A large contributing factor to Russia’s 2022 invasion is the fact that the US has demonized Russia and made engagement with Russia taboo (see Mike Flynn), all because Democrats couldn’t admit that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate who ran a poor campaign. Ever since 2016, “Russia Bad” has been our elites’ foreign policy.
So, making Russia a pariah for eight years has accomplished nothing but the rise of an anti-Western alliance of them, China, Iran, and others.
There was a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict- more autonomy for the east- but the US and UK goaded both Ukraine and Russia into war with bluster and tough talk, not to mention actively undermining peace talks.
Do not underestimate ideologues’ tolerance for stacks of dead soldiers and civilians if it furthers their goal- in this case, “hurting Putin” (essentially making him pay for “stealing” the 2016 election).
I find it very interesting (and ironic) that the same Leftists who adored the Soviet Union are now the most anti-Russian people around. And it doesn't help that a large sector on the Right never got over the Cold War.
You make a very good point that the U.S. is just as susceptible to making bad foreign policy decisions on the basis of irrational hatred when it comes to Russia. Our meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs was just another sample of the ugly Cold War policies (despite the Cold War being theoretically over!) that harmed multiple nations in the name of "protecting" them from Soviet influence.
We should have long-since demanded peace talks to settle the war in Ukraine, but our hatred of Russia is motivating us to use Ukraine as a proxy to fight Russia, at the cost of Ukrainian lives. The end game seems to be "regime change" in Russia, despite the fact that direct American action against Russia will almost certainly be met with nuclear retaliation.
Maybe they hate Russia because they ditched communism. Because they sure do admire China, which is every bit as repressive and murderous as the Evil Empire.
Agree a million times over with your first point. Starting with the Walter Duranty and the NYT winning a Pulitzer for helping to cover up the Holomodor and famously saying about it “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs” to Bernie taking his honeymoon there and every idiot leftist in between, many of them saw us as the bad guy during the Cold War- although the democrat party still had anti-commie adults in charge back then.
The neocons just love war and imposing their preferences on the world, I think, which is why when Trump won they stopped pretending to be conservatives and gravitated toward the new interventionists to pay their bills and start their wars.
I think Hillary’s historically embarrassing defeat in 2016 was more of a “last straw” reason to turn up the heat on Russia. It was an attempt to mitigate her humiliation and as an added bonus, excite the neocons. Putin was thrust as the world’s existential threat working with treasonous Trump and his army of deplorables here domestically. Global democracy was dying they screamed. Biden pounded his fist and called for regime change in Russia. The neocons were salivating.
The Minsk accords agreed to a year before Hillary’s election debacle failed and it was later revealed that signatories knew it was a sham ostensibly to buy time to beef up Ukraine’s defense capabilities and for a possible offensive to be determined at a later date. Through a series of public pronouncements and provocations the U.S. created an opportunity to go forward. They poked the bear one too many times. It is widely agreed Russia’s invasion was an act of aggression. What is the solution for a country with its best interests in mind, that is being threatened with NATO forces on its border egged on by the U.S. with punitive sanctions and trash talking? It seems Putin adhered to the FAFO philosophy. A long list of serious miscalculations brought us to where we are today. It was naked opportunism on our part and in no way displayed any moral obligation to the safety of Ukraine. Lyndsay Graham’s indifference to human life and destruction there is a great example. Would Americans be willing to sacrifice their children to fight an unwinnable war at the behest of another country? There are no shortage of American soldiers past and present who question their leader’s intentions and its good for America. The spectre of nuclear war hasn’t seemed to deter the West, even after repeated failures digging them deeper into a hole and squandering untold hundreds of billions better spent at home. It’s war games for the elites who are protected and immune from the havoc wreaked. This could all have been avoided in my opinion.
Cogent and sober analysis of the entire debacle. Or.....put another way. Ukraine was secure until Obama let Nuland and her cronies screw around and got the Crimea severed and the eastern provinces invaded. Then things settled down under Trump. Biden and his hand picked nitwits come in and get Ukraine invaded, a generation of young men decimated and its infrastructure wrecked. See a pattern here? Democrats suck.
