Posted on 07/23/2022 1:34:59 PM PDT by JonPreston
The biggest loser is Ukraine itself. Towns and villages have been destroyed, thousands of civilians and soldiers have been killed or wounded, four million civilians have become refugees, six million are internally displaced, the country’s farmland and manufacturing plant have been devastated, and its economy has been wrecked. The damage and destruction inflicted on Ukrainian infrastructure is estimated at $60 billion at this point.
Having stoked the fires of war, Biden and Johnson are also losers. Despite his engagement in Ukraine’s war effort, Biden’s overall approval rating has sunk to 38 per cent with 53 per cent disapproving of his performance. Only 35 per cent approve his handling of the economy – which is beset with a rising cost of living due to inflation and higher petrol prices – and a mere 40 per cent approve of his conduct in the Ukraine war, with 49 per cent disapproving.
(Excerpt) Read more at gulftoday.ae ...
Karen goes International...
” The first should be former US President George W. Bush for his 2003 unprovoked aggression against Iraq. His partner in crime, ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, should be next in the dock.”
“Unprovoked”? To this day the case against Saddam’s gangster regime is very much substantiated.
Leading up to the 2003 conflict, Saddam Hussein had been in breach of clear undertakings that led to the ceasefire of the first gulf war that he instigated back in 1990 by invading and annexing Kuwait.
He been in breach of 17 UNSC resolutions including Resolutions 687 and 678 which constituted the terms of the truce negotiated in the first Gulf War, a truce whose violation was a legal justification for renewed combat. He was also in breach of UNSC 1441 which stated that he was to honour the terms of the Gulf War truce and to destroy his illegal weapons programs, or face “serious consequences.”
Yeah odd I don’t see you taking any hohols into your house
The Middle East was a far more stable place with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. On the flip side the world was far more dangerous with Bush #43 in Washington DC. The man should be in prison.
Maybe we can toss in a few forum Neocons to supervise :)
The crooked Ukrainians had another bake sale in my neighborhood today. You have to give them exact change or they will keep whatever bill you hand them.
One thing for sure about a Ukrainian - if they can pick it up, they will steal it.
Hey Michael Jansen, whoever the hell you are: Ukraine is not losing from some innocent “conflict”. If it is losing (define losing, you POS..), she is losing from the unprovoked Hitler-inspired invasion from a foreign power with military, economic and human resources vastly exceeding their own ones.
Still time to get into the fray, exinnj. What say you?
Ukraine has bluntly said they do not want A 10s. Too old and antiquated. I guess a plane that can return to base with one wing shot off just isn’t good enough for them.
She was buttering his bread, I wonder if he wasn’t buttering her muffin?
His wife and mother-in-law tell him to.
Poor guy is really hag-ridden.
You joined Free Republic less than ten days ago - just to post that?!
Fail!
Regards,
I am concerned foremost with authoritarian regimes which launch unprovoked invasions of neighboring countries, grab territory, commit war atrocities, and rattle nukes.
At present, there is only a single country fitting that description, and they have nukes targeting American cities.
I am thus not concerned with any alleged venality of other countries you might care to mention. You are attempting to distract us from the crimes of the one truly evil empire threatening Western civilization.
Regards,
Are you saying that Ukraine's dismissal of Russia's warnings justifies an invasion? Are you saying that a sovereign nation does not have the right to join whatever military alliance it wishes? Are you saying that Ukraine had nothing to fear from Russia, and was hence wrong to attempt to protect itself?
Absurd!
Regards,
Yep - and your list confirms it. Russian science and technology development since 1957 can be summed up in one sentence - Nothing new under the sun, just improvements to what's already there and often built on stolen tech. No new ideas, no massive leaps forward.
launched first satellite into space?
Yeah, I'll give you that one. From 1957. And they're still dining out on it. (Get over it, Ivan, got anything from the last 40 years to cheer about?!)
