Literally no one in this thread except for you has used either of these terms or has made any comparable accusation.
Stranger
It’s not “complete surrender” like we had in WWII. In this context surrender only means “Russia leaves Ukraine.” We can (and should) go after war crimes, but Putin himself will not be in any danger from that unless he vacations abroad.
To @Sam_Stone and anyone else saying that we need to prevent World War III, the problem is that we can’t prevent World War III. If Putin wants to launch nukes, he will, and we can’t stop him. If he launches nukes, it won’t be because we provoked him; it’ll be solely and entirely because he decided to do so.
I don’t think @Sam_Stone is an appeaser or peacenik, but I do think that he is predisposed to be critical of whatever foreign policy decisions a Democrat White House would make.
There is no easy choice to be made here, but whatever is decided will be ripe for second guessing.
I assumed the Neville Chamberlain 'Peace in Our Time" picture was aimed at me.
Huh? He’ll either do it or not, and we’re just spectators? We can"t influence that decision in any way?
I have fully supported everything this administration has done in Ukraine up to the point where they started threatening war crimes tribunals and putting America front and center in the war. I think it’s a mistake to turn this into Putin vs America, and it’s exactly what Putin wants to scare the people at home into believing that the war is an existential threat to them.
I have had no problem with the arms and financial aid. I have much bigger problems with many on the right over this. The pro-Putin talking points coming from some of them is nauseating, and also plays into Putin’s hands.
If you are not endorsing,
1. Kiev makes a deal to allow Russia to keep some small gains and promises not to join NATO in exchange for peace.
(which I don’t think you are) then how could it be aimed at you?
If Putin is subject to rational incentives, then he already won’t launch nukes. To even ask the question is to presume that he’s not responding to rational incentives.
Further, if he were to nuke anyone, presumably it would be Kyiv. And yet, the Ukrainians think that all of those things that might putatively “provoke” Putin are all worth the risk.
You may assume what you please but @crowmanyclouds’ post in no way indicated a specific reference to you or anyone and was a general observation that appeasement to aggressive autocrats is not successful in preventing war. And again, literally nobody responding to this thread used the terms “peacenik” or “appeaser” except you.
Neither of these claims are strictly true. The statements made by Vice President Harris (and previously by President Biden) have suggested that Putin should be held to account for the war crimes committed by Russian troops in this invasion but neither has ever discussed tribunals or any other legal proceedings. America is only “front and center” in the sense of being a first-among-equals member of NATO but can hardly be described as being the most aggressive in defense of Ukraine, and in fact the reluctance of the United States to more openly support sending advanced military weapons to Ukraine has been a bit of a sticking point among several of the NATO Alliance members who feel more immediately threatened by Putin’s aggression.
Stranger
This isn’t quite accurate. A minimal search shows:
But to be fair, I’ll let you post where you mentioned your support for the current administration’s foreign policies.
Nothing in there singles out Putin, and the remainder of what I quoted indicates that it would be difficult if not impossible to bring anyone on the Russian side to trial. So your contention that Putin will feel desperate enough to launch nukes seems…bizarre.
I did use the term Russia appeaser to describe many on the right in reference to this conflict, but did not so characterize Sam.
- Russia remove all its armed forces from Ukraine’s territory to include withdrawing from the Crimea.
- Putin resign as president of the Russian federation and submit to trial for his war crimes.
I’d be interested in your take on the Canadian approach to all this. Your country doesn’t want war crimes punished?
“You will be held to account” could mean all sorts of things. It could mean trial by the US, or by an international tribunal… or it could mean “by the history books”, or that karma will come due, or that some usurper will sense weakness and overthrow him, or that he’ll go to Hell at the Last Judgement.
I’d like the kidnapped children and adults returned. That’s a big condition for me.
Withdraw to pre-2014 borders.
Pay reparations on a schedule.
Signigicant demilitarization zone established.
Russians deal with Putin.
Sanctions decrease as reparations are made.
I was talking about the administration’s support for the war. What I disagreed with in that post was the decision to waive sanctions in order to allow Nordstream 2. I said I opposed that in this very thread. I also said that his ‘limited excursion might be okay’ talk was helping to trigger a war.
In other words, I was criticising him for appeasing Putin, giving him leverage over Western Europe, and for hinting that America might look the other way if Putin did just a little bit of invading. In my opinion, which I still hold, Biden was making war more likely, not less, at that time.
When the war actually started and the Biden administration committed to helping Ukraine, I supported it fully. But yes, waiving sanctions to allow Nordstream 2 to go ahead was a bad mistake which made war more likely, as was the tepid answer to the threat of an invasion - the kind of ambiguous answer April Glaspie gave Saddam Hussein, which convinced him America wasn’t interested in defending Kuwait.
Does anyone now think that allowing Nordstream 2 was a good idea?
I’m sure that’s what Putin wants the Russian people to think. Putin’s problem is that it isn’t true. As counter examples, consider some US presidents who in a certain sense could be said to have been defeated by a country the United States was at war with. LBJ was basically defeated by the North Vietnamese. Jimmy Carter by Iran. John McCain by Afghanistan and Iraq. None of those losses were existential threats to the United States. Putin losing the presidency of Russia is similarly not an existential threat to Russia as a nation. Putin knows that, and my guess is that this is the reason he hasn’t given the order to launch the nukes.
…what timeline are you posting from?
When it’s prefaced with a claim of war crimes, “You will be held accountable” is pretty clear. It may not mean swinging fro ,a rope, but the idea that she might have meant “One day Karma will get you,” or “The history books will not be kind to you” is a real stretch. It was a threat and a promise to make ‘those responsible’ pay for war crimes after the war. The only payment I kmow of for genocide or the mass slaughter of civilians is execution.
Whether they actually will or not is another question, but it was certainly delivered as a threat. Or more likely, it was delivered as red meat to a base that wants Putin punished any way possible. If so, they should have paid more attention to how that would be received by the Kremlin.
I don’t recall you ever supporting a foreign policy decision made by a Democratic White House. Perhaps you could link to a post of yours where you do?