I understand what you mean. And contrary to how it may seem, I don’t like the fact that we look like appeasing/appeasers. the problem is that sanctions are an act of war. always have been. As is providing ‘humanitarian aid’ because that means it frees up cash to buy ammo.
IMO, we (America) have promoted the insanity for decades now that they were not acts of war. And because we have done it so often without blowback, we now have idiots like Kerry standing on TV Telling Putin “YOU CAN’T DO THAT TODAY!” or whatever drivel that was.
Russia, China, ad a couple other places don’t care how WE define squat. We now have a whole generation believing/raised to believe that Disney movies are real when it comes to this stuff and a well made speech will melt the ice cold heart of Putin/whoever.
As a nuclear power, we have a responsibility. And as a country, we have a responsibility. To our people. If we get involved it should be to win. Period. Since Vietnam that has not been the case, save for Reagan. And this is Russia. Another nuclear power.
If we get in it at all, they have the right under the ‘rules’ of warfare, to consider us the enemy and fight back. that is WW3. Because they too have a responsibility to their people. Neither of us can go to war without nukes eventually being used to protect those people.
And Russia does not have any responsibility to ignore aggression against them. Supplying their enemy, whoever or however strong/weak that enemy is, is an act of aggression in the real world. John Kerryland is not the real world.
We all know this instinctively. But we hate the idea of Russia ‘winning’ against us in any way. Well, the option is a Strangelove total commitment.
those are the real world choices. And none of us want that outside a few delusional idiots.
There is one aspect to this whole thing that has been mentioned before on other threads but not (I think) on this one, and I’d like to get your take on it:
Russia sat by and watched the US bomb its ally Serbia in the 1990s, bomb Serbia and kill a lot of Serbians. All to achieve what goal? To allow a bunch of Albanian Muslims to conquer a huge piece of Serbian territory. Russia sat back and let it happen, and did not threaten war with the US.
Now the shoe is on the other foot and many of us in the US are outraged. In fact, when I think of things from the Ukrainian point of view, I myself am outraged. I feel for the plight of the Ukrainians and view the situation as a Russian boot on the neck of the Ukrainians.
But from a geopolitical perspective, what the US did in Kosovo was far worse. We facilitated the MUSLIM takeover of NONMUSLIM land. And we slaughtered a bunch of NONMUSLIMS, raining death from the sky.
While I feel bad for those Ukrainians who are losing their sovereignty, at least they are not losing it to a bunch of USA-facilitated MUSLIMS.
What we did in Kosovo is far worse. Whether that means we should sit back and do nothing now (the way the Russians did then) is open to question. But what is not open to question is this: we should recognize our own duplicity on the subject of territorial annexations.