maybe the most consistent streak in american foreign policy is arming right wing groups whether they be part of the government or rebels/terrorists/etc then it turning out to be profoundly awful for the citizens of those countries and the world at large. giving military supremacy to a radical right wing group in afghanistan definitely had many negative externalities for the region.
The reality is that we’re constantly faced with a series of difficult situations, the solutions for which are all imperfect or undesirable. It’s easy (and fair) to say we’ve made mistakes in the past, but it’s also impossible to know what would have been different if we had taken different paths. Ideally those making decisions in government will weigh the options and make a good faith effort to make the best choice. I trust the current administration to do the best possible job under these difficult circumstances. All that said, we have to (and quite clearly will) keep arming Ukraine. This is not analogous to arming the Mujahideen. I would argue any presently-contemplated involvement in Ukraine is the most justifiable example US military (or non-military) intervention since the Gulf War, if not WWII. So, if any congresspeople or administration officials have ideas for how to best safeguard that effort that haven’t been done before or aren’t presently being implemented, I hope they bring those issues to the fore. Because our continued involvement seems inevitable.
Nobody is arguing that these things shouldn't be contemplated and planned for in the appropriate spaces. Openly musing about these things at the moment isn't helpful and comes across a bit tone deaf.
I don't understand the fascination with digging even deeper holes of faulty logic. Immediate nuclear holocaust benefits nobody.
she's a congresswoman who has directly felt the impact of american imperialism. you wrote that like she's your little sister.
You're the one saying that we have to do what we can. What we can do is limited by what serves our interests. Claiming that we ought not to look more than 30 days into the future to determine our interests is a bizarre take.
Even if Ukraine "wins," their economy will be shattered and there will be loads of weapons knocking around. It will be a mess. I don't see a situation like Afghanistan happening, where as soon as the Russians pull out, the rest of the world loses interests. But that is way too many steps down the line considering no one knows what is going to be happening in two weeks. But I hope we got a couple of State Department dorks working on it.
Trump was a public servant (allegedly). It doesn't mean we had to hear every thought that popped into his mush-addled brain every second (even though he decided to grace us with them anyway).
Nobody is claiming that we shouldn't look into the long term impacts. But her tweet reminds me of when you argue with a gun nut after a mass shooting and you say something like, "we should ban high-capacity clips" and then they interrupt you to say, "Actually, it's called a magazine," as if they made some profound point. "I'm not comfortable handing off all these guns to people under attack because who knows what they might do with them!" Okay, so are you saying don't give them guns? If the answer to that is no, then it's just a pointless musing with poor timing.
What kind of nonsense is this "we ought to think about it, she just can't talk about it" line of reasoning?
she literally said we should have some accountability component in the initial tweet instead of no strings attached gifts
That's great. But Congresspeople don't get involved at that granular level. Congress doesn't specifically decide who to hand weapons to on the ground or when or how much. So again, what was the point of even bringing that up right now when the question revolves around whether we should provide arms to the Ukrainians?
no it isn't. that program went on for years and tons of missiles and launchers were unaccounted for at the time.
Guys, Omar isn't going to impact our policy of giving weapons to Ukraine to better kill Russians. So it doesn't actually matter what she tweeted or thinks.
This is certainly true of South America. But Afghanistan, bordered by Iran, Pakistan, and India? It’s all counterfactual so who knows.
She made public statements and I said how I feel about them. I didn’t mean to strike a nerve by speaking plainly. My intent was to make it clear I’m not anti Omar, so caping up is a waste of time. If you want to go on all night about how my feelings are “wrong” knock yourself out.
We're not comfortable delivering them to Ukraine because Nazis are going to take over Europe with them when we're done.
My biggest issue with it is that its a "cover my ass" statement with nothing behind it. You can put all the accountability clauses you want in, but it doesn't mean anything once the weapons are handed over. We aren't going to implement an IMS system to track each weapon by serial number when a country is actively defending itself from a superior force. Throw in her stance on the Russian oil ban from earlier this week and I don't believe she is currently on the right side of this issue.
Who knows? Seems ideally they end up with Ukraine, but letting everyone know where they came doesn't seem in the interests of Poland or the US government.
Seems like the powers that be are still looking for a way to have them magically appear in Ukraine without any sort of receipt.
Ihlan Omar is against means tested aid in the US, but for conditional aid in foreign policy, curious. Spoiler: Source
Do we need a mediator for this little debate we have going on here? That isn’t what Omar or really anyone on here is saying. The way I see it, Omar’s sentiment is in the right place but it’s the wrong conversation to be having right now. The Ukrainian army is still standing and those weapons are being sent in to preserve Ukraine and their army. A verification process at this point in the conflict will only slow down the lethal defense we are sending in and thus increase the odds Russia can basically break the Ukrainian army into factions without a centralized command. If the army falls apart, and we start to outfit a true insurgency with multiple different groups these are more than reasonable questions to be asking. But we aren’t there yet.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-8 This group puts out some of the better strategic info I’ve seen
i get that this is the in-joke to make but it really just shows how dim and binary your position is again, shes someone who felt the impact of these decisions and thinks the overwhelming harm on regular russian citizens far outweighs the upside of the sanctions. research on sanctions against adversaries doesn't even point to her being wrong either. not an unreasonable position.
where is reagan buried again i forget, i like to mark good rest stops on road trips for when i need to take a leak
Or, or, or....it was a timely, topical joke that sheds zero light on my position and you're just being your humorless self.
correct, and it's highly debatable if that works from the standpoint of enacting the political change we desire when dealing with autocracies as well as the inherent inhumanity of harming innocents