That was a huge milestone achieved entirely through incremental gains to existing tech, and Russia only did it for the prestige because America announced they were going to do it.
The long term result was DARPA, which has been instrumental in the development AND real world applications for: weather satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, vaccine development, modern encryption, the affordable personal computer, mobile communications, and the internet to name but a few. Russia did it first for the bragging rights, but America did it properly.
launched the first man in space?
An overstated achievement. Russia beat America's plans by just one month, and only did so by cutting every safety corner and using simplification again. The result was one orbit (and if that had failed and Gagarin had died Russia would've simply buried it.) The following year, John Glenn did three orbits, in a craft with more safety systems. Russia did it first for the bragging rights, but America did it properly.
#3 in the world oil production
Ha!
Russian access to oil mainly stems from geography and geology, combined with Russia really not exactly setting a high bar in technology related to oil and mining. If we had the same oil reserves they had, and were just as motivated to tap all of them, our oil production would be forty years ahead of theirs technologically, and vastly more efficient. Their biggest advantage here is actually the Western geopolitical aversion to developing new oil fields.
And, the single best political decision for the benefit of Russia's oil industry in the last 25 years was Germany's INCREDIBLY retarded choice to use Russian oil because of... Fukushima. As if there's ANY risk of a nuclear power station in the Schwarzwald being hit by a tsunami AND damaged by an earthquake on a non-existent continental fault line near Frankfurt.
sent our astronauts into space for years when we could not get them of the ground
See above. More about the bragging rights, than about serious innovation. It's one of the greatest ironies that despite the West actually investing a shit-ton into safety that Russia doesn't really bother with, the biggest tragedies in space exploration have been with the Space Shuttles. Russian low-bar achievements with tried-and-tested tech are actually good evidence of Russian stagnation. There's no drive to innovate in anything except making rockets faster and longer range - which basically puts Russia on the same level of ambition as medieval archers refining longbows and crossbows.
#1 wheat exporter in the world
See the oil argument. A product of Russia's sheer size, and climate - nothing to do with competence. One could just as easily argue, if Ukraine was just as big and had just as many wheat fields with the same climate, its vastly more advanced agribusiness would be producing and exporting far more than Russia.
Oh - and some of the innovations in wheat production that Russia wants to use has been developed in Ukraine with Western cooperation, while Russia is still using 50-year-old tech. Including the customized firmware for the automation... Russia might've nicked those tractors, but it sure as shit will have a problem unlocking the mobilisers, and it will have to reverse-engineer the customizations to make use of them.
winning in Ukraine special military operation against everything the US & NATO can throw at them
Haha. Russia's WOULD be winning in Ukraine if it wasn't corrupt as hell, didn't have a completely stagnant military-industrial complex, and wasn't hamstrung by Putin refusing to admit (and in fact legislating to ban anyone saying it) that this is a war and issuing a general mobilisation.
Anyone in Russia with two brain cells to rub together, and access to the internet, had ample opportunity to see what a shit-show the first few weeks were, before YouTube and Facebook got blocked. The educated Russian masses saw tanks getting stuck and cheap Chinese tires on vehicles disintegrating in the cold. they saw dress uniforms in abandoned tanks - proof the military brainz thought they'd walk it all the way to regime change in Kyiv.
Educated Russians know the media blackout in Russia and the wall-to-wall propaganda is being done to cover stuff up; they're making damned sure their kids don't join the military right now. Conscripts and those on national service are exploiting their legitimate right to refuse to be deployed into Ukraine.
Russia would be buggered if it didn't have three proxies doing all the hard work: the DPR, the Kadyrovites, and Wagner mercenaries. And, it has a tappable resource in the POOR areas of the Russian empire. Where people still think cathode ray tellies are advanced tech, and where the brainwashing is so much easier.
Justify? We’re any wars justified?
All those 10,000 wars in history with millions of people killed were justified?
There is no world court where you can sue for justification.
Use your head, and do not antagonize a more powerful neighbor if you want to survive. Follow that simple rule and you have better chance to avoid wars.
