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Here are the 70 House Republicans who voted to cut off all US military aid to Ukraine
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Never thought conservatives would be against a small country fighting for their freedom and join hands with our cold-war enemy. How patriotic of them.
In case you missed it, the cold war was fucking stupid. Furthermore I would argue that the US's bad behavior at home and abroad ramped up MASSIVELY once they didn't have a counterbalancing superpower they had to take seriously.
It is fucking wild that libs have in like the last 5 years or so all become cold war nuts that act like it was good. 10 years ago it was universally regarded as an incredibly dangerous farce that never should have happened and yet now the libs have all turned into rabid hawkish nationalists that spew red scare and cold war propaganda completely uncritically. I even see them spewing literal actual nazi propaganda these days that used to be regarded as loony and still is in historic academia at least.
Your against selling old stockpiles we are never going to use for the original sticker value? I mean Elon pretty much spent the same amount we have lend leased to Ukraine to buy Twitter...
It's not even that much money making the whole situation more funny for the second greatest military in the world.
Source: https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
As if were ever getting paid for them. This isn't cash & carry. The overwhelming majority of what we've sent has been on our own dime. And to that end, yes. I don't support giving away shit that still work because that means replacements are needed. Quite expensive replacements, usually.
...OK? That's not really an argument for increased spending. He's free to make whatever dumb financial decisions he wants.
I couldn't care less which corrupt Eastern European government is the legitimate sovereign over eastern Ukraine. What difference does it make? Is it worth the hundreds of thousands of dead young men? Or the food insecurity crisis in the global south? The worldwide inflation?
People have been tricked into thinking enriching the pockets of Lockheed Martin & Co is somehow helping freedom and democracy.
Don't get it twisted, that's why we're in Ukraine. It's primary purpose is a mainline IV injection of cash straight into the military industrial complex. Hundreds of billions. Meanwhile we struggle for years to give a handout to the American people.
It's a joke, I feel like we live in a parody movie sometimes.
See, I'd try to create an argument against you, but it's utterly pointless. If I link to a news story highlighting genocidal actions by Russia, you'd say it was propaganda. I show you a first person photo or video of the situation, you'd say it's staged and fake. I link a Russia Today article where a high ranking administrator at RT says Russia should drown Ukrainian children, you either don't respond or you call it fake and offer no supporting argument for it.
The Ukrainian War has become a litmus test of sorts. It shows you who's actually capable of critical thought and evaluating dynamic situations, and who's just as blinded by propaganda as the people they condemn.
You may think you're the former, but consider how people aren't bothering to genuinely argue and discuss with you because you seem like you'd just reject any evidence which contradicted your worldview.
Well said!
So what exactly is your endgame here then? If you believe that the Russians are simply genocidal and want to ethnically cleanse everyone in Ukraine (who is ironically exactly the same ethnicity as they are), then how do you see the war ending? The complete and total destruction of the Russian state? If that's not what you believe then this use of "genocide" is soft holocaust denial and extremely dangerous.
Everyone needs to sit around a table and negotiate to end this. And that's likely going to need to involve Ukraine giving up something and Russia giving up something, in order for both sides to walk away from this with some way to look like they won. I don't understand why you think that's impossible, it was literally happening before Boris Johnson stopped it.
A few things -- for one, nothing is stopping Ukraine from negotiations with Russia. It's their choice, and I support whatever they decide. No other country should be interceding on their behalf. It would be incredibly patronizing, imperialistic, and confirm Putin's flawed casus belli that Ukraine has no true sovereignty. Now, if Ukraine were to directly ask the US or other countries to negotiate for them, that's a different story.
Genocide is the appropriate term to use here. The atrocities in Mariupol speak for themselves. Additionally, Putin's speech before the invasion insisted that Ukraine was historically Russian territory and that Ukraine had no strong independent cultural identity. Finally, Russia has kidnapped Ukrainian children -- and freely admitted to it. Administrators in RT have suggested drowning the children. All of these fall under genocide: indiscriminate civilian violence and mass graves in Mariupol, insisting Ukraine has no true culture nor national identity or sovereignty, and kidnapping Ukrainian children.
As for the endgame, how the war ends, and what should happen to Russia -- I don't know. I truly don't. I strongly value the notion of sovereignty and that countries deserve to have self determination. Any resolution must respect that, and since Russia is denying that Ukraine should have that, I don't see an easy end to the war. The Russian invasion force being repelled back into Russia is the most likely situation I think, which ends up causing the end of Putin's regime, one way or another. And personally, I don't think Donbas or Crimea or etc should be bargaining chips in a negotiation either. After the war, all Ukrainian and Russia soldiers need to retreat from the areas, while UN peacekeepers observe the vote for independence from Ukraine. I would support whatever was decided.
Not to mention, if Russia walks away with a benefit from the war, it rewards them for their invasion. That cannot be the case.
No it's fucking not. The word genocide was created in the 50s as a response to the holocaust. It was invented to create a specific method of opposition to ethnic cleansing. The misuse of it by liberals who clearly have no idea what it means or how important it is to victims of the shoah helps holocaust deniers by diluting its meaning, hence why you are a soft holocaust denier in your misuse of it. I STRONGLY urge you to look up Raphael Lemkin who coined it, and its origins.