I had dinner with 15 or so Ukrainians at a work function around 2014. People got drunk and started talking about politics (of course). It was 14 to 1 against Russia. The lone holdout kept saying "but we were all a lot better off when Russia was in charge", and the response was basically "of course, but it's Russia!"
As an aside, I also used to know a Chilean immigrant who would get drunk and go on about how great things were under Pinochet. It takes all kinds, I guess.
I'd probably be able to achieve more clarity around Ukraine if so much of their current situation wasn't due to blatant and incompetent fuckery on the part of the US government. Assuming that Russia would fail to act in its own national best interests is a position so absurd that only a neoliberal could ever think of it.
For most of the world the only thing that matters is if their government makes it easier to support their families. What's most disappointing about the current culture wars here is half of us can't support our families the way we should be able to but we're fighting over whether people should be allowed to disagree with the government and if teachers should be able to determine what gender a child is.
All good points. I would also point to the lies of the Western Press about how Russia is losing the war. Russia is not losing, in fact Ukraine cannot win. Substack analyst "Big Serge" has demonstrated that. https://substack.com/home/post/p-144670767
Given this, why has the Biden cabal antagonized Russia and continued to keep this pot boiling, needlessly killing Ukrainian men and destroying much of that unhappy land?
Likely because they cannot. If this all has been driven by a craven nationalism fueled by the US and laced with corruption all around, the "support" is being strong armed (read:blackmail).
What I could never understand is why we all watched Russia build up its military on Ukraine's border for months and Ukraine, like all of us, sat back and watched it happen. Their aggressive neighbor, who had already snatched territory under O'Biden, was attempting the same, under O'Biden again, and nothing? Where was their military to clearly give Russia the message that they would not be coming in without a fight? Decades of aid, where did it all go? I clearly remember during Trump's Ukraine impeachment, former Ambassador Yovanovitch was asked by some commitee member where all the aid had gone: her reply, "Umm...well...we're trying to get a lot of it back." The corruption!! So many questions and not enough answers, as usual.
The flip-flopping from the left, "the 80's want their foreign policy back" and how Barry will have more "flexibility" as a lame duck and now every wrong in the world is supposedly the fault of Pootin, is enough to give you whiplash....
It also didn’t help when telegraphed explicitly by Russia that they wouldn’t tolerate Ukraine in NATO, membership in NATO was broached as well as idiot Biden saying a minor incursion wouldn’t be problematic when he should have either shut up completely or said no incursion at all would be tolerated.
Then there is the yapping grifter zelensky jetting around Hoovering up money to pay for pensions (really?) I also understand there might have been peace proposals proposed early on but Biden said no.
You’d be shocked. I don’t doubt for a moment that a couple billions of the “aid” he’s swiping out of Uncle Sam’s hands and gift wrapping with a big blue bow for Zelenskyy includes suitcases full of money for the inner circle who has the goods on Joe.
And it’s no secret Israel has even more sway in Washington because of this. Their intelligence gathering is second to none. It’s the reason Bill Clinton did an about face on his “firm positions” that didn’t align with Netanyahu. The message is clear to our past and future office holders: “Don’t fuck with Israel. We’ll let you pretend to protest, but in the end you will do what we want.” If any of our ruling class have skeletons in the closet, rest assured Israel knows about it.
Also the reason in-over-his-head Jeffrey Epstein was “suicided”. Both sides were afraid of him spilling the beans for a sweetheart deal and therefore he was expendable.
The spectacle early on of Zelenskyy receiving a full body tongue bath in Congress was another chapter in cringeworthy moments in political history. It was nearly as bad as the Democrat’s embarrassing Kente cloth charade created to appear as a symbol of solidarity, but really a roundabout way to ask the protesters not to invade their neighborhood.
