RUSSIAN TROOPS INVADE UKRAINE! Obama ends vacation!

[sirs]

Putin would surely have done the same thing in Crimea had Bush been president, or McCain or Romney.

LOL...yea...right....  This has nothing to do with how weak anyone except the U.S. is

[Plane]

Putin would surely have done the same thing in Crimea had Bush been president, or McCain or Romney.

LOL...yea...right....  This has nothing to do with how weak anyone except the U.S. is

XO may be right, perhaps Putin pays no attention to us , because he is a gambler.

Greater risk is just greater thrill to a real gambler.

[sirs]

Naaa....I don't buy it.  Putin may indeed be a gambler, but gamblers generally prefer a better hand.  Obama's foreign policy has given him an inside straight.  He would have had to bluff, with Bush

[Plane]

  It is practically the same behavior.

  Will our next president try a reset and charm on Putin?

    Fooling us three times the same way would be especially shameful. Oh! I hope our next president doesn't think that Putin is a different character, depending on who is president of the US.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Again, the people of this country do not want to fight Putin over Ukraine, and Putin will not back down unless there is physical force involved.

[sirs]

Which again reinforces my whole point, that a LEADER can, and will, do things contrary to what's politically expedient.  No one wants war.  But no one wants another Hitler either.  Russia backed down to Kennedy.  Russia backed down to Reagan as well.  They would have backed down to Bush, but with Obama, they know they have no one that'll check them....and the people of this country can go back to playing on their i-pads

[Xavier_Onassis]

When did "Russia" back down to Reagan?

Putin would have done the SAME DAMN THING to Romney or McCain. Ukrains is the Russian sphere of influence. Don't you know history? Parts of Ukraine were in Russia for centuries.

[Plane]

When did "Russia" back down to Reagan?

http://www.thereaganvision.org/the-reykjavik-summit-the-story/


Really it is more like the Soviets went to Reagan with hat in hand to ask for a better deal.

But of course this is after many years of economic pressure and military containment , costing both sides many lives and much treasure.

So rather than saying that the Soviets backed down because of Reagan , you might say rather that Reagan was as resolute as any and all presidents since Eisenhower, and the Soviets were exhausted and ready to fail.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Reagan was a posturing toad,  the political equivalent of a blowfish.

The Soviets could not keep up without computers and they could not maintain an oppressive society with computers. The war in Afghanistan was one reason for their weakness, and that was not attributable to Reagan.

[Plane]

 

    Carter helped Afghanistan become an expensive , dangerous , quagmire for the Soviets.
     Go JC.

    Reagan made the mistake of leaving them alone after the Soviets left, Bush41,Clinton continued this mistake and Bush 43 might well have also left Afghanistan alone if the AlQueda attacks had remained smaller scale.

      Computers can be used to assist oppression, if this is not true then there is nothing interesting happening at the NSA.

      Reagan was the greatest and most subtle mind of his time and his vocation. His success looks entirely accidental to people that cannot accept this, and "handlers " who fed Reagan all of his lines have to be invented to explain how no Democrat existed who could argue in his league.


     "Handlers"  Hahahahaha!  Where did the handlers go? Did they all die when Reagan retired?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Actually, the plot by Brezinsky to create problems in Afghanistan was a TERRIBLE idea. It destroyed the culture and the development of an entire country and eventually resulted in Taliban rule and 9-11. The blowback was horrible, and cost us a fortune.

Zbignieuw Brezinsky was a grandson of the Polish aristocracy executed by Stalin in Katryn Woods after the Nazis were driven out. Afghanistan was his revenge. It may have hastened the breakup of the USSR, which was inevitable, but it destroyed millions of people and ended up costing is a ten years war that is still going on.

[Plane]

I think Zebignew is one of the few of our leadership to show some sign that he understands Sun Tsu.

    The enemy must be made to bear the cost of the war.

    The cold war was the container of several smaller hot wars.

     If Afganistan was a mistake for the US , was Vietnam a mistake for the Soviet Union?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Vietnam was mistake for everyone. But it had very little impact on the Soviets, since Vietnam did not turn into a bunch of Soviet hating fanatics as Afghanistan did. There was no Vietnamese equivalent of the Taliban.

The Russians sent money and weapons to the Vietnamese, but not many troops.After the War was over, Vietnam had a minor spat with China. Cambodia was ruined by the Vietnam War, far more than Vietnam itself.

Vietnam was the dumbest thing the US did except the Civil War. It looks like Iraq will turn out to be dumber still, but Vietnam changed the US for the worse in ways that Iraq did not, because of the massive number of troops that were drafted and forced to serve there

Had the US just allowed elections to unify Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, I am sure that today, Americans would be buying Nikes and Reboks made in Vietnam. The average Vietnamese family would still be poor, but there might be more Vietnamese. It is possible that Vietnam might have been more likely to have decided to do what China did and become capitalists.

[sirs]

When did "Russia" back down to Reagan?

Putin would have done the SAME DAMN THING to Romney or McCain.

They backed down when Reagan actively pushed for greater military development, causing the Russian economy to collapse trying to keep up  And yea, a President Romney or President McCain would have stemmed any considered Putin aggression, given that they'd actually have credibility to any lines they would have drawn

[Xavier_Onassis]

That is patent nonsense.

None of it is true.