Sorry for not responding earlier -- I was out of town for the holiday.
Thank you for your reply @Maj. Bill Martin A few thoughts and observations follow.
If the US Congress was still in the business of declaring war, I would give you this point. But, it's not. So, what we have is a proxy war with Russia, and the line between this and a direct war is becoming increasingly thin.
I disagree with that completely. I think it is a very clear, very bright line as to whether or not you have troops pulling triggers or not, and that certainly isn't either proven or obvious. We're providing them weapons, intelligence, and out-of-country training. Those things are incredibly valuable, but they're the same things that happened in innumerable conflicts during the Cold War, and both sides understood where those lines were drawn. And I'm sure we have some of the usual military liaison people in terms of keeping us informed, but we don't have Vietnam-type "advisors" running around with maneuver battalions. Seems a pretty clear, bright line to me.
The same Russia we are now told is our most potent enemy is the same Russia who told Bush he was cancelling war games right after the attacks on 911 and offered assistance with intelligence gathering, ----- that warned us a year before the Boston marathon attack. Russia also fought ISIS in Syria and has given Israel near carte blanche to enter Syrian airspace to destroy Iranian weapons stored there.
First, I don't believe they are our most potent enemy. China is. Nor do I believe that Russia's goals in 2001 were the same as they are today. Putin back then saw NATO as a potential avenue for Russia to maintain hegemony as the largest European member of the alliance. Once Putin learned that Russia would have to follow the same process and meet the same standards as everyone else to join NATO, he balked and reversed course.
Russia wasn't in Syria to help us. They couldn't have cared
less about either us or ISIS in isolation. Putin sent Russian troops to their proxy state of Syria to help his long-time fellow dictator Assad and that's it. And regionally, Russia has been screwing us in terms of Iran for a very long-time now because they see Iran as a useful regional antagonist of the U.S.. It was Russia who opposed sanctions, pushed for the least possible inspections, , and undermined every effort made to try to get a tough anti-nuclear agreement with Iran.
Why is Russia, but not China, enemy number one?
As I said, Russia isn't. China is, but China is watching very closely how the West responds to Russia aggression.
Are not the WEF and China greater threats to our freedoms?
Since this entire war started, I am at a complete loss to understand the obsession with the WEF, which never wanted this war in the first place. This war actually has
undermined the WEF's goals of "globalism" and going green. And this war actually enhances our ability to stand up to China because it is strengthening the alliance of the most advanced nations in the world to resist aggression.
It's the same thing when people saw "why are we more concerned with the borders in Ukraine than our own southern border", as if the Biden Administration was interested in enforcing the southern border before the war in Ukraine. The issues simply aren't related. You oppose the ideals of the WEF through domestic economic legislation, and you secure the southern border by building a wall, hiring more guards, changing asylum law, etc.. And those things are completely independent of whether or not we send weapons to Ukraine.
BREAKING: Tony Blinken just said the US couldn’t be supporting Ukraine right now if they were still in Afghanistan and has no ability to support 2 allies at once" (Video)
I don't understand the relevance of that. Afghanistan and Ukraine are both ground-combat intensive conflicts. A potential conflict with China would involve, overwhelmingly, air and naval assets, which simply aren't involved at all in Ukraine.