The Ukranian hatred, justifiably so, has gone on for hundreds of years. My maternal grandparents escaped in 1906 and my grandmother used to tell me stories of growing up in a farming village, where, at harvest time, the Cossacks would ride through the village, swords out, killing any man or child in the road and raping the women. The men and boys working in the fields would hide in the wheat stacks until the Cossacks rode away to the next village. The only thing that has changed is that now, the Cossacks ride in on tanks and their swords have been replaced by guns. That's not to say the Ukrainian govt. has no responsibility for this war, it's just a reminder of what has always been.
Ukraine has been a prize tossed around between the surrounding nations for hundreds of years. It was a backwater on the fringes of the Roman Empire until the Vikings created the beginnings of the Russian Empire in Kiev.
After being smashed by the Mongols, the parts that weren't still dominated by the Turks came under the control of Poland and Lithuania. Eventually it came under the control of the Russian Empire. Ironically, the only period when Ukraine had anything like self-rule was for about a hundred years in the 17th/18th centuries under the Cossacks, who had rebelled against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and were initially permitted by the Russian Empire to be semi-autonomous.
I'm not a historian, but my maternal great-grandparents came to the US from what is now Western Ukraine (near Poland) in the 1890's. Growing up in the 60's I was told my great-gran was "Russian." she sang songs in honor of the Emperor Franz Joseph (Hapsburg Empire) as opposed to the Czar. I'm not sure what language she was speaking. I didn't know I was part Ukrainian until the late 1970's, when for some reason my family began identifying as "Ukies" as opposed to "Russkies"! Point being- as you said Celia-- lot's of different influences in the "breadbasket" of the former USSR.
Sounds like they are taking the "Give me liberty or give me death!" approach? Might also have something to do with Stalin deliberately killing between 6 and 11 million of them by deliberate starvation in the late thirties, depending on who you want to believe, and dispersing many of the remainder to various places like Kazakhstan and Siberia, and moving Russians in their stead. But I am entirely infavor of realizm. If its not currently winnable, live to fight another day.
There's no question that Ukraine was abused by Russia--under Stalin even more so than the Tsars. I get why Ukrainians hate Russia. But that isn't a good basis for either foreign or domestic policy.
It's ironic that McCarthy's authoritarian overreach in trying to root out communism in the U.S. gave the Left exactly the sympathy it needed to quietly enact the Long March.
On a tangent, I recall The Bad Orange Man being laughed at by much of Europe when he pointed out how dependent they have become on Russian oil; where is Germany getting their energy from nowadays? How committed are they to the inevitable?
Ukraine strikes me as the Illinois of Europe, where the corruption is just part of the process; so while I broadly think Russia is in the wrong, I am having a hard time believing that absorbing one of the former Soviet states is a world-changing event. Especially since, my understanding, is that many eastern Ukrainians actually have more ethnicity with Russia.
On Ukraine, it seems to me Ukraine was a hot mess, with Eastern Ukraine more Russian than Ukraine. this was Vlad’s strategy all along. Just take the ethnic Russian part. Today, the entire place is a cluster fuck. There was a chance to seek peace early on, but Biden wouldn’t allow it because he wanted to weaken Vlad. But as a meat grinder, that’s tragic. Men on both sides are being destroyed.
Can someone tell me why Biden is escalating Ukraine but de escalating Israel-Gaza ?
Seems to me Biden is not afraid of Vlad, but scared shitless of the Mullahs in Iran.
Add to Mr Adenauer: All of history is dependent upon the right man or the wrong man being there. Some got lucky; imperial Britain comes to mind, but through most of history, the peeps have had little or no say or even influence upon who shall lead them. Then came Our Founders: or a while there was a system that tended -- no better than that, I fear -- to find and support wise choices and -- critically -- to prevent the unwise choices from doing much damage. And it's being busily squandered. And another trenchant quote springs forward: "events, dear boy, events."
Way too complicated to figure out the “soup” that goes back for this region. Ingredients of church’s influence, middle ages antisemitism, reliance on father figure (tsar), conflicts with Poland, Russia, internal corruption of selling out one’s country, etc. So what’s new?
