Ukraine aid is dropped from government funding bill. That raises questions about future US support
3 years ago by HEISENBERG to c/world
And I will show you how the second and third world wars started by a dictator doing a land grab and fucktard leaders doing nothing when they had a chance. If Ukraine does not win, WW3 is the inevitable outcome in the next 10 years. These are the people that cause the deaths of millions.
I agree.
If only you thought the same about Turkey&Azerbaijan.
No, whoever wins, it'll just show that brute force matters and everything else doesn't, be it for the Russian leadership or for that of any Western country.
WWIII is already inevitable, in one way or another. And fuck everyone talking about realpolitik, because realpolitik is what got us here.
Other than that, Ukraine is going to win or make the conflict frozen against Russia, with or without more support. Russia is not going to be a participant in that WWIII, not a major one anyway.
They can read the polls and can see that a plurality of voters seem to be against more aid.
Edit: -72 is breddy good, I'm quite impressed at how resistant you guys are. It really IS the reddit experience.
a plurality
Yeah, about ten guys who were bought and sold by Russia and a couple thousand other folks that fell for their con. By no means a majority and also by no means a reasonable stance.
Which sources: https://www.documentcloud.org/...
No... page 10&11 clearly states that you're wrong. It's effectively a 50/50 split on Ukraine war with an actual majority 45/55 split saying no more funding.
These polls are as idiotic as the Brexit Referendum was.
People have no fucking clue what's going on and they answer by their "gut feeling". So it's all down to the way the question is formed.
And it's not a "yes" or "no" type of situation either.
The majority support Ukraine. Fuck off Russian bot.
Putin's investment in U.S. conservatives pays off once again.
Everyone looking at the price tag vs the results knows a proxy war with a well-trained army, the side of the US and Ukraine, against formerly your biggest adversary is the least costly way to cripple your foe while hardly lifting a finger.
~$125 billion TOTAL, including humanitarian, in a sea of $800B+/yr is play money in war, and throwing Russia back with dollars is the largest blow to a man who thinks he’s militarily strong.
It even makes China hesitate. I’d pay a lot more just for that.
Edit to add: This is a sad justification to be involved in ending human life, regardless of merit.
It's especially peanuts when you consider that the VA won't have to take care of the veterans either. In the long-term, that's where most of the funding actually goes after you put boots on the ground.
Edit to add:
The costs of caring for post-9/11 war vets will reach between $2.2 and $2.5 trillion by 2050 — most of which has not yet been paid.
Source:
That is roughly 1/3 of the total estimated past/future costs of the wars.
It is Patton by proxy - "The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard to die for his." Except instead of "the other bastard" being an enemy, it's your allies.
Don't worry, there's still going to be plenty of vets who "hurt their backs" during training excersize and get lifetime disability pay. I got a cousin who brags about his.
Yes your cousin is still allowed to have a comfortable life after being hurt on military duty... That's not "bragging". That's being recompensed.
I bet if you actually talk to your cousin about the stuff they miss out on in life due to their disability... You'll find that the trade still isn't worth it. Things like being able to play with their kids without worrying about debilitating pain. But you know... At least they don't have to actively work to live a normal life.
Even if they're 100% disabled. I don't know anyone who "brags" about $45k a year. I have military associated hearing loss. The time I waste every day just trying to parse things other people are saying isn't worth the ~$200 a month I'm given for it.
Ya, so he's not really disabled. If his back does actually hurt it's cuz he's fat. He's scamming the system and votes Trump because only he deserves a second free income.
It's not just that. It's about oil & gas too. Ukraine is gar friendlier to the US and the EU. They also has the ability to sever Europe's need for Russian energy.
Every dollar is worth it.
And it provides your weapons industry with real life data from a large-scale conflict with equipment from multiple origins.
And it advertises a competitors products as inferior, and yours as superior.
I despise all these things, but from a purely economic viewpoint, this is interesting for business.
You can blame those deaths on Putin.
Ukraine wouldn't need those equipment if Putin didn't invade a sovereign nation.
He can literally decide tomorrow to pull back and no deaths would follow anymore.
True, but unclear what that implies. Some people say weapons kill people so we should not produce / supply weapons, expecting less people would die. Others point at aggressors using (their home made) weapons to kill people, pointing at the need to supply their victims, expecting less people would die.
Comparing the track records of Russia (frequently invading and killing neighbors) and Ukraine (not so much) it's easy for me to take sides. But the tragedy exists, which is why I despise all these things.
I wouldn't call $125 billion "play money", even if the US yearly military budget is $900 billion.
The US military budget is egregious, and this just shows how much war is about funneling taxpayer money to the MIC.
I don't think the definition of "proxy war" must include "instigated".
Amusingly, with North Korea providing munitions to Russia and Korea providing munitions to Ukraine, it's now a proxy Korean War, which never ended.
