President Elect's 'top team'

[sploo]

You belive 100% that this is all Putins fault.

At no point have I ever said it's 100% Putin's fault.

You also believe that most Ukrainians would find my post distasteful, without any evidence at all and which ones, the ones in the west or ones in the east?

You're right that I believe most Ukrainians would find your post distasteful (without any evidence); just as you claimed that "I suspect most Ukrainians would rather be alive, than being beaten, press ganged and frog marched off to die in a ditch, so you can feel good about yourself."... without any evidence (but maybe you forgot that?).

Ukraine is only Ukraine when it or they align with you.

What an utterly bizarre statement. Ukraine is always Ukraine; regardless of whether of not they align with me (and whether they "align" with me or not is irrelevant).

There’s no point in reasoning with you.

You could try making a post that contains some reasoning? The above just seems to be refuting a hallucination of arguments that I didn't make

 

[Ed Weber]

The consensus on this forum seems to be that Biden's decision to allow Ukraine to use longer range weapons is a deliberate attempt to disrupt whatever strategy Trump wants to put in place once he has power. I don't agree.

There is another equally plausible explanation - he is doing it to support Trumps initiatives.

To bring conflict to a swift end requires:

• Putin to believe that he has won - winning permanent border changes enlarging Russian territory. It is a victory justifying the losses and sacrifices sustained by the Russian people.
• Zelensky needs to bring the conflict to a close with dignity. There is zero chance of Ukraine defeating of Russia. Conflict is only sustained through Western supplies of military hardware, without which rapid defeat by a numerically superior enemy would quickly follow.

The Trump strategy - force agreement to a ceasefire and revised borders:

• Putin carrot - gets enlarged territory - borders - Crimea is already a de facto done deal + Eastern Ukraine largely held by Russia now
• Putin stick - all limits removed from US sourced weapons + increased supply of munitions
• Zelensky carrot - probable membership (there will be some hurdles) of NATO and/or EU - future security for the core of Ukraine
• Zelensky stick - no more munitions - defeat looms large

Bidens initial act is just a warning to Putin - I suspect they have much more potent weapons in their arsenal and the capacity to reach Moscow if wanted.

If the Trump initiative is success he can claim to have laid the groundwork, if Trump fails he can at least claim they tried. He may even have agreed their use with Trump, or at the very least denied Trump the egotistical kudos of claiming "I did it, Biden was a hopeless POTUS"

You say this as if Trump has a rational, well thought through strategy to broker a deal.
The man works on impulse and grievance.
His "strategy" will most likely be to tell Putin, if you stop attacking Ukraine, well stop arming them and you can have what land you've seized. This will all happen at the same time he's trying to destroy NATO any way he can.
See, I ended the war, no one else could have done it.

This wil end terribly IMO

 

[ey_tony]

What is really half-witted is doing a Neville Chamberlain all over again.

Perhaps you should ask the 384,000 British soldiers who lost their lives and the families of those who fought and died. I'm sure they will have an opinion regarding the fighting and the millions of people coming here to take advantage of what the people of this country have worked and died for but are considered racists because they object to their nation being taken advantage of!

If you feel so strongly about standing up to Putin then you could always volunteer to fight for the Ukraine army!

 

[Delaney]

Perhaps you should ask the 384,000 British soldiers who lost their lives and the families of those who fought and died. I'm sure they will have an opinion regarding the fighting and the millions of people coming here to take advantage of what the people of this country have worked and died for but are considered racists because they object to their nation being taken advantage of!

If you feel so strongly about standing up to Putin then you could always volunteer to fight for the Ukraine army!

Cannot find a single one of these keyboard warriors, who will actually go over there a fight.

And honestly, I respect those that do,

Civ div has a good channel. I used to watch his content back when I was saying

“Yeh think about it, we’re fighting Putin without risking a single one of our own”.

Sounds borderline sociopathic now. That was the main western political argument, at the start, for why we should help Ukraine; they were the ones going to die.

I wonder if Ukrainians find that position peddled by their ‘allies in the west’ distasteful?

 

[Chris152]

Perhaps you should ask the 384,000 British soldiers who lost their lives and the families of those who fought and died. I'm sure they will have an opinion regarding the fighting and the millions of people coming here to take advantage of what the people of this country have worked and died for but are considered racists because they object to their nation being taken advantage of!

So, back to nasty old immigrants again? What on earth has that to do with what Jake posted?

Cannot find a single one of these keyboard warriors, who will actually go over there a fight.

Again (I asked above, but no answer) - do you pay taxes in the UK? If so, you're contributing to the defence of Ukraine, it's your war, too. You're clearly vehemently against that - what have you done to stop the fighting? Plenty in the past have refused to pay their taxes and ended up in prison, on principle. Or are you just happy making all kinds of accusations against others while doing nothing yourself - except, of course, posting in the aob section of a woodworking forum.

 

[sploo]

Cannot find a single one of these keyboard warriors, who will actually go over there a fight.

That's (another) bizarre argument. It's like saying that anyone who's against immigration into the UK that is not willing to personally defend our shores invalidates their position.

