Let’s have a war!

[jfish26]

I don’t doubt that Russia spreads misinformation.

But it’s pretty wild that the only example that article provides is, “Washington wants war.”

The topic of the article is domestic politics, not the Ukraine war - specifically, that certain House Rs are calling out members of their own conference for adopting and amplifying Russian dis- and misinformation about Russia's war on Ukraine.

Here is something with more depth (emphasis mine; linked sources in the underlying post).

April 8, 2024

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ril-8-2024

On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.”

Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”

Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected.

Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.”

Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.

Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.

Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”

Trump’s MAGA loyalists in the House of Representatives have held up funding for Ukraine for six months. Although a national security supplemental bill that would fund Ukraine has passed the Senate and would pass the House if it were brought to the floor, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. The House returns to work tomorrow after a two-week recess but is so backed up on work that Johnson is not expected to bring up the Ukraine measure this week.

Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, told the Washington Post’s Belton and Menn: “The impact of the Russian program over the last decade…is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid…. They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.”

The Trump loyalists echoing Russia who have taken control of the Republican Party appear to be hardening into a phalanx around the former president, but even as they do so, Trump himself appears to be crumbling.

[...]

I want to highlight this in extra-particular:

Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.

Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.

Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”

This is the entire game.

Trump serves Putin and wants the war to end in a manner favorable to Putin. Trump's base will support him, because cult.

But of course there is a problem: Trump's base is a minority here in the US. Support for Ukraine is broadly popular.

What to do about that?

Well, you frame a Ukraine surrender as "peace," such that Ukraine is the belligerent one for not surrendering land and people (never you mind that Russia is responsible for the war in the first place, and can stop it at any time). You draw narrow lines around the war as "just a Ukraine-Russia thing," such that our provision of materiel echoes our misadventures in Iraq/Afghanistan and even Vietnam (never you mind that this situation is not remotely comparable to those).

In other words...you peel away non-Trumper support of the Ukraine war by ... exploiting sincerely-held anti-war positions in non-Trumpers.

And the bitch of it is, it works.

Anecdotal examples are right here on this board. And the statistics bear it out as well: https://news.gallup.com/poll/513680/ame ... hat%20view.

This is why I keep coming back to the importance of Putin's brazenly-false war-opening speech. The playbook has been right in front of us the entire time. He told us the lies he will tell us, and others will tell us on his behalf.

And yet.

[jfish26]

This feels like more gaslighting.

“No you’re just childish! You’ve lost your goddamn mind!”


…do you guys know what gaslighting is?

Do you?

‘Gaslighting’ is a commonly misused therapy buzzword. Here’s what it really means

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/07/health/g ... index.html

Gaslighting is so commonly discussed that Merriam-Webster deemed the expression its word of the year in 2022, after experiencing a 1,740% increase in searches for the term. But experts say there are a lot of misconceptions around what gaslighting is and isn’t.

“When we’re challenged or confronted or told, ‘Hey, I remember this differently,’ we might think we’re being gaslit, when actually we’re being confronted on a behavior and asked to change it — as opposed to being told that we’re bad or that we don’t remember things correctly or that we’re emotionally unstable,” said Vanessa Kennedy, director of psychology at Driftwood Recovery, a residential rehabilitation center in Texas.

[...]

Some people weaponize psychological terms like gaslighting when others simply do something they don’t like, which is wrong, said Monica Vermani, a Canada-based clinical psychologist and author of “A Deeper Wellness: Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety and Traumas.”

Gaslighting is actually “a highly calculating form of manipulation — which involves the destabilization — of one individual by another over a protracted period of time,” Vermani said.

“Most commonly, gaslighting — also referred to as coercive control — is carried out by someone in a position of trust who is in close contact with the target,” she added. “It is a complex and usually deliberate means of intentionally controlling an individual, which is carried out over an extended period of time.”

[DeletedUser]

LOL

[ousdahl]

This feels like more gaslighting.

