Prediction Thread: When Will Ukraine Conquer Russia

[Berzerker]

The one thing that no one ever seems to consider is "What if the U.S. didn't play a peacekeeping role in the world?" What would the death toll be then? You always have to balance the "what is" versus the "what could have been" and that is no easy task. Maybe I am a homer when it comes to the USA but my sense is that there would be millions more dead around the world if we didn't do what we do.

Does that mean that every decision was the right one? Of course not, that would be impossible. Still, I believe the world is better off because we chose to get involved.

peacekeeping

[PLATO]

The simmering civil war in Afghanistan was the result of Carter and Reagan (and the Saudis and Pakistanis) recruiting and arming Islamic radicals to topple the govt. Yeah, we paid terrorists to invade Afghanistan and destroy the place. Sound familiar? But we weren't calling them moderate rebels back then, they were freedom fighters. They morphed into AQ in time for Bush's Gulf war and started attacking us when we stayed in Saudi Arabia to enforce sanctions on Iraqis.

Which of those wars would have happened against our wishes? We currently occupy 1/3rd of Syria after a decade of bombing the hell out of the country while arming terrorists to drive Assad from power, but you dont think we bear any responsibility? We dont get involved to end enormous conflicts, our fingerprints are all over these countries and wars. That Arab Spring was propaganda to pressure Muslim govts we didn't like but it got a bit too close to our Saudi friends so Obama, Trump and Biden helped commit genocide in Yemen. If we didn't want this war in Ukraine there wouldn't be a war in Ukraine... And so on.

This is an incredibly simplistic (and outright incorrect) view of each of those conflicts. It is easy to assign blame when people die, but much harder to get to root causes. Equally simplistic however, you should look at the role Russians played in Afghanistan, the role U.S. forces played in Saudi post 1st Gulf War, the overall situation in Syria, and the Iranian role in Yemen. You may just find that your facts are not nearly so black and white as you like to say. Once again, try and extrapolate long term consequences for the U.S. not being involved in each of those situations.

Your view of things brings to light the possibility of a much darker world with even darker possibilities on the future had the U.S. not become involved.

It is easy to criticize when you silo each event into a myopic view of reality.

[PLATO]

Berz the US started Afghanistan and Iraq 2003 the rest were enormous conflicts before the US got involved at all. Even Afghanistan was intervention in a simmering civil war. It's ridiculous to ascribe 2/3 let alone 3/3 of the total to the US. Generally the only way to start a war and make it stick is to either "start" one that was going to start anyway or to put boots on the ground and invade keeping the war going directly as in Iraq. There is nothing the US could have done to substantially reduce most of those casualties, apart from managing to get support from at least one side for a vast US+multinational peace keeping role and avoid having the locals turn the peacekeeping role into an endless simmering insurrection like in Afghanistan.

The one thing that no one ever seems to consider is "What if the U.S. didn't play a peacekeeping role in the world?" What would the death toll be then? You always have to balance the "what is" versus the "what could have been" and that is no easy task. Maybe I am a homer when it comes to the USA but my sense is that there would be millions more dead around the world if we didn't do what we do.

Does that mean that every decision was the right one? Of course not, that would be impossible. Still, I believe the world is better off because we chose to get involved.

[Berzerker]

Berz the US started Afghanistan and Iraq 2003 the rest were enormous conflicts before the US got involved at all. Even Afghanistan was intervention in a simmering civil war. It's ridiculous to ascribe 2/3 let alone 3/3 of the total to the US. Generally the only way to start a war and make it stick is to either "start" one that was going to start anyway or to put boots on the ground and invade keeping the war going directly as in Iraq. There is nothing the US could have done to substantially reduce most of those casualties, apart from managing to get support from at least one side for a vast US+multinational peace keeping role and avoid having the locals turn the peacekeeping role into an endless simmering insurrection like in Afghanistan.

The simmering civil war in Afghanistan was the result of Carter and Reagan (and the Saudis and Pakistanis) recruiting and arming Islamic radicals to topple the govt. Yeah, we paid terrorists to invade Afghanistan and destroy the place. Sound familiar? But we weren't calling them moderate rebels back then, they were freedom fighters. They morphed into AQ in time for Bush's Gulf war and started attacking us when we stayed in Saudi Arabia to enforce sanctions on Iraqis.

Which of those wars would have happened against our wishes? We currently occupy 1/3rd of Syria after a decade of bombing the hell out of the country while arming terrorists to drive Assad from power, but you dont think we bear any responsibility? We dont get involved to end enormous conflicts, our fingerprints are all over these countries and wars. That Arab Spring was propaganda to pressure Muslim govts we didn't like but it got a bit too close to our Saudi friends so Obama, Trump and Biden helped commit genocide in Yemen. If we didn't want this war in Ukraine there wouldn't be a war in Ukraine... And so on.