Technically... this war was "kind of instigated" by the EU out-bidding Russia in 2013 for the investment in a commercial agreement with Ukraine. Everybody at the time knew that Russia had to keep Ukraine under its boot or risk getting fucked long term in the Black Sea, so buying-out Ukraine's allegiance was sort of like poking a bear... and the bear reacted pretty much as expected, by instantly invading Crimea... which also worked as expected to fortify Ukraine's allegiance towards the West... which ultimately lead to Russia launching its "special military operation"... which everyone kind of expected to end in a couple days with the loss of Kyiv... but instead turned out to spectacularly show off Russia's hand and military weakness, allowing for a proxy war to begin.
The instigation was very tactful, playing the long game over 10 years, but it was there. Which is also expected when trying to start a proxy war against a nuclear power; even this low-key instigation, already got Russian crazies clamoring for nuclear retaliation, even when the war was obviously their own fail.
Technically... this war was "kind of instigated" by the EU out-bidding Russia in 2013 for the investment in a commercial agreement with Ukraine.
If you know your history, the Yanukovych-administration in Ukraine at the time reneged on the deal with the EU and switched deal to Russia at the last minute, angering the ordinary Ukrainians (which caused tensions with the pro-Russian Ukrainians but that is another story). I distinctly remember it as it was all over the news at the time. So, it is Russia who outbid for Ukraine's support in 2013 if anyone looks at it objectively.
Bullshit. The country that did the invading was the instigator, full stop.
Interestingly China could still invade and expand their territory, without the rest of the world getting involved. Not Taiwan. Vladivostok. That peninsula was part of China till Russia took it, and a fairly large section of the population is ethnically Chinese. They would just be "looking out for the interests of 'their people .'"
This allows Xi to take advantage of the current situation, expand territory to look strong at home, and maintain the status quo everywhere else.
Sometimes when I'm bored, I'll do some google maps "tourism", and just cruise the globe. One of those spots I've visited, is right at that tri-border with Russia, N. Korea, and China.
I always thought it was weird that China doesn't have a direct shore/port on the Sea of Japan. It doesn't really look like the Tumen River would cut it to give sea faring ships access either. Annexing Vladivostok would fix that.
Russia's military budget in 2019 was $65 billion. It's a waste of money that's only practical because the US is literally swimming in taxpayer money (mostly because the US doesn't invest in itself, but that's another issue).
At the federal level, taxes don't pay for anything. They literally used to be burned when we still collected actual dollars. These days a number in a digital ledger gets set to 0. Taxes are the primary anti-inflationary device that government has to maintain inflation.
Deficits don't cause inflation, if they did Japan would be in hyper-inflation because of the massive deficits they have been running for 30 years. Instead they are barely able to hold off deflation of the Yen.
We didn't start the invasion. We're helping the defenders of the invasion fight off the invaders.
Everyone would be better off if Russia packed it in, but sometimes the barbarians are at the gates and you do in fact have to fight them off.
How are conservatives not widely declared as traitors? A few decades ago even the slightest hint you might be working for the Russians was enough to derail your career. But now it seems they can openly squash the best chance to disarm Russia, at a ridiculously low price, without sending troops. Why is the bar for them so low with everything?
They'd be traitors by their own standards. They would complain and run constant news cycles on Obama cozying up to the Russias and how weak he looks when he interacted with Putin.
Fascists don't have standards, only whatever will get them power in the moment.
I think what was meant was not them being declared traitors according to law but being declared traitors publicly to move the public opinion.
To America? It's the definition of the word
I wonder if it would happen with NATO partners as well. If the US elects another (or previous) moron, the partnership could end on a similar whim.
Idk, I feel like the US not a very stable or trustworthy partner. Maybe Macron was right, maybe the EU does need it's own army.
Honestly strategically, it's stupid not to. But I sit here on my high horse, where we are used to sacrificing an enormous amount of tax dollars on military prowess and have the military wealth of like all nations combined. But hey we go bankrupt if we go to the doctors... so there is that.
I guess my rambling point is it sounds good in theory, but it's a huge sacrifice.
The US would be able to spend more on the military with all the money saved on socialised medicine. Private medicine is about corporations taking a cut, not saving govt money.
Spending doesn't mean quality or even quantity.
Americans get swindled big time by weapon manufacturers colluding with government contract drafters, and pharmaceutical companies colluding with medical insurance appraisers and hospitals to raise fictional treatment costs through the roof. All that, while having a taxation pressure pretty much on par with the average in the EU.
So far, the EU has managed to avoid the medical racketeering, it isn't unthinkable that it could also avoid the weapons racketeering... unless it keeps buying overpriced shit from the US big bully in town, instead of investing in it's own manufacturing.
An EU military, with weapons produced in the EU, would be a huge loss for the US, not necessarily much of a sacrifice for the EU.
The problem for the EU is they don't exactly have a sovereign currency, at least not the way The US, UK, AU, CA, and China have. We can always pay more, because the government can just "print more money." I don't know if the EU can really do that with the Euro. They should be able to, but they don't seem to function the way our Federal Government does.
The ECB is more independent, but that doesn't really matter. The EU can borrow from it just like the US government does from the Federal Reserve, and the ECB's mandate is to stabilize inflation, no matter what the EU does.
If the EU decided to borrow massive amounts of Euros to spend on weapon manufacturing and creating its own military, that would have massive ripples on the whole economy and impact inflation, but the ECB would just have to follow.
