War in Ukraine

#82,926
#82,926
lawgator1 said:
So he stole US aid money? I'm asking earnestly, because I don't know and it would be mighty disturbing if a Ukrainian official was able to steal a billion in U.S. aid.
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Sounds like it but as stated, I think this is pretty common in a lot of these nations. It probably did pass, properly, into Ukrainian hands but was then misapplied once through the process. So it wasn't probably directly stolen right out of US hands but rather out of Ukrainian hands once they had it. Heck, go read about Somali in 1995, same crap was going on there. Every aid sent to that country was being hijacked and taken up by Warlords.

When I traveled to Liberia in Africa, i was warned on about what to send and how to send it because government employees could steal your stuff. Policemen would also stop people demanding bribes.
 
#82,927
#82,927
BeardedVol said:
Why not?

You do realize that even in a wartime situation, you still have to fund government functions, right?
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Why should any non-mouthpiece for the unprincipled grift and profiteering doing business as an undeclared "American" non-war "war" in Ukraine "realize" something that is the blathering fiction of a propagandist like you. Just more of your disinformation and lackeying-for-pay, and your extremist rhetoric, threatening our democracy. That's not who we are.

We don't "have to" fund other countries' government functions. It's just more grift, makes for more and bigger slush funds and laundered quid-pro-quo criminality. Prolly how you get paid. And that doesn't even take into account the off-budget money.

You do realize that we don't even fund our own government functions, right?
 
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#82,928
#82,928
volbound1700 said:
World War 2 and Soviet Union are the reasons.

NATO was initially concepted based off the failure of the Western Allies to coordinate a method to stop Germany in 1940. History of NATO - Wikipedia

The Western Defense Union was initially setup for France, UK, and the three Benelux countries to plan better defensive strategy. USA agreed to join and was invited plus USA brought friends: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Iceland, and Portugal.

This is also when the Alliance became more Soviet focused and they eventually invited West Germany (who became Germany), Greece, Turkey, and Spain eventually joined.

Than in 1991, it grew to include a lot of Eastern Europe members that are now in today.

Alliance has kept Europe from a 1939-1945 type World War. To me, the problem with the Alliance is not integrating Russia into it. You have all the major European nations except one in it so it looks like the exclusive club is pretty much an Anti-Russia league which has been what happened.

I don't really care about defense expenditures as a lot of these nations are in it to give access to their territory for bases IMO. I really think only the major countries are the ones we are pushing: Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Italy are the big ones. Poland as well but I am fairly confident that Poland puts up the numbers. Sweden is another new player but from the data, Sweden meets 2% requirement.

Do we care whether Iceland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Netherlands, or Denmark meet the 2% threshold? These nations are so small, it would matter anyways.
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IIRC, during the Clinton years Russia joined as an associate member, but Russia withdrew over some perceived slight. Besides, we need NATO to keep Russia and China in check.
 
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#82,929
#82,929
volbound1700 said:
Well you are wrong. Looks like we sent money and you see the results. Corruption. We have 0 obligation to protect Ukraine IMO (the treaty states that Russia and USA guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty, it doesn't say we have to "defend" it). We also have 0 obligations to fund the Civil Government functions of Ukraine as you called out.

We sent weapons, provided intel, etc. We have done a lot for Ukraine and frankly, Ukraine is holding out well right now.
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Every country, including our own has it's own fair share of corruption to deal with.

Trying to use the existing of "corruption" as a reason not to aid Ukraine as we said we would when we forced them to give up their nuclear weapons, missiles, and long range bombers in order to comply with our demands under the Budapest Memorandum, is a pretty weak argument.

As I pointed out to you earlier, the government still has to function during war time, and the vast amount of budgetary support for Ukraine is being handled by the EU.
www.statista.com

Total bilateral aid to Ukraine by donor & type 2024 | Statista

How much has each country given to Ukraine? The U.S. provided the highest bilateral aid to Ukraine as of June 2024, at over 67 billion euros.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
 
#82,930
#82,930
Orange. said:
Why should any non-mouthpiece for the unprincipled grift and profiteering doing business as an undeclared "American" non-war "war" in Ukraine "realize" something that is the blathering fiction of a propagandist like you. Just more of your disinformation and lackeying-for-pay, and your extremist rhetoric, threatening our democracy. That's not who we are.

We don't "have to" fund other countries' government functions. It's just more grift, makes for more and bigger slush funds and laundered quid-pro-quo criminality. Prolly how you get paid. And that doesn't even take into account the off-budget money.

You do realize that we don't even fund our own government functions, right?
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You should google "US isolationism 20th century".
Public education seems to have failed you on the subject of US history and the wider affairs of foreign policy.

If you have evidence of "slush funds and laundered quid-pro-quo criminality" then I would encourage you to report it. Every dollar sent to Ukraine should be used to defeat Russia's invasion.

Ukraine Oversight Fraud and Waste Hotline.
 
#82,931
#82,931
Orange. said:
Why should any non-mouthpiece for the unprincipled grift and profiteering doing business as an undeclared "American" non-war "war" in Ukraine "realize" something that is the blathering fiction of a propagandist like you. Just more of your disinformation and lackeying-for-pay, and your extremist rhetoric, threatening our democracy. That's not who we are.

We don't "have to" fund other countries' government functions. It's just more grift, makes for more and bigger slush funds and laundered quid-pro-quo criminality. Prolly how you get paid. And that doesn't even take into account the off-budget money.

