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Point to Ponder on Russia and Ukraine
Glenn Greenwald is a lefty, but lately he has been far more cogent in his analyses of events than “conservatives” like George Will, David Brooks, or David French.
By the way, is it at all notable that Crimea became part of Russia during the Obama administration, and now Russia is supposedly preparing to invade Ukraine during the Biden administration, but never did either when they had their blackmail-controlled puppet in the White House?
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 8, 2021
Update: Biden Administration reportedly pushing for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia.
Administration officials have suggested that the U.S. will press Ukraine to formally cede a measure of autonomy to eastern Ukrainian lands now controlled by Russia-backed separatists who rose up against Kyiv in 2014.
But for sure Trump was “Putin’s Puppet.”
Published in General
I’ve noted many times that certain “lefty” journalists such as Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Bari Weiss are honest in their treatment of the topics they cover. I want to make clear that I don’t necessarily agree with their analysis (though I sometimes do), but they do not ignore or make up facts. One can trust their reporting of what happened. Which I find I generally can’t with most news sources, including some on the Right.
(Edited to correct typos.)
Speaking of David Brooks, he’s getting a lot of slobbering attention for his piece in the Atlantic (of course) about how he was initially drawn to conservatism when it was the domain of effete intellectuals, but once the dirty common people got involved, it became distasteful to him. Also, he fell in love with Obama’s pant crease.
How about so called “Regan Republicans” on the right who supported Biden, like the Bulwank?
Be fair. That’s a low bar.
I’ve bolded where they fall under.
I think the right is so desperate for an alternative to the traditional hating progressive media apparatus that grifters can easily gain an audience with laziness and platitudes. Like Frum and French. Say the right things and you gain a loyal audience and it’s an untapped market. The lack of competition makes them lazy and crude.
I find the places that don’t come with the primature of acceptability have to prove themselves and support their reporting better to stay legit.
Yeah, the ones I listed moved to the Substack platform. They have to be reliable in their reporting of facts. I also note that Matt Taibbi, at least, forthrightly admits when he gets facts wrong. Which is good.
These lefties are my allies. After we get rid of the authoritarians on both sides, then we can squabble about how to re-distribute wealth. At this point freedom itself is being threatened, and freedom trumps economic ideology. This is the segment of the left that is anti-authoritarian. I suppose there have always been utopian lefties, otherwise known as useful idiots, but these guys have stopped being ‘useful’.
Furthermore these leftists are not far wrong in their fear of giant corporations and oligarchies. It used to be that American corporations were relatively benign entities. They definitely had an outsized influence over government, but it wasn’t alarming and was something of a necessary evil. Now these corporations are multi-national with no allegiance to their home country (if there is such a thing) with huge reach and influence, colluding with government. This is fascism.
The giant media companies have a huge influence on voters and they are exploiting it on an hourly basis. Google, Facebook, Twitter as well.
Then there’s the pharmaceutical industry, who depend greatly on advertising and a corrupted federal oversight machine. Media will always take the side of their biggest advertisers, so we now are experiencing a perfect cycle: Media, Pharma and politicians create a scare. Government mandates a solution that brings billions of profits to Pharma, who spend it liberally at the media’s advertising store. Politicians get to look like saviors, Media gets more attention and money and Pharma profits and cycles some of that money into lobbying and advertising.
Much of the Russia hoax was a cover-up (defense by offense) of the Democrats’ own Russia corruption. Can’t investigate two very similar sets of accusation involving many of the same people from two different perspectives at the same time.
This is Clinton 101. It’s why huge swathes of people get immunity at the bat for useless “testimony” — that immunity was the real goal all along, and now they can never be threatened with consequences for not rolling on the Clintons (and Obama at times) — they’re already immune. Remember Benghazi? That’s how that went.
So, Biden is a pathetic and weak President who wants an ally to cede territory to an obvious adversary, which will only serve to make Putin stronger and more likely to invade NATO allies like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. How is this about Trump? Biden’s ready to sellout Ukraine. That’s really, really bad!
Greenwald may be “fairer” than a lot of reporters, but he’s wrong on foreign policy. We need to do more to help Ukraine, and Biden’s out to lunch.
No mean tweets, though.
Lavishly spending your blood and treasure on endless wars without victory created our Imperial ennui. Let Russia grow rather than risk another failure by the inept and incompetent General Staff.
Americans support Wars that are rapid, brutal, and victorious. This is an impossibility with the current military.
Russia and the Ukraine matter I suppose, but China is a fundamental threat to us. Biden can’t win points with Putin, but we don’t have to make it easy for him nor do we want to pick a fight to show how tough we are. The Russia China angle isn’t easy unless we are seen as very strong and firm, the way we were under Trump. With the Biden White House, or whatever we call these people, coasting and doing nothing may be as good as we can expect. We’ve got to get rid of Biden as soon as possible, next week wouldn’t be too soon. Everybody on both sides is frozen because the VP is not up to the job, even a leftest job, but presumably she isn’t beholden to the Chinese because of corruption of her kids.
They don’t need our troops.
They need advanced weapons and advisors.
Ukraine is a money-laundering hellhole. All we’d be doing is enriching NGOs.
Bull****. ISIS rose to power because Obama stupidly withdrew from Iraq. ISIS was pushed back and Iraq stabilized after we sent troops back in. The mere fact of our troops being there acts as a deterrent and a force-multiplier for the Iraqi forces. Iraq was not an endless war, nor did we lose.
Afghanistan collapsed because successive administrations decided to negotiate with the Taliban. Once we went down that path, we proved we were an unreliable ally. Biden didn’t have to withdraw and didn’t have to do it the way we did.
These aren’t military failures, they are political ones.
The problem is the powers that be are willing to spend endless blood and treasure with no victory conditions band no will to fight to win.
They may have a difficult time with that anyway, given how they’ve demoralized our military.
But maybe their new all-tranny army can put their high-heeled shoes on the ground.
Empathically true and Putin can’t afford an Afghan venture like Brezhnev’s. Increase the cost and he won’t move on Ukraine but arming Ukrainians is not favored by Biden because the opportunity for immense expenditures is limited.
I agree. And it is sadly a bipartisan affliction. Unfortunately, that means that we now have left ourselves and our allies vulnerable to aggression by Russia and China.
Yes we have.
So we stand by and let Russia invade one of our allies?
Hey, it worked for Czechoslovakia!
I say no.
I agree. I think some troops, in the form of advisors and perhaps air support, may be necessary. I certainly don’t think we need a full-scale deployment of forces to Ukraine. However, advanced weapons systems will help deter Putin. As would a deployment of NATO forces into eastern Poland. The message should be that Putin will pay a very heavy price for invading. We should also deploy NATO forces to the Baltic states.
Quibble: Technically, Ukraine is merely a “partner”, not an ally. An alliance requires a treaty, and all Ukraine has with the USA is a “charter on strategic partnership”. A treaty would require congressional ratification, but a “charter on strategic partnership” does not.
https://www.state.gov/u-s-ukraine-charter-on-strategic-partnership/
That being said, the AP News report does seem odd since that “charter on strategic partnership” was signed a mere MONTH ago.
How many young American lives are you willing to sacrifice to defend the financial interests of the political class?
And when we run, do we leave it all behind for the Russians like we did for the Taliban? And will Germany and our other wealthy NATO allies help pay for the massive troop deployment or nah?
Do you trust the current administration to actually do the right thing?
There are currently NATO “training missions” in Ukraine and the Baltic states.
For example:
The number of NATO personnel involved is in the hundreds rather than the thousands, but still…