Yeah, and even then it would suck to be me.
Heck, I didn’t think he had enough to invade and take Ukraine before this happened and I still don’t. The idiot went ahead and did it anyway.
One big reason is because authoritarianism has been popularizing itself as the answer for the last decade and a bit - with Russia and China leading the way on that. The argument against was always that authoritarian regimes were cruel and ruthless. Modern day Chinese and Russians have been living in fairly good, well managed societies that are (until now) peaceful because the ruling party trusts to “benevolent authoritarianism”. It’s like democracy without all the angst of fighting parties, handicapping itself through infighting, and fomenting division between the people.
If you have a single party and a single boss over everything, the system is far more nimble and capable. They can reorient the economy, move workers around, create great works, all at the drop of a hat - just to make you, the average citizen, feel comfortable and satisfied in life that everything is well managed and all problems are solvable.
But, of course, that sort of requires that they stay benevolent and it’s not clear that there’s anything built into the system to require that. And, likewise, all the problems with democracy are fixed by strengthening the republican (small s) systems that were built into the Constitution to ensure that we’re electing competent and trustworthy people.
Western leaders are getting a bit worried - the systems have been falling apart, with Facebook and populists cranking all the internal conflict up to 11 - and no one wants to campaign for reducing the power of direct democracy. We really are on the edge of going back in time, globally. A few nations in the West might pull through but we’re vastly outnumbered and authoritarianism can be frighteningly nimble.
Lovely, although if I may, I would like to propose the following slight edit to the last line in keeping with the current trends in Russian generals…
But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a Russian Major… BANG! (thud)
I laughed.
“Comrades! We have not lost 20,000 soldiers, as the Nazified Ukraine leadership would have you think!”
“We have only lost 9,861!”
“It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.” (Yossarian)
Edit: I agreed with this when I was 20 and I still agree at 71.
I can’t remember which author said it, nor the exact quote, but it was something to the effect of,
It’s all very well to entrust the reins of the government to the best man for the job, but what do you do if he has a stomach ache?
bear in mind that the first 1-2 weeks they only had about 50% of their boots in Ukr. (the other half sat on the sidelines and sold off their fuel 
) … so now with 100% of them in Ukr. of course the daily KIA numbers are creeping up
My father fought in WW-II,
As a nation it wasn’t in our direct interest to support England. .Europe fell in a very short period.
There was no NATO and we just fought a horrible world war 2 decades prior. .
And yet it was the right thing to do. And it took the combined efforts of many nations to do it and a lot of people died in the process.
The difference is a nation that wants to gobble up other nations which were formerly a part of it. It’s an adversarial situation with the potential to repeat itself across Europe.
They’re being sent some by one nation or another getting Patriot systems to replace them. Romania? Possibly Bulgaria.
I have a friend in the U.K whose brother-in-law is currently fighting in Kyiv, and has other relatives stranded in Warsaw. He pointed me to an interesting development in Belarus where rail workers appear to be sabotaging the lines between Belarus and Ukraine, thus holding up Russian supply routes.
It appears that Russia can’t rely on a totally compliant Belarus for continued support, which gives me a crumb of comfort. Sample article here:
Russia Is Getting [additional] Generals Killed on the Front Lines
This is remarkable, although Ukraine is also suffering substantial battle loses along with the thousands of civilian deaths.
I’m 62 and I am really on the fence, though I’ve stated numerous times on this board that NATO should intervene. But when push comes to shove I honestly don’t know and that’s because I don’t believe that Putin is in any way predictable.
Czech Republic.
I am 64 and I have a lot left to do. However, I think that global warming is going to make the planet very uncomfortable in a very short time. Humanity is on it’s way out, so what does it matter if it’s nukes or drought? Hopefully the next dominate life form will be nicer to the planet.
We aren’t really hearing about their casualties, but they didn’t have the biggest army, and are presumably also being ground down, suffering deaths, injuries, MIAs, and units being shocked into disorganization.
Russia and Japan have been trying to establish a peace treaty ever since World War 2, and Russia announced recently that they have broken off talks with Japan due to Japan’s support for Ukraine. And now Japan has announced that they are monitoring Russian ships traveling between Japanese islands.
With this logic, any time an aggressor has nukes, or even just a lot of power - might as well roll over and let them have what they want. Saddam’s Iraq wants Kuwait in 1990? Hey, let him have it, if we intervene it will just prolong the conflict.
Would you prefer the Ukrainians just…get conquered?
I lived through the cold war. It wasn’t unusual to clash in proxy wars. The Russians supplied MiGs and pilots in the Korean war.
Russian advisors were in N Vietnam. The US did not bomb them. We bombed other areas.
Biden and NATO are making a mistake tiptoeing around Putin. We can and should provide MiGs to Ukraine. The red line is we can’t attack Russian territory. We can’t bomb missile sites in Crimea or Russia. I wouldn’t put NATO pilots in Ukraine.
My father, a Korean War Vet, didn’t often talk about his time there except for funny stories like their still blowing up while they were gone and coming back to a stinky mess.
Once in a while, Dad would get drunk enough to talk about combat. He told me about several pretty nasty battles up with the White Russian (Cossacks) infantry.