[Rocco DiPippo]

I get that the US has to play games sometimes and take unsavory sides to influence international policy in order to protect its interests (whatever that means in this current, non-virtuous climate among so-called "public servants.") But after having seen the inside of the defense contracting and spook "businesses," more often than not the US State Department (ahem ahem) just destroys situations and creates chaos, death and impoverishment. It's just an 'effin nasty scewne all around.

Now, the pipehitters are mostly straight-up guys; patriotic and brave to a fault though there are a few psychopaths/sociopaths among them, but not many from what I've experienced. However, the clowns and scumbags (generally speaking) who send them out are goldbricking, rumpswabbing, card-punching f*cksticks. Corrupt, evil, lazy and generally useless. Ugh.

Knowing what I know, I'll bet a king's ransom that "protecting US interests" during the Ruzziiiaaa/Youcrayne grudge match involves mostly protecting the interests$$$ of select "elites" and bureaucrats and their families and biz associates. Eff them all. Meanwhile, we have good guys who fought for us and got messed up because of what they did and saw living in the streets. Sickening.

This must be ended.

[alexander_busek]

Knowing what I know, I'll bet a king's ransom that "protecting US interests" during the Ruzziiiaaa/Youcrayne grudge match involves mostly protecting the interests$$$ of select "elites" and bureaucrats and their families and biz associates.

I sympathize with your sentiments, Rocco DiPippo!

But I hasten to add that, for most of the 20th century, the Soviet Union (the declared successor-state of which is the Russian Federation) was America's pre-eminent geopolitical foe.

No country in the world had as many nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at our nation's heartland! (Russia still has more nuclear death poised over our heads than any other country in the world.)

Anything that degrades Russia's military might and thus weakens its ability to wage war is in the interest of the U.S. - incl. in the interest of the "pipehitters" (slang? meaning?) you mention. It is in the interest of anyone in America who doesn't want to have to send a son to die on some foreign battlefield or who doesn't want to himself die in a nuclear holocaust.

And to those spineless appeasers who claim that it is exactly because of Russia's nuclear arsenal that we should now do everything in our power to placate Russia, I say: We thwarted their attempt to blackmail us during the Berlin Blockade (1948/49).

We "played hardball" with the Soviets in a real shooting war (Korea) in which they sent their proxies (the N. Koreans and Red Chinese) and equipped them to kill G.I.s.

We called their bluff on the high seas near Cuba in 1962.

There is thus no reason to kneel down and bear our throats to the Russians now.

Regards,