You do realize that we don't even fund our own government functions, right?
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Umm, that wasn't extremist rhetoric, it is the rationale that Biden gave. The Biden gave direct payments to Ukraine to keep its economy from collapsing. Remember, Russia had destroyed much of the infrastructure of Ukraine, including power plants, dams (remember that one), roads, hospitals, airports, children's hospitals, farms, etc. The funds kept the government in place and most of the people from fleeing the country. It helped avoid a humanitarian catastrophe. Ukraine has rebuilt some of their country. Biden's weakness is that he never met a spending idea he didn't like.

The US left $88 billion of equipment in Afghanistan. We blew billions on green energy projects.
 
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#82,932
#82,932
My question is why the heck didn't Joe send them hundreds of F-16s. We have about 2,000 that are mothballed.
 
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#82,934
#82,934
So, it looks like Biden coordinated with the Trump Administration. Biden has spent almost all of the 60 billion in funds for Ukraine. That gives Trump a free hand, probably 3 months, to bring Russia to heel.
 
#82,937
#82,937
FortSanders said:
So, it looks like Biden coordinated with the Trump Administration. Biden has spent almost all of the 60 billion in funds for Ukraine. That gives Trump a free hand, probably 3 months, to bring Russia to heel.
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Unless someone can provide another realistic path for resolution, and I have asked for about 2 years (or similar).... it would seem like 🍊 has basically one of two choices 1.) continue the funding and support or 2.) stop the funding and support.... generally.

If its true and that is what Putin has offered, he is basically saying that Trump has nothing to offer because he can't even give him one man for the whole country... which is what I have said for a very long time, maybe years.

Maybe I reading it wrong, but its actually quite clever and funny as hell.
 
#82,942
#82,942
whodeycin85 said:
I thought I read that Putin said if NATO added Ukraine which is on his doorstep he wouldn't have it..sorry if I'm wrong
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It's a moot point anyway. Ukraine was neutral in 2014, and had already been told "no" by Germany and France on joining NATO 6 years earlier, and Putin still invaded Ukraine. Even then it wasn't until Putin escalated the invasion in 2022 that any credence was given to Ukraine joining NATO.
 
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#82,943
#82,943
FortSanders said:
IIRC, during the Clinton years Russia joined as an associate member, but Russia withdrew over some perceived slight. Besides, we need NATO to keep Russia and China in check.
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To me, you keep them more in check by including them. They are then in the crowd and required to defend each other. The way I take NATO, it would also be applied if a NATO member attacked another NATO member.

However, by having them under the NATO banner, you finally get peace in Europe. NATO doesn't just defend Europe from Russia (or China), it also defends Europe from itself (Germany, Italy, France, etc.).
 
#82,945
#82,945
BeardedVol said:
Every country, including our own has it's own fair share of corruption to deal with.

Trying to use the existing of "corruption" as a reason not to aid Ukraine as we said we would when we forced them to give up their nuclear weapons, missiles, and long range bombers in order to comply with our demands under the Budapest Memorandum, is a pretty weak argument.

As I pointed out to you earlier, the government still has to function during war time, and the vast amount of budgetary support for Ukraine is being handled by the EU.
www.statista.com

Total bilateral aid to Ukraine by donor & type 2024 | Statista

How much has each country given to Ukraine? The U.S. provided the highest bilateral aid to Ukraine as of June 2024, at over 67 billion euros.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
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I agree our nation has corruption but we have no obligation to fund the Ukrainian government and when we are in trillions in dollars in debt, it is an issue; even a National Defense issue. The best way to weaken the United States is to continually run it into debt. How do you think the British Empire went away?
 
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#82,946
#82,946
volbound1700 said:
I agree our nation has corruption but we have no obligation to fund the Ukrainian government and when we are in trillions in dollars in debt, it is an issue; even a National Defense issue. The best way to weaken the United States is to continually run it into debt. How do you think the British Empire went away?
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Every country has corruption, including every other country that we donate aid to, and not funding Ukraine, will not cause any politician, including Trump, change the deficit-spending model.

I'm all for cutting waste, but we will never see a world where the US doesn't carry debt.

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The British empire had to significantly raise taxes on it's colonies to cover it's massive debt after the 7-years War, which lead to revolts (including us), but they still didn't "collapse" until WWII when they couldn't maintain their colonies during the war, and there was a push to decolonize.

We give corporations and the ultra-wealthy tax breaks instead, so I don't think we have to worry about them breaking up the United States.
 
#82,947
#82,947
volbound1700 said:
To me, you keep them more in check by including them. They are then in the crowd and required to defend each other. The way I take NATO, it would also be applied if a NATO member attacked another NATO member.

However, by having them under the NATO banner, you finally get peace in Europe. NATO doesn't just defend Europe from Russia (or China), it also defends Europe from itself (Germany, Italy, France, etc.).
Click to expand...

There's no profit in peace and government loses a control mechanism.
 
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#82,949
#82,949
Gh9LXnCWoAAtLuv
 
#82,950
#82,950
hog88 said:
There's no profit in peace and government loses a control mechanism.
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I agree that Russia probably doesn't want to do it but that would be the best mechanism to stop European Wars.

People think NATO is just geared at Russia, its original founding came off failure of Western European nations to deal with Nazi Germany and, in a way, was initially more directed at Germany. This was why West Germany's entry was controversial, it is basically the equivalent of Russia joining today.
 
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