Oppression Olympics: Biden vs. Carter

 

Say what you will about Jimmy Carter, he and his large congressional Democratic Party majorities acted strongly to counter Brezhnev’s doctrinal intervention (invasion) of a peripheral Soviet client state, Afghanistan, while the Biden regime and his bare radical congressional social Democrat Party majorities are doing all they can to empower Xi’s ongoing genocide, to be followed by intervention (invasion) in “Taiwan, China.” The Democrats do so, both directly and by empowering the current Russian czar in his long campaign to reestablish the pre-1990 Russian imperial borders first established by Stalin, the Red Czar. Sadly, there are self-professed republicans, supposed liberty-lovers, who are also enabling the twin towers of 20th Century oppression to advance in the current era. This is especially bitter as the left’s advance in this country now appears to have reached another high water mark, short of forever truly fundamentally transforming America.

President Carter acted quickly against Czar Brezhnev’s Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In 1979, Czar Brezhnev sent Russian elite troops and armored columns south into Afghanistan, a move far beyond that any Russian imperial army made through the entire Great Game between the Russian and British empires. In response, President Carter, with the support of overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, launched an ultimately effective set of countermoves, using the tools of national power other than direct U.S. military power.

In 1980, the Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the Senate by an almost filibuster proof majority, while they continued their complete domination of the House of Representatives, by almost 2 to 1. The Democrats were on the side of the Communists in our own hemisphere, supporting the Sandinistas and their Soviet proxy advisors after the successful 1979 take-over of Nicaragua. Indeed, the Democrats tried to criminalize Reagan’s efforts to effective counter the communists in our own hemisphere, ending in the Iran-Contra gambit.

Then, as now, a Democrat administration and Congress did nothing before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, worrying about not poking the Russian bear. This weak posture and misunderstanding, at best, of Russian imperial calculations invited the same response we had seen in the 1930s. Yet, Carter and his liberal Democratic Congress did effectively respond, leading to a decade-long struggle ending in complete Russian withdrawal.

Yet, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, later that same year, on the flank of newly radicalized Iran and the oil-rich Middle East, and pointing towards Pakistan, a U.S. Cold War ally, and India, a non-aligned nation, triggered a very different response. Carter, with the support of Congress, launched a diplomatic, economic, and military response. He shocked and angered the farming states with a boycott of grain exports to Russia, threatened all U.S. athletes with loss of their passports if they dared travel to Russia for the 1980 Summer Olympics, and used the CIA to train and equip Afghan tribal forces, making Russian operations far harder. While Stingers, shoulder launched surface-to-air missiles were not seen in Afghanistan until the mid 1980s, this new technology was not available in 1980.

Today, ex-Vice President Biden and the radical bare Democratic majorities in Congress are green-lighting Emperor Xi’s ongoing genocide, while clearing the way for Czar Putin’s next stage of Russian imperial re-expansion. Consider each of the three prongs of Carter’s response in turn.

President Carter led a successful massive multi-national boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Some governments, like those of Great Britain and Australia, supported the boycott, but allowed the athletes to decide for themselves whether to go to Moscow. No such freedom of choice was allowed U.S. athletes, as Carter threatened to revoke the passport of any athlete who tried to travel to the USSR. In the end, 67 nations did not participate, with 45 to 50 of these nations likely being absent because of the U.S.-led boycott. Eighty nations did participate—the lowest number since 1956.

Today, the Biden regime has green-lit U.S. athletes’ participation and done nothing to pressure any other nation to withdraw from the 2022 Winter Olympics. They have applied no pressure to NBC, busy promoting the games as a cash cow, while carefully avoiding mentioning China in the advance ads, only including the branding badge at the end:

The current Democrat regime publicly disavows any real boycott of Emperor Xi’s games, only checking a token diplomatic box:

The Biden administration insists it never intended to marshal an international diplomatic boycott coalition akin to President JIMMY CARTER’s 65-country alliance that supported a full boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union subsequently rallied 14 countries to join a counter-boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

“We were not and are not coordinating a global campaign regarding participation at the Olympics [and] that was not and is not our intention or goal,” a senior administration official told China Watcher via email. “We did consult with allies and partners and informed them of our decision before we made it public, but again, we were not urging anyone to take specific actions [and] we always fully expected other countries to make their own decisions on their own timelines, and that is exactly what is playing out now.”

