This is not a proxy war dumbass. It's supporting an ally in a direct conflict because Russia invaded.

Lmao stick to trans theory, you are way out of your depth clown

For at least 100 years Ukrainian people were fighting for their independence, and were free for past 30years.
But Ukraine was always different people, they weren't Moscovians, they weren't Polish either.
People who were 5 years old in 1991 now are 37 years old!
They were always free as long as they remember, and now when they are middle aged you ask them to suddenly become Russian slaves.

This post was edited by Ironfister on May 8 2023 01:08am

Belarus:
Troops to attack Kiev came from Belarus territory.
Also planes and Rockets launch from Belarus to attack them.
So imo they are part of the current conflict.
They were also forced to give much of their best equipment.
Also Belarus is still in transition phase, every year Russia takes a bit of their freedom.
One year Russia takes control of your gas pipelines, another year Russia takes Control of air forces, the next year Russia takes Control of your railway tracks and so it goes piece by piece. Once you accept the Russia path, this ends being completely eaten sooner or later.
Łukashenko doesnt know when will Russia get rid of him, he risked a lot imo. But really since he gave nearly all of his military equipment, thats his excuse not to join, "I cant join because I have given all equipment and all my ammo"

Poland:
Poland was shocked by terrorists attack 9/11 so when uncle Sam asked us to join war against terrorism, we helped voluntary.
Also being part of an alliance means helping each other.
The closest the alliance with USA, the bigger chance that USA will actually help us defend if Russia decides to attack us.
That's the kind of thinking we have over here.

I cant wrap my head around the cognitive dissonance expected of everyone on the left now. It got darkly comical when they allied with literal nazis. How can folks who pretend to carry the mantle of the peaceniks and tree huggers and bleeding hearts now turn around and tell us not to believe our lying eyes and demand we support their forever war. Same shit as 'bodily autonomy' married to 'forced experimental vaccinations' and 'womens rights' married to 'kill all terfs'

At least the commies kept true to form on the bomb throwing part of their anarchism

I'm right back where I was during the Iraq War. Pointing out the obvious lies of our government, how our war is backfiring and won't serve our national interests, and being called a traitor by the neocons demanding unlimited war powers and suppressing civil liberties on the homefront. Where are the bleeding hearts now? Dead in a field in Eveleth I suppose

More rambling and speculations just as usual...

You should stick to facts buddy

Yea, family members' anecdotes over academic history. Its not Russians domineering. Its the tradition of a ruling faction (tsardom, communust party, siloviks and oligarchs) that happens to exploit the Russian majority, enforcing control through the Russian language. The best example being Belarus as Thor said earlier. Not even the Russians themselves are safe from this. Theyre being sent by force of law to die on foreign soil.

The fact that some things were better back then doesnt mean all things were. The last decades of the Cold War werent as bad as the earlier ones so of course people have a positive outlook on that. The 80s in particular were quite ok times. People tend to also be nostalgic.



Why is aiding Ukraine to defend itself wrong? Its definitely not wrong from a moral standpoint. Any state would want outside help when invaded. We can discuss the pragmatic aspects of military aid, such as the effective risk of escalation, but i want to be an idealist and i believe the risk of escalation is worth more than letting modern Russia have its own way with Ukraine. You can also be pragmatic about it and think that staunch support from the West could act as a deterrent in the future.

This post was edited by Neptunus on May 8 2023 02:20am

Alphabet agencies keeping the populace divided with inane BS like drag queen story hour while they enact their horrific foreign policy to prop up the dying empire for a few more years. Modern bread and circus.

The US finally realized liberal democracy wasn't as infectious as they believed so they needed to start another crusade to help spread the good news/ counter the rise of China. It doesn't matter to the deep state whether public support comes from the left or the right, so long as they have enough support to do what they want. I think it is just easier to generate that support with the left at the moment because the right has become increasingly distrustful and radicalized against the government since Iraq/Afghanistan crusade.

