War in Ukraine. Did the West handle the post Cold War era badly?

Any Republicans voting against it at the time?

I hope you aren't taking him seriously.

Assuming Ukraine survives this, they will receive aid from the west for years, possibly decades to come. Potentially becoming a prosperous centre-point of Europe in the long run, with Russia, essentially North Korea to it's South Korea. Ostracised from the world.

Ukraine itself is far from perfect. But your argument here directly applies to (and more so) Russia. To the point Russians themselves aren't properly equipped that it's actively been detrimental.

Ukraine will be using state-of-the-art weapons will Russia is reduced to rusty of old bangers.

How's that for a twist.

And yes, I do think Zelensky cares. In the opening of the war, when it was predicted to be certain dooms-day, with a 40-mile tank line incoming, he opted to stay in Kiev when offered an option out.

Compare that to Russians turning their back and running on mass when they became the target of an overwhelming offensive.

Oh no, not at all. It's odd that we got essentially two pieces of Jim though.

Why don't you go look it up and tell me? Guess who controlled the senate at that time?

By default, if you have to read to get the definition, it's the liberal definition. The conservative definition can be found on YouTube.

Fine

Senate: republicans were 48 for, 1 against, democratic were 29 for, 21 against.

House: Republicans were 215 for, 6 against, democratic were 81 for, 126 against.

So Republicans were the biggest war mongers.
to think that if I relied on your lies I wouldn’t have known.

And Democrats were in charge of Congress. Republicans couldn't do anything with Democrat support. I know what you're trying to do, you're trying to absolve Democrats from their roll in by saying "but.. but... Republicans did more."

You seem to be of the illusion there's a big difference between parties in the US. There isn't. They all profited. But that's Okay to you because more people with an R by their name voted for it than those with a D by their name? Okay. Shows you know jack shit about US politics.

The vote totals were clearly different.

Damn Eoten lies so much!

Yea, that's why Hitler wasn't a fan.

This discussion of who is what and what was who is redundant. It's easy to resolve. Respect the distinctiveness. German National Socialism was fascist, but it wasn't italian fascism, as todays rashists are not bolsheviks.

And no, Fascism has been around long before Mussolini. The movement starrted in the 19th century, and started its development across various countries, including France, Germany, Austria and Italy. These ideas began as a backlash towards increasing secular liberalism and other forms of enlightenment thought sweeping the European continent.

Are you sure? You could go back even further. Ancient Rome was fascist. Just take its origin story and the rape of the sabines. The violent strong, martial prowess, military coups and consequently military leaders on a regular. The OG fascists so to say...

@eoten: Stop lying. One side was split almost 50/50, the other was 95/5. Republicans could have stopped it as well.

@palasta: The ideologies of liberalism, traditional conservatism, socialism and communism did not exist back then. So no. They did exist however in the 19th century, which is where fascism originated as a response to these movements.

What an absolute surface level take.

Even if Democrats were in charge of congress at the time, it doesnt change the fact that Republicans were overwhelmingly in support of the war, and Democrats were mixed on it. You tu quoque fallacy fails yet again. With the ammount of republicans supporting the war, even a very small minority of democrats would be enough.

Nor do I see how the war on terror is relevant to the war in Ukraine. Do I need to remind you that Ukraine is being invaded here? We westerners are not engaging in a war of aggression, we helping a country defend itself.

Do you not understand the difference between defending a country and invading it?

@Maroxad: I trailed off topic hence the Iraq war questions.

And the congress was controlled by Democrats. I don't care if Republicans could have stopped it as well, you tried pushing blame onto Republicans, who couldn't do anything with support from Democrats. Key democrats too, including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. You people have a hard-on for calling people a liar. Okay, where's the lie in this statement?

Here's some facts to help you out. The bill to authorize force was October 2nd, 2002, and was passed October 11th, 2002. It was signed into law by Bush on October 16th, 2002. This makes it the 107th congress.