I believe we need to take a hard look at the Ukraine situation. I wonder why very few people mention the effect Biden has had on Ukraine for the last 15 years. Wasn't Biden the moron who was the point person for Obama's administration on Ukraine? His moron son on the board of a large Ukrainian energy company with no experience whatsoever. His bragging about getting an official fired. Trump being impeached over a phone call with the Ukrainian President? Corruption everywhere.
Then this stupid weakling gets elected as POTUS, and Putin says, "well this fool can be rolled". Is it too hard for some people to find out WTF is going on here, and what caused this mess?
I don’t pretend to understand the complex tensions and dynamics between Eastern Europe and Russia. The history of fear of aggression goes back for centuries. But I see the current idea that Russia will try to conquer all of Europe if they are not defeated in Ukraine as a dangerous oversimplification. Does this war look like Blitzkrieg to anyone?
Russia has always occupied a unique spot- one foot in Europe and the other in Asia. Geographically, Russia is the only land barrier between Europe and China and Iran. Is a decimated, defeated Russia really what the West wants?
Thank you for sharing Celia - I will have to do much more reading on this subject . I had no idea (their point exactly as you've noted) that Ukraine has been bombing its own citizens for well before the current conflict. I feel awful for the day to day people who want just to be mostly free of interference in their lives and live in peace with their neighbors. Now we have a whole new generation of vengeance brewed up that will breed more, not less, conflict whenever this round of shooting stops.
A large contributing factor to Russia’s 2022 invasion is the fact that the US has demonized Russia and made engagement with Russia taboo (see Mike Flynn), all because Democrats couldn’t admit that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate who ran a poor campaign. Ever since 2016, “Russia Bad” has been our elites’ foreign policy.
So, making Russia a pariah for eight years has accomplished nothing but the rise of an anti-Western alliance of them, China, Iran, and others.
There was a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict- more autonomy for the east- but the US and UK goaded both Ukraine and Russia into war with bluster and tough talk, not to mention actively undermining peace talks.
Do not underestimate ideologues’ tolerance for stacks of dead soldiers and civilians if it furthers their goal- in this case, “hurting Putin” (essentially making him pay for “stealing” the 2016 election).
I find it very interesting (and ironic) that the same Leftists who adored the Soviet Union are now the most anti-Russian people around. And it doesn't help that a large sector on the Right never got over the Cold War.
You make a very good point that the U.S. is just as susceptible to making bad foreign policy decisions on the basis of irrational hatred when it comes to Russia. Our meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs was just another sample of the ugly Cold War policies (despite the Cold War being theoretically over!) that harmed multiple nations in the name of "protecting" them from Soviet influence.
We should have long-since demanded peace talks to settle the war in Ukraine, but our hatred of Russia is motivating us to use Ukraine as a proxy to fight Russia, at the cost of Ukrainian lives. The end game seems to be "regime change" in Russia, despite the fact that direct American action against Russia will almost certainly be met with nuclear retaliation.
Maybe they hate Russia because they ditched communism. Because they sure do admire China, which is every bit as repressive and murderous as the Evil Empire.
Agree a million times over with your first point. Starting with the Walter Duranty and the NYT winning a Pulitzer for helping to cover up the Holomodor and famously saying about it “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs” to Bernie taking his honeymoon there and every idiot leftist in between, many of them saw us as the bad guy during the Cold War- although the democrat party still had anti-commie adults in charge back then.
The neocons just love war and imposing their preferences on the world, I think, which is why when Trump won they stopped pretending to be conservatives and gravitated toward the new interventionists to pay their bills and start their wars.
I think Hillary’s historically embarrassing defeat in 2016 was more of a “last straw” reason to turn up the heat on Russia. It was an attempt to mitigate her humiliation and as an added bonus, excite the neocons. Putin was thrust as the world’s existential threat working with treasonous Trump and his army of deplorables here domestically. Global democracy was dying they screamed. Biden pounded his fist and called for regime change in Russia. The neocons were salivating.
