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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
His point was that Putin is flexing his military muscles as a way to cover up his fundamental domestic weaknesses, and that his people will tire of his warmongering the way we tired of Bush's. It's something that has been said repeatedly by plenty of illustrious pundits besides him. For him to take this position may seem shocking to CNN's viewership, but it is nothing new. It's only surprising because the media loves to ignore it.
Frankly, by engaging Putin directly on the world stage, we give him what he wants: domestic legitimacy. All the talk of "no-fly zones" over Syria merely plays into his narrative that the U.S. is the Great Oppressor; moreover, it's one of the surest ways to passively touch off open warfare when the first "accident" occurs. No, thank you.
Putin is not a schoolyard bully that you can win over by fighting him back. He's the kind of schoolyard bully who has a big gang behind him and is playing to that gang to puff himself up as a leader; he wants you to try to stand up to him so he can prove that he's right about needing to be a tough guy.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:06:17 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
We didn't tire of Bush's warmongering because the war was unjust,if anything we seemed to be more united than ever when just about the entire rest of the world was against the invasion. We tired of it because of the torture revelations,and most importantly, the heavy US casualties. This won't happen because Putin is careful to pick his wars. He isn't George Bush. He's Otto Von Bismarck.
That's what we tried to do with the dam reset, but Putin just walked all over us. Get it though your head. As long as Nato exists anywhere West of Germany, Putin will always be our enemy. Their may be lulls, and their almost certainly won't be war, but he will always be looking for an opportunity to weaken us.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:08:23 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.![]()
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Just because multiple pundits have said it doesn't mean they are right. Most of those pundits are the same talking heads who do nothing but regurgitate narrative rather than offer analysis.
Sanders statement to that effect was the most disappointing one in terms of foreign policy.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:09:04 PM by FFShinra
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Putin is not an imperialist. He's a bully who wins by goading you into picking fights with him.
So certain are you.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:08:54 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Also, speaking of pundits.
Apparently they're all declaring Hillary the winner of the debate.
Polls seem to indicate viewers felt Sanders was the winner.
Also, Sanders says he calls himself a Democratic Socialist instead of a Democrat because he feels the party has strayed away from actually representing working class and middle class values due to the New Democrats.
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Again, we've been acting civilized on the Ukraine crisis. Short of going Finland and actively censuring anyone criticizing Putin their is nothing more Obama could do to appease the man. Well their is one thing that might buy him off for ever, and I have already stated it above. But even then Putin would want more, that is his nature.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:11:56 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.Ukraine was right on Russia's doorstep; Putin didn't need to provoke it into picking a fight; all he had to do was send in agents provocateur to create unrest, then step in to "calm things down" and coincidentally annex part of the country. He could get away with that because it's his backyard. The Middle-East is a quagmire that swallowed the Soviet Union's military like quicksand in the 20th century; it has done the same to us and will gladly repeat the trick if Putin steps in again.
Hell, we could do just as well to abandon the area entirely and say, "Okay, you try fixing it." Then Pass the Popcorn.
Potatoes Rock: This is true; if anything, Democrats have drifted right during the Reagan and Clinton eras, and are just now groping uncertainly back to where they were before Nixon.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:13:49 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
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Yes. Because the Russian economy isn't in a regretable state. Europe (as I've constantly predicted since the crisis in Ukraine began) have started tiring of Poroshenko and Ukraine's liabilities as a whole and will soon stop bothering with that country. Putin is earning poltiical capital across the world in a positive way (most of whom dont' really see Putin all that negatively at all, beyond Europe and the US) for his intervention in Syria. He is also quietly diversifying, building, and negotiating in a way that will lead to a stronger Russia.
Do I think his fans are a little too overblown in their praise? Yes. The man isn't some evil genius that seeks to personally confound the US. But he's not a moron either.
There is nothing he will "regret" because he's going to be rewarded for it at home and abroad.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:15:00 PM by FFShinra
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In that case we would se the Gulf state's all line right up to kiss Putin's ring, along with Israel if it wanted to avoid destruction. Oh and we would give Russia an even greater stranglehold over world energy than it already has.
