Gifts for Putin, Demands for Zelensky
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I literally twice made a concise point fully expressed in a single sentence. Your refusal to understand it seems willful at this point.
Do you just wish I had said something else? Do you just wish I had my own war plan for you to critique? Sorry to disappoint.
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I literally twice made a concise point fully expressed in a single sentence. Your refusal to understand it seems willful at this point.
Do you just wish I had said something else? Do you just wish I had my own war plan for you to critique? Sorry to disappoint.
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Ok well in the future just say ‘I wish you had said something else entirely’ rather than pretending to not understand what I actually did say.
@jon-nyc Well, you have mental blocks against good faith interpretations of oppositional viewpoints, and this is not new. I understand your claim that there are other options. My response to you was to get you to delineate those options, and your peculiar brain jumped to the comfortable conclusion that I just didn't understand your point. And there it will stay.
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No, you told me to be more specific while my point didn’t lack specificity at all.
I’ll repeat it one more time: ‘Seems like there should have been other options besides capitulation and status quo.’
Only non-witches get due process.
- Cotton Mather, Salem Massachusetts, 1692
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You should be asking what other options did Putin offer to end the war other than Ukraine’s unconditional surrender and the withdrawal of NATO from all former Warsaw Pact countries. That was and remains, as Trump will soon discover, Putin’s demands. So long as Putin maintained those maximalist demands, NATO membership, with the exception of Hungary and more recently Slovakia, remained committed to keep Russia in isolation and facilitate Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.
Sorry if you can’t wrap your mind around that, but the least desirable option was to reward the tyrannical aggressor for its unacceptable behaviour. Never worked in past and will not work in the present or future. No one other than that war criminal bastard Putin has blood their hands from this war.
Elbows up!
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No, you told me to be more specific while my point didn’t lack specificity at all.
I’ll repeat it one more time: ‘Seems like there should have been other options besides capitulation and status quo.’
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Look I’m already bored of this so you’ll have to talk to yourself now but when you said my point wasn’t specific enough you clearly had missed it.
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You should be asking what other options did Putin offer to end the war other than Ukraine’s unconditional surrender and the withdrawal of NATO from all former Warsaw Pact countries. That was and remains, as Trump will soon discover, Putin’s demands. So long as Putin maintained those maximalist demands, NATO membership, with the exception of Hungary and more recently Slovakia, remained committed to keep Russia in isolation and facilitate Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.
Sorry if you can’t wrap your mind around that, but the least desirable option was to reward the tyrannical aggressor for its unacceptable behaviour. Never worked in past and will not work in the present or future. No one other than that war criminal bastard Putin has blood their hands from this war.
@Renauda said in Gifts for Putin, Demands for Zelensky:
You should be asking what other options did Putin offer to end the war other than Ukraine’s unconditional surrender and the withdrawal of NATO from all former Warsaw Pact countries. That was and remains, as Trump will soon discover, Putin’s demands.
Then it is the conclusion that the conflict was set on rails towards, according to Biden's plans, as per his security advisor. Either that, or an escalation on the part of the west to keep the conflict from that conclusion.
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There seems to be an implicit understanding within NATO that the "war" being waged against them by Russia was a certain level of "war" below that of the sort of "war" where there are soldiers from those NATO countries fighting and dying. These levels of "war" might be obfuscated with certain rhetorical framings of what is going on here, but clearly the levels remain understood and respected.
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Stick to calculus.
History, diplomacy and strategic studies really aren’t your cup of tea.
You never see me talking about maths. Now you know why.
What I wrote in the previous post is just obviously true. I get that you're the self appointed gate keeper here of who can and cannot have opinions on these topics. I appreciate that you've reigned in the insults lately, even as you continue to assert the gate keeper status. Meanwhile, everything I wrote in the previous post is just obviously true.
Education is extremely important.
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@jon-nyc said in Gifts for Putin, Demands for Zelensky:
Especially such a complete capitulation. It’s humiliating to be an American this week.
There are other countries...
