good to see you my friend! May you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

You too, my splendid companion! I hope you have a Thanksgiving that's as happy as you make me feel!

I'm not sure where you have been for the past few decades....there was a Soviet Union, it included Ukraine. That Union failed and Ukraine was no longer a vassal state for the USSR.

I don't know why you are so committed to the idea of the Warsaw Pact but that idea has played out as well. Ukraine doesn't want to be Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, or Belarus. Ukraine is a modern democracy. As soon as they got their self-determination they started moving toward Europe, and now you're saying that Europeans do not want them?

Yes, I know Russia really wants Ukraine to continue being a vassal state. But Ukraine isn't Syria and Russia will not be able to get away with the same stuff unless this continued appeasement with Putin goes on.

We both see a rogue state attacking and occupying neighbors, instigating civil wars in the middle east, and working to corrupt our elections even more than sneaky money already does. this isn't Russia fearmongering as apologist like ofthevoid would say,

I don't agree with you that Ukraine belongs to the Russians, that it is and always will be part of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. I believe every country should be a democracy, that democracies do not go to war with one another, and that Ukraine should have self-determination and disagree with you that Ukraine shouldn't have self-determination and should not be a democracy.

This post was edited by Skinned on Nov 27 2019 06:00am

You're once again grossly misinterpreting me. I want Ukraine to be a democracy and a part of Europe, and I want them to join the EU when they're ready for it. But right now, they are far far faaaaaar away from being ready. A hurried EU membership for Ukraine right now, for which Brussels had been pushing, would be a disaster in both economic and foreign policy terms.

In general, note that Europe and the EU are not he same.



Btw, characterizing Russia's part in the Syrian civil war as "instigating a war" is completely ridiculous. The Syrian civil war was fueled by support for the rebels from Arab countries and the West. When Russia finally did deploy troops to Syria in the fall of 2015, the war had already been going on for several years. Russia prevented the rebels, which at this point consisted mostly of islamists (Al-Nusra et al) and had the government on the ropes, from taking over the country. It is certainly debatable whether Assad really is the lesser of two evils, but either way, Russia definitely did not instigate this war.

Syrian Civil War started with the Arab Spring and peaceful demonstrations in Damascus. Assad opened fire on peaceful protesters who were Syriana in Damascus. That was the start of the civil war. Assad was artifically kept in power so that this state could continue to be a vassal state. Russia enabled Assad to commit war crimes that he needs to be brought to the Hague still for, including chemical weapon use, barrel bombs on hospitals, etc.

This post was edited by Skinned on Nov 27 2019 11:27am

And within a few months, the moderate and pro-democracy groups among the rebels were crowded out by islamists and foreign mercenaries...
Still, I dont see how anyone can come to the conclusion that Russia "instigated" this war...

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 27 2019 12:28pm

That seems like a crass oversimplication of a conflict with a dozen or more powers intervening. The Arab Spring was sparked by misguided US support for Sunni populists and the proximate spark of then-Bradley Manning's Cablegate leaks, and Syria was just one of many countries with Sunnis in the streets. Assad was quickly faced with an influx of foreign jihadis from all over the middle east, europe and america traveling through turkey to fight a sectarian holy war against him, and before long it became an extension of the proxy conflicts of the US and Russia, Saudi Arabia and UAE and Iran, Israel, Iraq, the Kurds, etc etc, with so many factions we had Al Qaeda fighting ISIS.

Boiling down the conflict to pretend Assad is the boogeyman and everyone else were peaceful protesters that were violently suppressed belies everything the Arab Spring taught us. If Assad hadn't crushed the Sunnis with an iron grip like daddy did in Hama, the alternative would have been ISIS taking control of the full country. The same people who would wave flags in the streets would turn around and behead the enemies of islam if they had the power.



I remain unconvinced that moderate and pro-democracy groups were ever anything but a myth the state department sold to the public as they shipped arms to Al Qaeda affiliates and the militias that blended into ISIS.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Nov 27 2019 12:39pm

Well I would hate to be an enemy of Islam then.

https://twitter.com/RonColeman/status/1199685849169960961

New Democratic presidential candidate Mike 'OK' Bloomberg suggested taxing poor people because he says its good for them.

ROFL!!!

This guy is a caricature of the whole "pale pasty privileged limousine liberal" archetype.
He's so awfully out of touch with what the bases of BOTH major parties want at the moment, it's not even funny.