I think we can safely stipulate that invasions of peaceful nations are unethical, no? Also…
1. Fatuous headline of the year: The New York Times has a headline on its front page that reads, “Russians Wake Up To Discover They Didn’t Really Know Putin.” The man was KGB. He has kept himself in power for 22 years. He has imprisoned some political opponents and had others murdered. He had Russia invade the Crimea once it was clear that Barack Obama was all talk. The Russian forces have been massing on the Ukraine border for weeks. How stupid does the Times think the Russians are? How stupid does it think its readers are?
2. What good is the U.N.? Wasn’t this kind of invasion exactly what the United Nations was created to prevent? President Trump was excoriated for reducing U.S. support for the U.N., and branding is as virtually useless except to bash the U.S. He was right, and this crisis proves it.
3. Speaking of useless...American demonstrations against Russia’s move on the Ukraine are the epitome of grandstanding and virtue signaling. Morons. If they are so concerned about foreign aggression, they should have elected a President who wasn’t weak, feckless and, like Obama, all talk. Have they started singing “Give Peace A Chance” yet? That might work.
4. Why wouldn’t China take Taiwan now? It knows that the Biden Administration has neither the fortitude nor the means to do anything about it.
5. It’s all Trump’s fault! This is creative: The Times condemns Trump for “praising Putin:
He is “pretty smart,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday at a Florida fund-raiser, assessing the impending invasion like a real estate deal. “He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” he said, “taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people — and just walking right in.”
Historians called the remarks unprecedented. “The idea that a former president would praise the man or leadership who American troops are even now traveling to confront and contain,” said Jeffrey Engel, a presidential historian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, “is astounding.”
What historians, other than the established Trump-bashers? What is Trump supposed to say, “Putin is a weasel-faced stinky pants”? Of course he’s smart. And Trump is saying that he rolled Biden, which is true.
6. Meanwhile, Trump went on Fox News with Laura Ingraham to opine about the invasion when he obviously didn’t know what he was talking about. But that’s our Donald: irresponsible, impulsive. On the other hand, The Washington Post criticizes him for being “out of the loop.” Of course he’s out of the loop: he’s not part of the government any more.
Ethics Alarms 
From what I can tell in the midst of all the pro’s and con’s of the Russian vs Ukraine propaganda, Putin has intentionally violated international law by invading Ukraine. This is what Putin just told the world in a nut shell…
This is a turning point for international law regarding war and if the world doesn’t take this very violation of international law very seriously and respond forcefully international law will completely loose its teeth and chaos will ensue.
Arrgh, a double tap on the letter “o”; it’s lose NOT loose.
I saw that they still hadn’t cut Russia off from the SWIFT international banking system, saying they were holding that “as a last resort.” Well, the tanks are advancing on Kyiv. What are you waiting for that would finally cross that line? If a ground invasion isn’t enough to justify cutting them off from banking services what would be? Bouncy castles?
Biden was nowhere to be seen while the tanks were rolling into Ukraine. When he finally got out of bed yesterday, all he said was that the sanctions were never expected to stop Putin from invading. What exactly was the purpose then?? Biden foreign policy is an incompetent dumpster fire. I cannot tell what current foreign policy measures are intended to accomplish. There doesn’t seem to be any intention to accomplish anything at all. What exactly is it that our rulers even want?
How about our fecklessness in not harming Russia’s key industry?
No. Sanctions aren’t going to do anything to alleviate Ukraine’s dire situation. Russian coffins will. And if we aren’t doing direct military aid then we shouldn’t do anything at all.
Convoy truckers in Canada got their bank accounts frozen faster than this. It’s outrageous.
#4 China sees the writing on the wall. The West has lost the plot, and all they can do is fight climate change windmills and salt the fields with wokeness. Anything else, the West doesn’t care. It will be made to care, eventually…
“What historians, other than the established Trump-bashers? What is Trump supposed to say, “Putin is a weasel-faced stinky pants”? Of course he’s smart. And Trump is saying that he rolled Biden, which is true.”
And ridiculous on the face of it. What Trump is saying, in his usual sloppy way, is that Putin accurately read the room just like Hitler, Stalin and every other territorial robber baron has for the last 100 years.
