More like Opération Harmattan morphing into Operation Unified Protector resulting in terrible civilian casualties, refugees, decades of devastation and open slave markets. And almost complete abandonment by the West who came to spread liberty and freedom via Tomahawks and F16s and never bothered to rebuild anything they bombed out. Please understand how that looks now in the eyes of everyone who looks at NATO hawks statements.

“Democracy” as pitched by Pentagon and Lockheed Martin is a very hard sell after all these bungled operations over the past decades that resulted in nothing but misery and death for the average guy. A gesture of goodwill would be to start big infrastructure investment programs to rebuild bombed out schools, hospitals, roads and factories at the expense of the western taxpayer who de-facto authorized these bombings. That would be a morally just thing to do.



Not every dictatorship or authoritarian regime is inherently evil, surprising as it may sounds. Taiwan/Singapore/ South Korea have managed to morph from pretty authoritarian states into westernized globally integrated economies with general elections, politically active citizens and developed institutions.

Plenty of middle eastern countries would pretty quickly develop as well if not for decades of meddling by the French, English and the Americans. Starting from Sykes-Picot mess, to Mandate for Palestine to more modern fiascos like accidental creation of Al-Qaeda and ISIS by the CIA. Those were the chosen, the freedom fighters, the liberators, the padawan’s that turned to the dark side! Ooopsie. Gotta rewrite history and Wikipedia so people wouldn’t ask to many questions and shuffle those stories under the rug.

I see the same happening in Ukraine with collective amnesia somehow preventing MSM from drawing parallels and discussing what has transpired without regressing into simplistic propaganda along the lines of “Putin Bad! NATO Evil! Ukraine Nazis!”.

History doesn’t repeat. It rhymes.

This post was edited by Malopox on Sep 6 2023 11:36pm

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12476889/German-police-hunt-Russian-man-hospitalised-Ukrainian-boy-10-throwing-bridge-chucking-glass-bottle-shoulder-speaking-native-language.html

An orc gets upset over children speaking more civilized languages

all sides agree that the US election will only mean reinforced support for ukraine, no matter who wins
(on the basis that trump will be in jail or dead).

Reminds me of Charlie Wilson's war.

Wonder what would happen if all that money that's used to drop javelins on people who don't even make that in their lifetime would do?
If you gave every jihadist $80k and said here is some money feed yourself and your family for the rest of your life. Would that solve the problem I wonder?

This post was edited by addone on Sep 7 2023 01:08am

Anti west rant complete. So you would agree Russia's ruling authoritarian dictatorship is inherently evil?

What's your thought on their armed forces bombing civilian markets?

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Sep 7 2023 01:18am

You know you made a good post when Prox1m1ty gets that upset

It’s a good question. There haven’t been many cases like that except perhaps Arab oil states (Saudis, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and perhaps Chechnya) who got intertwined into petrodollar structure when US moved away from gold standard in 1973 or eg states of Israel and now Ukraine propped up by foreign assistance instead of military interventions by the collective West (foreignassistance.gov data). These are the only examples that spring to mind where the route of economic assistance or trade with wealthier partners have resulted in countries developing along the route of democracy and stable institutions while their human rights abuses and flagrant violations of international law being looked over.

We have seen this approach somewhat in eg Chechnya where Russians realized fighting jihadists backed by foreign governments is not working out. So instead they just flushed the most violent of them with money buying their loyalty (Kadyrov clan). Chechnya is now completely rebuilt from the ruins of the first and the second wars, but it did not westernize yet as even rule of Russian law is frail there. I wonder what will happen in the long-term especially if the stream of money will dry up shaking up power balance within Chechen clans. Perhaps it is too early to tell as only two decades have passed since peace has been established and a few generations of leaders have to change for the power balance to stabilize there.

You could bring the argument of Botswana where government of a British educated Seretse Khama have managed to establish prosperity, democracy and relative stability in the region plagued with coups, ethnic conflicts and colonialism. They did not even have an army for the first decade of their existence until Rhodesia conflict broke out. I personally see Botswana as one of the miracles of the 20th century and its on my short list of countries I want to visit with in the next decade.

I haven’t seen Charlie Wilson’s War. Looked it up now, looks like it’s worth my time. Thanks for the suggestion,

This post was edited by Malopox on Sep 7 2023 01:46am

BBC: Ukraine war: US to arm Kyiv with depleted uranium tank shells. "nuclear weapons" used in Ukraine indeed.

They aren't as dangerous as the bombs which were delivered prior. The only nuclear part about this one is the heavy metal used (u235 isotop) to break armor. The ones to watch out for are u238 isotops. No one ever is going to use u238 for anything but nuclear warheads or power plants, far too expensive to get and to maintain.

This post was edited by babun1024 on Sep 7 2023 05:00am

its a bit like strikes on Russia and F16's, what can possibly go wrong, if you get me.