President Carter shocked American agribusiness and important states with his executive action embargoing grain exports to Russia. Consider the U.S. Wheat Association’s response:

As a new decade and a new future for wheat export market development dawned in January 1980, the urgency facing the wheat-producer boards of both Great Plains Wheat and Western Wheat Associates could not have been much greater.

They were under the strain of discussions and negotiations for months in the effort to merge the two existing regional wheat market development groups into one, single national association. Then, on January 4, these farmer leaders and all U.S. wheat producers sat in disbelief hearing President Jimmy Carter address the nation and summarily cancel 17 million metric tons (MMT) of existing wheat, corn and soybean sales contracts between U.S. exporters and the former USSR. That was 17 MMT of production that had already been grown and harvested and scheduled for movement by truck, barge, rail car and ocean vessels through the U.S. grain export system; 17 MMT of system revenue, margins and farmers’ annual income – all cancelled.

By contrast, the Biden regime has spent the past year downplaying the Chinese threat and reversing President Trump’s prosecution hold on a top Chinese Huawai official, while continuing limited, ineffective targeted sanctions. By weakening the U.S. economy and ending energy independence, even energy dominance, the Biden regime is giving the Chinese empire decisive control, with their current dominance of rare resources needed to make solar panels and batteries.

We cannot compare covert military support between 1980 and 2022, because we acknowledge that Xi is acting within his own borders against non-Han ethnic groups. There is not chance of successfully inserting agents and even small arms with ammunition into China. Any attempt would be catastrophic for the people we were supposed to be helping.

Just as the Biden regime and bare congressional majorities seem determined to make us more dependent on China for our energy and economic future, so to they have aggressively promoted Russian regime wealth by canceling a major U.S. pipeline and attacking coal, oil, and gas development at every turn. This is in the context of earlier, ongoing Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. The Democrat regime has even effectively canceled a new pipeline from Israel to Europe. The one gas pipeline Democrats have supported is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, intended to facilitate Russia’s reconquest of Eastern Europe. Russia limited its invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and then launched the Nord Stream 2 project. The risk Russia and German faced in 2014 was that Ukrainian patriots would destroy the pipelines that fund Czar Putin’s regime and allow Germans to pretend Green climate change virtue, shutting down nuclear power and phasing out coal power generation. By completing Nord Stream 2, Russia and Germany are on the verge of eliminating the ability of Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans to resist.

This disastrous development started with the Biden regime’s assertion of an executive waiver to 2018 bipartisan legislation sanctioning support of Nord Stream 2. Then, the Senate Democrats, in the same week they denounced the filibuster as a Jim Crow relic, used the filibuster to stop passage of legislation stopping Biden’s interpretation of the sanctions law. Indeed, Senators Manchin and Sinema voted with Schumer to kill the Nord Stream 2 sanctions bill. Six of the most vulnerable Democrats got passes to vote for the bill, and the moral idiot Rand Paul claimed muh principles to vote against a bill designed to stop Russian imperial expansion by preventing direct energy delivery and so money transfer between the Russian empire and its wealthy partners in Western Europe.

Six Democratic senators – Mark Kelly of Arizona, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Mastro of Nevada – voted to support the legislation.

Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) switched their votes from “aye” to “no” while the roll call was in progress.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the only Republican to vote “no.” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) was not present to vote due to a recent COVID-19 diagnosis.

