Robert DeLong: "No it hasn't.
It may have prevented a kinetic version of WWIII, but we are in WWIII.
while the kinetic portion of the war is raging in Ukraine, it has great potential to expand considerably, and there is no guarantee that nuclear weapons won't become involved."
Sure, and it's an interesting exercise in mental gymnastics to contemplate how many "real World Wars" there've been.
By my count, we could be up to World War Seven:
- World War I -- 1756 - 1763 Seven Years' War (including our French & Indian War) about 1 million died.
- World War II -- 1803 - 1815 Napoleonic Wars (including our War of 1812) about 4 million died.
- World War III -- 1914 - 1918 The Great War (aka First World War), nearly 20 million died.
- World War IV -- 1939 - 1945 aka Second World War, around 75 million died.
- World War V -- 1945 - 1991 The Cold War, around 25 million died
- World War VI -- 2001 - 2021 The War on Terror, around 1 million died.
- World War VII??? -- 2022 to ??? Russian invasion of Ukraine, about 100,000 killed, military and civilians.
If Russia had done to the U.S. & the UE, what the U.S., EU, & N.A.T.O. has done to threaten Russia's security, we would have reacted as well."
As far as I'm concerned, that is lies and nonsense, and why anyone would want to believe such drivel is beyond my comprehension.
Reasons include, first of all, beginning in 1994 Russia and other eastern European countries planned to join NATO, and in 1999 some of them did join.
NATO was no threat to Russia then, and in 2000 Putin himself discussed joining NATO with our Pres. Slick Willie.
Other eastern European countries were also on a MAP to NATO membership.
Had Putin stuck with the plan to join NATO, there is no possibility of NATO threatening Russia.
Well into the early 2000s, Russia and NATO maintained good relations through the NATO-Russia Council.
But Putin didn't want NATO as his ally, he wanted NATO as his enemy, and so began threatening small countries that still planned to join NATO, like Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and Estonia.
The result was NATO-Russia relations cooled and, when Putin began invading his neighbors in 2008, NATO-Russia relations then froze.
Robert DeLong: "I mean, we invaded Iraq, & Afghanistan for 911, when it was most likely Saudi Arabian involvement than either of those nations.
We invaded Syria, again by proxy, with our funding of ISIS."
I've seen no evidence suggesting Osama Hussein Obama funded ISIS.
And, there was never any question about Afghanistan harboring Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
That's why we went to Afghanistan.
The fact that Bin Laden came from Saudi Arabia is an interesting curiosity but does not suggest we should have invaded Saudi Arabia instead.
We invaded Iraq in the belief that Sadaam had WMDs and threatened his neighbors with them.
Come to find out, Sadaam himself believed he had such weapons, had used them against Iran, and nobody has yet accounted for what happened to them, if they did in fact exist.
Nothing remotely resembling these scenarios existed between Russia and Ukraine, or any other country Vlad the Invader has threatened.
Robert DeLong: "You can try to cover up our misdeeds, but I can no longer do so in good conscience, for to do so is to avoid the evil we are doing.
You apparently can justify our evil, by saying that it's Putin's evil that caused this, because you have chosen to not see the evil our nation is engaging in.
This time that evil involves Russia with whom we've started yet another proxy war, on purpose.
We are no better than Iran, who also engages in proxy wars around the Middle East regions.
Combating evil with evil is not righteousness."
Now you're just babbling mindless childish nonsense.
None of that is true.
The truth is, the only connection between our alleged "misdeeds" in Iraq and Afghanistan with Vlad the Invader's "special military operations" in Ukraine is this: our withdraws from those countries demonstrated fatal weakness and incompetence in our leadership, which Vlad realized he could take advantage of, and gave him, in effect, a green light to invade Ukraine.
Vlad's invasion of Ukraine is evil by every traditional definition -- see St. Thomas Aquinas on Just Wars.
Our helping Ukraine defend themselves against invasion is good in every sense of the word.
So why you would want to muddle up the issues and confuse yourself about this is beyond rational comprehension.
Robert DeLong: "Now if Putin had done this without any provocation whatsoever, that would be different. But that was not the case.
He tried to get the international community to intervene to get Ukraine to stop the hostilities in eastern Ukraine against Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens, and he was rebuffed for 8 years.
That resulted with 2 Minsk Agreements in 2014 & 2015.
But while Ukraine signed those agreements, they made no attempt whatsoever to enact the agreements with actions.
In fact, they later admitted they only signed them to buy time, and had no intention whatsoever to act upon them at all."
And the babbling nonsense of Russian propaganda just never stops with you, does it?
The truth is that Vlad the Invader had no moral or legal justification to invade Ukraine in 2014 and Ukrainians had every right to defend their country against invasion, period.
Nor did Vlad have justification for a SECOND invasion in February 2022.
What he had instead was demonstrated weakness by American leadership giving him, in effect, a green-light to do as he pleased in Ukraine.
Effective American leadership (i.e., Pres. DJT) would have prevented Vlad's invasion and could quickly end Vlad's war.
All the rest of your nonsense about America's "misdeeds" is just babbling idiocy, FRiend.
Robert DeLong: "Imagine of there was a large contingency of English speaking citizens living in northern Mexico on the border that is shared by the U.S. & Mexico.
Then imagine them being terrorized by people in Mexico for speaking English.
Then imagine that our president tried to get the international community to intervene, but the international community ignored those attempts.
Do you think a president would, or even should, ignore such events, or do you think the reaction would be to intervene.
Would our president then be the criminal you now claim Putin to be?"
Can you not see how nonsensical that is?
Today there are something like 10 million Americans living in 76 foreign countries, some of which are less than friendly to us.
The biggest number, maybe 1.5 million live in Mexico.
And what does the US State Department do whenever Mexican drug gangs attack & kill Americans there?
Does the American government ever launch invasions of foreign countries **just because** our citizens there are mistreated?
Of course not! Instead, the US State Department tells Americans in hostile countries to GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!
Your insane suggestions that Vlad the Invader's only option to fix problems caused by his FIRST invasion was to launch a SECOND invasion of Ukraine, is just beyond rational comprehension.
Robert DeLong: "Now, I am not siding with Putin at all, I'm just pointing out that it's not as cut & dry like you cheerleaders always claim."
Of course, you are siding with Vlad the Invader -- you've drunk the Russian propaganda Kool-Aid and now you're trying to make moral and logical sense of what is truthfully nothing more than insane Russian empire building, by conquest.
In fact, there's no excuse for Vlad's actions and no reason for you to attempt justifying them.
Robert DeLong: "When you look at all sides a very different picture begins to show itself.
But you have to be willing to do so, for if you don't then you can only see the evil on one side, while ignoring the evil on the other side.
I love my country too much to allow myself to be duped by the evil in my country."
But I do totally 100% see Vlad the Invader's side!!
He wants to restore the old Russian and Soviet Empires, so he's concocting any excuse he can think of to bully and invade his smaller neighbors.
As for alleged "evil in my country" nothing here remotely compares to the evil of Vlad's unprovoked invasion, or can somehow magically remove our moral duty to help defend Ukraine against this violation of every international law, rule and moral standard.
Robert DeLong: "I prefer to vanquish evil on earth, where ever it's ugly head exists, and especially in this country before I desire it vanquished in other countries, because to ignore the evil here while worrying about it elsewhere is hypocritical."
In effect, what you are saying is, we cannot arrest a murderer until we have arrested every jaywalker in the country because jaywalking is a crime and murder is a crime and it's **"hypocritical"** to arrest one if we don't arrest all the others too.
And that is surely the very definition of utter blithering insanity, FRiend.
You need to fix that.