“No you’re just childish! You’ve lost your goddamn mind!”


…do you guys know what gaslighting is?

Do you?

‘Gaslighting’ is a commonly misused therapy buzzword. Here’s what it really means

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/07/health/g ... index.html

Gaslighting is so commonly discussed that Merriam-Webster deemed the expression its word of the year in 2022, after experiencing a 1,740% increase in searches for the term. But experts say there are a lot of misconceptions around what gaslighting is and isn’t.

“When we’re challenged or confronted or told, ‘Hey, I remember this differently,’ we might think we’re being gaslit, when actually we’re being confronted on a behavior and asked to change it — as opposed to being told that we’re bad or that we don’t remember things correctly or that we’re emotionally unstable,” said Vanessa Kennedy, director of psychology at Driftwood Recovery, a residential rehabilitation center in Texas.

[...]

Some people weaponize psychological terms like gaslighting when others simply do something they don’t like, which is wrong, said Monica Vermani, a Canada-based clinical psychologist and author of “A Deeper Wellness: Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety and Traumas.”

Gaslighting is actually “a highly calculating form of manipulation — which involves the destabilization — of one individual by another over a protracted period of time,” Vermani said.

“Most commonly, gaslighting — also referred to as coercive control — is carried out by someone in a position of trust who is in close contact with the target,” she added. “It is a complex and usually deliberate means of intentionally controlling an individual, which is carried out over an extended period of time.”

Exactly!

I’ve come to understand “gaslighting” as, trying to manipulate someone in a way that makes them question their own reality.

So when I try to make what I really do think are good faith attempt at I discuss global conflicts, and you guys respond by calling me a Putin parrot, childish, lost my mind, and various other personal attacks and petty attempts to discredit (if you guys even respond at all), it just feels…well…gaslight-y.

It’s something I’m sensitive to, as gaslighting is one of the common tactics utilized by narcissists, and I have numerous therapists tell me I display all the symptoms of narcissistic abuse.

And for someone to comment they feel gaslight by others, and for others to not only not consider that but also double down on the reality-questioning manipulation, just seems like yet another example of narcissism.

[ousdahl]

I am responding, too, to your posts below this quoted one.

You are, still, bouncing from boogeyman to boogeyman like an eight year old at Chuck E. Cheese on a quad espresso rush.

As I have said, there is a reason I am trying to stay focused here with you on one thing at a time, that thing being Putin's nonsensical justifications for his war on Ukraine (which you have adopted and now amplify). And by staying focused here on one thing at a time, I am NOT saying that nothing else matters or is worth discussing. I am NOT saying that our own conduct is blameless or good or even acceptable, or in fact anything at all about Israel and so on.

I am talking about ONE ingredient (being Putin's nonsensical justifications for his war on Ukraine), and you are talking about what's in the global blender after 90 seconds on MAX.

You have very plainly adopted, whether you wanted to or not, and you now amplify, whether you want to or not, Putin's bogus pretext for his war on Ukraine. And that alignment continues through to what you call "deescalation" - which really means that (like Putin says) you think Ukraine should give Russia land and people. It continues through to what you describe as our failed strategy (which is what Putin, through Trump, has wrought).

And when you are challenged on the fundamental error at the heart of everything you have to say on Russia/Ukraine (being that you, like others, have fallen in line with nonsense), you spin off into forty-seven tangents that have nothing to do with the specific, basic issue that you are challenged on.

More condescension and gaslights.

This is futile.

This is the reason I’ve avoided discussing Ukraine here more and more.

And, considering you refuse to discuss any other foreign conflict even if we’re involved, and only to go back to fussing about Ukraine, I don’t think it’s worth discussing any other foreign conflicts here either.

As I’ve said in the past, I don’t feel that I have a very good grasp on the Israel/Hamas/Iran/Russia side of things.

I think there are many more variables, and that we have much poorer visibility into how the pieces fit. Our interests there are also comparatively indirect, in one sense, but bound up more closely with American politics, in another sense.

