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Ukraine Protests

TheTwinAndreBen said:
Hard to separate politics from this situation.

Russia is merely protecting its economic and military interests from the very real threat that those interests would be compromised by the disintegrating situation in Ukraine. If Maine had seceded from the US 20 years ago, but (i) we still kept a large portion of our Atlantic fleet there, (ii) had tens of billions of dollars invested in oil/gas pipeline infrastruture still running through Maine, and (iii) Maine was still 60+% ethnic Americans, we would absolutely put troops on the ground in Bangor. People would go nuts if we didnt.
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Hey false equivalency Butthead, you'll have to remind me of the time a hundred years ago when the US conquered Maine and then returned its independence twenty years ago.
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
Hard to separate politics from this situation.

Russia is merely protecting its economic and military interests from the very real threat that those interests would be compromised by the disintegrating situation in Ukraine. If Maine had seceded from the US 20 years ago, but (i) we still kept a large portion of our Atlantic fleet there, (ii) had tens of billions of dollars invested in oil/gas pipeline infrastruture still running through Maine, and (iii) Maine was still 60+% ethnic Americans, we would absolutely put troops on the ground in Bangor. People would go nuts if we didnt.
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i think this is about right. Add to that the fact that Ukraine got away from Mother Russia during a period when many Russians think the Russian government was weak, corrupt and illegitimate. Not surprising that a large percentage of them would welcome a chance to somewhat reverse that embarrassment.
 
Deacon923 said:
i think this is about right. Add to that the fact that Ukraine got away from Mother Russia during a period when many Russians think the Russian government was weak, corrupt and illegitimate. Not surprising that a large percentage of them would welcome a chance to somewhat reverse that embarrassment.
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Of course they would like to see that. It doesn't mean its a justifiable act.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
Of course they would like to see that. It doesn't mean its a justifiable act.
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Neither is droning people to death because they are standing next to some guy who may or may not be plotting an attack on Americans or America's third-world cronies. In international relations, "justifiable" is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Not saying that I think Putin's the good guy here, I just think it is helpful to look at things from different points of view, especially in international conflicts and diplomacy.
 
Deacon923 said:
Neither is droning people to death because they are standing next to some guy who may or may not be plotting an attack on Americans or America's third-world cronies. In international relations, "justifiable" is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Not saying that I think Putin's the good guy here, I just think it is helpful to look at things from different points of view, especially in international conflicts and diplomacy.
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I haven't seen any evidence that Ukraine's new government was planning attacks on Russian citizens.

Putin saw an opportunity to take back Crimea and he took it. Simple as that.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
Of course they would like to see that. It doesn't mean its a justifiable act.
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Deacon923 said:
Neither is droning people to death because they are standing next to some guy who may or may not be plotting an attack on Americans or America's third-world cronies. In international relations, "justifiable" is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Not saying that I think Putin's the good guy here, I just think it is helpful to look at things from different points of view, especially in international conflicts and diplomacy.
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Exactly. You have to understand their motivation. This situation effects us very little and you still have corndogs like McCain and Lindsay Graham that are killing the president for being weak. Putin has that same pressure at home.

What's really funny is that we are calling Russia aggressors, thugs, bad actors on the world stage, etc., when really all it is doing is protecting very real national interests from an awful situation that is right on its doorstep.

Meanwhile we fucking bombed Iraq, a country on the other side of the world, back to the fucking stone age 10 years ago for no good reason whatsoever. But that was way way different.
 
BiffTannen said:
Hey false equivalency Butthead, you'll have to remind me of the time a hundred years ago when the US conquered Maine and then returned its independence twenty years ago.
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I will defer to Vad on this, but I believe Kiev was the capital of the Rus Kingdom/Empire/whatever prior to the Mongols coming in and smashing things up. There's a centuries-long relationship of those regions being intertwined.
 