The Minsk accords agreed to a year before Hillary’s election debacle failed and it was later revealed that signatories knew it was a sham ostensibly to buy time to beef up Ukraine’s defense capabilities and for a possible offensive to be determined at a later date. Through a series of public pronouncements and provocations the U.S. created an opportunity to go forward. They poked the bear one too many times. It is widely agreed Russia’s invasion was an act of aggression. What is the solution for a country with its best interests in mind, that is being threatened with NATO forces on its border egged on by the U.S. with punitive sanctions and trash talking? It seems Putin adhered to the FAFO philosophy. A long list of serious miscalculations brought us to where we are today. It was naked opportunism on our part and in no way displayed any moral obligation to the safety of Ukraine. Lyndsay Graham’s indifference to human life and destruction there is a great example. Would Americans be willing to sacrifice their children to fight an unwinnable war at the behest of another country? There are no shortage of American soldiers past and present who question their leader’s intentions and its good for America. The spectre of nuclear war hasn’t seemed to deter the West, even after repeated failures digging them deeper into a hole and squandering untold hundreds of billions better spent at home. It’s war games for the elites who are protected and immune from the havoc wreaked. This could all have been avoided in my opinion.
Cogent and sober analysis of the entire debacle. Or.....put another way. Ukraine was secure until Obama let Nuland and her cronies screw around and got the Crimea severed and the eastern provinces invaded. Then things settled down under Trump. Biden and his hand picked nitwits come in and get Ukraine invaded, a generation of young men decimated and its infrastructure wrecked. See a pattern here? Democrats suck.
Apparently being a student of history isn’t a requirement to work in the upper echelons of government.
I had dinner with 15 or so Ukrainians at a work function around 2014. People got drunk and started talking about politics (of course). It was 14 to 1 against Russia. The lone holdout kept saying "but we were all a lot better off when Russia was in charge", and the response was basically "of course, but it's Russia!"
As an aside, I also used to know a Chilean immigrant who would get drunk and go on about how great things were under Pinochet. It takes all kinds, I guess.
I'd probably be able to achieve more clarity around Ukraine if so much of their current situation wasn't due to blatant and incompetent fuckery on the part of the US government. Assuming that Russia would fail to act in its own national best interests is a position so absurd that only a neoliberal could ever think of it.
I've heard Poles saying that in some ways communism was better because everyone was guaranteed a job. And therefore an income.
For most of the world the only thing that matters is if their government makes it easier to support their families. What's most disappointing about the current culture wars here is half of us can't support our families the way we should be able to but we're fighting over whether people should be allowed to disagree with the government and if teachers should be able to determine what gender a child is.
Those are the evil distractions put in place so that we spend less time being pissed about how hard it is to make ends meet.
All good points. I would also point to the lies of the Western Press about how Russia is losing the war. Russia is not losing, in fact Ukraine cannot win. Substack analyst "Big Serge" has demonstrated that. https://substack.com/home/post/p-144670767
Given this, why has the Biden cabal antagonized Russia and continued to keep this pot boiling, needlessly killing Ukrainian men and destroying much of that unhappy land?
Likely because they cannot. If this all has been driven by a craven nationalism fueled by the US and laced with corruption all around, the "support" is being strong armed (read:blackmail).
What I could never understand is why we all watched Russia build up its military on Ukraine's border for months and Ukraine, like all of us, sat back and watched it happen. Their aggressive neighbor, who had already snatched territory under O'Biden, was attempting the same, under O'Biden again, and nothing? Where was their military to clearly give Russia the message that they would not be coming in without a fight? Decades of aid, where did it all go? I clearly remember during Trump's Ukraine impeachment, former Ambassador Yovanovitch was asked by some commitee member where all the aid had gone: her reply, "Umm...well...we're trying to get a lot of it back." The corruption!! So many questions and not enough answers, as usual.
Do not forget Obama's hot mic wait until after (Obama's) the election comment to Putin.
It never fails to shock me that that was allowed to slide.
The flip-flopping from the left, "the 80's want their foreign policy back" and how Barry will have more "flexibility" as a lame duck and now every wrong in the world is supposedly the fault of Pootin, is enough to give you whiplash....
It also didn’t help when telegraphed explicitly by Russia that they wouldn’t tolerate Ukraine in NATO, membership in NATO was broached as well as idiot Biden saying a minor incursion wouldn’t be problematic when he should have either shut up completely or said no incursion at all would be tolerated.
