Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
November 3rd Led to February 24th
The Russian attack on Ukraine can be traced to the 2020 presidential election. Leaving aside the question of voter fraud, the replacement of Trump by Biden strengthened Russia’s economy. One of the first actions Biden took was to cancel the Keystone pipeline. He also discouraged drilling. Gas and other fossil fuel prices jumped. Russia depends heavily on energy exports so this was a huge cash infusion into its economy.
Biden appointed incompetent people such as Austin who became secretary of defense. When he wasn’t chowing down, he appeared to think that his most crucial issue was to root out conservatives in the defense department. A friend of mine knew a young man who joined the Air Force to work on cyber defense. With the emphasis on transgenders getting surgeries, he’s getting out as soon as his enlistment ends.
Austin also thinks that forcing people who are not at risk from COVID to get a leaky vaccine is critical. When push came to shove in Afghanistan, no one stood up to Biden and said that we should hold Bagram Air Base until the very end. It’s much more secure than Kabul but none of our generals were willing to put their careers on the line on behalf of the safety of our military. And in the debacle we left tens of billions of dollars of weapons behind.
Biden was always a gaffe machine, but by Election Day 2020 he was clearly unfit to be president. He barely campaigned. In his few press conferences since he’s become president, he calls on specific reporters and has the answers written out on 3×5 cards. His recent performance shows a man who is almost comatose.
https://t.co/llgadKtta0
pic.twitter.com/NyNiQZk26O— Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 (@ezralevant) April 28, 2022
Putin attacked Georgia when Bush was president. He then seized Crimea during Obama’s presidency. Now he’s attacking Ukraine. The only president he appears to have respected was Trump. The people who supported Biden are to blame for this debacle. And the escalation which is being pushed by Bill Kristol and other war hawks is dangerous. It’s good for Raytheon but no so good for Ukraine. We need to encourage de-escalation rather than ramping up the rhetoric.
Published in Foreign Policy
Even that obscures the issue, US aid to Ukraine dwarfs even the most generous EU and NATO member by orders of magnitude.
That’s the secret, isn’t it.
More like one order and a half, but still.
Missing from the discussion on why Russia attacked Ukraine:
None of the above exonerates Putin from his atrocities, but the reasons why this disastrous, potentially debilitating war was started all begin with the actions of Joe Biden.
Yes. Just as I personally want to know who is running the government (whether one person, one group, or generally agreeing groups, or groups in conflict that requires compromise, whatever) I really want to know who Biden was responding to, not only when he tried to correct his use of “kleptocrats” but when he riffed on “accommodate”.
It really looks like he does have a piece in his hear, and gets directions and corrections through it. He stopped and looked around, and repeated the word “accommodate” with a faint smile, as if a smirk of sarcasm. And he repeated virtually a whole sentence. It sounds to me as if he was fed the correct sentence and still got the word “accommodate” wrong again.
If this is so, my guess is that the wording was spoken by White House press official Meghan Hays, part-time Easter Bunny and the administration’s director of message planning. She is also the one regarded as being responsible for limiting press access to Biden at public events. But who knows.
No no . . . it’s not a proxy war at all. The best people assure me.
Let’s not forget his invitation for Russia to do a “minor incursion.”
Another one of those weird Biden statements that the White House had to scramble to cover and left Zelenskyy going WTF, guy?!
It is absolutely a proxy war. That may even be in the US’es best interest as long as it doesn’t escalate out of control.
I have come to the conclusion that it is several uncoordinated groups. It doesn’t seem to me as if it is groups that require compromise. Well they do but they aren’t if you take my meaning. It is simply a reactive exercise with no coordination.
Okay. :) So who spearheaded Biden’s candidacy? A schlemiel in the back who who shouted out Joe Biden! Or the guy on the dais?
No that was definitely a coalition of Democratic elites, but only after they couldn’t find anyone else. Problem is the ones who really got him there, I.e. the media. Aren’t really calling the shots, or maybe they are but not in any coordinated way. I don’t disagree that there were powerful people who helped get him elected. It just seems they had absolutely no plan after that happened. Should this surprise us though. The left’s grasp on reality is pretty tenuous.
Well, once Trump was out of the way, they didn’t really need Joe to do anything, their deep state operatives could take care of things. And the Never Trumpers were happy to help.
True but that is also part of it. The deep state isn’t one thing it is several different things. While they are all on the left so they can coordinate against a Republican, they fracture into seeking their individual agendas under a Democrat. This isn’t to say they won’t try to coordinate on defense. On day to day policies though each is trying to push a different agenda and some of those are at odds with one another. Biden just moves in the direction of whoever he talked to or read last. That’s why everything looks so chaotic. The shadowy cabal needs to have meetings and coordinate. They just haven’t done that yet.
Which is precisely the problem here. Whoever is responsible, whatever one thinks of the actors involved, however one thinks it started who cares? Let everyone debate their personal theories on those issues all they wish but what absolutely must be debated which clearly is not being discussed in Washington is what are our objectives here?
It is clear by now that this is turning into a proxy war between the US and Russia, what are our goals here? What is an acceptable outcome? How much are we willing to commit to achieve that outcome?
