HarthorneWingo wrote:HopelessKnick wrote:drekwins wrote:
It really is wild that they think that Ukraine is bankrupting our country. It is pennies to the overall budget. Pennies. The ROI on the Ukraine funding has been fantastic. There are many other areas of govt that should be reviewed and cut first.
Just to review, we are keeping one of our greatest adversaries at bay, and deterring WW3 (if we become passive and they conquer Ukraine, they will move on to Poland/Lithuania), as well as deterring the invasion of Taiwan, for PENNIES. This is working out amazingly well. The alternative is to embolden Putin further and pay in hundreds of thousands of lives (possibly millions) and trillions of dollars later. It's idiotic to have the opinion of not funding Ukraine. Absolutely idiotic. This is the Munich of WW2.
I bet that the people that want to defund Ukraine, also take the position of not intervening if Russia invades the Baltics next. If that is your position, you are not an American. You are a 'Russian shill and weak. Have a backbone.
Theodore Roosevelt once said: ""Speak softly and carry a big stick"
The assumption that the russians would go on invading the Baltics./Poland etc. has zero evidence. It is the same as a chinese person or politician saying "the US , if threatened to lose their position as dominant superpower to us ,will at some point invade China" ---it has the same level of evidence, it is pure conjecture. The whole narrative "Putin wanted to re-establish the big russian empire, it was a longstanding plan" can be refuted so easily that no one with knowledge of the situation can take it seriously.
Well? What are you waiting for? Start refuting.
Ok no problem. First off, keep in mind that with all political decision I try to look at the facts that both sides of a conflict agree upon. The big picture and the hard facts that all media outlets on both sides report very similarly upon. If you look at it in this conflict it presents as follows:
When Russia invaded Ukraine in the february of 2022, the russians had amassed a force of 180.000- 200.000 soldiers (many WESTERN media outlets added that most of them poorly trained conscripts on top of that. Now in the initial days of the conflict literally ALL military experts said that in order to occupy and swallow a country like Ukraine, who at that point had about 600.000 soldiers, the russians would need at least close to 1 million soldiers. A force of 200.000 is never going to be able to concquer, let alone occupy Ukraine. That fact ALONE speaks volumes against Putin had it long planned out to conquer and swallow Ukraine. Even if you bring the counter argument of the russians not expecting that much ukrainian resistance, still it would have been literally impossible to occupy a country of the size of Ukraine with just 200.000 soldiers. If you then look at more balanced and believable analysts trying to explain why the russians invaded with a force much too small to conquer or occupy said country---why did they do it?
The most rational explanation was: The russians wanted a short military intervention to force Ukraine into a quick political settlement of the conflict. If you then look at the areas the russians entered the conflict it was mostly the donbas and Kiev. The attack on Kiev was to put forth a maximum threat environment to force Selenski into a political agreement. Which actually almost happened in the Istanbul negotiations where you had the turkish foreign minister Cavasoglu (hosting the talks) announcing that a settlement is close to being finalized (Bennett later confirmed that version of events). The rest is history: The US and UK intervened, Boris Johnson flew to Kiev, urging Ukraine not to sign the agreement but continue the war--pledging unlimited western supplies and support. Now here in central europe, in the first days the narrative was that this force is far too miniscule to occupy Ukraine.....then within days it changed into Putin is Hitler, he always wanted to swallow Ukraine and all facts like mentioned above that spoke against this narrative were eliminated from the media.
The second reason makes it even more clear. In 2014---when the seperatists in eastern Ukraine clashed with the Ukrainian army and the conflict too a more violent shape---the ukrainian army consisted basically of 80000-100.000 soldiers overall. It was, at that point a tiny small army. That's basically why the western powers like Germany and France rushed to quickly negotiate a cease fire and settlement---due to the simple reason that the ukrainian army was so small they couldn't have held back the russians even for a week. Now if Putin had planned it all along and wanted to swallow Ukraine---why would he have agreed to Minsk 1 (2014) and Minsk 2 (2015) instead of simply invading Ukraine right away? Which emperor waits 8 years till the size of the country that he wantes to invade grows from 100.000 soldiers to 600k to invade? In what world does that even make the slightest bit of sense?
And there goes that mainstream media narrative.....the facts simply do not bear it out...the narrative is a complete fantasy. Even to this day the russians have mobilized only once and have right now about 500K soldiers in Ukraine. Even to this day, that force would not be enough to conquer and occupy Ukraine. 2014 or 2015 they could have easily done it, but didn't. In fact for 8 years until 2022 western countries poured in weapons into Ukraine but the russians still did not invade.
