Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
I disagree
If they go into the Baltics you’ll see a coming together not seen in 80 years
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
|
I hope you're right, because I think we're fighting for something more important than territory. Maybe fighting isn't the right word. More a way of life.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Edward64
Haven't read up on the new deal. I assumed it was similar to last with some added incentives to Iran. UN inspects, Iran promises not to refine uranium to X point etc. I knew Russia was helping in the negotiations but didn't think Israel was more beholden to Russia vs US. Have to read up more here.
|
It's mostly that Iran has no need to comply with anything. They hand over some enriched uranium that they still own and get back. Sanctions are removed and they get money. They send us oil and get more money. That in turn funds attacks, because that's how Iran's worked for a long time now.
Israel isn't beholden to Russia. They just don't want to get on Putin's bad side when they don't seem to have any friends in the US or Europe. This despite the remarkable achievements with the Abraham Accords. If we could stick with the Iran sanctions and we just stopped doing dumb stuff in the Middle East, peace in that region seems almost fathomable. Now, not so much.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Edward64
So why is the use of thermobaric bombs being called out? If used against Ukrainian military, I'd say its fair game. If used against civilians, its not the act of the bomb itself but the discriminate killing of civilians that is the problem.
On hospital bombs and innocent civilians, we know the US has frakked up before and bombed/killed innocents. I don't think majority of them were intentional vs fog of war, bad intel etc. but we've messed up before and can easily believe Russians have too. Now if there is a pattern (e.g. all 10 hospitals in Kyiv have been shelled), then that is a different story.
I do believe NATO should create a safe zone in western Ukraine for non-combatants. Russia seems to be getting more momentum now and if there are long "sieges", I can see NATO getting involved and creating a safe exit corridor for non-combatants (women, children, older men).
|
What is fair game? Sometimes you read the stuff that's out there and you wonder if there's some book called Robert's Rules of Combat, complete with illustrations of two lines of soldiers carrying muskets and firing and ducking and reloading while the other line fires - after Pinky Tuscadero waves a handkerchief to begin the proceedings.
So I see your point - if you're in active combat, you use your weaponry. However, when you're laying siege to a city, that means you do whatever you can to anyone defending the city and if you don't have weapons that can guide a missile down a chimney pipe from ten miles out, civilians are in the line of fire. And for that matter, maybe granny's packing heat? If she is, who would criticize her?
The problem then is whether Russia has any justification whatsoever in laying siege to Mariupol or Kharkiv or any other city outside of the "breakaway provinces" where it has sponsored war for the last eight years?
And so these lines become posturing unless we have other rules as well. We use the term "war crimes," and I guess we record just how the thermobaric bombs from hell are used against our fellow human beings and we politely request that Moscow hand Putin over for trial at some indeterminate point in the future.
We're not going to defend Ukraine. The people there have suffered, and will suffer a lot longer and a lot worse, if that seems possible. St. Petersburg was under siege for almost three years and a million-plus died. Russia knows both sides of this game.
You mention our rather disgusting adventures in Iraq, I think. OK, so we didn't go in there alone, but we did go in there under false pretenses (personally, I think Colin Powell's infamous vial contained the remains of Jimmy Hoffa). If I were Iraqi and my family hadn't personally suffered under Saddam Hussein (maybe both are mutually exclusive concepts), I'd never forgive or forget. I'd like to believe that our troops did everything possible to minimize loss of life. But mistakes were made and those can't easily be forgiven or forgotten, either.
So it's murky. The US isn't always right. And the US probably wasn't right when Yanukovych was deposed and Ukraine turned away from Russia in 2014. And then we let things fester after Putin took Crimea and no one really felt like telling him that was bad because we kind of understood why.
I don't think we've had a president capable of real diplomacy in a long, long time. Which is not to say Putin isn't a barbarian.
Oh, there are times these days when I'm glad I'm getting old.