IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES?: Public Opinion Shifts on Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Hamas Wars

[IceJad]

Because we are supplying Ukraine with well over a hundred billion dollars worth of military aid, does it make sense that there should also be a winning strategy to actually defeat the Russian military? Or should we continue to be okay with the modern day equivalent of the Vietnam War in which, by proxy, NATO and the USA is involved with between Ukraine and Russia?

To be fair Vietnam was only a proxy until Johnson put American boots there. And also to be fair Russia has covertly been active in Vietnam since the beginning. They flew the jets under the Vietcong sign but everyone knew they were not Vietnamese pilots.

A strategy Putin use during the Crimea conflict which his little green men. Fighters without insignia that look Slavic, talk in Russian and fighting on the side that benefits Russia.

 

[wing2000]

Such as Bosnia (a place you guys never should have intervened). Don't be coy, America has never been openly oppose to militarily engaging with anyone.

After multipe wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc), Americans are tired of spilling American blood abroad. That is the political reality as both Trump and Biden recognized. My point is: There is no political support for direct American involvement in Ukraine. Once more, it not our war.
In that context, how do you propose a "winning strategy" when the Pentagon is not calling the shots?

You guys have already been in conflict with the Russians in places like Syria. There are enough videos around where Americans & Russians military personnel engage in open hostility there under the guise of supporting your preferred faction.

Name one conflict where both the American and Russian government have acknowledge casulaties were inflicted by the other side? Covert actions are not the same as say, declaring and enforcing a NATO led no-fly zone over Ukraine.

 

[Pommer]

If the Biden Administration actually had a winning strategy that would enable Ukraine to utterly defeat the Russian military in order to force a complete military withdrawal of Ukraine by the Russian military, I know that more Americans would have continued to be extremely supportive of our efforts to help Ukraine.

On the surface this sounds like a valid and cogent point, but if one puts some thought into how, say, Representative Greene (R, GA) might characterize Joe Biden’s Administration as, enmeshing us with a futile war just to get votes, you can see why this wasn’t the chosen course of “strategy“.

Instead, the war between Ukraine and Russian has become a proxy war which resembles the mistakes the USA made in the Vietnam War.

No it isn’t a “proxy war”; there’s no “proxy-partner” with Russia.
Russia, (an international adversary), invaded an ally. We’re helping the ally, because that’s what allies do for one another.

8/10 for rhetoric, somewhat less for savvy.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Because we are supplying Ukraine with well over a hundred billion dollars worth of military aid, does it make sense that there should also be a winning strategy to actually defeat the Russian military? Or should we continue to be okay with the modern day equivalent of the Vietnam War in which, by proxy, NATO and the USA is involved with between Ukraine and Russia?

I didn't say there wasn't a strategy, I said it wasn't ours to select. Ukraine has strategies and some are obvious and the say ahead of time and others they don't. Sometimes it is clear that Ukraine is announcing things for international political reasons that they would rather not.

For example, in the last few months Ukraine has been very open about their dwindling supply of munitions. As a result, the Czech's have put together a large package of artillery shells that will soon start arriving in Ukraine and Speaker Johnson stood up to the nut-ball caucus and got the aid package passed. Also recently, public declarations of inadequate air defense have spurred announcements in the last week of what looks like several new Patriot missile batteries from various countries.

The Summer 2023 Ukrainian summer offensive started poorly as it was a "combined-arms" offensive of the kind the US said they should do even though the troops didn't have enough practice working together across large formations and there was inadequate air support. Unshockingly, it opened poorly and Ukraine changed tactics to an offensive they were sufficiently trained for with modest gains. If the US and NATO had provided more and earlier training and more and earlier armored vehicles it might have gone better. (F-16's would have also helped the same effort, but those won't arrive in Ukraine for a few more months.)

As for "proxy war" and Vietnam, if that was a proxy war, it was N. Vietnam that was the proxy for the other side -- we had troops in combat for years. There are a few of them on this board. My dad didn't spend a year in Thailand for the cuisine. There are no US troops in combat or troops of any other nation. Only Ukraine is fighting Russia. Both sides have foreign weapons suppliers and Ukraine is definitely getting weapons at a severe discount.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Such as Bosnia (a place you guys never should have intervened). Don't be coy, America has never been openly oppose to militarily engaging with anyone. You guys have already been in conflict with the Russians in places like Syria.