A week after the Senate Democrats and Rand Paul stopped real preventive action, Joe Biden greenlighted some sort of invasion. He revealed, over the course of a press conference where friendly reporters repeatedly tried to save him, a whole series of weaknesses in the facade of after-the-fact sanctions. Judge for yourself:

[Biden:] How about Jen Epstein, Bloomberg?

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Your top foreign policy advisors have warned that Russia is now ready to attack Ukraine. But there’s still little unity among European allies about what a package of sanctions against Moscow would look like. If the U.S. and NATO aren’t willing to put troops on the line to defend Ukraine and American allies can’t agree on a sanctions package, hasn’t the U.S. and the West lost nearly all of its leverage over Vladimir Putin?

And given how ineffective sanctions have been in deterring Putin in the past, why should the threat of new sanctions give him pause?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, because he’s never seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed if he moves, number one.

Number two, we’re in a situation where Vladimir Putin is about to — we’ve had very frank discussions, Vladimir Putin and I. And the idea that NATO is not going to be united, I don’t buy. I’ve spoken to every major NATO leader. We’ve had the NATO-Russian summit. We’ve had other — the OSCE has met, et cetera.

And so, I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.

But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the forces amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further ingra- — invade Ukraine, and that our allies and partners are ready to impose severe costs and significant harm on Russia and the Russian economy.

And, you know, we’re going to fortify our NATO Allies, I told him, on the eastern flank — if, in fact, he does invade. We’re going to — I’ve already shipped over $600 million worth of sophisticated equipment, defensive equipment to the Ukrainians.

The cost of going into Ukraine, in terms of physical loss of life, for the Russians, they’ll — they’ll be able to prevail over time, but it’s going to be heavy, it’s going to be real, and it’s going to be consequential.

In addition to that, Putin has — you know, has a stark choice: He — either de-escalation or diplomacy; confrontation or the consequences.

And, look, I think you’re going to see — for example, everybody talks about how Russia has control over the energy supply that Europe absorbs. Well, guess what? That — that money that they earn from that makes about 45 percent of the economy. I don’t see that as a one-way street. They go ahead and cut it off — it’s like my mother used to say: “You bite your nose off to spite your face.” It’s not like they have all these wonderful choices out there.

I spoke with the Prime Minister of Finland. And, you know, we’re talking about concern on the part of Finland and Sweden about what Russia is doing. The last thing that Russia needs is Finland deciding to change its status. They didn’t say they’re going to do that, but they’re talking about what, in fact, is going on and how outrageous Russia is being.

I am sure the Finns really want confrontation with a resurgent Russia. What “status” change could Finland adopt that would have any effect on Russia?

We’re finding ourselves in a position where I believe you will see that there’ll be severe economic consequences. For example, anything that involves dollar denominations, if they make — if they invade, they’re going to pay; they’re not going — their banks will not be able to deal in dollars.

So, they will just wash their billions through London and the European Central Bank, as they already do to a great extent.

So there’s — a lot is going to happen.

But here’s the thing: My conversation with Putin — and we’ve been — how can we say it? We have no problem understanding one another. He has no problem understanding me, nor me him. And the direct conversations where I pointed out — I said, “You know, you’ve occupied, before, other countries. But the price has been extremely high. How long? You can go in and, over time, at great loss and economic loss, go in and occupy Ukraine. But how many years? One? Three? Five? Ten? What is that going to take? What toll does that take?” It’s real. It’s consequential.

The terrain in Ukraine is nothing like Afghanistan, there are far more agents in place, and Russian imperial forces have detailed knowledge of the natural and human geography. Further, the Russians successfully conquered the current territory of Ukraine in 1922, and kept it a subject state within the USSR phase of the Russian empire, only giving up control in 1991. The costs of that long domination were almost entirely paid in the blood and tears of Ukrainians, not Russians, so this is an especially empty claim by Biden.

So, this is not all just a cakewalk for Russia.

