Will Ukraine situation lead to World War III?

[BotanyBoy]

Ukraine knows how to protest.....what is Venezuela's problem??

 

[KingOrfeo]

Ukraine knows how to protest.....what is Venezuela's problem??

That its government is much, much more popular.

 

[BotanyBoy]

That its government is much, much more popular.

But the boobs......why are there not Venezuelan boobies ???

 

[KingOrfeo]

But the boobs......why are there not Venezuelan boobies ???

Visit during Carnival.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Visit during Carnival.

But those are carni boobies....

http://www.igeektrooper.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Bearded-Lady-Salma-Hayek-36331.jpg

I want "I'm mad at the government, look at my boobies, agree with me because who doesn't like boobies??" protest boobies...like the Ukrainian protest boobies.

 

[dan_c00000]

Gods I hope you're right, but I'm highly skeptical of this. Obama has proven to be every bit the little tyrant that Bush was. I don't give a shit about the Ukraine though, nor about Russia.

You might want to look up the definition of tyranny and try again. Just because a someone does something you don't agree with doesn't make it automatically make it tyranny.

Anyway, this seems like more posturing from military people looking to drum up more business now that Iran and North Korea are no longer in the news.

 

[BotanyBoy]

You might want to look up the definition of tyranny and try again. Just because a someone does something you don't agree with doesn't make it automatically make it tyranny.

Anyway, this seems like more posturing from military people looking to drum up more business now that Iran and North Korea are no longer in the news.

Then by that standard the exact same thing could be said of Bush Jr. and you can't complain about anything he did. Or you can just admit up front that's what you do b/c your a politihack hypocrite of the highest caliber right next to vetteman.

What's it going to be dan?

 

[Wrong Element]

If Putin makes a move and he might, Obama will do nothing. Putin has taken his measure.

And Ike went to war over Hungary, and Dubya went to war over Georgia. Right?

Dumbass.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Then by that standard the exact same thing could be said of Bush Jr. and you can't complain about anything he did.

Or, one might complain about every bit of it without calling W a tyrant.

 

[Sean Renaud]

You might want to look up the definition of tyranny and try again. Just because a someone does something you don't agree with doesn't make it automatically make it tyranny.

Anyway, this seems like more posturing from military people looking to drum up more business now that Iran and North Korea are no longer in the news.

Or, one might complain about every bit of it without calling W a tyrant.

Fair enough.


That said I still have absolutely no reason to believe that Obama is particularly less likely to start a war than Bush was based on his observable actions. Sure I doubt we would have gone to Iraq if they were switched but I think that was personal for him.

 

[bill-pix-trade]

That its government is much, much more popular.

Then they should show more tits.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Obama hit the "reset"(appeasement) button, remember?

'Bout fuckin' time.

Monday, Feb 24, 2014 12:05 PM EST

John Kerry’s policy of surrender: His failures are redefining American exceptionalism

Perhaps the secretary of state knows what he is doing: His many failures actually point to a smarter foreign policy

Patrick L. Smith

We have just marked a year since John Kerry launched himself, at 69, as America’s chief diplomat. And for most of the period since it has been difficult to find anything good to say about our 68th secretary of state.

Events of late require that I confess to error and change my mind. Kerry could go down as the most important overseer of American foreign policy in the post–Cold War era.

The record is very mixed, it is important to add immediately. The past year’s agenda is littered with failures—Syria (Kerry’s diplomacy just reached a dead end), the famous “pivot to Asia” (driftwood floating somewhere in the Pacific), Ukraine (Putin again trumps Washington). But this list goes straight to the point: Kerry appears to be managing America’s relations abroad at precisely the moment it comes clear that Washington must surrender the pre-eminence it has exploited without much inhibition since the Spanish–American War in 1898.

So in failure there lies buried a certain success. Each time Kerry encounters the limits of American power, he goes some way to redefining America’s place on the planet in what we can call our post–Exceptionalist era. Of necessity this comes to a more modest but more constructive, less imposing and less disruptive presence. In failure success, and in retreat (as conservative critics, empire builders, and militarists see it) we find advances.

There is one question that crystallizes the thought more than any other. Let us look closely.

Kerry’s efforts to restart talks between Israel and Palestinians—some Palestinians—are tritely advertised as his “signature” issue. Many were the commentators who warned that Kerry would break his pick trying to induce a settlement, and they are proven right. Talks continue, but it is evident now they are a wash.

Yet it is in Israel that Kerry has achieved his clearest success-that-looks-like-failure. He has brought light and air to a relationship that has been cloistered, untouchable, mired, and on auto pilot for decades. He has opened a door, then: Across the threshold, America will be better off, Israel will be better off, Palestinians will be better off, and the Middle East will be, too.

One can identify the very moment Kerry managed this feat. It was on the morning of November 7 last year. That Thursday Kerry took the odd step of granting a joint interview to Channel 2, an Israeli network, and the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, which, as the name implies, functions as a BBC of the occupied territories.

