re: The Ukraine flag in our Capitol Building.....

quote:

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Who are fighting our war. You left that part off, chief. These people in DC love you, and thank you for your continued support of the MIC.

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Looks like Indefatigable is actually defatigable and needed more rest. Maybe he’ll chime in later. I’m on a cell so the following may be a bit disorganized.

I’m not pretending that Ukraine isn’t part of a proxy war. That proxy war has been going on for a very long time. During that time US activity in Europe has been fortification of allies such as Poland and Germany, political expansion. Russian activity has been geographic and political expansion (see Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea, the western oblasts of Ukraine, Transnistria if you want to include pre-Putin expansion).

This year’s invasion by Russia is an escalation of that proxy war. That doesn’t diminish the fact that Ukraine is defending their homeland against a foreign, military invasion.

If gaining the upper hand in this conflict while weakening the foe we have in Russia can be achieved by sending weaponry (not our top shelf stuff by the way) to those fighting in Ukraine I think it’s good military strategy.

It may also be a good economic strategy to prevent Russia from encroaching on NATO allies through their military expansionism. One thing it, hopefully, prevents is direct engagement by US and NATO countries. Direct engagement is much more costly than indirect support, on both an economic level and human level. Such indirect engagement also means higher levels of employment in the defense industry. Now, I’m not a huge fan of the military industrial complex, but if your main argument is “the US taxpayer blah, blah, blah” I’d point you to numerous times war efforts has benefited the US economy. Conservatives traditionally have been all for this Machiavellian type trade off. Additionally, while boosting certain sectors of the domestic economy, such conflict has the effect of slowing portions of the global economy which can aid in decreasing inflation, but that’s a bit of a teeter-totter since it can drive up the price of some commodities.

Of course, all of the possible benefits to the US indirect strategy wouldn’t be possible if Putin had kept his military in its borders. Folks can whine about the US encroaching on Russia by cozying up to Ukraine, but not one western attack has been made against Russian territory since the fall of the USSR, and as I stated before Russia has been engaged in military expansion throughout Putin’s regime.

Non sequitur, it makes more sense than sending military weapons to Saudi Arabia, which has happened a good bit over recent years.

Boil it down-war has been cold for a long time, hot war is occurring because of Putin/Russia, US is receiving ROI for its indirect assistance, better to let Ukraine fight this with our support and possibly nip a broader conflict in the bud.

And to Az(looking for hero)Tiger, how about make a definitive claim about Ukrainian money laundering if you want to step into the conversation. Maybe you’ll have more fun than hiding behind FakeTate and RogertheBuggerer taking potshots.