Re: Reply #677
I read your post a few times @Smokin Joe and thank you for the reply.
I'd like to respond to it, but I'm a little confused. When I feel confident I've understood your thesis, you appear to modify it in the next paragraph.
This is a sincere, snark-free question: Have you a bottom line summary of your opinion?
Thanks in advance.
Certainly. You have consistently sided with the Communists in this, or perhaps just against Ukraine, frequently citing the false dichotomy that because the Ukrainians are not Communist, and in fact a small minority of the Ukrainian army (one unit) have claimed or been claimed to be Nazis, that all are Nazis. Another common theme is that because the career Russian puppets before Zelenskyy were corrupt and in bed with the Biden Family, that somehow means a person who was rich when he took office without having previously held any political position must be corrupt, too.(Which would make as much sense as saying because Obama was corrupt, Trump (also a rich guy and first time office holder) must be corrupt, too.)
Maybe the Nazi under the bed is the source of your angst, but frankly, the rare few who actually swallow that line of totalitarianism are not a significant enough threat in the geopolitical reality of today to embrace the very Communist ideology that is tearing this country apart and has enslaved well over a third of the world's population, not to mention murdering close to a hundred million people in the last century.
Even today, those who embrace Communism have been and are calling any opposition "Nazis".
Don't like 'woke"? You're a Nazi.
Aren't buying the nonbinary gender bullshit? You're a "Nazi".
Nothing new, this same 'logic' has been going on since the '60s. Communist radicals then called anyone not on board with their crap a "Nazi", too.
Agree with Tucker Carlson? Yep, you guessed it, because he isn't sucking up to the Communists.
So it is only natural and normal that the Russians would be calling anyone and everyone opposed to them "Nazis". After all, it evokes memories to the glory days of the "Great Patriotic War" (even though Stalin was in bed with Hitler until Hitler kicked him out), against the Nazis, (Which, aside from keeping Stalin from being deposed, turned into a fine opportunity to subjugate a significant part of Europe, which incidentally, was what Hitler was up to, too).
Don't think for a second that some Americans didn't get filthy rich supplying the Soviets during the second World War, too. The more money is flying around, the more of an emergency there is, the more opportunities there are for graft and corruption, especially close to the source of those funds. Biden's bunch will have their cut long before a cartridge comes out of the other end of the pipeline.
You constantly mention the Azov Battalion as "Nazis", and so they claim, or at least some of them. However, they are shooting at the Neo-Communists of Russia, and resisting the seizure of the Eastern Provinces of the Ukraine by Russian (Neo-Communist) Imperialism. Putin's stated goal is to reconstitute the USSR, albeit under a different brand name, but key to that strategy is the control of energy supplies to Western Europe. Georgia was invaded to prevent a pipeline that would have undermined Russian Energy Hegemony over Europe. The whole green New Deal has, at its Socialist roots, the aim of crippling the west's industry, as has the Environmental movement since the KGB started dropping money into outfits like Greenpeace and others in the 1970s. The Eastern Provinces of Ukraine have nearly 90% of the country's oil production, significant manufacturing and coal, and controlling the ports means Russia would control grain shipments (which haven't been interfered with, so long as the grain is on Russian ships). This is a naked attempt to lock up resources or flat-out steal them at gunpoint, and hold Europe hostage by controlling those same resources.
I am all for self-determination, and Russia should butt out. Ukraine can deal with their own disagreements, but the minute someone who wasn't a Russian puppet is in power, Russia decides to go "liberating separatist provinces" like they did in Bosnia, and Georgia, and Eastern Europe before they rebranded the Soviet Union and declared communism "dead". Communism has never been so healthy as it is post-mortem.
To this end, propaganda is a tool that has been one of the sharpest arrows in the quiver of the Communists since Kaiser Wilhelm sent Lenin to stir up trouble in Russia, down to the very name "Bolshevik". The Russians are very good at disinformation, misinformation, and outright lying as tools to gain and retain international sympathy and power.
We Americans used to be very sensitive to the phraseology and techniques and even the artwork, but they have refined their craft, and we have become numbed to the normal triggers and indicators by the Orwellian language used by our own government, and the soviet-like degradation of art since the 1930s.
The Russians, locked into dichotomous reasoning in Europe will naturally harp on Nazis to evoke every deserved negative sentiment toward that flavor of totalitarianism, but that doesn't make the Russian flavor any more palatable for anyone who yearns to set their own course in their own country, regardless of that latter outcome.
I have a hard time not seeing Russia crowing about destroying the headquarters of the Azov Battalion to demoralize the unit, and the building shown (in better shape than many American High Schools), really doesn't indicate anything to me that couldn't be set up to parade reporters through, complete with a 'guide'.
Bottom line, though, in any conflict, is that those people shooting at your enemy are likely people you can work with, no matter how distasteful you may or may not find their philosophy. As I said before, these people have put their lives on the line to defend their homeland. They are a minority in their own country. Many have died, and those who surrendered probably will, too, because the Russians have a long history of treating prisoners very poorly.
Naturally, the Russians will accuse them of perpetrating any horrors the Russians perpetrated. It's a common propaganda tool used by anyone from that camp (see also how the Left in America accuses those "nazis" who disagree with them of the same crimes they, themselves, commit).
But that only addresses the rhetoric of the Russians and their sympathizers, predictably driven into the Russian camp by the mention of Nazis, as intended by those who emphasize it.
The bottom line is that we have no boots on the ground in Ukraine, provide no air cover, and that the Ukrainians are fighting for their right to self-determination, aided by the supply of weapons from the West. They have a slew of political parties over there, most minor, but it seems all but the Communists "separatists" (like there were in Bosnia and Georgia), and likely some Russian plants/recruits, want to fight for the opportunity to sort their own government out without a Russian puppet at the helm.
We aren't "Nation Building" and should not be. Provide the Ukrainians the tools they need to build their own nation without the Russians running it, and leave them to it. We have no troops on the ground--nor should we. We have no planes in the air--nor should we.
What could be more American than providing the tools for another nation to determine their own destiny?
If we are honest about it, it was the French Navy keeping Cornwallis' troops from being evacuated that led to the surrender at Yorktown and winning our freedom to decide for ourselves what course we would take.
Since then, we have intervened on behalf of many, but here is a rare opportunity to do so without direct troop involvement.
As for the kleptocracy in DC, they see an opportunity for skimming anything and everything from claimed direct aid to kickbacks from weapons contracts. Emergency funding is seldom fully scrutinized and rides a populist wave through Congress, which means enhanced opportunities to siphon off fortunes, and the more, the better to skim it.
Those sh*tbirds will find a way to loot the public coffers anyway, at least a trickle of this will go to a cause I can support--arming people to determine their own government.
This
In this case I am having a hard time celebrating the demise of any who have resisted the Russian invasion of Ukraine, regardless of their ideology. They were willing to die for their beliefs, which commands a modicum of respect, and if they have been captured, there is a very good chance they will, in fact, die anyway, if the Russian treatment of prisoners in the past is any indication.
does not contradict anything I said.
If there was some other paragraph you had a problem with, be more specific, and perhaps I can address your confusion.