If they’re not smart enough to figure that out, they don’t deserve to be called historians.
They know what he said and what he meant. The reporting is intended to reaffirm that Trump lies down with autocrats and dictators all over the world because that is just what and who he is: “Whew! Look at the bullet we dodged by electing the elder statesman Joe Biden instead of that guy. Trump is a dictator wannabe so don’t vote him in 2024!”
jvb
Jack wrote:
What is Trump supposed to say, “Putin is a weasel-faced stinky pants”? Of course he’s smart. And Trump is saying that he rolled Biden, which is true.
Under the circumstances, yes, he probably should’ve. Trump’s lack of self-awareness is not mitigated by the truth of his observation. But as the Julie Principle notes, we must consider his adolescent ability at communication, and desperate desire to bait his enemies into hating him.
None of this disputes your point, which was that the Times stumbled all over itself to characterize his comment in the worst possible light, however true, and condemn it. I think they both suck ethically on this one.
I know you hate memes, and I try to avoid posting them, but I made this, it’s kind of perfect, and I hope the tags work:
from Imgflip Meme Generator
Gah… It didn’t. I’m a luddite.
Hilarious.
Only good aspect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: The Democrats have an opportunity to observe what an armed insurrection looks like, as opposed to a mostly peaceful demonstration, or a riot.
I keep seeing left leaning people talking about how Biden “who the right thinks is so deep in dementia that he can’t tell Kyiv from Kentucky” is playing and winning 4-D Chess with Putin because he is such a master statesman and diplomat. They say that the only reason Ukraine is doing so well is that he has put the screws to Putin and China’s learning they can’t get away with stuff which is why they only flew nine military aircraft through Taiwanese protected airspace.
The other thing I have seen a plethora of (not piñatas, I’m sorry to say) is “Ukrainian lives don’t matter until Black
Lives Matter”. Until the most progressive of BLM demands and reparations are made to the black community, Ukraine is not worth our attention. Indeed, they keep talking about how Jan 6, 2021 emboldened Putin and how white supremacist Putin is, so we need to crack down on white supremacy here, by getting rid of all those Trump supporters, before dealing with international white supremacy that was caused or at least emboldened by Trump.
“Thank God,” they say, “that Biden and his tactical genius is in the Oval Office rather than Trump or we’d be in World War III right now.”
I’m not so sure this isn’t the opening volleys of WWIII, but even for it isn’t, I don’t see how Biden has proven his phenomenal abilities with this situation. I keep having to ask if I’m missing something major or if (as seems more likely) they have allowed their brains to rot with bias and gaslighting.
I don’t think it’s the opening volleys of WWIII either. I think it’s the Sudetenland of WWIII. Just one more aggressive territorial acquisition that no one does anything about that emboldens the aggressor enough to keep grabbing more.
That sounds right. The key to this is Germany. Germany relies heavily on Russian natural gas. If Germany doesn’t support the SWIFT banking sanctions and keeps buying Russian natural gas, then Ukraine will be flying a new flag in about a month. But, hey, Kerry worries about climate change. I guess if Germany had renewable/green energy we wouldn’t be in this predicament, ¿no?
jvb
Spending three years in The Netherlands, I had to wonder why NATO still existed. Gazprom, Vlad Putin’s privately held personal energy company, advertises everywhere, including every soccer match. There was a Gazprom office down the street from us. I took a photo of it to send to my half-Ukrainian friend for a laugh, and some guy sitting at his desk inside the second story window glared sternly at me and wagged his finger. Evidently no one was supposed to know that a Russian entity was operating in The Netherlands! Who knows, maybe it doubled as a KGB office?
Why is NATO posed as protecting against a Russian invasion of western Europe when all Vlad has to do to bring Europe to its knees is simply cut off the gas and literally freeze Europe and its people and economy? He already controls western Europe. Why are U.S. Troops stationed in Europe? People had a fit about troops being stationed in Afghanistan? What about Germany and Italy? Or North Korea? And Trump was slammed for wanting to encourage the Europeans to buy natural gas from the U.S. Insanity.