Then there is the yapping grifter zelensky jetting around Hoovering up money to pay for pensions (really?) I also understand there might have been peace proposals proposed early on but Biden said no.
All in all it’s a cluster.
Seemingly by design. What more do they have on Biden that we don't know about?
You’d be shocked. I don’t doubt for a moment that a couple billions of the “aid” he’s swiping out of Uncle Sam’s hands and gift wrapping with a big blue bow for Zelenskyy includes suitcases full of money for the inner circle who has the goods on Joe.
And it’s no secret Israel has even more sway in Washington because of this. Their intelligence gathering is second to none. It’s the reason Bill Clinton did an about face on his “firm positions” that didn’t align with Netanyahu. The message is clear to our past and future office holders: “Don’t fuck with Israel. We’ll let you pretend to protest, but in the end you will do what we want.” If any of our ruling class have skeletons in the closet, rest assured Israel knows about it.
Also the reason in-over-his-head Jeffrey Epstein was “suicided”. Both sides were afraid of him spilling the beans for a sweetheart deal and therefore he was expendable.
The spectacle early on of Zelenskyy receiving a full body tongue bath in Congress was another chapter in cringeworthy moments in political history. It was nearly as bad as the Democrat’s embarrassing Kente cloth charade created to appear as a symbol of solidarity, but really a roundabout way to ask the protesters not to invade their neighborhood.
The Ukranian hatred, justifiably so, has gone on for hundreds of years. My maternal grandparents escaped in 1906 and my grandmother used to tell me stories of growing up in a farming village, where, at harvest time, the Cossacks would ride through the village, swords out, killing any man or child in the road and raping the women. The men and boys working in the fields would hide in the wheat stacks until the Cossacks rode away to the next village. The only thing that has changed is that now, the Cossacks ride in on tanks and their swords have been replaced by guns. That's not to say the Ukrainian govt. has no responsibility for this war, it's just a reminder of what has always been.
Ukraine has been a prize tossed around between the surrounding nations for hundreds of years. It was a backwater on the fringes of the Roman Empire until the Vikings created the beginnings of the Russian Empire in Kiev.
After being smashed by the Mongols, the parts that weren't still dominated by the Turks came under the control of Poland and Lithuania. Eventually it came under the control of the Russian Empire. Ironically, the only period when Ukraine had anything like self-rule was for about a hundred years in the 17th/18th centuries under the Cossacks, who had rebelled against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and were initially permitted by the Russian Empire to be semi-autonomous.
I'm not a historian, but my maternal great-grandparents came to the US from what is now Western Ukraine (near Poland) in the 1890's. Growing up in the 60's I was told my great-gran was "Russian." she sang songs in honor of the Emperor Franz Joseph (Hapsburg Empire) as opposed to the Czar. I'm not sure what language she was speaking. I didn't know I was part Ukrainian until the late 1970's, when for some reason my family began identifying as "Ukies" as opposed to "Russkies"! Point being- as you said Celia-- lot's of different influences in the "breadbasket" of the former USSR.
And after that it all went to hell.
Sounds like they are taking the "Give me liberty or give me death!" approach? Might also have something to do with Stalin deliberately killing between 6 and 11 million of them by deliberate starvation in the late thirties, depending on who you want to believe, and dispersing many of the remainder to various places like Kazakhstan and Siberia, and moving Russians in their stead. But I am entirely infavor of realizm. If its not currently winnable, live to fight another day.
There's no question that Ukraine was abused by Russia--under Stalin even more so than the Tsars. I get why Ukrainians hate Russia. But that isn't a good basis for either foreign or domestic policy.
It's ironic that McCarthy's authoritarian overreach in trying to root out communism in the U.S. gave the Left exactly the sympathy it needed to quietly enact the Long March.
It's beginning to appear as if Biden's ultimate goal was to fund the Ukrainian government completely. No amount is too much for Biden's buddies.