And you don't think any of those involved profited? Or are you just intent on pretending there isn't a LOT of similarities with the billions of dollars being dumped into Ukraine by the same people? It's another for profit war being justified by the same people for the same reasons using the same line of pro-war bullshit.

There're people profiting from water, stop drinking water sheople!!!

Maths are hard. There were way more Republican votes.

imagine your main metric for something like a war is how rich or poor someone gets out of it.

jeez

What eoten's argument fails to acknowledge is that we live in a capitalist society, making armaments, or vaccines takes resources, time and a LOT of hard work. Money and profit is an incentive to produce stuff and services the rest of us need.

Yes, people profit, but so what? People profit when I buy video games, bought my bike, buy the saplings I plant to combat Climate Change. Money makes the world go round? So what if people get wealthy? The fact of the matter is, defending Ukraine is imperative, not only because if Russia Succeeds they will go after other european nations, but for the well being of Ukraine themselves.

When that is the purpose of it, it's a pretty good metric. People shouldn't profit off war. One of Joe Biden's campaign promises was to the MIC where he promised more military spending and more weapons sales overseas. Biden has not only spent over $50 billion US dollars on weapons to Ukraine, but is also requesting a record-breaking $813 billion in military spending. Up from $773 billion lat year. That's an increase of an additional $40 billion in military spending.

Do you remember 1 year ago when I said this?

He fails to acknowledge anything that goes against his party's talking points. Fear and hate is all the GOP has left to sell.

I've never been a fan of the ridiculous military spending in the US. I have not supported them under republican predecessors ( bush/trump) under the guise of "we need to rebuild the military!" or "democrats gutted the military!" or whatever asinine slogans they'd chant and I don't support it under the current administration either.

Whether you expect me to remember a comment you made from a year ago is immaterial. It was striking when, in response to a comment about human misery wrought upon Ukrainian people by the war your response was "but teh peeple are gettin' rich!"

Us europeans should definately increase our military spending to reach 2% of our GDP. Some of us have stepped up like here in Sweden and Finland.

The US should probably reduce theirs, at least after this war.

"The people" aren't getting rich. They're getting murdered. Politicians and corporations are getting rich. US politicians, UK politicians, politicians in Germany, politicians in Ukraine. Corporations that make and sell weapons, the people who in turn sell those weapons on the black market, and the people getting cheap western made weapons on the black market (often terrorist groups and cartels).

The only people not capitalizing on this are citizens, any of them. The ones in the US are dealing with massive inflation since we're paying the bulk of it while Europe does next to nothing. Then Europeans are going to be spending significantly greater amounts of money on energy this winter. Who does that hurt? The people who are now selling the same amount of fuel today that they would have only been able to sell for a fraction of the price last year? No, gas an energy companies are profiting too. And of course, what the people in Ukraine are going through is obvious.

But everybody BUT "the people" are profiting. And that's why it's going to continue to be dragged out, just like NATO dragged the **** out of Iraq and Afghanistan prior. And here's a bit more of a newsflash. When the mess in Ukraine finally does come to a conclusion, there's going to be another conflict. Billions of dollars (if not trillions) will be sold, the corporations and political figures will be profiting off the loss of citizens yet again. And yet again you people will be in here telling everybody else how inhumane they are for not being on board with the current crisis.

That's why making the prediction I made last year was so easy. It's a status quo, a pattern, that will be going on for the rest of your life.

Desperation looms.

@uninspiredcup: I hope that backfires on him domestically

He was supposed to do his speech, but nothing has happened.

Very strange.

@uninspiredcup: Some of the separatists in parts of Ukraine could try to hold elections about being part of Russia already next week. Russia could use them as a reason to call it a full out war in Russia and bring in heavier weaponry.

@horgen: As far as i'm aware outside a miniature nuke, Russia technically already has been using its heavy weapons. Namely, thermobaric weapons. They've also used hypersonic missiles.