Militarily, they have overwhelming superiority, and on — as it relates to Ukraine. But they’ll pay a stiff price — immediately, near term, medium term, and long term — if they do it.

Umm — I’m sorry. Okay. David Sanger, New York Times.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to follow up on your answer there about Russia and Ukraine. When you were in Geneva in June, you said to us, about President Putin, “I think the last thing…he wants now is a Cold War.”

Now, since then, of course, you’ve seen him gather these troops — 100,000 troops — around Ukraine. Your Secretary of State said today he thought he could invade at any moment. You’ve seen the cyberattacks. And you’ve seen the demand that he have a sphere of influence in which you would withdraw all American troops and nuclear weapons from what used to be the Soviet bloc.

So, I’m wondering if you still think that the last thing he wants is a Cold War. And has your view of him changed in the past few months? And if it has and he does invade, would your posture be to really move back to the kind of containment policy that you saw so often when you were still in the Senate?

THE PRESIDENT: The answer is that I think he still does not want any full-blown war, number one.

Number two, do I think he’ll test the West, test the United States and NATO as significantly as he can? Yes, I think he will. But I think he’ll pay a serious and dear price for it that he doesn’t think now will cost him what it’s going to cost him. And I think he will regret having done it.

Now, whether or not — I think that — how can I say this in a public forum? I think that he is dealing with what I believe he thinks is the most tragic thing that’s happened to Mother Russia — in that the Berlin Wall came down, the Empire has been lost, the Near Abroad is gone, et cetera. The Soviet Union has been split.

Here Biden acknowledges the fundamental Russian motivation some on the Right studiously ignore. This is not about reestablishing a communist USSR. It is all about reestablishing the greatness of the Russian empire achieved by the Red Czar, Stalin then lost by Gorbachov. It is simultaneously true that Putin has criticized the conduct of the Soviet communists and that he promotes the celebration of Stalin as a national hero. Putin has consistently pointed to the fall of the USSR, with its captive “republics” and puppet East European Warsaw Pact states, as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century.

But think about what he has. He has eight time zones, a burning tundra that will not freeze again naturally, a situation where he has a lot of oil and gas, but he is trying to find his place in the world between China and the West.

And so, I’m not so sure that he has — David, I’m not so sure he has — is certain what he’s going to do. My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.

And, by the way, I’ve indicated to him — the two things he said to me that he wants guarantees of it: One is, Ukraine will never be part of NATO. And two, that NATO, or the — there will not be strategic weapons stationed in Ukraine. Well, we could work out something on the second piece (inaudible) what he does along the Russian line as well — or the Russian border, in the European area of Russia.

On the first piece, we have a number of treaties internationally and in Europe that suggest that you get to choose who you want to be with. But the likelihood that Ukraine is going to join NATO in the near term is not very likely, based on much more work they have to do in terms of democracy and a few other things going on there, and whether or not the major allies in the West would vote to bring Ukraine in right now.

So there’s room to work if he wants to do that. But I think, as usual, he’s going to — well, I probably shouldn’t go any further. But I think it will hurt him badly.

Q Mr. President, it sounds like you’re offering some way out here — some off-ramp. And it sounds like what it is, is — at least in the informal assurance — that NATO is not going to take in Ukraine anytime in the next few decades. And it sounds like you’re saying we would never put nuclear weapons there. He also wants us to move all of our nuclear weapons out of Europe and not have troops rotating through the old Soviet Bloc.

Do you think there’s space for there as well?

THE PRESIDENT: No. No, there’s not space for that. We won’t permanently station. But the idea we’re not going to — we’re going to actually increase troop presence in Poland, in Romania, et cetera, if in fact he moves because we have a sacred obligation in Article 5 to defend those countries. They are part of NATO. We don’t have that obligation relative to Ukraine, although we have great concern about what happens in Ukraine.

Thank you.