This post was edited by DizzyBusiness on May 8 2023 02:31am

Iraq GDP is for 90% export of crude oil. The uplift in GDP which you saw between 2003 and 2006 is basically sanctions being lifted - whereby Iraqis were free to market their crude at market rates. Nothing else, nothing more. There has been no improvement since as Iraq has been ravaged by coalitions botched attempt to force a western set of values on a country that has a completely different set of cultural values and despises the invaders.

Here is a great video for you if you want to learn more how things are going on 20 years after the invasion and what went wrong. Pretty informative:


Majority of infrastructure has been built by Saddams government with the exception of a few new developments (West Qurna which has been built together with several foreign majors based on Kazakh/Norwegian PSA model e.g. with Statoill/ Lukoil). There has been no significant aid packages, infrastructure investments, rebuilding of sorts to my knowledge. The only significant infrastructure investments that were made are into Iraqi oil fields to keep it flowing. Fallujah was never rehabilitated from the Depleted Uranium, factories, schools, kindergartens never rebuilt.

You would also be surprised to find out that Norway owes big part of its success to an Iraqi (as you seem to think of them as dirty refugees escaping devastation inflicted by polish carpet bombs). Farouk Al-Kasim has been pivotal to the development of Norwegian state oil fund that has seen Norway grow from a second tier fishing country into a shining example of Scandinavian success we see today. Here is a great article from 15 years ago describing how that happened: https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0



I think you need to read your statement again and try to understand why NATO expansion creates a problem.

Poland decided to join an arbitrary war and bomb a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Note that it was not an "alliance" effort as both Germany and France refused to join in as they were not convinced by Powell's statements in the UN and even cited UN report on WMDs in Iraq as a reason not to join. Now if I would be a sovereign state that is not interested in allying itself with US for whatever reasons (e.g. Russia, China, India or any other rising nation that could present a problem for US hegemony in the next century) - I would be worried about being arbitrarily bombed for no fault of my own - based on a worked up fake news propaganda story. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia for a lack of better sources:



Do you think Aleksander Kwaśniewski will ever be summoned by the ICJ to be tried for his role in enabling e.g. this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukaradeeb_wedding_party_massacre

Imagine e.g. Nigerians will manage to unify Africa in the 21st century into an African Union styled after European Union and will promote the development of a common foreign interest and common army and what not. I'm sure this would immediately be considered a "foreign threat" by the Pentagon and we will start hearing a lot of dirt about how Nigerians are subjugating free nations of Africa, how bad they are and how free world should stand up with Country X in their stand against Nigerian influence!



There is nothing wrong with helping a country defend itself, but it does not stop the bloodshed - just prolongs it.

To really resolve the conflict (eg like Nigerians resolved the Tigray war in November 2022) you need to sit down with both sides and work out their differences and provide assurances. Macron, Xi, Erdogan and a few other politicians have tried to do just that - while it seems that e.g. US path was to attempt to dehumanize Russians as a nation and cancel entire Russian culture (which is ridiculous if you think about it). If e.g. Minsk agreements were enforced by e.g. Germany/France or - even better - a coup d'etat in 2014 has been condoned by the EU and new ultranationalist government declared illegitimate - we might have avoided the war and loss of lives.

It is questionable whether this war will lead to improvement of lives of an average Ukrainian. Definitely not in this generation. Maybe for the one that will come after this one if they manage to benefit from the EU/US investments like e.g. Poland did and stay the course to reform their country with better anti-corruption laws, press freedoms (e.g. no foreign owned press). Overall I personally think Ukraine will benefit from this nation-building experience as they are united as ever and have a common unifier now (Russian Aggression) whereby they were quite equally divided as a nation before and had trouble choosing their path. Was it worth it? Only time will tell ultimately. I can tell for certain that so far e.g. Lybians, Somalians, Iraqis probably did not enjoy their "liberation" quite as much.

This post was edited by Malopox on May 8 2023 04:21am

35/35 Iranian drones intercepted this night.

Bitches will be very prolific when it's about to talk anything else than what Russia is doing right now.