Gulfstream4 said:
Civilized said:
Well said Newt!
Stop condescending to our ally Ukraine while coddling Putin.
However supportable Israel's war with Hamas is (and it is highly supportable), our direct interests are served equally well by fully supporting Ukraine in their stand against unilateral Russian aggression.
Ukraine can not win a war with Russia without boots on the ground. The money we give them, a lot of it is stolen away in corruption. The military equipment, they must be trained on and we pay for that too. Their own citizens don't want to fight. They rather disco the night away or better yet go to another country and leave that third world sh*thole behind.
So, are ready to send your kids? Your nephews? Your neighbors kids? You want to go off and win the war because Putin bad…Trump bad….get Trump….okay, but it's not going to be pretty. Be careful what you're asking for.
Yeah man, Putin is bad. Why do you and so many others seem so eager to sugarcoat this?
You like to talk about the costs of supporting Ukraine but what are the costs of watching an authoritarian regime's aggression go unchecked and trying to change the border of a sovereign nation by force? Why would we not stand with a Western ally and democratic nation under threat? What message would abandoning Ukraine send to China, Iran, and North Korea?
The US and the West's efforts to date have already signficantly reduced Russia's ability to project power. Ukraine doesn't need to win the war, they just need to continue fighting Russia to nominally better than a stalemate, and they're absolutely doing that. Russia has been in an economically and militarily compromised position for years and barring an incredibly stupid and shortsighted abandonment of Ukraine by the West, Russia's position will continue to weaken over time.
Now, if only there was something we could do from afar, with our Western allies, to apply significant economic pressure on Russia...