BillBrasky said:
That is a horrible analogy TAB
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It's really not. Kiev is less than 100 miles from the Russian border, and probably less than 400 miles from Moscow. If there was that kind of unrest that close to our capital, military installments and infrastructure, we would act swiftly.
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
It's really not. Kiev is less than 100 miles from the Russian border, and probably less than 400 miles from Moscow. If there was that kind of unrest that close to our capital, military installments and infrastructure, we would act swiftly.
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see: Cuba
 
20 years ago, maine was home to one of the largest airbases on the east coast and (still) home to america's most important shipbuilders. if maine tried to rebel, it would've been occupied.

but no one in maine would try to rebel to join quebec or something.
 
here's a better analogy: President Obama, who half of America hates and 20% thinks is an illegitimate Kenyan born Communist, decides to give New Mexico back to Mexico and rams it through Congress. We retain military bases in NM in a deal with Mexico. 15 years later, the Republicans who hated this action and thought it was illegitimate, unconstitutional, and evil, are back in power. The Anglos in New Mexico are being oppressed by the Mexicans, and it gets violent, with pro-Anglo politicians being killed or removed from power by mobs.

Not too hard to imagine a GOP president rolling tanks into New Mexico to protect the Anglos and our military bases.

It's a crazy example because it could never happen, but that just points out how hard it is for Americans to understand this stuff. We live in a country with no recent history of borders moving and ethnic populations ending up on the wrong sides of those borders, except the Indians and we have made it so they don't count. In Europe, and especially Eastern Europe, this exact kind of thing has been causing wars for centuries and is still going on today.
 
Deacon923 said:
here's a better analogy: President Obama, who half of America hates and 20% thinks is an illegitimate Kenyan born Communist, decides to give New Mexico back to Mexico and rams it through Congress. We retain military bases in NM in a deal with Mexico. 15 years later, the Republicans who hated this action and thought it was illegitimate, unconstitutional, and evil, are back in power. The Anglos in New Mexico are being oppressed by the Mexicans, and it gets violent, with pro-Anglo politicians being killed or removed from power by mobs.

Not too hard to imagine a GOP president rolling tanks into New Mexico to protect the Anglos and our military bases.

It's a crazy example because it could never happen, but that just points out how hard it is for Americans to understand this stuff. We live in a country with no recent history of borders moving and ethnic populations ending up on the wrong sides of those borders, except the Indians and we have made it so they don't count. In Europe, and especially Eastern Europe, this exact kind of thing has been causing wars for centuries and is still going on today.
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Which Russians were being oppressed and killed in Ukraine?
 
John Kerry regarding Putin. I mean, you can't make this shit up.


“If Russia wants to be a G8 country, it needs to behave like a G8 country,” Kerry told CBS’s Bob Schieffer on Meet the Press. ”You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” he told Meet the Press’ David Gregory. “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” he added. “Russia is inviting opprobrium on the international stage,” he said.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
Which Russians were being oppressed and killed in Ukraine?
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i'm not defending Russia or saying they were justified. I was making up an analogy. Right now it appears that no Russians were being oppressed or killed in Ukraine and that is a strong argument against the legitimacy of Russia's actions. Of course, Russia will argue that there is a threat to Russians and Russian military bases and that they are, at the least acting preemptively to protect those interests. Sadly, the US is not in a very good position to get on a high horse and condemn preemptive wars, are we?

I guess another point to make is that the history of Europe is rife with ethnic minorities being oppressed by their governments (Russia has been a frequent offender, see Stalin, Josef). So, to most Eastern Europeans, it is not at all a stretch to imagine that once a Russian supported president gets run out by a popular revolution/coup/mob (terminology depends on whose side you are on), the ethnic Russians will soon be oppressed. Again, not defending Russia, just engaging in a discussion about the mindset.
 
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I love how the Russian line on all this is that the Ukrainians in charge are fascists. The fact that those statements out of Moscow seem to be working shows you how fucking stupid the Russian populace is.

Keep ignoring the fact that your entire nation's wealth is being stolen by a small group of oligarchs and keep trying to restore the empire.

You pinkos deserve your bread lines. Now go make some vodka out of shoes so that you can drown away your miserable existence.

U-S-A U-S-A
 
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