[Geronimo]

3/3rds... Those are our wars and the numbers dont include the 80s when we armed 'freedom fighters' and Islamic terrorists and used Iraq as a proxy vs Iran and spent the 90s killing Iraqis et al with sanctions and bombs. We could go back further, Vietnam and the Cambodian genocide, but that preceded Victoria's reign of terror.

Berz the US started Afghanistan and Iraq 2003 the rest were enormous conflicts before the US got involved at all. Even Afghanistan was intervention in a simmering civil war. It's ridiculous to ascribe 2/3 let alone 3/3 of the total to the US. Generally the only way to start a war and make it stick is to either "start" one that was going to start anyway or to put boots on the ground and invade keeping the war going directly as in Iraq. There is nothing the US could have done to substantially reduce most of those casualties, apart from managing to get support from at least one side for a vast US+multinational peace keeping role and avoid having the locals turn the peacekeeping role into an endless simmering insurrection like in Afghanistan.

[Dauphin]

I wanted to fact check myself.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0274317

"Overall, we find that, contrary to previous research, coverage and sentiment biases suggest equal public interest in female politicians. Rather than overt hostile or benevolent sexism, the results of the nominal and lexical analyses suggest this interest is not as professional or respectful as that expressed about male politicians. Female politicians are often named by their first names and are described in relation to their body, clothing, or family; this is a treatment that is not similarly extended to men"

[Dauphin]

Mostly targeted at our Greek friend, an a bit towards Berz. It got worse as the chain read through

I don't think people tend to comment on male politicians hairstyles and attractiveness. Mocking looks is one thing (President Orange and his hair), but tying it to attractiveness, I don't think so much.

[PLATO]

No...just an attempt to deflect the hate dogpile. Perhaps if we had been discussing a male and I made the same comment you would have felt differently?

[Berzerker]

everybody's arming Nazis, even the Jews... It only took a half dozen years but they're back to being fine people

[Berzerker]

Kirby said Ukrainians dont want their children taken away and abducted

[BeBMan]

Meduza revealed that Putin armed the Nazis. And just recently Reuters found out that he also gave them roles in his presidential apparatus.

[Berzerker]

Let's see that number at least. Then we can discuss why you think it's credible.

your 1st link shows the number, but it says post 9/11 dead. Victoria was already killing people long before that.

[Berzerker]

Here's lazy bing prompt estimates of *total casualties on all sides* for all of those conflicts:


| War | Highest estimate | Most commonly cited estimate | Lowest estimate |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Afghanistan | 241,000¹ | 171,000² | 110,000³ |
| Iraq | 1,033,000⁴ | 461,000 | 151,000 |
| Yemen | 233,000 | 112,000 | 56,000 |
| Libya | 25,000 | 10,000 | 4,700 |
| Syria | 606,000 | 388,000 | 250,000 |
| Somalia | 500,000 | 300,000 | 100,000 |
| Ethiopia | 52,800 | 52,800 | 52,800 |
| Ukraine | 13,200 | 13,200 | 13,200 |
| **Total** | **2.7 million** | **1.5 million** | **0.7 million**

Source: Conversation with Bing, 8/15/2023
(1) Post-9/11 wars have contributed to some 4.5 million deaths, report .... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...hanistan-iraq/.
(2) Human Costs of U.S. Post-9/11 Wars: Direct War Deaths in Major War .... https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/...1/WarDeathToll.
(3) How Death Outlives War - Watson Institute for International and Public .... https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/...t%20Deaths.pdf.
(4) Latest Figures | Costs of War. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures.

How the hell can the US, let alone Nuland be responsible for 2/3 of the high estimate? 🙄

3/3rds... Those are our wars and the numbers dont include the 80s when we armed 'freedom fighters' and Islamic terrorists and used Iraq as a proxy vs Iran and spent the 90s killing Iraqis et al with sanctions and bombs. We could go back further, Vietnam and the Cambodian genocide, but that preceded Victoria's reign of terror.

[Geronimo]

Crap huh... Actually the number I saw for the US death toll was ~4 1/2 million, but I dont know when they started counting or how indirectly our hands are on the instruments of death.

Madeleine Albright said a 1/2 million dead Iraqi children were worth the sanctions and that was before we invaded again. We could ask Victoria about that, she was already killing people for the neocon ideology

Let's see that number at least. Then we can discuss why you think it's credible.

[Berzerker]

Crap huh... Actually the number I saw for the US death toll was ~4 1/2 million, but I dont know when they started counting or how indirectly our hands are on the instruments of death.

Madeleine Albright said a 1/2 million dead Iraqi children were worth the sanctions and that was before we invaded again. We could ask Victoria about that, she was already killing people for the neocon ideology