[…]

Okay. Alex Alper, Reuters.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to follow up briefly on a question asked by Bloomberg. You said that Russia would be “held accountable if it invades” and “it depends on what it does”; “it’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and… we end up having to fight about what to do and what not to do.”

Are you saying that a minor incursion by Russia into Ukrainian territory would not lead to the sanctions that you have threatened? Or are you effectively giving Putin permission to make a small incursion into the country?

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.) Good question. That’s how it did sound like, didn’t it?

The most important thing to do: Big nations can’t bluff, number one.

And number two, the idea that we would do anything to split NATO, which would be a — have a profound impact on one of — I think prominent impact — on one of Putin’s objectives is to weaken NATO — would be a big mistake.

So, the question is: If it’s a — something significantly short of a significant invasion — or not even significant, just major military forces coming across — for example, it’s one thing to determine that if they continue to use cyber efforts, well, we can respond the same way, with cyber.

They have FSB people in Ukraine now trying to undermine the solidarity within Ukraine about Russia and to try to promote Russian interest. But it’s very important that we keep everyone in NATO on the same page. And that’s what I’m spending a lot of time doing. And there are differences. There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do depending on what happens — the degree to which they’re able to go.

And I want to be clear with you: The serious imposition of sanctions relative to dollar transactions and other things are things that are going to have a negative impact on the United States, as well as a negative impact on the economies of Europe as well, and a devastating impact on Russia. And so, I got to make sure everybody is on the same page as we move along.

I think we will, if there’s something that is — that — where there’s Russian forces crossing the border, killing Ukrainian fighters, et cetera — I think that changes everything. But it depends on what he does, as to the exact — to what extent we’re going to be able to get total unity on the Rus- — on the NATO front.

[…]

Okay. Kristen, NBC.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Very quickly on Russia — I do have a number of domestic policy issues, but I’m — on Russia very quickly: It seemed like you said that you have assessed, you feel as though he will move in. Has this administration, have you determined whether President Putin plans to invade or move into Ukraine, as you’ve said?

THE PRESIDENT: Look, the only thing I’m confident of is that decision is totally, solely, completely a Putin decision. Nobody else is going to make that decision; no one else is going to impact that decision. He’s making that decision.

And I suspect it matters which side of the bed he gets up on in the morning as to exactly what he’s going to do. And I think it is not irrational, if he wanted to, to talk about dealing with strategic doctrine and dealing with force structures in Europe and in — in the European parts of Russia.

But I don’t know if he’s decided he wants to do that or not. So far, in the three meetings we’ve had — OSCE and –anyway — have not produced anything because the impression I get from my Secretary of State, my National Security Advisor, and my other senior officials that are doing these meetings is that there’s a question of whether the people they’re talking to know what he’s going to do.

So, the answer is — but based on a number of criteria as to what he could do — for example, for him to move in and occupy the whole country, particularly from the north, from Belarus, it’s — he’s going to have to wait a little bit until the ground is frozen so he can cross.

To move in a direction where he wants to talk about what’s going — we — we have — we’re continuing to provide for defense capacities to the — to the Ukrainians. We’re talking about what’s going on in both the Baltic and the Black Sea, et cetera. There’s a whole range of things that I’m sure he’s trying to calculate how quickly he can do what he wants to do and what does he want to do.

But I — he’s not — he’s an informed individual. And I’m sure — I’m not sure — I believe he’s calculating what the immediate, short-term, and the near-term, and the long-term consequences of Russia will be. And I don’t think he’s made up his mind yet.

Q No, no, I’m — I’m going to take care.

Mr. President, thank you. Sebastian Smith from AFP. Another question on Ukraine. Ukraine borders four NATO member countries. How concerned are you? Are you concerned that a real conflagration in Ukraine — if the Russians really go in there — that it could suck in NATO countries that are on the border and you end up with an actual NATO-Russia confrontation of some kind?

And, secondly, are you entertaining the thought of a summit with Vladimir Putin as a way to perhaps try and put this whole thing to bed, address their concerns, and negotiate a way out of this?

