"If Russian President Vladimir Putin orders his forces to invade, analysts believe it would come before the spring thaw. 'The best time to do it is winter because it's going to be a mechanized advance and the mechanized divisions need hard frozen ground'... At a news conference Wednesday marking his first year in office, President Joe Biden warned Putin against an invasion, threatening a strong response by the US and NATO, but waffled over what would happen if Russia made a 'minor incursion,' in an awkward statement he sought to clarify afterward. 'The Russian dictator has not been subtle or secretive about what he wants. He might as well make the national anthem the Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R.,"' wrote Max Boot, in the Washington Post. 'He definitely wants to resurrect the Soviet empire, thereby undoing what he has called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century. And that requires bringing back into the fold the second-largest former Soviet republic (by population) — the independent state of Ukraine.'"
From "Putin confronts the mud of Ukraine" (CNN).
***
From a 2011 post of mine, collecting mud quotes:
"We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars." — Ivan Turgenev
"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French." — Charles de Gaulle
"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance..." — Thoreau
"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?" — Virginia Woolf
Russian, French, American, British.
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206 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 206 of 206So, Narr, two points:
1: Around my 18th birthday I volunteered to join the US Army. I did not flunk out of / get kicked out of basic, I did not get Dishonerably Dichared / a BCD. Beyond that? It's none of your business, and I'm not going to say
2: The policies you are advocating for are creating a world where every single small government in Europe and Asia has an existential urgency to obtain and keep WMD
Because the only reason Russia can threaten Ukraine is because the leaders of Ukraine were stupid and gave up their WMD
If you don't understand why it's a bad idea to create that world, perhaps I'll get out some crayons and draw you a picture appropriate to your intellectual level.
I'm not living someplace where I'm likely to get hit with one of the early terrorist nukes in the US. And I not a fan of any US city, so I'm unlikely to be visiting when they get nuked. How about you?
Do you have any care or concern for you fellow Americans most likely to get nuked once a large number of countries have them?
Thanks for sharing that info. But people who can't spell 'dishonorable discharge' shouldn't criticize other people's intellectual capacity.
I turned 18 in the spring of 1971 and registered for the draft. I had already had two years of compulsory JROTC (Army) in high-school, and took two compulsory AFROTC semesters in my freshman year. The men who staffed those programs were career military, and the older ones
had fought in WWII, Korea, or Vietnam if not all three.
Of course the university was full of guys my older brother's age and older who had been in Vietnam. What I recall most about conversations with them was their disgust with US political and military leadership.
In my sophomore year my number came up in the low 300s. Short of WWIII I wasn't going to be called, and I didn't, like a lot of people in my situation including relatives and friends, volunteer now that the shooting had stopped.
Which is all moot, as my nearsightedness and chronic allergic rhinitis (which was diagnosed -after- my draft risk had expired) may have made me a poor medical prospect anyway.
Leave aside the lies that got us into Vietnam, since that time we have been lied into many fruitless and costly conflicts that did not involve vital American interests. There is a distinct pattern.
As to WMD, really? I haven't checked the latest news, but is that the new spin? Fight Putin in the Ukraine now so somebody doesn't get hold of WMD? Is that going to apply to all conflicts now? Have you thought to advise President LGB of this really persuasive bit of geostrategic insight? I would think a good anti-Putin argument like that would be useful in their PR war.
ISTR a suggestion here in a comment that we give the Ukes some Nukes now, so it seems there are many paths to WMD proliferation, and those cats have been out of the bag for a long time already.
Of course, we can jabber all day about this, but the bottom line is that we are too broke, too weak, and too fractured a country to fight anyone powerful right now.
Good luck hunkered in your bunker.
Narr said...
As to WMD, really? I haven't checked the latest news, but is that the new spin? Fight Putin in the Ukraine now so somebody doesn't get hold of WMD?
Are you really that ignorant?
Ukraine gave up their nukes in exchange for "guarantees" from the US that their independence form Russia would be preserved.
Is there ANY doubt that if they had NOT done that, and still had their nukes, Putin wouldn't be partitioning them?
Let Putin cut into Ukraine, and now every other country in Europe, Asia, and any other place that Russia or China might threaten knows that their ONLY safety comes from getting nuclear weapons
You think Pakistan won't go back into the business of selling nuclear capability to other countries? Who's going to stop them?
How many nuclear powers do you want to see?
No, I'm not ignorant at all. I am rational.
It makes no sense for us to guarantee the foolish--you said it yourself--Ukrainian decision to de-Nuke. Your argument is that we now have to 'guarantee' (and the world has seen the value of 'guarantees' from the USG for many decades now) all Russian and Chinese neighbors' borders, or WMDs will proliferate?
I'll say just a couple of things and leave the last word to you. I don't for a moment trust the seriousness of the Biden admin, their judgement, or their competence. They are children, playing with fire in troubled waters (to go Soviet for a moment).
You expressed concern for where I live if some unknown baddie gets their mitts on WMD, but from where I sit my country's southern border is being dissolved by the day. That border matters to me and most Americans 1000% more than a few oblasts in the Ukraine.
As for the Pakis, who is stopping then now? (Muslim militarists have no legitimate interests, to paraphrase you, but I don't advocate war against them.)
And again, we simply can't afford the cost of a war, or even sustained ready deployments.
IMO.
Narr said...
No, I'm not ignorant at all. I am rational.
It makes no sense for us to guarantee the foolish--you said it yourself--Ukrainian decision to de-Nuke
We already DID guarantee it.
because we wanted to get their nukes destroyed, not sold off by corrupt people to people who would use them against us.
If that strikes you as a bad thing, you're the platonic opposite of "rational"
As for the Pakis, who is stopping then now?
Well, they were stopped by Bush, because after Saddam got pulled out of his spider hole. Kadaffi decided he didn't want the same thing happening to him, and so he sold out the Pakis to us.
What's been stopping them is a lack of customers. What a partitioning of Ukraine will do is create a large number of customers
Because in a choice between "US sanctions" and "Russia comes in, takes over, and kills the entire leadership class", "US sanctions" is less scary
You have made yourself clear. See you around.
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