Not quite. I think this is the equivalent of the Russo Finnish War that preceded World War II. The Soviets made multiple reaches West prior to World War II while the Germans began to reach all around them.
The Polish, under the underrated hero Josef Pilsudski, knocked them back on their heels, but they were the only ones to stop them cold. The shepherded the Baltic States into the USSR with nary a peep from the West, and they battled the Finns in 1939 into 1940 when they wouldn’t allow them to build a base on their territory.
Although the Finns put up a valiant fight, including skiing snipers who would take out Russian troops and vanish into the snow, their requests for help from the US and the West were rebuffed, although the West, still wanting to stay neutral after World War I, did send humanitarian aid. It’s not much help when you send plows and harvesters when what the person asking for help needs are airplanes and tanks. It almost sounds like a joke, and it was. The Soviets finally resorted to human wave attacks, and overwhelmed the Finns with numbers. The Finns later sided with the Nazis, but, after their poor treatment by the west, who can blame them?
That said, not much more than a few months after this, FDR specifically turned down Churchill’s request for P-40 aircraft to continue fighting the Battle of Britain, because the US was still so stuck on remaining neutral. I don’t think he actually told Churchill that he would fly the aircraft as far as the Canadian border and they could push them across, but that’s indicative of where the thinking was.
The US abdicated its leadership role in the world of the time, and it is abdicating its role now. The Democratic party has become so obsessed with issues like climate change and racial equity that it has chosen to ignore the basic requirements of running a government, up to and including recognizing and dealing with external threats.
You do enugh gaslighting, eventually you inhale enough of the gas yourself to make you a true believer as well. Biden is no tactical genius. When H. Norman Schwarzkopf (then a lieutenant colonel) had already served 2 tours of duty in Vietnam and won the Silver Star, when Colin Powell, also holding the same rank, had been stabbed through the foot by a booby trap and rescued a general from a burning helicopter, when then-Captain Tommy Franks was chooting cannons at the Viet Cong, when Admiral Elmo Zumwalt had battled the enemy in the brown-waters and was trying to move the Navy into the next generation, where the hell was Biden? He was the junior senator from Delaware (actually the 6th youngest Senator ever) trying to undercut the military’s efforts. He hasn’t stood up for the miliary, in fact he opposed the First Gulf War, although he DID vote for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – just like almost every other Senator. Tactical genius, hah! And this white supremacy nonsense is typical activist garbage, tying every damn problem in the world to their pet issue. ,
The really tragic news from the Ukrainian situation: Joy Behar will not be leaving the air and the country for a while as planned: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10549825/Amid-Putins-invasion-Ukraine-terror-Joy-Behar-complains-ruined-trip-Italy.html
As long as we are setting priorities here…
In other news:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/25/politics/supreme-court-ketanji-brown-jackson/index.html
-Jut
OOOPS! This was supposed to go in the Open Forum.
The pictures for this post and that one were very similar (identical?)
-Jut
Trump… he speaks the working man English, which I didn’t know existed separately from university English until he was constantly criticized for it. I assume he spent lots of time on his construction sites. What he meant, imo, by saying Putin is smart, and made a smart move to achieve his goal, but not only that, which I think his intelligence isn’t debatable, he also meant that the west continues to underestimate his trajectory, and what he’s willing to do. It was an actual – hey guys – I dealt with him for 4 years, you should know this already, but in case you don’t, pay attention to this guy because his plans aren’t yours. (Jen’s speech seems to imply that they do actually think Putin has similar successful economic goals that the US would have.)
If someone tells me someone I intend to deal with is “smart”, it doesn’t just mean that. It means to deal with them at your own risk and if you get taken advantage of, it’s your own fault because they’re a crafty son of a bitch and will not hesitate to plow you over getting what they want and you’re a fool if you let them do it after you’ve been warned. We might all live in the US, but my corner is nothing like yours. In fact, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself here, and WE have the hubris to assume we know what China and Russia want? Please. We don’t, but they’ve been nice enough to tell us clearly for at least 15 years and the Biden admin can’t seem to grasp that what they say is actually what they want, because it’s not what we would want.