No one is talking about this but everyone absolutely should be. The biggest military failures of this country have come about where the goals, the endgame were unclear. This is setting up to be another one because no one is asking “What are we trying to achieve here?”
Think back to how Afghanistan started and to how it just ended. The differences are stark but the similarities about the lack of clear objectives stands out like a midnight sun. Anyone wish to repeat the final result of that debacle?
That was Because Biden, not Because Afghanistan.
Plus nukes?
A war that lasted over 10 years, which appears to have cost well over a trillion dollars and which in the end achieved absolutely nothing, nothing.
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
Even a jackass like Kennedy understood that.
You are right of course because we have a great maladministration at the moment. I would argue that the US has achieved its aims at this point. Everything that happens next is gravy as long as Russia doesn’t escalate. To that end we should be trying to negotiate and end to this with the best possible terms for Ukraine and something that allows Russia a fig leaf of face. This is a dangerous situation. Unfortunately nothing can be done because we are run by incompetents.
Trick question how long did the Korean War last?
I’m not in uniform so cannot speak for them but I have been working alongside for over 18 years now and for all the pontificators out there one way or the other, get your @#$#@$ together. This is not a game for people who are clearly not you.
I would argue that it wasn’t a “war” that lasted over 10 years, and the last few years had ZERO US military casualties. The military advisors recommended keeping 2500 troops there, which – through providing intel support to the Afghan military, etc – was enough to keep the Taliban out, keep girls in school and not married off to Taliban “fighters,” etc. At some point it should have become possible to withdraw them all, once the Afghan forces were up to the task. But even if that never happened, it’s not like it was a seriously dangerous base or something. The numbers show that.
I don’t think the Ukraine war is a war between Russia and Ukraine. It’s not even a war between totalitarian Russia and China and the West with its democratic culture. It’s not just a proxy war between Russia and the US with China watching. This is a war between the totalitarian globalists and the totalitarian nationalists. To the globalists, every nation state with borders and a unique civilization and culture must be subsumed into One World Government, one which is owned by financiers or central bankers (the Davos crowd) and administered by multinational corporations. This is largely what they say, and it is what I see.
The purpose of this war, speaking of the causes of it, is to beat Russia down until those who work toward one world government can force a change in Russia’s government to one that is amenable and subservient to a higher Word Order in which, as they put it, No one will own anything, and everyone will be happy. But this One World Order will be no more dispositive of the population of the earth than Xi or Putin are now said to be.
Here Nanocelt writes in The Nuclear Umbrella :
Depopulation may be an insignificant result to Xi and Putin, but it is a specifically desired result for the globalists. They have written advocating it for decades. This is not merely human idiocy couched in pseudo-science, or an aspect of evolutionary psychology toward culling an overgrown population, but the desire of the malignant one who rules this world. To use a popular expression, depopulation is not a bug, it’s a feature.
I didn’t mean any offense. It most certainly isn’t a game. It also isn’t entirely our meaning the US’es decision. We could always withdraw our aid and let Ukraine fall but that doesn’t benefit the US. We lost the moment Joe Biden was elected. Fortunately for the US Providence may have intervened to give us long enough to right our own ship or it may be we just seal our fate.
Argue this with those who served over there, do not argue it with me.
That is a problem because much of the West is ruled currently by the globalists. I agree to they may have engineered this war. That having been said Russia doesn’t have the right to subjugate Ukraine. It also doesn’t have the right to dominate it’s neighbors. I agree it is refreshingly non globalist, but Putin is an evil man. I have no more desire, and believe you agree with me here, to have Putin win than the globalists.
I think arming Ukraine was correct. I would also advocate for finding a way to negotiate an end at this point. My feelings about the globalists verses Putin and Xi is that the enemy of my enemy is my enemy.
I agree with you. And Ukraine has been (perhaps to a great degree willingly) used and abused politically and financially by the West, and militarily by Russia.
The only party I have any sympathy or affection for is the Ukrainian populace.
That is a judgement call and it depends on the decision makers to decide what “too costly” means. In a world run by oligarchs, the opinions of the little people don’t seem to matter much.
That’s not how the oil market works. If there was any effect of ZIRP it would be to raise the nominal price in dollars and possible in real dollars, if it stimulated the economy. But the ZIRP did not have much affect, since the big banks were just sitting on the money. Note, real rates are even lower now.
I don’t actually think it is much of a judgment call. Russia’s losses in equipment, troops, and prestige are pretty dramatic. Oligarchs may chose to continue, but it still takes billions of dollars and multiple years to replace a Moskva class cruiser. Ukraine will have to spend billions to replace its cities and infrastructure. Also both sides have lost a huge number of absolutely irreplaceable human beings. The opinions of the little people may matter little to the powerful but that doesn’t reduce the butcher’s bill.
Or the purpose of the war, instigated by Russia, was to eliminate the fictive notion of Ukrainian exceptionalism, and that’s what the Ukes are fighting, not WEF Ted-talk blather.
We have centuries of evidence of Russian inability to countenance Uke independence, a reflorescence of messianic Russian nationalism, expressed through Duganism, coinciding with a moment when the West seems weak, emboldening an old troll’s desire to get the band back together, figuring that the West would quaver and see the invasion through the sphincter-prism of its own irrelevant obsessions.