Ahh, Syria, that didn't go so well for Russia and Wagner at the Conoco Fields.

Battle of Khasham - Wikipedia

The US used the same artillery we have been providing the Ukraine, though we haven't provided any of the air assets used.

There are enough videos around where Americans & Russians military personnel engage in open hostility there under the guise of supporting your preferred faction.

Not in Ukraine.

 

[Stephen3141]

Americans Differ on Ukraine and Gaza

American attitudes toward the wars in Ukraine and Gaza highlight the shifting political perspectives and public sentiment.

www.dailysignal.com

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Americans overwhelmingly supported Ukraine—as they did with Israel after Oct. 7. No wonder: Ukraine was surprise-attacked by Russia, and Israel was by Hamas.
It seemed an easy binary of good versus evil: Both the attacked Ukraine and Israel are pro-Western. Both their attackers, anti-Western Russia and Hamas, are not.
Now everything is bifurcating. And the politics of the wars in America reflect incoherence.
Both Ukraine and Israel are portrayed in the media as supposedly bogging down in their counteroffensives.
More pro-Israel Republicans are troubled by Ukraine’s strategy, or lack thereof, in an increasing World War I Somme-like stalemate.
Yet more pro-Ukrainian Democrats are turning away from Israel as it dismantles Gaza in the messy, bloody slog against Hamas. The Left claims either Israel cannot or should not defeat Hamas, or at least at the present cost.

So the Left pushes Israel to a cease-fire with Hamas.
It blasts Israeli “disproportionate” responses.
It demands that Israel avoid collateral damage.
It pressures it to form a wartime bipartisan government.
It lobbies to cut it off from American resupply.
It is terrified that Israel will expand the war by responding to aggression from Hezbollah and Iran.
Yet on Ukraine, the Left oddly pivots to the very opposite agenda.
It believes Ukraine should not be forced to make peace with Russian “fascists.” It must become disproportionate to “win” the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy deserves a pass, despite canceling elections while suspending political parties.
America must step up its resupply to Kyiv with more and far deadlier weapons.
Ukraine has a perfect right to hit targets inside Russia.
Russian threats to widen the war should be considered empty and thus ignored. America should hate Russia far more than Hamas.

This article is one man's opinion.

I think that many citizens in America have a very short attention span, and a
very poor knowledge of history.

I think that boredom, and exhaustion, are at least as strong dynamics
determining what the "average" American citizen thinks about these topics.

 

[IceJad]

Not in Ukraine.

Yet...

You guys should go render some real help instead of sending materials and money.

Like how in Israel the US helped shoot down Iranian drones and missiles. Even when Israel was the one aggravating it by directly targeting the building next to an embassy.

 

[Pommer]

Yet...

You guys should go render some real help instead of sending materials and money.

Like how in Israel the US helped shoot down Iranian drones and missiles. Even when Israel was the one aggravating it by directly targeting the building next to an embassy.

Yeah, great idea (this time) let’s have Americans fighting in another nation! Why should we learn from the other times?

 

[IceJad]

Yeah, great idea (this time) let’s have Americans fighting in another nation! Why should we learn from the other times?

America learns? Fast someone check the fabric of reality. I think it's torn somewhere and the other reality is leaking in.

 

[Pommer]

America learns? Fast someone check the fabric of reality. I think it's torn somewhere and the other reality is leaking in.

While we in America have gotten rather imbued with “being at war” with (some nation or other) for a good chunk of our lives, we’re also so RICH that the perils of war on the “home front”, (rationing of goods and services to help with “the war effort”, don’t usually touch our daily lives, so if a conflict lasts for a few years we can forget about it if we so choose.

Still, we just got out of Afghanistan in ’21, most aren’t chomping-at-the-bit for another international adventure, just yet.

 

[IceJad]

While we in America have gotten rather imbued with “being at war” with (some nation or other) for a good chunk of our lives, we’re also so RICH that the perils of war on the “home front”, (rationing of goods and services to help with “the war effort”, don’t usually touch our daily lives, so if a conflict lasts for a few years we can forget about it if we so choose.

Still, we just got out of Afghanistan in ’21, most aren’t chomping-at-the-bit for another international adventure, just yet.