The only real difference is in foreign monetary policy: the ECB doesn't have to listen to EU Parliament's wishes to change monetary policy in order to weaponize it, while central banks in the US, UK, AU, China, etc. do have to listen to their respective government's wishes to mess up the internal economy for whatever reason they see convenient.
It's not all one thing or the other. People ascribe these kind of blanket generalizations to US foreign policy frequently but it's as short-sighted as painting German foreign policy as imperial. Certain US presidents have started wars. Others the Marshall plan, WTO, IMF, the UN, NATO, etc.
Right now there's a crisis in the US driven by the same fear of change that drove them into containment during the cold war. That isolationist populism certainly benefits some narratives but it's no better than the worst elements of China-first economic coercion in the ACS that's alienated a lot of Philippine fishermen in recent years.
Fact is the biggest threat to the human race is the dissension these isolationists/populists are selling. No meaningful action on climate, migration, or the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine can occur in that worldview and anyone should be suspicious of politicians who promote them.
Most US policy has been quite good when non-isolationists have occupied the white house, just like most non-reich based German leadership has strengthened European unity. The Nazis and Trump's me-first exceptions prove the rule. Education, familiarity, and exposure should be the Rx for the US right now, along with all the countries dealing with the current wave of populist snake oil movements. In the words of a US propaganda film of the same name "don't be a sucker".
You're not wrong. We have a very short policy lifespan. It's the major downside of term restrictions - nobody wants to or is able to plan for anything more than 2 years ahead reliably. Except the military budget of course, because we live in hell.
The problem is that politics do not stop at the border. Support for Ukraine has become yet another culture war, us-vs-them battleground. It doesn't really matter what the issues are anymore, only that there has to be conflict over them to keep attention whores in the news cycle.
Everybody needs their own army. Otherwise they are too dependent on those who have, and that's not just the USA, that includes also plenty of vermin.
If we disband alliances and rely on individual armies, you'll very quickly see that we're back to the middleages, where the smaller countries are eaten by bigger countries ad infinitum.
That's not what I said, first. Second, smaller countries are eaten when the alliances they rely on turn out to be all puff.
Macron was right, but being right is extremely expensive. Meanwhile, the EU's dependence on F-35s for defence isn't too great given the well-known issues with F-35 maintenance and the need for US private contractors in the maintenance loop.
This is a small stop gap, and we already know the Mega GOP are against supporting Ukraine. The US has a lot of support going to Ukraine, so this little gap isn't going to hurt them. The training for F-16 is already paid for so they is no stopping that, same with tanks. The good thing is the non-Mega GOPs are starting to distance themselves so hopefully that makes them more willing to compromise with the Democrats so things can get done. You know how the government was set up to work.
Yeah, I'm kind of shocked how dissociated the comments this thread are from what they're talking about. People are dying, right now - people will die as a result of this, too.
We're talking about death, here. Needless, wasteful death. War is hell - not an economic stimulus package.
Does R stand for Republican or Russian?
Answer: Yes
Did you serve for 8+ years or has it been 8 years since your original enlistment date?
I feel you man, even though I'm left broken after my time in I bet they'd still find a way to fuck everyone and recruit them.
How's this? If we don't support Ukraine, we also don't support Israel?
Can we also add Turkey and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Please?
I am all for supporting Ukraine, its so hard to see Ukrainians shit talk america here equating the opinions of a few loud MAGA conservative assholes to the feelings of america as a whole. Most of our people are with you and want to support you but our political and economic situation is very hard right now. Im ashamed that we aren't doing better during this critical time.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional supporters of Ukraine say they won’t give up after a bill to keep the federal government open excluded President Joe Biden’s request to provide more security assistance to the war-torn nation.
Nearly half of House Republicans voted to strip $300 million from a defense spending bill to train Ukrainian soldiers and purchase weapons.
Both the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved the stopgap measure, with members of both parties abandoning the increased aid for Ukraine in favor of avoiding a costly government shutdown.
The latest actions in Congress signal a gradual shift in the unwavering support that the United States has so far pledged Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and it is one of the clearest examples yet of the Republican Party’s movement toward a more isolationist stance.
In a letter to congressional leaders dated Friday, Michael McCord, under secretary of defense, wrote that the department has exhausted nearly all the available security assistance.
Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he would like to send a clear message to the world about U.S. support for Ukraine by passing legislation, but believes the Pentagon has “enough draw-down money” to last through December.
The original article contains 1,211 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Ukraine must quickly reactivate its weapons industry. It must not rely on foreign powers to fight against Russia. Maybe form manufacturing pacts with Turkey and surrounding nations threatened by Russia. At the same time, the counteroffensive must be accelerated regardless of casualties. I feel Ukraine is trying to minimize casualties for PR reasons but time is running out.
A country that is already fighting a war on its home turf is going to find it very hard to find the human and financial resources to build a large domestic arms industry. They probably will not prevail unless they receive foreign aid, both financial and military.
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Show me a MAGA politician, and I’ll show you a person bought and sold by Russian interference.
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