Rising fascism in the US

Just stopping the aggression that spurred the war would be great.
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2933203/more-us-troops-to-deploy-to-europe-guardsmen-reassigned-out-of-ukraine/

We started it; we could stop it (but we won’t.)

https://www.cato.org/commentary/us-nato-helped-trigger-ukraine-war-its-not-siding-putin-admit-it

The U.S. and NATO Helped Trigger the Ukraine War. It’s Not ‘Siding With Putin’ to Admit It
But Moscow’s cruel overreaction deserves emphatic condemnation.

Just a thought, but it sounds like the surrounding countries have just been given a really great for becoming a part of NATO.

So when Russia invades another country, that's not a war, but when the invaded country tries to repel the invasion, that is both aggression and starting a war?

There is a defense to be made for Russia's aggression here, but that defense doesn't come from progressive lunacy.

Progressives are demented. Never listen to progressives.

From the Cato Institute’s linked essay:

Russian leaders and several Western policy experts were warning more than two decades ago that NATO expansion would turn out badly—ending in a new cold war with Russia at best, and a hot one at worst. Obviously, they were not “echoing” Putin or anyone else. George Kennan, the intellectual architect of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 2, 1998 New York Times interview what NATO’s move eastward would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” he stated. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”

U.S. and European officials blew through one red light after another.
Kennan was speaking of the first round of enlargement that brought into the Alliance Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Later rounds, which added the Baltic Republics and other East European countries, were considerably more abrasive, and Washington’s subsequent attempt to make Ukraine and Georgia members was contemptuous of Russia’s core security interests. Moscow’s complaints and warnings were becoming increasingly sharp as well.

Yet U.S. and European officials blew through one red light after another. George W. Bush began to treat Georgia and Ukraine as valued U.S. political and military allies, and in 2008, he pressed NATO to admit Ukraine and Georgia as members. French and German wariness delayed that endeavor, but the NATO summit communique affirmed that both countries would eventually achieve that status.

In his 2014 memoir, Duty, Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense in both Bush’s administration and Barack Obama’s, conceded that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” That initiative, he concluded, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.”

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We’re largely responsible for this war and its destruction. I’m beginning to accept that few people care about that.

Lash has repeatedly parroted Putin's propaganda.

She doesn't consider the Ukrainians deserving.

Ukrainians didn’t deserve to be used as cannon fodder in a proxy war for the resources of Russia.

But they do deserve to be occupied and tortured to death.

You Republicans do love your mass murderers, you supported Hitler up to Pearl Harbor.

This is no different. Quisling.

The one that is filled with KGB lies and propaganda?



Russia's supposed objections to NATO expansion were created after the fact to justify their aggression.

Although I'm sure some progressive nutcase somewhere did argue against it. Progressives oppose anything that is good and worthwhile.



"Preventing other countries from protecting themselves from Russian aggression" is not a legitimate Russian interest.



It's Iraq's fault that we invaded them in 2003.

Ukrainians don't seem to agree. They are happy that we are helping them to defend themselves.

The word peace is verboten in America now.

You just said "peace". I'm gonna report that to - well, somebody.

Peace is verboten because it is inappropriate when defending against aggression.

Would you demand that a rape victim stop resisting her rapist?

The Insider, Bellingcat and Der Spiegel published an investigation in which they show that there is a secret unit in the Main Computer Center (MCC) of the Russian Armed Forces, which is engaged in targeting missiles at civilian objects in Ukraine.

The unit is at the centre of Russian President Vladimir Putin's current war strategy, which apparently aims to prevent the Ukrainian population from being supplied as widely as possible in the coming winter. Whether this strategy is successful from the Russian point of view depends largely on how precisely the soldiers programme the destructive missiles.

All identified personnel in the unit (33 so far) have an IT background. While some have had a purely army career, the force also includes IT experts with civilian training. Some have programmed computer games in the past.

Under Lieutenant Colonel Igor B., three teams are responsible for programming different types of missiles: ship-based Kalibr missiles, ground-launched Iskanders and air-launched Kh-101 missiles.

According to a member of the unit, the trajectory of each missile has to be simulated in advance and programmed accordingly. The corresponding data would be transmitted to the missiles by means of storage media. This is the only way they can find their target.

The time-consuming method suggests that an assumption of Western intelligence services is correct: the attacks, e.g. on 10 October, were planned for a longer period of time and were not a spontaneous retaliation for the so far unexplained explosion at the Kerch Bridge.

All 33 men and women identified as suspected members of the unit were contacted for comment. 31 of them did not respond or denied being part of the clandestine unit. Another member passed on information and photos via an anonymous channel.

Neither NATO nor the USA alone threatened or invaded Russia. Plenty of good arguments can be made about the West's failures when it came to integrating the newly formed Russian state into Europe. But those mistakes were made twenty years ago. Putin's paranoia and his wish to form some mythologized "Slavic Empire" led Ukraine and Georgia to seek membership in NATO for their own protection. The West must accept some of the blame for its diplomatic failures but the invasion itself is directly due to Putin's imperial project.

Putin started on Chechnya, part of Russia.

He did it by blaming them for terrorism.

He then repeated these tactics in Georgia, Syria and now Ukraine.

He was empire building, and still is, and if it wasn't for NATO he would have invaded all the ex Warsaw pacts.

He'll be pleased to know Lash has swallowed all his lies wholesale, and is a reliable propagandist.

Correct, Russia–NATO relations only began deteriorating in 1999. And about the same time or shortly afterwards, Russia's relations to European countries (EU and non-EU) became more troublesome, too.

I realize Bush began offering NATO memberships for the former Soviet states. I don’t single Biden out for Western culpability, but I feel pretty confident he could’ve stopped the escalation had he been so inclined.

I remember cheering the idea back then.

Current events prove me wrong.

So you prefer that Russia invades the neighbouring countries.

Well, I wonder what you would prefer if you lived there, were a citizen of any European country or had been here during the Cold War and noticed what happened.

I can’t understand how anyone could come to that conclusion. Of course I don’t prefer a violent invasion. I can just connect the contributing events.

The inversion of cause and effect of the war, i.e. the narrative that the alleged aggression of the West has put Russia in the position of having to defend itself, is played out in many different variations by Russia.

In addition, Ukraine is denied state autonomy.

The sanctions are also portrayed as the real evil. They are therefore the cause of many crises - from food safety to other things.

And then the narratives, which can perhaps be used to prepare one's own measures or as a pretext to carry out one's own measures. And the uncovering of the alleged dirty bomb will probably be one of those narratives.


But it is not only Russia that does this, sometimes it can be read here on A2K as well.