Fallacy of Moral Nihilism!
You are attempting to establish a Moral Equivalency between the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and all other wars (which you lump together in a single category, as though, e.g., America reacting to the Bombing of Pearl Harbor were comparable to Nazi Germany invading Poland).
Perhaps a more-apt description would be the "Appeal to Hopelessness" Fallacy. "All wars are bad... There have always been wars... Therefore the Russian Invasion of Ukraine is no worse than any other military action ever taken!"
Absurd!
Then you pivot 180° and invoke an Appeal to Pragmatism:
Use your head, and do not antagonize a more powerful neighbor if you want to survive. Follow that simple rule and you have better chance to avoid wars.
"That's right! Just bow down to the Nazis! Feed all of your friends to the crocodiles, and maybe they'll eat you last!"
Pure defeatism!
Regards,
“Unprovoked”? A NATOized Ukraine is an existential threat to the Russians, a point they have made for many years. Moreover, the Z regime was on the cusp of launching a massive military operation to overrun the Donbas republics last February to finish the dirty little war it had been waging for 8 years against people who wanted no part of the coup government, replete with NeoNazis, that WE installed after overthrowing the democratically elected government. There would be peace in Ukraine but for the coup we orchestrated in 2014. Even afterwards, there would have been peace if we had agreed to let Ukraine be neutral, demilitarized, and stop it’s war against the ethnic Russians of the Donbas.
You want “unprovoked”? Try the Clinton administration’s Balkan war - unprovoked and criminal - or Obamalini’s “Arab Spring”.
As for “evil”, we need to clean our house first. The Russian government, for example, doesn’t advocate the chemical and surgical mutilation of children in the name of “gender ideology”. The Russian government doesn’t advocate and enforce racism under the guise of CRT and DEI as ours does. The Russian government doesn’t have an income tax code that effectively makes everyone a criminal because it is impossible to comply with. The Russian government didn’t create and propagate the Covid hoax and kill or damage the health of millions by vaccine mandates, lockdowns, etc. The Russian government isn’t trying to replace its native population through massive illegal immigration. The Russian government doesn’t operate an “educational” system that is guaranteed to vomit forth millions of illiterate, misinformed “graduates” every year. The Russian government doesn’t advocate or accept as “normal” the sodomite lifestyle. The Russian government doesn’t, at any level, encourage abortion (although some abortions are legal). The Russian government is not trying to destroy its domestic economy and institutions in the name of the “Great Reset”. The Russian government is not tolerating hooliganism on the part of groups like BLM and Antifa. The Russian government is not allowing the streets of it’s great cities to become open sewers controlled by criminals and druggies. The Russian government is not turning felons loose on the streets through no bail and no prosecution policies. The Russian government doesn’t consider parents attending school board meetings exercising their right of free speech to be domenstic terrorists. The Russian government is not promoting environmental fascism through the “Green New Deal”. And on, and on, and on...
Despite the Russian government being far from “perfect” (whatever the hell that is), we have enormous problems. Worse, WE are behind this hideous war in the Ukraine. WE have been trying to use the Z regime as our proxy for weakening the RF. For stupidly buying into this, the EU is being economically destroyed, and President Depends’ administration is trying to use the crisis it has created to advance its totalitarian dreams.
Russia is doing what it has to do (and what we would have don in Cuba in 1962 if the Soviets hadn’t taken their missiles out.), and the Russians are doing it, so far, with as much care for the civilians (who are ethnic Russians) as is possible in a war. There is a settlement proposal coming from the Russians, and it had better be taken, because if it isn’t, the rules of engagement will change, and the Russians may well roll all the way to Lvov.
Don’t be obsessed with a mote in the eye of the Russians when we have a beam in ours. What we need is a revolution here. The woketards and “progressive” must be ruthlessly crushed, or the American experiment is over.
No I think that Bill should go to the US they’re the ones that instigated this war do US and NATO.
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