THE PRESIDENT: The last part — to the last question, yes. When we talked about whether or not we’d (inaudible) the three meetings we talked about. And we talked about: We would go from there, if there was reason to, to go to a summit. We talked about a summit as being before the Ukraine item came up in terms of strategic doctrine and what the strategic relationship would be. So, I still think that is a possibility, number one.

Number two, I am very concerned. I’m very concerned that this could end up being — look, the only war that’s worse than one that’s intended is one that’s unintended. And what I’m concerned about is this could get out of hand — very easily get out of hand because of what you said: the borders of the — of Ukraine and what Russia may or may not do.

I am hoping that Vladimir Putin understands that he is — short of a full-blown nuclear war, he’s not in a very good position to dominate the world. And so, I don’t think he thinks that, but it is a concern. And that’s why we have to be very careful about how we move forward and make it clear to him that there are prices to pay that could, in fact, cost his country an awful lot.

But I — of course, you have to be concerned when you have, you know, a nuclear power invade — this has — if he invades — it hasn’t happened since World War Two. This will be the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world, in terms of war and peace, since World War Two.

So, NATO allies are divided, they and the U.S. do not want to engage in open war, Putin is assumed to be able to both conquer and hold Ukraine for many years, and as long as the divided allies and the U.S. can claim the invasion is only a “limited incursion,” or one limited incursion after another, than we will do nothing of any substance, especially if any action might hurt our own wallets and cause domestic re-election problems. Or do you read this otherwise?

If America shows itself ineffective in both unilateral and coordinated deterrence (remember the Cold War) and response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, what is Xi to conclude about Taiwan? If Biden cannot even summon our Winter Olympians to the White House to break the bad news and lay down the law, as Carter did 42 years ago, what real measure with a real effect will Democrats take against the imperial ambitions of Xi or Putin?

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  1. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Clifford A. Brown: If America shows itself ineffective in both unilateral and coordinated deterrence (remember the Cold War) and response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, what is Xi to conclude about Taiwan? If Biden cannot even summon our Winter Olympians to the White House to break the bad news and lay down the law, as Carter did 42 years ago, what real measure with a real effect will Democrats take against the imperial ambitions of Xi or Putin?

    Only time will tell, Clifford. And we will probably have answers to these questions much sooner than we think–or that we would like. Thank you for the description of the contrast between Carter and Biden in responding to these threatening issues.

    • #1
  2. James Salerno Inactive
    James Salerno
    @JamesSalerno

    At least Carter could grow nuts.

    • #2
  3. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot) Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Does anyone really think that the 1980 Olympic boycott was effective?

    The Russians invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, and withdrew in February 1989.  If the Olympic boycott was effective, it sure took a long time.  My impression is that it principally accomplished two goals:

    • It deprived great American and allied athletes of the opportunity to win the Olympic medals, after years of effort and sacrifice.
    • It apparently made some people feel good about themselves.

    On to another issue.

    If you think that Afghanistan in 1979 was analogous to Czechoslovakia in 1938, would you list the other countries that the Soviets invaded and occupied in the wake of their successful invasion of Afghanistan?

    If Afghanistan in 1979 was not analogous to Czechoslovakia in 1938, why should we expect that anything going on in Ukraine presently will be analogous to Czechoslovakia?

    • #3
  4. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot) Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)
    @ArizonaPatriot

    I’m going to comment a bit further, in general.  There’s a school of foreign policy that was dominant in the Republican Party for several decades, commonly called “neoconservatism.”  I used to subscribe to this view, which promoted an active and interventionist foreign policy.

    Our experience in the so-called War on Terror led me to change my mind.  In hindsight, we seem to have overstated the risk of terrorism, and to have employed a costly strategy that was ultimately ineffective.

