Well where was the US when the 'Amr ibn al-'As and his 4,000 invaded Egypt?Or when Abu Bakr and Umar conquered Syria?
Knock it off.
This is not The BBQ Pit.
[ /Moderating ]
That said, Marmite Lover, you are out of line hijacking this thread to be one more rant against Israel with its anti-semitic underpinnings.
Drop it or take it back to one of the other threads where you have tried to make that point.
[ /Moderating ]
What? The word “Benghazi”?
I think the United States needs to stay out of it.
How are we in any way ‘in’ it? As far as I know, the only thing the US has done thus far is mouth some stuff about the will of the Ukrainian people. This is really the Europeans fight…and the Russians. We have little, if anything to do with all of this or with whatever eventually plays out.
Several things OP:
[ol]
[li]Thanks to Hitler and that group of assholes formerly known as the Nazis, there are relatively few Jews remaining in Ukraine. Most of those who survived the Second World War have already emigrated to Israel or elsehwere[/li][li]For cultural and historical reasons, it’s doubtful that the Muslim population of Ukraine will ever rise above a tiny fraction.[/li][li]The situation in Ukraine will almost certainly fizzle out like the similar situations n Georgia, Armenia and Azebijan. Eastern Europe and the Trans-Caucasus experience unrest on a yearly basis and most of it never rises to more than the occasional pogrom. After that’s over, things go back to relative “normalcy.”[/li][li]The West has limited influence in Ukraine, so there’s little it can do besides wait and see what happens. Fortunately, the country didn’t join NATO when BUsh was pushing for its expansion or we actually would HAVE to do something other than that,[/li][/ol]
While this makes for great news on a slow news day, ultimately things will settle down and people will go on about their lives. No civil war and not much to “see” here, people.
New elections will be May 25. If the interim “Unity Government” can form as planned and hold things together until then, I think the crisis is over.
Might they be wanting to join it now, I wonder.
Now if something like this could only happen in Belarus . . .
How prominent is their kind of hypernationalism in the Ukraine, though?
Oh, c’mon! You didn’t know they were in cahoots all along?!
Nationalists and radicals who represent Ukraine’s minority are well grounded and from the start of Euromaidan they wanted to get power by force and turn Ukraine into the new Reich for the Ukrainian nation. These radicals tricked authorities because they forced them to sign an agreement and make concessions while opposition itself continues provocations and extreme violence. Opposition’s actions already pushed Ukraine towards economic collapse and devastation and now Ukraine is going deeper and deeper. Opposition wants to hold presidential elections in May but the east part of Ukraine do not support nationalists and likely will boycott the elections because no matter who wins it will be representative of radicals so things won’t be right. I guess it would be great to divide Ukraine into two parts - the west for radicals who can do whatever they like and play their dirty games there, while the east will be a place for people who don’t want to live under the authority of Nazis.
Again, even the ones you are calling Nazis claim that moving towards the European union is evil for them and they are going to oppose it, The parliament is not paying attention to them, even the majority of the party of the deposed president agrees to move forward.
I see that Western leaders are busy issuing grim warnings to the Russians not to intervene (as if the West hasn’t been doing just that for a long time). But what exactly could we do if Putin sent Russian troops in to ‘protect’ those in the Eastern provinces who lean towards Russia, and perhaps engineer a de facto partitioning of the country? McCain in particular should learn that you don’t talk tough unless you can back it up and the option to lob a few missiles at them to show our displeasure isn’t available with Russia (unless you’re insane, of course).
There aren’t that many options. I am sure Obama will give a very stern speech. And it’s too late to boycott the Olympics.
Nah, there’s a lot more on the table than that. The political and diplomatic backlash from the EU and the US would be pretty immense, albeit largely behind the curtain. I realize that many people don’t consider those sort of repercussions to be “real,” but they very much are. And that’s excluding the potential for a proxy war.
There’s a lot more than simply “Will the US bomb us?” that would have to go into Putin’s decision about whether such a move would be worthwhile.
Looking at those pictures, if I were Obama, I’d be pissed. We don’t give him his own ship to play on or his own personal zoo! Richest country in the world should be able to treat our president at least as good as Ukraine does.
So… Any reasons why a peaceful partition of the country would not be a good solution to its woes?
The Western-leaning, Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians get their own country - called either “Ukraine” or “Western Ukraine” or whatever - which is promptly made a member of the EU (hurray! welcome!); while the Russian-leaning, Russian-speaking Ukrainians either get their own country, with close cultural, political and economic ties to Russia, or actually becomes part of Russia (hurray! welcome!), as its latest raion or okrug or oblast or whatchamacallit.
Everybody gets what they want, and all is well in the jungle…?
The current problem is Crimea - the eastern portions of Ukraine are not, as of yet, clamoring to be included in Russia.
The history of the area is unfortunate as well here. Crimea had a whole different population before WW2. During the war, the Soviets ethnically cleansed Crimea and deported/murdered its population. The current inhabitants are majority Russian, and look to Russia as their protector, because they are Russians moved there by Russia to replace the former inhabitants.
The issue is complicated because Crimea is the location of Russia’s Black Seas naval installations (on long-term lease) - thus of strategic importance to Russia.