[DEPcom]

I think we are headed that way.

[babble-on]

What fact would you base your hope that Trump is doing anything other than just encouraging Russia to slaughter the Ukrainian civilian population upon?

[Jim W N]

World War I is on my mind

Me too. I want to read a really good book about WWI. Any suggestions?

[kaktuskid]

More like the current situation in Korea

[PGR88]

There are some who argue that Woodrow Wilson, and our new Central Bank, were preparing and always ready to go in on the side of the British Empire.

That same line of thought says the US has been manipulated into doing the dirty work of the British Empire since then, all the way up to Joe Biden.

The way Trump is now behaving, by rejecting the anti-Russia narrative, dumping Ukraine, and breaking these military and financial bonds with the EU and London - leads one to believe the first two points were true - or Trump certainly believes in the London/EU ability to manipulate and control Americas deep-state.

[catbertz]

Sounds like the most pragmatic reality available. With sympathy to the Ukrainian PEOPLE, they will never be able to push Russia out of those lost areas like Crimea and the Donbas. Those areas are lost. Every country on earth has lost land at one time or another, even Russia. Ukraine needs to accept that reality and work towards a deal that allows them to move on and rebuild. The choice is rebuild their future, or greater destruction.

[gnarledmaw]

Ya, so many that youre baked. Add some water and turn it back down below 350.

[Just mythoughts]

The WWI museum in downtown KCMO has a narration of and about the first world war ... the consensus they claimed that caused WWI was, get ready for it, ‘nationalism’! I could not get out of that place fast enough!

[Sirius Lee]

Watching Zel the Clown today I was reminded for Albert Hopman's description of the Kaiser: "He is vanity itself, sacrificing everything to his own moods and childish amusements, and nobody checks him in doing so."

Well, he just got body checked by Vance and Trump today. Maybe getting slammed into the boards will knock some sense into Z.

[fruser1]

I’m sure folks had similar thoughts when Germany went into Belgium in 1940.

Peace between Ukraine and Russia would be great, but if Putin gets to keep territory, there’s no reason he won’t take more once Trump’s out of office.

Putin won’t live forever either, but unlike in the US, he will be able to select his successor who will likely have the same ambitions.

And as Russia’s ambition includes control of the artic, I’m pretty sure they’ll eventually go for Alaska when another retard like Biden is in office who won’t mind a “minor incursion”.

[chajin]

Understood and agree.

The other war that is stuck in my mind is Vietnam. Kamala’s handlers would have sent troops to Ukraine as the only card left, and we would have been feinting and parrying with the Russians until President AfterHarris threw in the towel, we lost everything, and had a few thousand or ten thousands of body bags. Trump is doing what JFK might have done if he had lived, and not what LBJ did, which was to sacrifice our soldiers. Kyiv needs a clean divorce from Russia, with all the costs, rather than a spouse-murder.

[DouglasKC]

Sounds to me like Trump is done with it. He tried but Z just keeps posturing.

[packrat35]

As much as I dislike the Russian history of paranoid aggression, and as much as I admire Ukraine's determined resistance to the Russian military, I do not want to see my admiration turned into a perverse willingness to oppose Russia right down to the last American dollar and the last Ukrainian soldier.

Pretty much sums up how I feel...

[Dr. Franklin]

When German and Russian defense sensitivities led Russia to mobilize and Germany to respond; and then Poland became a target for division between the two, all of Europe and then the U.S. became participants in a trench war that killed millions of young men.

Poland, more properly the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was divided between Austria, Germany in Russia and disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795. The partitioning powers allowed little industrialization of of those lands because they knew that these lands would be either in rebellion to regain lost independence, or fought over by the partitioning powers. They were very prescient since much of WWI and WWII was fought there.

With the Bolshevik Revolution unfolding in Russia, Poland became the substitute for Russia on Germany's Eastern border. Poland was reborn at Versailles. Wilson pushed for that. Since the new Polish state required the assistance of its stronger allies, it was required to accept their approval of its final borders. With arms from Britain and France, Poland defeated Russia in 1921 when it attempted to regain lands in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. (Russia fought other battles in the Baltic states as well.) Lenin offered to recreate the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and offered to cede all of Belarus and all of Ukraine to it. Britain and France balked at that proposal, and because of that, the Poles rejected it.

What was won on the battlefield, was lost at the peace table. Poland was recreated too small to defend itself, while millions starved in Ukraine and Belarus under Stalin's decree to confiscate their food. Ultimately, that is the genesis of the present war in Ukraine. Modern Ukraine was forged in WWII after Stalin deported the Poles, and declared a new "Ukrainian" ethnicity from the former Ruthenians, and those of mixed ethnicity, and Stalin exterminated the Ukrainian Jews and assimilated the ethnic Germans in Galicia. So, yes, the present conflict in Ukraine has its roots in WWI and Versailles.

[CatHerd]

You have a very ... er ... unique ... version of the history of WWI.

[KrisKrinkle]

World War II is more on my mind, specifically the Munich Agreement, Chamberlin and “Peace for our time”.

[odawg]

I have always avoided reading about World War I. Of all the most useless, bloodiest wars in history, that hideous war has got to be number one.

The British lost about twenty thousand men killed in a few hours in just one battle.

I saw a documentary about the war; they were interviewing an old, old, (and weeping after all those years), German soldier who said he operated a machine gun in a battle. He said he just quit firing he was so sick of killing so many British as they climbed out of their trenches and across the no-man’s land.

[nickcarraway]

I do not want to see my admiration turned into a perverse willingness to oppose Russia

What willingness to oppose Russia? Bush first catered to Putin, then Obama did. Remember, Obama promised Putin, he would be more flexible to do what Putin wanted after he got reelected. He promised him Ukraine, Georgia, and other countries.

And Putin has interfered in every election to help Democrats. He came out and endorsed Biden, then Kamala last year.

Why does the U.S. have to grovel before Russia?

[dfwgator]

1916 - Motorhead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTG6I3jxdnc

[nickcarraway]

Russia was already exiting WWI before the U.S. joined.