Putting the two correspondents together was inspired. In hindsight it suggested what was coming. The Israeli press thought he “spoke from the heart” and that he put aside his “statesman-like impartiality.” I do not think he did either. His remarks were considered, as is plain on reading them, and spotlessly impartial. What he dropped was the pretense of American impartiality that long ago devolved into a mere formality, an empty convention it was not done to acknowledge as such.

It is difficult to choose a single remark that represents the whole of what Kerry said. But here is a try. He was addressing a certain complacence evident in Israel of late, the thought that Israelis are safe as things are and in no need of a settlement with Palestinians.

“Well, I’ve got news for you,” Kerry said then. “Today’s status quo will not be tomorrow’s or next year’s. Because if we don’t resolve this issue, the Arab world, the Palestinians, neighbors, others, are going to begin again to push in a different way.”

The background here is important. Kerry was in Jerusalem for talks with Benjamin Netanyahu. The previous day the Israeli prime minister had prevailed upon Kerry to “steer [the Palestinians] back to a place where we could achieve the historical peace that we seek.” Netanyahu, as has been his habit since this round of talks began last July, had just announced that permits would be granted for yet more settlement construction on the West Bank.

Equally, momentum was building—notably but not only in Europe—behind boycotts of Israeli businesses operating on the West Bank, banks financing illegal settlements, and so on. This is called the BDS movement, boycotts, disinvestment, and sanctions, and it starts to resemble the campaigns waged against South Africa during the later years of apartheid—a slow burn, but not without effect.

Kerry thus warned of a “third intifada,” this one an economic squeeze. “If we do not resolve the issues between Palestinians and Israelis,” he said early in the interview, “if we do not find a way to find peace, there will be an increasing isolation of Israel and an increasing campaign of de-legitimization of Israel.”

Kerry gathered steam as the encounter went on—almost certainly out of frustration, as Israeli commentators speculated. He let rip on the settlements question, the Israeli military presence, the risk of engendering a generation of Palestinians prone to what used to be called armed struggle.

Here are two more snippets:

“How, if you say you’re working for peace and you want peace, and a Palestine that is a whole Palestine that belongs to the people who live there, how can you say we’re planning to build in a place that will eventually be Palestine? So it sends a message that perhaps you’re not really serious.”

“If we do not resolve the question of settlements and the question of who lives where and how and what rights they have; if we don’t end the presence of Israeli soldiers perpetually within the West Bank, then there will be an increasing feeling that if we cannot get peace with a leadership that is committed to non-violence, you may wind up with leadership that is committed to violence.”

You did not read or hear much about Kerry’s interview in the American media. Paradoxically, the Israeli press is far freer in its reports and commentary on the Mideast crisis than one finds in the States. I found good accounts in the Times of Israel and here.

The reaction was strong, predictably. Conservatives accused him of anti-Semitism, dealing Israel out of existence, indulging a “messianic” streak, knowing better than Israel what is good for it. Three members of Netanyahu’s cabinet mounted frontal attacks.

I predicted in this space last summer that a renovation in U.S.–Israeli relations was due. It is far from accomplished, but this is what it looks like for now. Something abrupt had to push the process in motion. Kerry did the deed waiting to be done.

He did some other important things, too. Most immediately, he re-asserted control over American policy in the region. As the Middle East evolves post–Arab Spring and as Iran seeks to open, the only alternative was to allow Israel’s standing hostilities and its givenness to military solutions over diplomacy to limit Washington’s alternatives.

The honest talk, fresh and direct, was key. By way of it he insisted on a key distinction that is often blurred. While making clear his support for the Israeli project, he insisted that this does not compute to acquiescing to Israel’s behavior in the occupied territories and its evident lack of genuine interest in a comprehensive settlement.

One cannot imagine a previous secretary of state pulling this off, but in my view Kerry got his timing just right. He tapped a liberally flowing undercurrent. One already detects a distinct turn in the comments of prominent Israel watchers, and they follow that distinction Kerry insisted upon.

One example among numerous will do. It comes from Roger Cohen, a New York Times columnist whose pieces usually run in the international edition or as blogs on the website. Many concern Israel, and a very fine one appeared last week. Declaring himself “a strong supporter of a two-state peace,” he remarked, “Jews, having suffered for most of their history as a minority, cannot, as a majority now in their state, keep their boots on the heads of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank any longer.”

Cohen’s commentary along these lines preceded Kerry’s interview in Israel by a long way. But Kerry has lent this perspective deserved prominence and credibility. This lands us all with a new responsibility. It comes as a question. What do critics of Israel mean now that it is feasible they may be heard in high places?

I answer this way: I am a vigorous critic not of Israel but of its conduct. The flaws lie in execution, not the originating thought. As to history, it can never be made not to count; the displacements of 1947–48 cannot be forgotten. But neither can history be reversed, as Cohen asserts. “There can, and should be, agreed compensation for the dispossessed,” he writes. I sign on to this. As a memorial Israel is a poor one, in my view. All concerned, those living and those remembered, deserve better.

(Transparency: Cohen is a friend and former colleague.)

