# US Aid to Ukraine **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** ukraine-invasion\ **Created:** [October 2, 2022, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624 "2022-10-02T22:36:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/61 "2022-10-04T17:13:23Z")
If I came across as promoting that viewpoint, it was unintentional. When I said the US has had a hand, it meant exactly that. I never said the US created this war. My entire post addressed a much stronger case for the US using this conflict to display power. Quote that too next time please, instead of addressing one paragraph, before calling it weak. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/62 "2022-10-04T17:20:52Z")
> [@WellHelloThere](#): > > When I said the US has had a hand, it meant exactly that. I never said that the US created the war Those two are functionally synonyms in the minds of most. Having a hand in something = having some level of responsibility for something. The U.S. has no levels of responsibility in Russia fighting this war, except in the minds of some Russian paranoiacs (“NATO and the US are seeking to encircle us so they can eventually destroy Mother Russia!”). The U.S. does have a rooting side, both for moral reasons (to oppose unjust aggression) and geopolitical realpolitik (a weakened Russian military is a better Russian military as long as Putin is in charge). But the U.S. did not “have a hand” in creating or starting this war. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/63 "2022-10-04T17:22:34Z")
> [@WellHelloThere](#): > > When I said the US has had a hand, it meant exactly that. I never said the US created this war. In the thread title you explicitly ask if the “US is to blame for Russia’s invasion”. To me that means that if the US had not acted the way it did the invasion would not have happened. You can’t “blame” someone for something that would have happened no matter how they acted. ---
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/64 "2022-10-04T17:22:45Z")
This is getting silly, but what I said was that the US had a hand in creating the situation. Russians fleeing Russia, that situation. ---
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/65 "2022-10-04T17:24:03Z")
I didn’t start any thread with that title ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/66 "2022-10-04T17:26:04Z")
OK, I missed that this was a mod generated spinoff from another thread. ---
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/67 "2022-10-04T17:26:56Z")
That explains the wild accusations, and not just from you. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/68 "2022-10-04T17:34:20Z")
> [@WellHelloThere](#): > > what I said was that the US had a hand in creating the situation. Russians fleeing Russia, that situation. Yeah, but it didn’t 😉. Russians are fleeing Russia because they don’t want to get drafted into a war Russia started out of sheer irredentist aggression. The United States literally had fuck all to do with Putin’s adventurism, except as I said in the minds of a certain breed of Russian conspiracy theorists. If you’re arguing for instance that U.S. material support for Ukraine is keeping Russia from winning the war, which in turn is forcing them to draft Russians, which in turn is creating a refugee flood - well, that’s just a bad argument. Russian response to not being able to win a quick war should be to acknowledge defeat and sign a peace treaty surrendering every shred of Ukrainian territory back to Ukraine as established in 1991. I’m quite fine with the U.S. taking as many Russian refugees as it can, but that’s just morality. It has zero to do with responsibility. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/69 "2022-10-04T17:41:17Z")
> [@WellHelloThere](#): > > It showcases US intelligence capability I think that’s the wrong way to think about it. You can get intelligence through open means (satellite images, Internet posts, etc.), electric means (wiretaps, etc.), and through human sources. The US is probably strong in the former two but it’s probably the third that matters the most. Developing sources requires handlers and those have to be allocated around the entire world. There’s only so many people who can do it and, probably, they’re less effective when they look foreign because people can’t be seen with them. Ultimately, we’re going to be strong in places that we target and where we have a lot of people who can fit in, in that locale. Russia, yes, North Korea, no because we stick out like a sore thumb. Macedonia also probably not, but mostly because we’re not interested in them. But, also, people can sometimes just send you stuff. Work all day to develop sources and it might not really matter if people just send you info on their own. There’s every chance that someone in Russia outed Putin, of their own free will, just to try and stop the madness in advance. ---
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/70 "2022-10-04T17:44:34Z")
But the announcement of it, for the entire world to see? Absolute power move ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/71 "2022-10-04T17:45:44Z")
I have only noticed one wild accusation in this thread. Putin as Oliver Hardy-“_Now_ look what you made me do!” Ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/72 "2022-10-04T17:47:50Z")
> [@WellHelloThere](#): > > But the announcement of it, for the entire world to see? Gee, there was a way to release the information to just _part_ of the world? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/73 "2022-10-04T17:49:16Z")
> [@WellHelloThere](#): > > Absolute power move Knowing that an invasion was imminent and keeping it a secret would have been an absolute dick move. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/74 "2022-10-04T17:49:33Z")
How so? Anyone with half a brain could see what Russia was up to. ---
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/75 "2022-10-04T17:51:44Z")
Not really. Nations perform military exercises all the time. The US declaring that it was an impending invasion was absolutely deliberate. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/76 "2022-10-04T17:54:15Z")
Just to add to the pile on: > [@WellHelloThere](#): > > The next step, providing Ukraine with US and NATO armaments showed the absolute superiority of NATO to Russia. This isn’t really true, either. If NATO really wanted to show its absolute superiority, this would have been over in a month. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/77 "2022-10-04T17:57:08Z")
So you would have the U.S. lie, either overtly or by omission, and Putin would have conducted a simple “military exercise” and then taken his troops home? ---
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/78 "2022-10-04T17:57:40Z")
There were considerations to me made about providing too much aid. Lest the Russians take it as a provacation. The goal was to wear them down with out providing so much that it would make them afraid that they might lose. ---
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/79 "2022-10-04T17:58:33Z")
No I am just saying things that happened ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624/80 "2022-10-04T17:59:24Z")
Are you perhaps saying them in another thread? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-aid-to-ukraine/972624.md?page=5)