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Ukraine: It’s starting…


Ser Scot A Ellison

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5 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

Yes, Obama didn't enjoy the kind of landscape that...uh...had Republicans actively saying how Russia should be able to do whatever it wanted? 

I'm not sure domestically that this argument holds even remote water. Right now Putin has a higher approval among Republicans than Biden does.

First, you're glaringly misinterpreting the "support" Putin has among Trumpists with how the GOP on the Hill has predominately deferred to Biden -- literally saying as much last week.  Second, again, you're missing the context of 2014 which also included Obama fighting a whole other front with the GOP on Iran sanctions.  Third, you're forgetting that while much of the GOP did attack Obama from a hawkish position on sanctions, the end result was in large part if not almost entirely what they were pushing for.

This framing of Obama strongly suggests you weren't paying attention to what was going on in DC in 2014.  I'd say you could ask the Obama officials that drove these decisions at the time, but a lot of them like Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, hell even Jen Psaki, etc. are pretty busy right now.

16 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

We have Obama's reaction to Syria's crossing the red line. We have his reaction to Russia actually attacking the election in the US and doing basically nothing.

I've always disagreed with Obama on the Syria thing but he raised the alarm on Russia and the election as much as he could - or importantly should - have.  Criticizing him for that is further Captain Hindsight horseshit.

17 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

Regardless of what your view is, the prevailing view of his advisors, his cabinet, his VP was that Obama did not do enough

This, also, is horseshit.  I mean sure there's Gates and Panetta, but, well, I'm perfectly happy with Obama not being as hawkish as Gates and Panetta.

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2 minutes ago, DMC said:

This framing of Obama strongly suggests you weren't paying attention to what was going on in DC in 2014.  I'd say you could ask the Obama officials that drove these decisions at the time, but a lot of them like Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, hell even Jen Psaki, etc. are pretty busy right now.

Tony Blinken was one of the ones quoted as saying that Obama was too soft on Russia in 2014.

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

I've always disagreed with Obama on the Syria thing but he raised the alarm on Russia and the election as much as he could - or importantly should - have.  Criticizing him for that is further Captain Hindsight horseshit.

And I disagreed then and disagree now. Obama chose not to do anything because he was worried that he would be seen as potentially attempting to 'rig' the election in Clinton's favor, and he assumed Clinton could take care of it once she took office. Once that didn't happen he scrambled to do something agaiinst Russia in the lame duck period, but by then it was far too late. 

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

This, also, is horseshit.  I mean sure there's Gates and Panetta, but, well, I'm perfectly happy with Obama not being as hawkish as Gates and Panetta.

And Blinken, and Biden, and Brennan, and...

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15 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

In the 2012 Presidential debates Obama said "the 80s want their foreign policy back" or something to that effect when Romney said Russia was our biggest enemy.  

Romney originally said Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe.  It got bogged down into a lot of equivocation and clarification on both sides afterwards, but Russia wasn't our biggest geopolitical foe then and it isn't even today.

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17 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

In the 2012 Presidential debates Obama said "the 80s want their foreign policy back" or something to that effect when Romney said Russia was our biggest enemy.  

And to be clear, Russia is not our biggest enemy or the biggest consideration, but I also think that Obama did not consider Russia to be a significant future threat.

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And on that "Obama dealing with Republicans" talking point - not so much:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/08/07/why-arming-ukraine-is-a-bad-idea/

At the time, Republicans wanted to arm Ukraine. Obama refused. I don't see how his going along with Republicans on this would have been any harder than him choosing not to.

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1 minute ago, Kalibuster said:

Tony Blinken was one of the ones quoted as saying that Obama was too soft on Russia in 2014.

In hindsight, sure!  He also was one of - if not the - key administration officials that helped craft Obama's response to Russia in 2014, so...yeah.

3 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

And Blinken, and Biden, and Brennan, and...

Please cite these quotes where Blinken and Biden are portraying Obama as feckless on Russia in 2014.  As for Brennan, see Gates and Panetta.

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Just now, DMC said:

In hindsight, sure!  He also was one of - if not the - key administration officials that helped craft Obama's response to Russia in 2014, so...yeah.

So...he admits that he made a mistake and that he should have been stronger. Which is my point!

Just now, DMC said:

Please cite these quotes where Blinken and Biden are portraying Obama as feckless on Russia in 2014.  As for Brennan, see Gates and Panetta.

I did; see above. You chose not to read the articles, so that's on you.

 

3 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Yeah I dunno about taking anything John Brennan says about how the US needed to be more aggressive seriously.

But fwiw I do remember Kal calling for Obama to have retaliated against Russia as soon as the Mueller report came out.  

A bit earlier than that, actually. I had known for quite a bit of time some of the stuff Russia actually did. The Mueller report revealed a lot of it, but not all of it. It's still remarkable how little we ended up doing and continue to not do. 

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Meanwhile, in terms of why the timing? Because Trump isn't in office, and when Trump was in office he was giving Putin everything he wanted. Now he's openly praising Putin for this invasion.

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

So...he admits that he made a mistake and that he should have been stronger. Which is my point!

Which means he thought he should have done things differently in hindsight.  Which is my point!

5 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

I did; see above. You chose not to read the articles, so that's on you.

I read the CNN article you cited.  There were literally no quotes attributed to Biden or Blinken.  Not gonna waste one of my clicks for WaPo on that article.  Again, please cite.

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26 minutes ago, DMC said:

Romney originally said Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe.  It got bogged down into a lot of equivocation and clarification on both sides afterwards, but Russia wasn't our biggest geopolitical foe then and it isn't even today.

It is clearly… clearly… a force to be worried about and dealt with.  Blythely calling that a past problem seems very short sighted gived the current situation.

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2 minutes ago, DMC said:

Which means he thought he should have done things differently in hindsight.  Which is my point!

I don't know why this is a disagreement. Hindsight saying that they should have done more and were too weak is entirely my point. I'm sure that at the time I thought Obama was fairly reasonable on Ukraine because I probably wasn't paying crazy amounts of attention to it, but it's definitely the case that a whole lot of people - Biden among them - thought it was too weak. 

And as it turned out, it was WAY too weak. 

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

I read the CNN article you cited.  There were literally no quotes attributed to Biden or Blinken.  Not gonna waste one of my clicks for WaPo on that article.  Again, please cite.

Blinken, one year out of his time with Obama. Hopefully you have clicks for Frontline.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/antony-blinken/

 

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2 hours ago, Kalibuster said:

For anyone not from the usa thats horrible, i didnt know about the two war doctrine, but maybe the rest of the world would be better with china as the dominant superpower. i dont say russia cuz it very much seems like they want a usa type of dominance.

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1 minute ago, Conflicting Thought said:

For anyone not from the usa thats horrible, i didnt know about the two war doctrine, but maybe the rest of the world would be better with china as the dominant superpower. i dont say russia cuz it very much seems like they want a usa type of dominance.

The Uyghurs of Xinjiang are likely to disagree with your assessment of the… benevolence… of China.

:|

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4 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

For anyone not from the usa thats horrible, i didnt know about the two war doctrine, but maybe the rest of the world would be better with china as the dominant superpower. i dont say russia cuz it very much seems like they want a usa type of dominance.

No. Why do you thing China would be any more benevolent if they became the world hegemon?

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