Atrocities are atrocities. Horrible things that happen. But genocide is VERY specific and refers to the aim to annihilate an ethnicity and we MUST keep that meaning to be sure that legislation we have won in the past preventing genocides does not become diluted to the point that this legislation gets removed for its antiquation.
This is one of those things that's a mess. Moving children out of the fighting zone was objectively necessary. Would you prefer they not have been? What this has done however is create a narrative that can be used to maintain the "genocide" bullshit because it's a pivotal pillar of the mindset liberals need to be kept in to maintain their support for the war.
Put it this way. If you did not believe genocide was occurring, then you would immediately have to reckon with the fact that the sooner this war stops the sooner people stop dying. It's the cornerstone on which liberals maintain their hawkish support for more bloodshed, by convincing themselves they're opposing a genocide by doing it they can maintain the belief that these hundreds of thousands of people would be killed by the Russians anyway if they did not fight.
This is nonsense of course. The war started in 2014, and Russia didn't want anything to do with Donbas then. Ukraine had no army in 2014, when Russia took Crimea and could happily of taken Donbas without opposition. Ukraine having literally zero army back then is the reason the volunteer nazi battallions of Azov and Right Sector were the frontline against the Donbas rebellions at that time. Had Russia wanted this land, or to do genocide (for what purpose?) then would have been the time to do it. Instead what they engaged in was attempts to keep it Ukrainian while giving some political independence to the region (something like a devolved government, similar to Scotland as being part of the UK but also governing itself). They spent 8 years pursuing that before the war. You've read the Minsk agreements right?
Not really.
(Source.)
The term populicide would be better and less ambiguous when referring to a series of massacres against the same people. Unfortunately, it’s a much less common term.
Are we really quibbling over 6 years here? Being off by a handful of years on the date doesn't materially change the point.
My point is that ‘genocide’ was not coined to refer to massacres. It’s become an ambiguous term.
Ok so... Are you just reinforcing the point I was making then? I can't read context because the site is doing nothing whenever I click the context button. I literally can't read up and see what this is about and since it's like 2 weeks old now I'm just confused.
I… never mind.
?
I'm like mega confused here. My position has always been that the misuse of the word genocide by libs is dangerous to its intended goal of protecting marginalised peoples and preventing another holocaust. I don't know how exactly we disagree here.
Criminals break into your home and these appeasers would have you negotiate with them and give them half your stuff. More weapons for Ukraine until they can stop every last invader.
This is just bloodthirsty nationalism. And completely detached from reality.
Ukrainians defend their right to exist.
Russians: how dare they
You're the only person who has left me a real message challenging anything. I'm more than willing to talk all day.
Russia is a brutal authoritarian state who is willing to do almost anything. But the fact is the life of an Eastern Ukrainian citizen will not appreciably change if they are ruled by Russia or Ukraine.
If there is no difference, then what are we doing this for? Killing hundreds of thousands, displacing millions, starving Africa, twisting the knife on the lower classes of the entire world.. etc
All of this so Lockheed Martin's stock goes up. I think it's amazing they've effectively convinced a lot of people that war = good. That we should want more war.
Do you know about the atrocities at Mariupol?
Do you mean besides destroying the city?
Yes.
This is what I mean - silence. Nobody has anything to say. You believe a certain thing very strongly and yet cannot articulate any meaningful response.
The best you could come up with is "mariupol"
You would kill every Ukrainian male and doom their demographics for a century if it meant putting Russia behind a quarter century.
Don't confuse a reticence for wasting my time with an inability to make a strong argument. I've just argued so much with skeptics who were in bad faith that I don't care to reproduce the same argument for the hundredth time.
You keep saying that. If you don't want to waste your time, why do you make comments in the first place? It's not even that hard - a bullet point list shouldn't take more than 60 seconds to put together.
Seriously, anything is better than just saying "you're wrong and I know you're wrong but I can't actually tell you why"
I'm an open minded guy and I'm more than happy to change my mind if I'm wrong. I don't drink kool-aid though so you'll actually have to say something of substance.
Your only thing was "mariupol" trying to imply Russia is a genocidal country. And you're absolutely right- they are. That doesn't change my opinion that we are adding fuel to the fire in Ukraine, killing more Ukrainians, fucking up the whole world's economy.. and we're doing it for Lockheed Martin (and of course to hurt Russia, but mainly $$$)
Ok what about it? I'm not sure what this changes. They destroyed various cities. Bombed many civilians. All sorts of stuff. I still don't think the life of a Ukrainian would be appreciably different under one government or the other.
Unfortunately, the Republican senators mentioned also have a very hard time allocating funds to programs that help Americans too.
Yep. In the US you are given two options. One is trash and the other is worse.
I can't believe I'm agreeing with Trump and the other Republicunt politicians who bow down to him. For whatever reason he has determined being anti-war is politically advantageous.
Which might work out for him. Inflation & instability & war aren't great sales points for a presidential election. Biden's numbers jumped for a little bit after the invasion but people will get fatigued with an endless stalemate. And worse, if Ukraine loses we essentially threw away hundreds of billions.
High stakes game our politicians are playing being so hard and loose with money