All of this leaves me unsure of my footing, and so I don’t take a firm or strong position on something I feel I don’t understand.

This is among your better posts here lately.

If I may ask - and this question gets right to the core of our bickering, and of what I’ve tried to articulate in this thread all along…

if we can display the humility to admit we don’t have a very good grasp on the Israel/Hamas/Iran/Russia side of things, and realize there are variables, and can simply acknowledge we’re unsure so we don’t take a strong position, then…

How are we otherwise able to take such a strong position on Ukraine/Russia, and insist we DO have a very good grasp, and reject and attack any unsure positions, and continue doubling down on the idea that there are NOT more variables to consider?

[jfish26]

More condescension and gaslights.

This is futile.

This is the reason I’ve avoided discussing Ukraine here more and more.

And, considering you refuse to discuss any other foreign conflict even if we’re involved, and only to go back to fussing about Ukraine, I don’t think it’s worth discussing any other foreign conflicts here either.

As I’ve said in the past, I don’t feel that I have a very good grasp on the Israel/Hamas/Iran/Russia side of things.

I think there are many more variables, and that we have much poorer visibility into how the pieces fit. Our interests there are also comparatively indirect, in one sense, but bound up more closely with American politics, in another sense.

All of this leaves me unsure of my footing, and so I don’t take a firm or strong position on something I feel I don’t understand.

This is among your better posts here lately.

If I may ask - and this question gets right to the core of our bickering, and of what I’ve tried to articulate in this thread all along…

if we can display the humility to admit we don’t have a very good grasp on the Israel/Hamas/Iran/Russia side of things, and realize there are variables, and can simply acknowledge we’re unsure so we don’t take a strong position, then…

How are we otherwise able to take such a strong position on Ukraine/Russia, and insist we DO have a very good grasp, and reject and attack any unsure positions, and continue doubling down on the idea that there are NOT more variables to consider?

You are mixing singular and plural, and mixing specific and general, in a way that creates a moving target.

I am uncomfortable speaking with certainly on Israel etc., because I do not feel that I understand the issues well enough to speak with confidence.

I am comfortable speaking with certainty on Putin's pretext being bullshit, because I feel that I understand that issue well enough to speak with confidence.

Specifically, I find analyses like these to be thoughtful and compelling, and I have not seen evidence that undercuts them to anything close to the point of damaging my confidence:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/n ... raine-war/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/worl ... raine.html

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ebruary-22

In my opinion, you fail to see that Putin's pretext is bullshit (and so you fail to recognize that you are the one being exploited for your sincerely-held anti-war positions).

In that light, it's not surprising at all that your views on "peace" in Ukraine...pretty much follow Putin's. And in that light, it's not surprising at all that you view the stalling or failure of our strategy as a result of a fundamental failure of the initial strategy (when instead what we are seeing is the success of Putin's crippling of the strategy).

[ousdahl]

I’ve already tried to comment, to no avail and to want to bother to comment, again, on the Putin propoganda thing.

But if you really want me to comment again, I will.

But first, I really do think we should discuss the issue of why you don’t feel you understand the issue well enough to speak on Israel bombing U.S. (and other) humanitarian workers.

They were in clearly-marked vehicles, with location and movements clearly shared with IDF.

The also bombed a foreign embassy! In another foreign country yet! With bombs paid for by you and me!

Like even Pelosi and dozens of other democrats are even speaking up about it now!

I just struggle to understand what’s so uncertain about this situation for you.

And I think it’s frankly says a lot about you and your views here to continue avoiding that particular issue, only to continue to deflect to this “but you’re parroting Putin!” shtick with, at this point, boy-who-cried-wolf levels of redundancy - especially cuz, as I’ve mentioned, I think I’ve made more than enough good-faith attempts to compare and contrast my views from Putin’s.

Here’s another thing that’s been bugging me:

How come you guys haven’t been giving all sorts of hell to DCHawk too when he posts the exact same sorta shit I do here?