On a tangent, I recall The Bad Orange Man being laughed at by much of Europe when he pointed out how dependent they have become on Russian oil; where is Germany getting their energy from nowadays? How committed are they to the inevitable?
Ukraine strikes me as the Illinois of Europe, where the corruption is just part of the process; so while I broadly think Russia is in the wrong, I am having a hard time believing that absorbing one of the former Soviet states is a world-changing event. Especially since, my understanding, is that many eastern Ukrainians actually have more ethnicity with Russia.
I agree with Konrad Adenauer.
On Ukraine, it seems to me Ukraine was a hot mess, with Eastern Ukraine more Russian than Ukraine. this was Vlad’s strategy all along. Just take the ethnic Russian part. Today, the entire place is a cluster fuck. There was a chance to seek peace early on, but Biden wouldn’t allow it because he wanted to weaken Vlad. But as a meat grinder, that’s tragic. Men on both sides are being destroyed.
Can someone tell me why Biden is escalating Ukraine but de escalating Israel-Gaza ?
Seems to me Biden is not afraid of Vlad, but scared shitless of the Mullahs in Iran.
Add to Mr Adenauer: All of history is dependent upon the right man or the wrong man being there. Some got lucky; imperial Britain comes to mind, but through most of history, the peeps have had little or no say or even influence upon who shall lead them. Then came Our Founders: or a while there was a system that tended -- no better than that, I fear -- to find and support wise choices and -- critically -- to prevent the unwise choices from doing much damage. And it's being busily squandered. And another trenchant quote springs forward: "events, dear boy, events."
Way too complicated to figure out the “soup” that goes back for this region. Ingredients of church’s influence, middle ages antisemitism, reliance on father figure (tsar), conflicts with Poland, Russia, internal corruption of selling out one’s country, etc. So what’s new?
The money laundering deal Hunter and Joe set up. Same story, different era.
What was in it for Obama to allow the Biden money laundering scheme?
Good question Disa!
I never read or hear anyone ask that question. It’s inconceivable that Obama wasn’t aware of the Biden scheme.
He’s in on it too but I don’t understand how. His finances would be fascinating . Or was he paid in a non monetary fashion?
Yes!! It is food for thought. He would never have let Biden get away w/ it if it didn't benefit his royal self!
All that and what I call "Polish Syndrome;" a desirable asset and no real borders.
My football coach in high school summed up Adenauer for us, thusly: “Coulda, woulda, shoulda”
Yabbut the quote is a busted clock moment.
I believe we need to take a hard look at the Ukraine situation. I wonder why very few people mention the effect Biden has had on Ukraine for the last 15 years. Wasn't Biden the moron who was the point person for Obama's administration on Ukraine? His moron son on the board of a large Ukrainian energy company with no experience whatsoever. His bragging about getting an official fired. Trump being impeached over a phone call with the Ukrainian President? Corruption everywhere.
Then this stupid weakling gets elected as POTUS, and Putin says, "well this fool can be rolled". Is it too hard for some people to find out WTF is going on here, and what caused this mess?
The Leftist press does not want people to look too closely. "Russia Bad" is motivated by the same ideology as "Orange Man Bad."
I don’t pretend to understand the complex tensions and dynamics between Eastern Europe and Russia. The history of fear of aggression goes back for centuries. But I see the current idea that Russia will try to conquer all of Europe if they are not defeated in Ukraine as a dangerous oversimplification. Does this war look like Blitzkrieg to anyone?
Russia has always occupied a unique spot- one foot in Europe and the other in Asia. Geographically, Russia is the only land barrier between Europe and China and Iran. Is a decimated, defeated Russia really what the West wants?
Thank you for sharing Celia - I will have to do much more reading on this subject . I had no idea (their point exactly as you've noted) that Ukraine has been bombing its own citizens for well before the current conflict. I feel awful for the day to day people who want just to be mostly free of interference in their lives and live in peace with their neighbors. Now we have a whole new generation of vengeance brewed up that will breed more, not less, conflict whenever this round of shooting stops.
how do Burisma and Hunter fit in?
Just another element of the corruption involving foreign aid and foreign funding.