 

[RobinBHM]

You belive 100% that this is all Putins fault

It is 100% Putins fault.

Believing anything else is Russian propaganda

 

[RobinBHM]

So Elon Musk is in charge of cutting federal workers by a third and slashing public services

So the worlds richest man will be in charge of making people poorer and suffer more, while he makes himself richer.


this is gonna be fun

 

[Croolis]

Cannot find a single one of these keyboard warriors, who will actually go over there a fight.

Oh ffs. Mate, just because you watch combat vids from Ukraine and it makes you all hot and sweaty doesn't mean you're some kind of validated hero. You're just a t-w-a-t talking pineapples like everybody else. Keyboard warriors ffs, and you said my post was something a child would say. Pathetic.

 

[Fergie 307]

So are you saying that we need to go to war in order to stop him ? If we do not negiotate then that will be the final outcome, faced with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea what do you think are our chances ?

For a start who said anything about China. They seem to be playing their usual long game. They have never been supportive of the Ukraine invasion, not least of all because no one likes to back a loser and the Russians campaign has been an embarrassment from day one. They will certainly be watching what happens with interest. If we, and in particular the US, fail to act decisively against Putin then they may feel emboldened in relation to Taiwan, where presumably you would be equally happy to just let them get on with it?

And I have not said that we need to go to war. What we need to do is to stop pussy cat footing around and give Ukraine the means to resolve the situation themselves. We should have done it in 2014 when he took Crimea, but as usual we talked a lot and did nothing.
We have done this time and time again, waved our finger and told Putin in no uncertain terms that he absolutely must not do such and such or there will be dire consequences. When he has then done these things we have done nothing effective.
Hardly surprising that he should have come to the conclusion that we are paper tigers. Let's face it he may well have been right about Ukraine too. Had it gone as he appears to have expected, and he had overrun the country in a week, what would the West have done? I would bet that his expectation would have been that we would wring our hands, talk a lot and DO nothing, just as we did in 2014. The shameful thing is that that is probably exactly what would have happened.

Us giving Ukraine the means to defend herself effectively, and fight off this vicious and completely unwarranted invasion is no different to Putin's use of weapons from Iran and N Korea and now troops from the latter.
Bulls**t about it amounting to direct NATO involvement is just that.

If we negotiate a peace with Putin which allows him to keep large tracts of Ukraine, then we will have betrayed them just as we did Poland in 1945.

And what on earth makes you believe that Putin would stick to any agreement?

He has demonstrated time and again that he has no respect for international law. If you show him that all he has to do is invade another country and we will accept that as a fait accompli, then what is to stop him doing it again?

Do please share your reasoning.

If history shows us anything then that is that appeasement does not work.

What would you do if it were Britain. Would you let him have maybe the south coast Kent, Hampshire etc and hope he would be content to leave it at that?

 

[Fergie 307]

Incentives for Putin:

• possibility of conflict without a clear end - like 12 years in Afghanistan without success
• cost and casualties - criticism of his leadership may grow - public or inside Kremlin
• settlement could be sold as a victory - in contrast to the potential negatives
• if the west allows Ukraine much more flexibility to use advanced weapon the conflict could be very visible in Moscow, Leningrad and other large cities

No guarantees - but if he says no to any proposal he is back to the status quo - a bitter fight with little evidence of progress on either side.

If successful Zelensky quickly invites NATO forces for exercises on Ukrainian territory to seal the deal.

Let's us not forget that Afghanistan, and the casualties there, were a big factor in bringing down the then Soviet leadership.
Putin is well on the way to similar casualty figures in a quarter of the time, and the Afghans did not very publicly invade part of the Soviet Union.
He would be a fool not to be nervous.
But somehow there needs to be an exit strategy that allows him to spin it as something other than defeat.

 

[ey_tony]

So, back to nasty old immigrants again? What on earth has that to do with what Jake posted?


Again (I asked above, but no answer) - do you pay taxes in the UK? If so, you're contributing to the defence of Ukraine, it's your war, too. You're clearly vehemently against that - what have you done to stop the fighting? Plenty in the past have refused to pay their taxes and ended up in prison, on principle. Or are you just happy making all kinds of accusations against others while doing nothing yourself - except, of course, posting in the aob section of a woodworking forum.

I and millions of ordinary people were totally against the very much illegal Iraq war in which your left wing Tony Blair was complicit with Bush and went ahead in destroying a sovereign nation and effecting regime change both of which would make them war criminals by any standards if they weren't part of the West.

What was your response to the UK's illegal war?
It appears after looking at some of these posts that the left wing mentality favours violence over negotiation believing that only more violence solves conflicts.
Putin doesn't trust the West and historically for good reason so it's not hard to see why he would want a buffer zone between Russia and what we call the West.

At the time of the outbreak of war in 1939, nuclear weapons hadn't been invented...unfortunately they have and there's no way of uninventing them so if pushed too far, sooner or later those weapons are going to be used as a last resort so the last thing to do is to provoke a nuclear facilitated nation into using them and the provision of long range weapons by NATO could be the tipping point in the current conflict the results of which don't bear thinking about.