I mean, it’s all there:

The Nazis! The provocation! The historical context! The memes!

[jfish26]

DARVO - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

I'm the bad guy here for ... checks notes ... declining to give strong opinions on something I acknowledge I don't understand.

You may, at any time, do the same.

[ousdahl]

So you don’t understand DC when he posts that shit, but you understand it so well when I post it that you can insist it’s Russian disinformation.

Got it!

And it’s quite the profile in courage to insist you simply don’t understand what the big deal is about bombing humanitarian workers and embassies.

[jfish26]

So you don’t understand DC when he posts that shit, but you understand it so well when I post it that you can insist it’s Russian disinformation.

Got it!

And it’s quite the profile in courage to insist you simply don’t understand what the big deal is about bombing humanitarian workers and embassies.

This last bit is a good example of why I do not engage with you on the Israel stuff.

[KUTradition]

deliberate misrepresentation

temper tantrum

[DeletedUser]

Cease fire now?

[ousdahl]

You know what?

In the interest of civility, forgive me if that comment on your lack of understanding came with more sass than it should have. And I certainly didn’t mean to misrepresent.

My instinct is to apologize, but considering how posters have retorted with “BuT Yer NoT ReAlLy SoRrY!!!”, maybe I should just not bother.

But, fish, while I don’t think you meant to do so intentionally, I can’t help but perceive your lack of understanding about Israel as a sort of tell. You seem to pick and choose an awful lot in this thread, about what warrants understanding and what doesn’t.

Your picking and choosing sure does seem to coincide with what the western imperial rhetoric tells us what warrants understanding and what doesn’t; who are the good guys and bad guys, and if the good guys do something bad it’s just not worth understanding, when I really truly sincerely seek some greater objective understanding yet, but I’m beating another dead horse there.

As such, I just don’t think it’s worth engaging someone who, though I’ll concede you seem like a lot smarter and better-informed dood than me about most else, by your own admission simply does not understand the issues I’m trying to discuss.

And frankly I would have never tried to engage you specifically this time around, if not for this time around you taking my prompt to discuss Israel as yet another opportunity to go on another one of your Putin parrot crusades.

For real, I’m not even sure how we got on that again!

[Overlander]

I give it 15 minutes.....

[ousdahl]

OPINION
GUEST ESSAY

J.D. Vance: The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up

By J. D. Vance
Mr. Vance, a Republican, is the junior senator from Ohio.

President Biden wants the world to believe that the biggest obstacle facing Ukraine is Republicans and our lack of commitment to the global community. This is wrong.

Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president.

The Biden administration has applied increasing pressure on Republicans to pass a supplemental aid package of more than $60 billion to Ukraine. I voted against this package in the Senate and remain opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war. Mr. Biden has failed to articulate even basic facts about what Ukraine needs and how this aid will change the reality on the ground.

The most fundamental question: How much does Ukraine need and how much can we actually provide? Mr. Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong. $60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor. But this is not just a matter of dollars. Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.

Consider our ability to produce 155-millimeter artillery shells. Last year, Ukraine’s then defense minister assessed that their base line requirement for these shells is over four million per year, but said they could fire up to seven million if that many were available. Since the start of the conflict, the United States has gone to great lengths to ramp up production of 155-millimeter shells. We’ve roughly doubled our capacity and can now produce 360,000 per year — less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs. The administration’s goal is to get this to 1.2 million — 30 percent of what’s needed — by the end of 2025. This would cost the American taxpayers dearly while yielding an unpleasantly familiar result: failure abroad.

Just this week, the top American military commander in Europe argued that absent further security assistance, Russia could soon have a 10-to-1 artillery advantage over Ukraine. What didn’t gather as many headlines is that Russia’s current advantage is at least 5 to 1, even after all the money we have poured into the conflict. Neither of these ratios plausibly lead to Ukrainian victory.

