People in Britain who think they are governed by fools should take a closer look at the Russian and US presidents. Vladimir Putin is systematically ruining his country. His war of choice in Ukraine is an economic, financial, geopolitical and human calamity for Russia that worsens by the day. For his own murky reasons, Donald Trump, another national menace, offered him a lifeline last week. Yet Putin spurned it. These two fools deserve each other.
On the table in Moscow was a “peace” deal that, broadly speaking, rewarded Russia’s aggression by handing over large chunks of Ukrainian land, compromised Kyiv’s independence and weakened its defences against any future attack. The Trump deal, if forced through, would have split the US and Europe; ruptured Nato, perhaps fatally; reprieved Russia’s pariah economy; and probably toppled Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government.
These are key Russian war aims. But Putin, suffering from neo-imperial fantasies and legacy issues, said “no”. He reckons he can get it all, and more, by fighting on. He has persuaded the idiot Trump that Russia’s victory is inevitable – and that scheming Europeans are the real warmongers. Yet his premise is fundamentally flawed. Hard facts confound him. Almost four years on, he’s still trapped in Donbas mud and ice. And at home, things fall apart.
This is what happened in the US with Iraq and Afghanistan, arguably similar forever-wars instigated to benefit a few. But holy fuck, it took nearly two decades.
I don’t know about that, I wasn’t hearing too many calls to end the over the number of soldiers being killed. Casualties were fairly low in the 9/11 wars, compared to Vietnam, which had 55,000 deaths in about a decade.
Calls to end the war over the high body count were much, MUCH, louder in the Vietnam era, to the point that it became a political liability beyond the young protesters. That’s why they finally abolished the draft, then probably would have left soon anyway, if they hadn’t been chased out by the North Vietnamese.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, there seemed to be more outrage over the amount of money that was being wasted to keep a war going with no real agenda or final objective. After a while it gets hard for Republicans to complain about the National Debt when they are wasting trillions of dollars on wars over nothing.