Posted on 01/26/2022 8:12:02 PM PST by Mariner
It is no secret that I have had a lot of foreign policy disagreements with the bipartisan War Caucus in Washington D.C. during my time in office. From Iraq to Syria, and Yemen to Afghanistan, it seems that there is always a war they want to be in.
I was heartened when President Trump spoke of stopping our “endless wars” and I was hoping for more restraint from President Biden. Unfortunately, that wasn’t his history and it doesn’t seem to be his current direction. The endless wars are ramping up again even as I write today.
The war-as-first-resort crowd, including the Biden Administration, put 8,500 troops on heightened alert for possible deployment to Eastern Europe. Folly best describes the idea of sending a small contingent off to a potentially big war. This mistake was made in Syria and elsewhere in recent years.
Go big or go home still rings true with ‘go big’ being even more insane than ‘go small.’ And of course, the President cannot enter any war — big or small — without the authorization of Congress.
I don’t always agree with Henry Kissinger (there was that little Vietnam War debacle), but I think no one has described the situation in Ukraine more accurately. In a 2014 op-ed, Kissinger advises that Ukraine should not exclusively join the East or the West. For Ukraine to survive, “it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.”
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He's correct on this matter.
The problem is I don’t think Paul understands why a conflict is threatened. It has nothing to do with Ukraine joining NATO.
Russia’s economy and society is a mess, to stay in power Putin needs to grab a bit of the USSR every few years to convince his people that he is returning Russia to glory.
A compromise agreement like Paul proposes would be great, it won’t do what Putin needs.
Good points.
Ethnic Ukrainians deeply distrust and hate the Russians. They remember the widespread starvation in the Ukraine during WW2 so that the Russians could feed themselves first.
Russians remember that the Germans enlisted 250,000 native Ukrainians for military duty during WW2.
These are old hatreds, that Paul and Kissinger don’t take seriously.
LOL. What exactly is wrong with Russian society and economy? Compared to what?
“LOL. What exactly is wrong with Russian society and economy?”
Average economic growth 2013-2018:
* United States - 2.28%
* United Kingdom - 2.08%
* Germany - 1.70%
* France - 1.18%
* Russia - 0.44%
Top Countries with the Highest Abortion Rates:
* Russia - 53.7
* Vietnam - 35.2
* Kazakhstan - 35.0
* Estonia - 33.3
* Belarus - 31.7
Top countries with the highest rates of alcoholism:
* Hungary - 21.2%
* Russia - 20.9%
* Belarus - 18.8%
* Latvia - 15.5%
* South Korea - 13.9%
Americans always fail to understand other nation’s hatred from prior wars on their soil.
Most of Asia hates Japan from their atrocities in WWII.
Germany and Russia are hated by nearly all of Europe for different reasons - Germany for their actions during the war, and Russia for after the war. (Except the Germans hate them for during the war.)
Economic growth rate over this period is unrelated to internal conditions, abortions and alcoholism are heavily decreasing and you know it.
He is correct on many matters...and especially on this one.
Conservatives should agree, avoid foreign entanglements.
He is the adult in that vacuum of DC
Rand Paul is right on most issues. Example: Look up his Penny solution to the national debt.
Appeasement does not work!
Old Roman saying:
“If you want a peace, prepare for war.”
What that means, do not make a war, but scare the heck out of your enemies.
That’s the best policy, always.
Unfortunately, it requires a skilled politician!
Rand should be trying to figure out how to prevent war in the US.
What "old hatreds" are driving the US neocons to involve Americans in a war that has nothing to do with us?
I do think Paul understands that. Like everyone here says, not our monkeys, not our circus. Which matters more to the US, Ukraine or Taiwan. You get to pick maybe one. You don’t get to pick two. We actually have no vital interests in Ukraine.
And BTW it is the US which has a long history of oppressive aggression in this region so maybe some folks on our side need to stare in a mirror for a while.
The wide spread starvation in Ukraine was the Holodomor in the ‘30s which was about
Peasant and kulaks protesting collectivism of farms by Stalin. It happen in other places in CCCP too. This was after the 1922 famine in Ukraine and the Volga River area which followed the Russian Civil War.
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