Mitch McConell says the quiet part out loud.
Exact full quote from CNN:
“People think, increasingly it appears, that we shouldn’t be doing this. Well, let me start by saying we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” McConnell said. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4085063
And why shouldn’t he?
Not a single lib will change their minds after hearing this.
russia can end this whenever they want by restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity, if they think the US is benefiting so much from it at their expense. The US is just making it much harder for russia to reach its maximalist goals: to conquer Ukraine. One of those is a war crime, the other one is supporting international law.
International law is when you support a government coup to replace the pro-Russia government with a pro-EU/pro-NATO government.
International law is when russia does not annex Crimea because of the unfavourable internal affairs of its neighbour. You know, your power ends at “these” borders and from there to here you can’t threaten the Ukrainian President.
The coup government illegally removed the previous president, so they don’t get to complain when Crimea illegally votes to join Russia.
Yea, well, did you hear about how the President escaped and the Parliament voted to destitute him. And when you invade Crimea to do a mock referendum, that’s awesome international law. Not even Iran and China recognize the annexation of Crimea, because you can’t invade a country and referendum an annexation unilaterally.
Most of the people living in Crimea work for the Russian Black Sea Fleet you dork. They didn’t have to invade Crimea, they already had a huge military instalation there. And no one cares about international law, least of all NATO.
Also Crimea has been trying to get autonomy or leave Ukraine for thirty years.
The parliament had no constitutional authority to vote to expell him without an impeachment hearing, which he never got. It was an illegal move.
The referendum in Crimea is as legitimate as the acting president of Ukraine.
And tankies love it when America invades another country because that country didn’t democracy correctly.
I don’t support Russia invading, just so we’re clear. I can just see the rational progression of events from A to Z
Why do you think Russia invaded? Cuz Russia bad? lol
Ukraine is literally on Russia’s boarder, and Russia is not even a regional empire - it’s a jumped up gas station. Russia is vulnerable and knows it, so it lashes out like any animal backed into a corner. Now we have another forever war, this time in Europe.
Ah yes, the revolution to overthrow the Russian puppet who gave the government dictatorial powers so that it could arrest anyone they wanted for years at a time without a trial, was a bad thing.
I think they just should’ve accepted their fate while their country became a dictatorial hell hole.
Bro, you’re just straight up evil.
Revolutions are illegal 🙄
The US isn’t making it much harder, it’s making it pay.
Indeed, making russia pay for trying to conquer a sovereign country by helping that country defend itself.
This is a little ahistorical.
Wouldn’t happen if you didn’t try to conquer countries
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
Alright but what would guarantee Russia’s safety after they do that? It’s obviously not in their interest. What they want is to negotiate a peace treaty, which is why they are holding their defense line so strongly until their opponents are exhausted.
Who the fuck is threatening russia? It’s all imagined bullshit.
If a coup happened tomorrow in Canada and the new government was suddenly allying itself with China and asking for Chinese military bases to be placed along the border with the US I guarantee that America would invade Canada within the year to “protect itself” against the “Chinese invasion.”
When you’re a country on the other side of the world and you’re trying to put troops in place to surround a country you’ve arbitrarily decided is your “enemy” then that’s a clear, open threat.
Would you have believed Russia saying that their troop buildup on the border of Ukraine in 2021 was “defensive?” If not why would you expect Russia to believe the same of nato? Russia at the time was claiming there was no intent to invade, just like NATO does.
Russia has a long history of invading its European neighbors and an unabashed imperial ambition (pathetic shithole though it is). When was the last time a nato country attacked russia? Edit: you gonna answer the question, or just downvote like a bitch?
The US already had bases closer to Moscow and St. Petersburg than Ukraine! As soon as Russia invaded Crimea, the US stationed a shitload of troops in the Baltic states that are part of NATO. Every part of Ukraine’s further from Russia’s center of power as compared to the deployments of Operation Atlantic Resolve.
There’s not a damn thing that Ukraine would do to benefit the US militarily other than securing non-Russian nuclear plants to provide power to the EU. Russia is going after a war of retribution and hydrocarbon imperialism for leaving it’s sphere of influence.
You forgot the part where the Us first needs to annex Quebec a few years earlier.
Nuclear Arms. The ones they accepted from Ukraine in return for security guarantees. Which they violated when they took Crimea already.
How on your mind do you think attacking Ukraine guaranteed their security? Like how was that a “oh this will make us more secure move” By driving all other Neighbors into NAtOs nuclear shields ?
That’s big brain energy right now. I’m afraid of the entire neighborhood, especially the guy next door who gave me their shotgun in exchange for safety 2 decades ago , let me rape their wife and abduct their children and annex their house, that’ll show the neighborhood, especially if I manage to show that I barely can take the front lawn before getting spanked.
What I heard were rumors that the “UN” could sort of hold Ukraine’s occupied territories “in escrow” as a DMZ buffer, but it’s not a final solution (we know how these handovers have turned sour in the past), because eventually you’d have to divide it, or create a new country…the essential is that russia does not get rewarded for its aggression with territory to brag about in the history books and that there is no chance that any native pro-russian Ukrainian in the buffer zone suffers reprisals…
those territories are independent republics that have been embroiled in a civil war with Kyiv for 9 years. Ukraine’s fascist factions within the military have been shelling those republics in violation of multiple peace treaties that have been signed over the past 9 years. securing the independence of those regions is Russia’s entire pretext for invading - in response to requests for military aid from said republics.