The Left-media worked very hard to convince Americans that Trump was in league with Putin, or that Putin wanted Trump in office and was manipulating social media to make it happen. Were the Left-media actually the ones supporting Putin? Or was Putin using reverse psychology with obvious false-flag operations to pull a Kansas City Shuffle to make people turn against Trump so he could get a Democrat elected? Or are both Republicans and Democrats in league with Putin? But then why would Putin need to manipulate social media at all? Maybe he didn’t, and the Democrats were using a false flag operation of their own?
Bah, too many potential conspiracies for me to sort out right now. My point is calling attention to the irony. The Democrats are probably even now convincing themselves that whatever Russia is doing, it would be worse if Trump were still president.
Now I’m wondering how Trump would actually have responded. He’s decisive when he cares, but would he care? Most likely he’d be criticized for either doing too much, or not enough, Procrustes-style.
They’re blaming the entire Ukraine situation on … wait for it … TRUMP! A taste: https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2022/02/22/morning-joe-blames-trump-russian-invasion-ukraine
All roads lead to Trumpville.
Hilliary jumps on the train: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10552015/Hillary-Clinton-suggests-Republicans-like-Russian-leader-anti-gay.html
No one needs the internal mechanics worked out to know that Bad Countries work out their evil schemes more effectively when Democrats are in charge. And yes, Democrats are currently trying to convince themselves and eventually us, that things would be worse if Trump had been elected.
No body is falling for it except the truest of true believers.
The challenge facing Republicans is that while a lot of voters are soured on Democrat incompetence, they have still been thoroughly convinced that Republicans are evil incarnate.
A little dark humor: I’d have loved to have been in the Russian military strategy meeting when they announced they were going to “capture” Chernobyl. Wasn’t anyone in the room willing to say, “Uh, guys? Do we really want to occupy Chernobyl? Uh, isn’t the place radioactive from the time our brave Soviet comrades occupied Ukraine the last time?”
The town sits on a useful bridge across one of the Dnieper’s key tributaries in the north. Very useful for cross-river coordination in the push towards Kyiv. On the east side of the river system, Chernihiv is a huge roadblock for Russian advances. If it proves insurmountable, Russia can just pivot all its forces across the river at Chernobyl and focus on the attacks from the Northwest of Kyiv.
“Push?” Wouldn’t “cake walk” be more apt?
We’re 3 days into this and I think Ukrainian military is proving that Russia isn’t facing a cakewalk. I’m sorry that this disagrees with Aleksei’s family in Kyiv, but even a general view of the news coming out of Ukraine is that the military is doing way better against Russia than anticipated. It’s still a very long shot that Ukraine can repulse Russia – it’s very unlikely – but the Ukrainians are showing that Russia may not be what we thought it was.
It’s a great movie plot idea! The Russians take Chernobyl, the quickly mutate into blood-thirsty weasel-headed, human/mongoose hybrids that multiply like planaria and threaten the world! Russia has to abandon the invasion, and begs the US to help save it and Europe from a mutant apocalypse!
Why do our leaders operate under the assumption that diplomacy will solve everything? The naivete is inexcusable.
but…but… John Kerry!
What were the ethics of the Budapest accords?
I understand the rationale (among other things, we did not want to risk Ukraine providing nukes to Iraq and North Korea).
#2 and #3 – I was listening the the UN Security Council talks yesterday when the French (I think) delegate said to the Russian delegate something like this: “Please pull your troops out of Ukraine and give peace a chance.”
Thank goodness I had already finished my coffee or I would have choked on it.
Correction:
U.N. Secretary-General Guterres addresses U.N. Security Council meeting: “If indeed an operation is being prepared, I have only one thing to say from the bottom of my heart: Pres. Putin, stop your troops from attacking Ukraine. Give peace a chance.
Great. That should do the trick…
I still can’t help but be amazed that the news hasn’t talked about Russia taking Crimea during the Obama administration, and is finishing the job while Biden is in office.
While Putin’s Cockholster was in power? Nothing.
Even with snide comments about Trump being an American asset to be frozen like Ham Solo, they simply pretend there is nothing notable about Putin taking no aggressive action towards Ukraine while Trump was in office.
2) The United States should leave the UN and invite *Republics* close enough in style to the United States to form a better alliance.
I agree.