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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What I wrote in the previous post is just obviously true. I get that you're the self appointed gate keeper here of who can and cannot have opinions on these topics. I appreciate that you've reigned in the insults lately, even as you continue to assert the gate keeper status. Meanwhile, everything I wrote in the previous post is just obviously true.
@Horace said in Gifts for Putin, Demands for Zelensky:
What I wrote in the previous post is just obviously true. I get that you're the self appointed gate keeper here of who can and cannot have opinions on these topics. I appreciate that you've reigned in the insults lately, even as you continue to assert the gate keeper status. Meanwhile, everything I wrote in the previous post is just obviously true.
If you say so but then not necessarily obviously true.
Like Zelenskyi said yesterday whether he was offended when Trump called him a dictator, he answered “no because only a dictator would be offended”.
Likewise here, only a gatekeeper would be offended. I’m sorry then that I may have offended you. You do not at all deserve the same derisive impunity I regularly afford the other two posters.
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Here’s a simple fact. There was no resolution in the offing under Biden. The prior administration and the Europeans seemed absolutely locked in on supporting the Ukrainians enough to put up a passable defense, but not enough to allow them to actually win the war, either. The whole “wearing down Russia’s military” sounds good on a balance statement but is a ridiculously immoral and unethical view, in my opinion. Spending and wasting Ukrainian and Russian lives to no great ultimate effect.
Did Trump go about this the right way? No. He’s a dickhead. But something is at least getting done. So which is better? A polite coward that lets the war continue killing people indefinitely, or a dickhead that does and says mean things, but gets the war ended and gets a business deal done that reimburses our investments and also provides an immutable security guarantee. It also opens up an economic opportunity for Ukraine that was not being utilized before.
@LuFins-Dad said in Gifts for Putin, Demands for Zelensky:
Here’s a simple fact. There was no resolution in the offing under Biden. The prior administration and the Europeans seemed absolutely locked in on supporting the Ukrainians enough to put up a passable defense, but not enough to allow them to actually win the war, either.
Yep. When they really needed air superiority, we (along with Europe) dribbled in aircraft a few at a time, withheld aircraft or gave them aircraft with earlier generation avionics. When they needed more artillery, they got it piecemeal. Even the training we provided was not geared to a war of defense, but a war of maneuver, which doesn't translate when you can't use combined arms effectively.
The Ukranians have done a really good job with what they had. Their drone work has been outstanding. Their ability to rework and rebuild battle damaged armor has been exemplary.
But you can only do so much, with so little.
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It's been obvious for a long time that the principled western defenders of Ukraine, do not want to broach a talking point about potential military escalations against Russia. The discussions would feel a lot more honest if they did. But those discussions would immediately become a lot more complicated, as we openly consider a military escalation between nuclear powers. I can understand that the simple virtue-based talking points are a lot easier to get behind.
I don't consider military escalation against Russia by NATO members to be a non-starter. I only think it's remarkable how the principled defenders of Ukraine don't want to talk about it, as if there is another way Ukraine gets out of this, in the presence of what I am told are immutable and maximalist demands from Putin.
Education is extremely important.
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You guys talk as if the only two possibilities were status quo or Trump switching sides and completely adopting every last one of Putin’s talking points while shaking down our former ally.
Seems there might have been other possibilities.
@jon-nyc said in Gifts for Putin, Demands for Zelensky:
You guys talk as if the only two possibilities were status quo or Trump switching sides and completely adopting every last one of Putin’s talking points while shaking down our former ally.
Seems there might have been other possibilities.
No. We’re just pointing out that this solution seems to at least be better than continuing what was going on… Do I personally believe it could have been accomplished without being a repugnant dick? Of course! I am Mr. How To Win Friends and Influence People…
But, that doesn’t change the fact that Ukranian and Russian kids aren’t going to continue dying in a proxy war with no reasonable shot at success for either side. There will be reasonable security agreements in place, and the US will receive at least some return.
I’m not a big “ends justify the means” person, but at least there is a not unreasonable end in sight.