Kerry’s first year raises a question of intent. Obviously he did not intend for the current round of Mideast talks to fail when he started them last July. He did not intend to give Russia the lead on the Syria question, or Iran the initiative in getting talks going on its nuclear program. But in the latter two cases, recognition of other poles of power has resulted.

As to the Mideast, Kerry has accomplished something I had judged possible only in principle. He has shaken loose a policy badly in need of shaking and given a stale conversation a new sound.

All positive. Maybe Kerry’s gift is for getting under way a transition in America’s posture abroad that will inevitably lead to a loss of primacy, and to do so quietly enough to avoid (so far, anyway) upsetting conservatives, nostalgists, and exceptionalists any more than necessary.

Who can imagine that failure-as-success was Kerry’s purpose when he set out a year ago? But the big messes, such as the coup Washington sanctioned in Egypt, now a god-awful crisis, are cases wherein old policies, in the American century mold, ran the full course. Then you get success as failure, not the other way around.

Patrick Smith is the author of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” was the International Herald Tribune’s bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote “Letter from Tokyo” for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications.

 

[dan_c00000]

Then by that standard the exact same thing could be said of Bush Jr. and you can't complain about anything he did. Or you can just admit up front that's what you do b/c your a politihack hypocrite of the highest caliber right next to vetteman.

What's it going to be dan?

You'll notice if you can go back and read my posts I never called Bush II a dictator or tyrant. Again if you go back and read my posts you'll notice I'm critical of both Democrats and Obama.

Of course you didn't do either of those things and here's how I can tell: you claim to have a PhD and own a business but can't get the correct you're. Good job.

Moving on after that massive owning of botany again...

Obama seems to have a reluctance to starting wars. Which is a good thing. It means he kept his "no dumb war" policy. Though the most recent example of Syria his ass got saved by Putin and a strong push back from both the right and left.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Of course you didn't do either of those things and here's how I can tell: you claim to have a PhD and own a business but can't get the correct you're. Good job.

Oh, we all make typeing misteaks now and then.

 

[Liar]

is border expansion a goal of the current russian administration?

Not per se. But Putin would very much like to have Russia's ol' sattelite states back.

Geopolitics ain't mostly about borders anymore. It's about who controls which puppet.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Ukraine knows how to protest.....what is Venezuela's problem??

You can find the whole story here.

 

[mark197205]

But those are carni boobies....

http://www.igeektrooper.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Bearded-Lady-Salma-Hayek-36331.jpg

I want "I'm mad at the government, look at my boobies, agree with me because who doesn't like boobies??" protest boobies...like the Ukrainian protest boobies.

Dood, that is just so wrong!

 

[Sean Renaud]

Various typos are just part of life, not at all worth even mentioning. I don't know how anybody can say Obama's been particularly reluctant to start wars, I don't believe Clinton was reluctant, not getting a chance is different. Obama's use of drones in Pakistan and sending the seals after Osama suggest he's certainly not afraid to piss someone off.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

Obama seems to have a reluctance to starting wars. Which is a good thing. It means he kept his "no dumb war" policy. Though the most recent example of Syria his ass got saved by Putin and a strong push back from both the right and left.

Putin didn't actually save his ass, though. Obama formed the deal with him when he met him at the summit that was going on prior to the shebang's escalation. So Putin got to wave his dick in the open (that the conservatives on here gleefully gobbled up and made him their male hero poster boy for about a week) and Obama was like, "hey, this is all on your dime now, say what you want, I got the job done with no mess, I'm on next shit."

 

[badbabysitter]

If Putin makes a move and he might, Obama will do nothing. Putin has taken his measure.

the RWCJ paradigm at work


if Obama does nothiing...he's weak

if he intervenes... the RWCJ will be outraged about another conflict


classic

 

[Sean Renaud]

the RWCJ paradigm at work


if Obama does nothiing...he's weak

if he intervenes... the RWCJ will be outraged about another conflict


classic

Nobody ever said they were fair. I kinda hope we get a nice white male president next, I don't know if I can make it through four more years of this ignorance.

 

[ryan8558]

Nobody ever said they were fair. I kinda hope we get a nice white male president next, I don't know if I can make it through four more years of this ignorance.

Sorry, Bill Clinton can't run again.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Jeb Bush could win.

 

[JonB1969]

The US is already saying no succession in Southern or Eastern Ukraine.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/23/us-ukraine-crisis-usa-idUSBREA1M0PL20140223

IF, and that's still an IF, a majority of people in these regions wish to pursue some type of autonomy or even independence, and they ask Russia for protection, is the US and EU really going to start a war over this? On the other hand, will Russia puss out again like it did in the Yugoslav War?

This seems far more serious to me than we are being led to believe.

I personally doubt this situation will lead to an all-out shooting war. It would have to escalate way beyond the level that things are at now. Besides, the president has been impeached by the parlaiment, so the reason for all the protests and whatnot has been resolved. The only real question is where is he?

So unless either US or Russia gets involved on a personal scale and things escalate way out of control, I personally doubt this will lead to a shooting war. I hope.