have security guarantees with the USA.
But the crappy reality is, the USA offered itself to serve as a guarantor of the UN Charter, and through multiple treaties is obligated to protect its partners and allies. Ukraine has such assurances, and has been a reliable partner in NATO operations.
Putin doesn’t care that his own invasion fetish guarantees that the USA will get dragged into a conflicting with Russia. Putin actually WANTS that fight.
If anyone on the pro Putin anti war side has ever come up with a way to enable Putin’s invasion fetish without it guaranteeing a hot war between Moscow and Washington I’ve yet to hear it.
Yes, I think concerning the first Iraq (not much of a) War that's true. That's not the Iraq War I'm referring to though. However, on a personal note, while I was living in Kuwait (I lived and worked there for an Egyptian company for a year) I eventually started having the thought that the Kuwaitis, most of whom are fabulously wealthy, didn't deserve to be rescued because they are largely an arrogant, boorish lot of scumbags. They treat those "beneath" them like crap, they treat Filipinos, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans like slaves (literally) and they flash their bling and money like low-rent, inner-city American thugs. I heard story after story, a few of which I heard first hand, of Kuwaitis raping their Filipino and Sri Lankan house slaves, their wives beating the crap out of them and Kuwaiti employers stiffing their "underlings" out of their slave-like wages;(something I had to rather forcefully remedy numerous times). I did not care - in the least - for most of the Kuwaitis I personally knew.
On the other hand, the Egyptian, Syrian, Pakistani, Punjabi and Sri Lankan guys I directed were overwhelmingly good people.
Sometimes a people deserves getting thrashed. . . In spite of that sentiment I abhor the thought of innocents being maimed and killed for the sins of others, and especially for sins and/or stupidity of a few.
Bush made a good, pragmatic call keeping that oil wealth out of Saddam's hands. I'd have done the same thing, even after my Kuwait experience. But it would have left a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm not buying your opinion that the thug Putin's driving intent is to invade and conquer other countries. Let's be honest, yes, he's a vicious sociopath and has always been one, but he didn't invade Ukraine simply because he was bored, he didn't do it on a whim or for no reason and like I said before, there are plenty of other players, including the US, NATO,and the many antagonistic, agenda-driven leftist/globalist and corporate totalitarians and Western "Color Revolutionaries" who helped instigate the situation between Russia and Ukraine, pushing Putin to respond as he did. Given the leftist scumbags who now control and direct every institution in America (and have since around 2009) there's no way this thing ends to the advantage of America and its taxpaying citizens, because those dirtbags loathe the traditional West, America included.
Speaking of leaders who are vicious sociopaths I say that instead of focusing on Russia/Ukraine we direct focus on ridding America of the monstrous thugs who control our major institutions and now use them to persecute, imprison and destroy people like us. Whether Putin rolls over Ukraine or not has no bearing or effect on the existential, domestic nightmare America is facing - at the hands of its own leaders; the same ones directing the nightmare in Russia/Ukraine and other "projects' around the world.