The US drops bombs and mobilizes troops all over the globe against countries and people who pose no existential threat to us and have not attacked us or even threatened to attack us, which is usually the only really acceptable basis to do so under the UN charter, international law, or even what was established during Nuremberg as a “War of Aggression.”
But there’s always some convenient excuse. Excuses that sound a lot like Russia’s for invading Ukraine. In some cases they’re bullshit money grabs to control resources and political favor. Perhaps to further the military-industrial complex or just to justify it’s existence.
We topple governments and foster coups and, perhaps inadvertently, create more deaths and instability and humanitarian crises.
NATO has unrepentantly encroached on Russia over the past 25 years (against our word) and then positioned weapons in those nations that posed direct risk to Russia and its people. At least Obama cancelled the missile defense system in Poland when Russia got in a tizzy.
The west has become increasingly involved in Ukraine in the past decade (considered by many Russians and Ukrainians as a natural extension of Russia, if not a traditional territory). The US was involved in a bloody coup in 2014 that led to the ouster of a democratically elected government that was replaced by a much more anti-Russian one.
Obviously Russia felt threatened and moved to retain influence in the region. We’d already been moving east and loading those areas with weaponry, and now we were meddling with Ukraine. An eight year shit show has ensued, with the people of Ukraine being the victims.
None of this is to say what Putin is doing is in any way acceptable. I’m just saying when the US does it, it’s always that we are moral and just and helping the good guys out when in fact we have lost a lot of credibility around the world over the last 20 years. And NATO’s continued aggressiveness in Eastern Europe has without question been a major contributor to what’s happening right now.
I doubt you or anyone else here would be content to stand by if Russia had formed alliances with and amassed weaponry in Canada, Central America, and the Caribbean. And then started fucking with the government of a territory that’s adjacent to us, important to us, and has shared culture.
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No one was going to invade Russia or overthrow it. GMAFB. If the Soviets weren't assholes, their former satellites would not be begging to get into NATO. How many countries have asked out of NATO? Plenty do not appear to want to voluntarily be part of the Warsaw Pact again though. He thought Trump had decimated NATO and it turns out that this has already backfired on Putin.
If you recall, before the US became the World's Policeman, there were 2 world wars. It has been messy, but there have been no world wars, formal colonialism ended (yay, United Fruit Company!), we beat back the Soviets who had enslaved how many millions for 50 years, and world living standards improved by us taking a few for the team by allowing ourselves to be fucked in international trade - a popular Trump and Perot talking point. The world has been a far safer place, for far more people, even with our bombing some shit ass country every few years. Even the Vietnamese don't hate us at this point.
People bitch about immigration south of the border, but we have allowed Central and South America to go to shit. Soviet Venezuela looks really great now, doesn't it?
Basically, you are one of those peace and prosperity for me, but fuck everyone else. You let the fucking Soviets and Chinese run things, with the help of Murph and his Big Tech whores, and see how long you/we remain prosperous. Just look at the mortgages the Chinese are now holding throughout Africa (and now, apparently in Russia). That is the existential threat. And we don't have the stomach for this since we half-assed Iraq (at least the goddamn Iraqis can now vote for whichever shithead they want running their shit country instead of Saddam) and Afghanistan (by not chasing the Taliban into Pakistan and wiping their asses out when we had the chance). And now, after 50 years and untold millions in money and lives lost tearing down the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall you sit in your nice home and say we should look at it from Putin's view and allow it all to be taken back by the Soviets?
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