    I don’t think that the neocons are completely wrong.  I think that the situation is complicated, and that the neocons typically seem to have a simple, one-size-fits-all solution, which is also frequently ineffective.  It generally starts with a claim that some possible foreign problem is an “existential threat,” usually based on the sort of “domino theory” argument that I think I detect in the OP.  The essential argument is that every international crisis is just like Czechoslovakia in 1938, and every adversary is just like Hitler’s Germany.  I don’t think that this is true, though it’s hard to tell in any particular case.

    Regarding Ukraine in particular, even if this is some indication of a Russian plan to advance westward, why do you think that it is our problem?  Aren’t the Europeans strong enough and wealthy enough to counter Russia?  A I understand it, there are four European countries with larger GDP than Russia (Germany, UK, France, Italy).

    • #4
  5. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot) Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Another thing.  

    Why would you advocate a boycott of the Olympics in China at this time?  Has China invaded anyone recently?  Or are we just going to boycott countries that we don’t like perpetually?  If we do so, what leverage would we have in response to possible future aggression?

    • #5
  6. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    James Salerno (View Comment):

    At least Carter could grow nuts.

    Governor Goober!

    • #6
  7. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Another thing.

    Why would you advocate a boycott of the Olympics in China at this time? Has China invaded anyone recently? Or are we just going to boycott countries that we don’t like perpetually? If we do so, what leverage would we have in response to possible future aggression?

    I think I was clear that the reason for boycotting China is twofold:

    1. They are in the middle of a genocide campaign. It is vile that we would place athletes’ hopes for medals, fame, and wealth above treating the Chinese regime as a pariah.
    2. The signal from both our response, including all the public comments by “conservatives” slinging “neocon” as a sneer (considered by Chinese and Russian intelligence analysts in informing their leaders’ decisions), increase the likelihood of the PRC invading Taiwan, the world center of microchip production. That matters more than you may now realize.

    Your entire string ignores the real alternative, the Trump alternative. That alternative involved using all the tools of national power to successfully check Putin:

    1. Unleash American oil and gas production, driving down the world price and so choking off the excess petrodollars Putin needs to run a modern military campaign.
    2. Push NATO members to meet their promised 2% GDP defense spending, showing a basic level of national will, creating a credible deterrent to Russia.
    3. Choke off Nord Stream 2 so Putin cannot bypass Ukraine, so that he cannot invade without risking complete disruption of the gas shipments he must have to sustain his rule. This is a financial system tool, imposing massive sanctions on anyone who chooses to fund Nord stream 2.
    4. Talk up the independence of the states between Russia and Germany, preferably on their soil.
    5. Rotate troops through Poland regularly.
    6. Provide effective anti-armor weapons to Ukraine, significantly increasing the cost to Russia and decreasing the chance of quick, easy victory.

    You also may just forget that we got Ukraine to give up its massive nuclear arsenal on a promise that we would protect their territorial integrity. Or maybe our word as a nation just does not matter.

    • #7
  8. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot) Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Clifford, I find your arguments to be pretty weak.

    First of all, complaining about me using “neocon,” while referring to people who disagree with you as “vile,” is quite rich.  Neocon actually isn’t an insult, but a description.

    Second of all, you didn’t answer my objection about China at all, which was the fact that if we sanction them for whatever genocide they’re supposedly committing, we don’t have any leverage if they do something worse.

    About Ukraine and our supposed “word as a nation,” please point to the treaty involved.  That’s the Constitutional procedure for making an enforceable promise, and even treaties can be broken when circumstances changed.  As Washington did, by the way, with respect to the treaty of alliance with France, by declaring American neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars.

    What about our “word as a nation” reportedly given to the Russians, not to expand NATO eastward?  I don’t think it’s binding anyway, without a treaty (and again, even treaties can be broken).

    I think that your worry about some imminent Chinese invasion of Taiwan is unwarranted, too.  Scaremongering, I think. 

    Kinda like the hysteria after the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    • #8
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