Indeed. People don't seem to understand Putin's global appeal. He tells them everything they want to hear. "You can oppress your citizens all you want, it is your sovereign right." "America is the source of all your problems." "The gays are a menace." You get the idea.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:17:18 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.Bloody ninjas everywhere.
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Except thats not how Ukraine went down nor the Russian strategy to handle Ukraine.
And Pass the Popcorn only works if the guy is gonna fail. That is a broad assumption at this juncture. Also, the Soviet Union didn't fail in the middle east (Afghanistan is not part of the middle east, for one, and for two, apart from that campaign, they did okay in the region).
Also, the Arabs as a whole have a much better view of Russia than they ever had of the US.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:18:27 PM by FFShinra
Tell ya what, we can start World War III, or we can sit back and play a containment strategy while waiting for the Russians to tire of Putin's pec-flexing. I know which option I'll take.
Putin has demonstrated nothing in the way of credibility as a global threat and it's kind of crazy that we are using him now as a mythological bogeyman to justify spending even more time and money on useless military posturing.
Um, what? The hardcore Islamists hate Russia with a fanatical passion, never having once forgotten their suppression at the hands of the USSR.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:19:32 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I agree that using him as a boogeyman is dumb. He isn't a Bond Villain (though its foolish to say he poses no threat).
Also, don't strawman the choices. There is more than just WWIII or containment.
Tamil. Not Tamali. They aren't fucking chillies dude. Learn to spell.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:20:09 PM by FFShinra
Russia's strength at fighting insurgents is its willingness to employ a "take no prisoners" form of warfare, indiscriminately slaughtering everyone until there's nobody left to fight. Is that the model you want the U.S. to follow? There are no government commissions in Russia investigating the use of torture or prosecuting war crimes.
Our national morality absolutely bars us from taking offensive action here. We must hold the higher ground or we make ourselves no better than Putin.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:21:35 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Putin is more than capable of being a global threat, he just doesn't want to be.
All the conflicts he's been involved in are ones that are basically in Russia's backyard and are easy wins.
Hell I wouldn't be surprised if he was just using Syria as a testing ground for new air force toys.
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Not at all. But there is a such thing as being too cautious, as was the case with the DOD training program. There is also such a thing as having a long term plan, which Obama didn't for Libya and still doesn't for his efforts in this conflict.
And I agree we should be moral. Thats why I suggested the best solution (if the least likely) was to go into Syria in full to stop the fighting and stay long enough to rebuild that society. Short of that, partition. But this current plan is neither useful or moral.
EDIT- God damn ninjas.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:23:24 PM by FFShinra
Yeah I mean it's not like Obama could stop actively arming the Ukrainian goverment, stop actively supporting rebels group against Russia's ally Assad, stop providing economic assistance to the Ukrainian goverment, put pressure on the EU to pull out of its agreements with Ukraine, relent the sanctions placed on Russia for Crimea, not have proposed and pushed though a UN general assembly resolution condemning Russia for Crimea. There is clearly nothing Obama could do that would make him any more of a massive appeaser then eh already is.
Jack I know this is hard for you to get, but not actively declaring war on a country does not making you an appeaser. Now please for the love of god cut this "Obama is the new Chamberlain" (not actual quote, just summing up what your positions seems to be) crap, it's factually inaccurate, foolish, more then a little war mongery and really fucking stupid.
You wanna go on about how Obama is a massive appeaser who licks Putin's boot, go to the Russia thread and argue with Knit about how the West is acting towards Russia, I could use a laugh.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:26:03 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
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He has a long-term plan. It involves intervening in stark humanitarian crises and otherwise letting the governments and people of the region sort out their politics for themselves — as is their right under democratic principles. All of our efforts to intervene in their politics have ended up in disaster. There is no reason to expect it to change this time. Remember the definition of insanity?
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Thank you.
You can't dissociate yourself from the sources of your strawmen. "Appeasement" has always been a call-back to the disastrous policies of European governments facing the aggression of the Third Reich. Putin is not Hitler and fighting him directly would be stupid.
edited 14th Oct '15 12:26:25 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I briefly glossed over the whole article, so I can't say much about it all, but this part (unless he was misquoted/strawmanned there) is indeed comical naivety.