Proponents of American aid to Ukraine have argued that our approach has been a boon to our own economy, creating jobs here in the factories that manufacture weapons. But our national security interests can be — and often are — separate from our economic interests. The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict.

The story is the same when we look at other munitions. Take the Patriot missile system — our premier air defense weapon. It’s of such importance in this war that Ukraine’s foreign minister has specifically demanded them. That’s because in March alone, Russia reportedly launched over 3,000 guided aerial bombs, 600 drones and 400 missiles at Ukraine. To fend off these attacks, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and others have indicated they need thousands of Patriot interceptors per year. The problem is this: The United States only manufactures 550 every year. If we pass the supplemental aid package currently being considered in Congress, we could potentially increase annual production to 650, but that’s still less than a third of what Ukraine requires.

These weapons are not only needed by Ukraine. If China were to set its sights on Taiwan, the Patriot missile system would be critical to its defense. In fact, the United States has promised to send Taiwan nearly $900 million worth of Patriot missiles, but delivery of those weapons and other essential resources has been severely delayed, partly because of shortages caused by the war.
If that sounds bad, Ukraine’s manpower situation is even worse. Here are the basics: Russia has nearly four times the population of Ukraine. Ukraine needs upward of half a million new recruits, but hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men have already fled the country. The average Ukrainian soldier is roughly 43 years old, and many soldiers have already served two years at the front with few, if any, opportunities to stop fighting. After two years of conflict, there are some villages with almost no men left. The Ukrainian military has resorted to coercing men into service, and women have staged protests to demand the return of their husbands and fathers after long years of service at the front. This newspaper reported one instance in which the Ukrainian military attempted to conscript a man with diagnosed mental disability.

Many in Washington seem to think that hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians have gone to war with a song in their heart and are happy to label any thought to the contrary Russian propaganda. But major newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic are reporting that the situation on the ground in Ukraine is grim.

These basic mathematical realities were true, but contestable, at the outset of the war. They were obvious and incontestable a year ago, when American leadership worked closely with Mr. Zelensky to undertake a disastrous counteroffensive. The bad news is that accepting brute reality would have been most useful last spring, before the Ukrainians launched that extremely costly and unsuccessful military campaign. The good news is that even now, a defensive strategy can work. Digging in with old-fashioned ditches, cement and land mines are what enabled Russia to weather Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. Our allies in Europe could better support such a strategy, as well. While some European countries have provided considerable resources, the burden of military support has thus far fallen heaviest on the United States.

By committing to a defensive strategy, Ukraine can preserve its precious military manpower, stop the bleeding and provide time for negotiations to commence. But this would require both American and Ukrainian leadership to accept that Mr. Zelensky’s stated goals for the war — a return to 1991 boundaries — are fantastical.

The White House has said time and again that they can’t negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opin ... raine.html

Honestly, I’m open to the idea that sorts of these talking points really are just more Putin propaganda.

So my question then becomes, why does the NYT keep publishing this shit?

[jfish26]

I think you might find the answer to that question illuminating, generally.

[ousdahl]

Thanks, CoyDC.

For the sake of discussion, and since RationalDC already asked it like over a year ago and didn’t get shit so maybe it’s ok to ask:

What exactly IS the Biden administration’s strategy here?

Another $60 billion…

*dude where’s my car Chinese restaurant voice*

…and then?

[jfish26]

The answer to your question above is that the NYT is not a Putin Parrot in the sense that it (unlike Putin Parrots) is not unwittingly adopting and amplifying Putin's bullshit talking points.

It is doing so (at least the amplification part) knowingly, because its business interests are more akin to the role of bookmaker than the role of journalist.

Go find the great Twitter account NYT Pitchbot, and that might also be useful in understanding.

[ousdahl]

Fascinating.

Would you say Biden is loosing the information war to Putin, and his parrots and amplifiers?

[KUTradition]

Trump on Ukraine aid: 'We're thinking about making it in the form of a loan'

tell me again why “we” includes trump at all?