09-21-2023, 12:16 PM
(09-21-2023, 11:23 AM)Dill Wrote: A. I've already granted we would "save money" over the short term.
But I don't want to sacrifice principle and geopolitical position to save that money.
B. If the U.S. and Europe cede geopolitical space to Putin and Xi, why should that message to the world bring "peace in our time"?
C. Fewer Americans would have died in WWII if we'd just ceded the Pacific to Japan. Short term, anyway.
And they might not have attacked Pearl Harbor. In the short term.
At the time, millions of America Firsters were of a mind we shouldn't piss off Hitler, either.
I'm puzzled you think ignoring authoritarian aggression in Europe is a way to STOP people from dying,
and that my only possible motivation for opposing that could be Trump hate.
But as I said in another post, you and I are judging politics/policy by different metrics.
So we should be talking about those metrics, maybe, evaluating them. They're what we'll be voting on in 2024.
Most of that is fair. Edit: some of that is fair.
A) What principle? Are you looking at us defending one of the most corrupt countries on earth as a humanitarian measure? Outside of agricultural imports and the occasional successful startup tech company, Ukraine is a corrupt country that contributes very little to the world.
B) Geopolitical space: I don’t know your stance on energy. But the current administration is shooting itself in the foot by reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Ceding Ukraine won’t have near the impact, the only thing the Ukraine war does for this is provide a very expensive excuse to put sanctions on Russia to make it more difficult for them to export oil. Less energy independence weakens us geopolitically as we will have less and less influence on global oil markets and reduced ability to defend our allies if we were to depend more than we should on foreign oil imports. We’re still a net exporter but not like we used to be. It’s really not that complicated. Oil. It’s not going anywhere. Unless we switch to nuclear, which we won’t, dependence on oil will outlive every member of this board. We have it. We must use it. The US and Russia are in constant competition over production, exports and market share. We’re throwing Russia a very large bone in the geopolitical space by choosing not to dominate them.
C) Ceding Ukraine to Russia is different from ceding a NATO ally to Russia. Ceding Ukraine is different from ceding the Pacific to Japan and ignoring an attack on US soil. It’s not our war. We do not have the military might that we used to have. We do not have the money that we used to have. We can’t just put Russia and China in their places anymore. They’ve become too powerful.