To quote Churchill "meeting jaw to jaw is better than war".

 

[Fergie 307]

Perhaps you should ask the 384,000 British soldiers who lost their lives and the families of those who fought and died. I'm sure they will have an opinion regarding the fighting and the millions of people coming here to take advantage of what the people of this country have worked and died for but are considered racists because they object to their nation being taken advantage of!

If you feel so strongly about standing up to Putin then you could always volunteer to fight for the Ukraine army!

Have you ever encountered a WW2 veteran who didn't believe we were right to fight Hitler?
I have known a good number, and whilst they all abhor the enormous waste of life, I have never encountered any who did not believe that Hitler and his regime had to be stopped, and that war was the only way.
My dad was a desert rat, injured several times in the fighting in Europe. No doubt whatsoever that it was the right thing to do. He was ashamed of the disgusting way we betrayed the Poles after the war. As he used to say we fought to save them from one dictator, only to hand them over to another, who was arguably even worse.

 

[Blackswanwood]

I and millions of ordinary people were totally against the very much illegal Iraq war in which your left wing Tony Blair was complicit with Bush and went ahead in destroying a sovereign nation and effecting regime change both of which would make them war criminals by any standards if they weren't part of the West.

What was your response to the UK's illegal war?
It appears after looking at some of these posts that the left wing mentality favours violence over negotiation believing that only more violence solves conflicts.
Putin doesn't trust the West and historically for good reason so it's not hard to see why he would want a buffer zone between Russia and what we call the West.

At the time of the outbreak of war in 1939, nuclear weapons hadn't been invented...unfortunately they have and there's no way of uninventing them so if pushed too far, sooner or later those weapons are going to be used as a last resort so the last thing to do is to provoke a nuclear facilitated nation into using them and the provision of long range weapons by NATO could be the tipping point in the current conflict the results of which don't bear thinking about.

To quote Churchill "meeting jaw to jaw is better than war".

To quote Churchill “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last”

 

[RobinBHM]

I and millions of ordinary people were totally against

Tony why did you support Saddam Hussein?

 

[woodieallen]

This belongs in OT2, but
I'm going to let it be for a while in the hope that some sensible conversation can emerge, and not that this is just a chance to vent. If our members from outside the UK, and especially those from the USA would like to share their views for or against, that could make for an interesting discussion. Let's avoid calling each other names please.

If they did, I'd have to report them to the police as Hate Crimes or maybe non-Hate Crimes

 

[woodieallen]

Cannot find a single one of these keyboard warriors, who will actually go over there a fight.

And honestly, I respect those that do,

Civ div has a good channel. I used to watch his content back when I was saying

“Yeh think about it, we’re fighting Putin without risking a single one of our own”.

Sounds borderline sociopathic now. That was the main western political argument, at the start, for why we should help Ukraine; they were the ones going to die.

I wonder if Ukrainians find that position peddled by their ‘allies in the west’ distasteful?

Have you ever thought that actually making a coherent sentence once in a while would help whatever line of 'reasoning' (and I do use that term somewhat loosely) you are trying to make ?

 

[woodieallen]

... As he used to say we fought to save them from one dictator, only to hand them over to another, who was arguably even worse.

Spot on. Churchill and Roosevelt connived with Stalin to send back all the Soviet citizens who the Germans had taken/moved into Germany during the war. They actively sent round American and British soldiers and trucks to round them up and ship them back to Russia.

 

[Fergie 307]

I and millions of ordinary people were totally against the very much illegal Iraq war in which your left wing Tony Blair was complicit with Bush and went ahead in destroying a sovereign nation and effecting regime change both of which would make them war criminals by any standards if they weren't part of the West.

What was your response to the UK's illegal war?
It appears after looking at some of these posts that the left wing mentality favours violence over negotiation believing that only more violence solves conflicts.
Putin doesn't trust the West and historically for good reason so it's not hard to see why he would want a buffer zone between Russia and what we call the West.

At the time of the outbreak of war in 1939, nuclear weapons hadn't been invented...unfortunately they have and there's no way of uninventing them so if pushed too far, sooner or later those weapons are going to be used as a last resort so the last thing to do is to provoke a nuclear facilitated nation into using them and the provision of long range weapons by NATO could be the tipping point in the current conflict the results of which don't bear thinking about.

To quote Churchill "meeting jaw to jaw is better than war".

Do calm down.
No one is suggesting that Ukraine is going to start striking at random targets deep inside Russia. The weapons involved only have a range of a couple of hundred miles. Given the size of the place hard to conceive how their use could ever place Russia in a position of "last resort".
And do at least try and get your quotes correct. It was "jaw jaw is preferable to war war".
Churchill readily accepted that the former was not going to work with Hitler, any more than it is likely to with Putin.

 

[Fergie 307]

Spot on. Churchill and Roosevelt connived with Stalin to send back all the Soviet citizens who the Germans had taken/moved into Germany during the war. They actively sent round American and British soldiers and trucks to round them up and ship them back to Russia.

And most of them were duly shot or sent to the gulags. Stalin famously said that there were no Soviet POW, only traitors.