They aren’t independent republics anymore, they’ve been annexed by the Russian Federation
sure but forgetting the historical context just provides justification for NATO aggression
Sure, I just thought it was a difference worth noting
I could even imagine a scenario where if they had become independent republics, russia parked tanks there and said: “peace now”, it could have worked, but Putin got greedy. Then to pile on the catastrophic stubbornness, russia annexed parts of them, plus parts of 2 other oblasts in mock referendums that nobody recognizes. There is no defense, it’s a land grab and a clumsy one at that.
can you see how if you were living in those cities and multiple peace treaties were violated, that you might prefer joining the larger power that speaks your language to remaining at the mercy of death squads that howl for your blood?
If you speak russian and you want to move to russia and you like daddy putin’s policies, you always could join Russia: they’ll give you a passport and welcome you with open arms, nobody is stopping you, they have plenty of space and can use the manpower.
why is “leave the place you and yours have lived for countless generations” a preferable option to you? would you see it the same way if this were the choice offered to your city?
The UN was absolutely useless at peacekeeping in Ukraine from 2014-2022. Why would they suddenly become competent now? Ukraine would just keep shelling those territories (now with cluster munitions) and would invade them if Russia pulled it’s military back.
And if you try and say that Ukraine wouldn’t dare do that because it would be against “international law” I’ll remind you that Ukraine had absolutely no problem violating the Minsk Agreements. Ukraine just kept violating those agreements by shelling the Donbas for 8 years without suffering any consequences until Russia invaded.
Oh my god, nobody gives a fuck about international law. It’s a meaningless term used to sling attacks at your geopolitical enemies. Just look at Guantanamo bay, where Americans are torturing people that have never even faced a military tribunal for over two decades! In an illegal occupation of Cuban land!
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Yea, like Sevastopol
Yes, the brutal hard truth is if your country is neighbor to a much more powerful country than you will be forced to make concessions to that country. Else you will get couped, invaded, have your leaders assisted or be put under crippling economic blockades. Russia sucks but any state in the world would do the same to prevent giving their enemies an easy point of invasion
Cool, rule by the strong and powerful, acquiescence by the weak is a great take by a leftist, but whatever, I don’t care, I’m done here, please stop writing.
I’m not saying any of this is good. It is reality however
Are liberals generally opposed to supporting Ukraine? What opinion are they not going to change?
Because the reasons to support Ukraine are supposed to be noble and not completely self-interested. That’s why there is popular support for it. McConnell admitting that it’s about funneling money into the military industrial complex, at least in part, ought to make at least some people reconsider their assumptions
Ah I see now. It’s about the motivations behind the support. Thanks for the insight!
It’s actually quite interesting. Personally, I try to remain neutral on politics but I’m definitely fed a left-leaning social media diet. Within that content, the general reason to support Ukraine is still self centered. “Go beat up the Russian military because they’re the bad guys and our cost is super low.” The nobility of this support feels like a happy side effect. But the really interesting part is that “funneling money into the military industrial complex” simply isn’t focused at all. This is the first time I’ve considered that aspect.
You don’t need to go super far left to find convincing arguments against US foreign policy. Noam Chomsky is a mainstream intellectual after all, and he coined the phrase “consent manufacturing”.
The idea that the US acts in total self interest should be presumed true in all cases, but that doesn’t on its own defeat the idea that its intervention in Ukraine is good. The logical next step is to ask ourselves whether this intervention ever had any chance of changing the outcome of the conflict at all. If it didn’t, and most people here would agree that it didn’t, then the US’ involvement amounts to wartime profiteering at the cost of human lives.
edit: I should also add, there’s good reason to believe that NATO expansion is what caused the conflict, and that the west did this in spite of clear and explicit warnings from Russia
Yeah… About that. There is no neutrality in politics.
Why don’t you go look up what the US and Saudi did to Yemen over the last decade and decide how you feel about sitting on that fence.
They’re not beating up the Russian military. They’re fertilizing the fields of Ukraine that the Rada is going to sell to Blackrock. There’s nothing noble about this. NATO pushed and pushed and pushed until the RF took the bait, and now they’re bleeding the RF using Ukrainians because they don’t give a shit about Ukrainians. Christ this is so frustrating ISTG if people would just read Sun Tzu they’d understand everything and we wouldn’t need to have these absurd conversations over and over.
Opposed? Liberals are fully on board with endless war in Ukraine. It’s a bipartisan consensus.
This thread is evidence of it. The quiet part gets shouted and rather than accepting that this is what MLs have been saying for two years, the libs are doubling down. Will they now accept the truth behind the quip, ‘To the last Ukrainian?’ Not a chance. Oblivious.
Ya that’s my understanding was well. Which is why I asked the question.
Your question was: Are liberals generally opposed to supporting Ukraine?
The answer is no. I dunno what to tell you.
Liberals are just as bloodthirsty as their fashy counterparts, they just need to have their own slightly different words for why it is okay.
It took like 6 months for mainstream liberals to feel 100% comfortable thinking of Russians as subhuman monsters deserving of any and all violence, dredging up old-school orientalist tropes, and celebrating snuff videos, making special exception for them so long as they are accompanied by a little story about how it’s happening to Russians. A random Russian civilian got attacked by a shark in Egypy and liberals were rah-rahing for the shark.
Liberals will be pro-war until their corporate masters tell them not to be. Then, like with Iraq, they might pretend they werw anti-war the whole time.
I thought he was pandering to them.
Next maybe he’ll admit that all of the conditions being placed on the weapons are to protract the war and its profits. Or that the US didn’t support Ukraine materially at first because they didn’t want to sour business relations with the projected winner.
The US would be a lot more believable as the global ‘good guy’ if its actions were consistent. Instead its all obfuscation and gas lighting, even when they actually seem to be doing something right. Not very trust-inspiring imo.