From the jist of what i've read, Ukraine technically has superior weapons now. Namely, the HIMAR (see vid page back) which even with just a tiny amount of them has caused Russia major problems.

The whole image of Russia has just been shattered. Their army and equipment is absolutely shit.

Even stuff like basic maintenance, or using it properly, like encrypting data, they've been moronic, extremely disorganized with (made in China) tires lol

The term paper tiger is thrown around, but I think in this case it really does apply. Russia was all show. Take away nukes, basically trash. No wonder they've been threatening it every 25 seconds on State TV.

Ah.

Something something provocation.

Not a good time for russia. If Putin shows more weakness than he currently does, we may even see the dissolution of the Russian Federation entirely, in which case, squabbling oligarchs will take what they can. We may potentially see a slew of Mini Putins, many of them armed with Nukes.

So Biden is supposed to give a speech at the UN tomorrow, and Putin supposedly pre-recorded a speech to air tomorrow morning in Russia. Going to likely be an interesting day tomorrow.

Russia is in a much worse state tha they're making out.

Also Google tracking with massive spikes of how to get out of Russia and how to get out of draft.

In full panic mode.

jeez.

given how inept russia's military has shown itself to be, does anyone thing their nukes would actually even work at this point?

@comp_atkins: not that I want to count on it, but would be great if that's the case, this guy made a great point that given the corruption and skimming of in Russian military funds, it could be worse in nuclear arsenal maintenance as that's the last place anybody might notice, and doubts as to whether it was properly maintained in years when Soviet Union wasn't maintaining them or in years after, that the USA with a slightly smaller arsenal spends $30 billion a year to maintain what we have and doubts Russia does the same, and since these are precision devices, one ill maintained component could greatly impact their yields or whether they'll even work

L O L Putin's speech was so dismal. Now he's drafting up 300k reservists to be cannon fodder or deserters. Great job, throw your futures work force and economic lifeline to the wolves instead of admitting defeat. This, on top of skirmishes between CSTO members which have shown how limp and pathetic they are to honor pledges. It only serves to dissolve the organization and federation. Putin is setting back Russia decades.

@lamprey263: It would be so poetic, if ultimately Russia was so corrupt to the core with the elites gobbling it's own assets that it ultimately couldn't strike the West, due to Russia being Russia. Or beat Ukraine, due to Russia being Russia.

It's irrelevant how functional is the nuclear arsenal since they only need a small percentage to cause cataclysmic damage.

With that said, I hope the west understands that now it's time to step up the military support for Ukraine.

My biggest hope is that the Russian people finds their balls and finally takes freedom into their own hands. I dream, I know. But I feel sorry for them too.

Meh, they could be selling them under-the-table, but the question is does NK produce its own weapons or just re-sell Russian and/or Chinese made ones?

They produce their own. Weapons is about the only thing they produce there. It's a decent sized country by population and resources that pretty much just makes eastern block compatible weaponry for dirt cheap.

Russia, NK, China it means nothing what they say.

Until you realize China has control over production of just about every device you rely on in your daily life. Even the electronics that allow your car to operate, your computer, internet equipment, all of it. That kind of power and control over ordinary people halfway across the planet tends to give somebody a voice.

Mean something to Ukrainians getting killed by weaponry.

China won't help, they care more about their economy. They propose to hate the West, but they just love money too much. Happily throw Russia under the bus and sit back.

NK on the other hand is basically a country build around weapons that's been isolated from the world.

Russia has been getting drones from Iran also, they were slow to catchup on Ukraine. These have been having some effect, though nothing drastic. It was suspected but now more or less confirmed they're using them.

Also got a basic maintenance and supply issue. Russian equipment is shit. Whereas NK probably do upkeep their equipment (much of it outdated) at the expense of its population.

@uninspiredcup: It means nothing because they are not trust worthy and have no free press, or political opposition, to contradict their words.

They saying that they're not sending weapons to Russia means nothing, they say a lot of things that aren't truth it's not like there's space for contradictory.