Chill I know what you're saying. I'm just having my fun. But what I'm serious about is you guys start doing real help for Ukraine rather than Israel/Palestine. The US is only bold when it comes to certain undeserving nations but timid for nations who deserve your help.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Yet...

You guys should go render some real help instead of sending materials and money.

I don't know if I've written it here, but I am definitely in favor of NATO providing some anti-air defense against missiles and drones from NATO territory, in particular Poland and Romania. That would require an integration/de-confliction of Ukrainian monitoring of flying objects with those aiding nations. I don't think that integration exists yet. If it is not there, then Ukrainain planes and drones will be accidentally targeted from NATO lands. (Let's leave shooting down friendlies to the Russians. They have some experience with that.)

Like how in Israel the US helped shoot down Iranian drones and missiles. Even when Israel was the one aggravating it by directly targeting the building next to an embassy.

This thread isn't about Israeli war crimes/acts of war.

 

[Biblicist]

Americans Differ on Ukraine and Gaza

American attitudes toward the wars in Ukraine and Gaza highlight the shifting political perspectives and public sentiment.

www.dailysignal.com

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Americans overwhelmingly supported Ukraine—as they did with Israel after Oct. 7. No wonder: Ukraine was surprise-attacked by Russia, and Israel was by Hamas.
It seemed an easy binary of good versus evil: Both the attacked Ukraine and Israel are pro-Western. Both their attackers, anti-Western Russia and Hamas, are not.
Now everything is bifurcating. And the politics of the wars in America reflect incoherence.
Both Ukraine and Israel are portrayed in the media as supposedly bogging down in their counteroffensives.
More pro-Israel Republicans are troubled by Ukraine’s strategy, or lack thereof, in an increasing World War I Somme-like stalemate.
Yet more pro-Ukrainian Democrats are turning away from Israel as it dismantles Gaza in the messy, bloody slog against Hamas. The Left claims either Israel cannot or should not defeat Hamas, or at least at the present cost.

So the Left pushes Israel to a cease-fire with Hamas.
It blasts Israeli “disproportionate” responses.
It demands that Israel avoid collateral damage.
It pressures it to form a wartime bipartisan government.
It lobbies to cut it off from American resupply.
It is terrified that Israel will expand the war by responding to aggression from Hezbollah and Iran.
Yet on Ukraine, the Left oddly pivots to the very opposite agenda.
It believes Ukraine should not be forced to make peace with Russian “fascists.” It must become disproportionate to “win” the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy deserves a pass, despite canceling elections while suspending political parties.
America must step up its resupply to Kyiv with more and far deadlier weapons.
Ukraine has a perfect right to hit targets inside Russia.
Russian threats to widen the war should be considered empty and thus ignored. America should hate Russia far more than Hamas.

As the madman Zelensky and his Western backers do not want to see a peaceful resolution to this very sad conflict, this means that a negotiated peace will probably never be realised.

Russia certainly attempted to reconcile the two Donbass regions with the post-rebel government of Ukraine, but as Zelensky has presented a number of nonsensical demands for peace then a military solution, which has its goal with the alteration of Ukraine’s borders will be the only solution.

The following four reasons are reasons why a negotiated peace in unrealistic:

• Russia views Ukraine’s membership within NATO as being a threat.
• Russia’s conservative and often Christian perspectives are in opposition to the West's policies of inclusiveness and diversity along with its promotion of LGBT and transexual agendas.
• As the post-rebel government of Ukraine began to persecute the Russophiles in Southern Ukraine, this left the people within the Russophile regions with no other option but to seek help from Russia.
• Zelensky has also instituted a regime of persecution against some Christian traditions, both within Ukraine and in those territories that chose to return to Russia.

 

[Pommer]

As the madman Zelensky and his Western backers do not want to see a peaceful resolution to this very sad conflict, this means that a negotiated peace will probably never be realised.

Russia certainly attempted to reconcile the two Donbass regions with the post-rebel government of Ukraine, but as Zelensky has presented a number of nonsensical demands for peace then a military solution, which has its goal with the alteration of Ukraine’s borders will be the only solution.

The following four reasons are reasons why a negotiated peace in unrealistic:

• Russia views Ukraine’s membership within NATO as being a threat.
• Russia’s conservative and often Christian perspectives are in opposition to the West's policies of inclusiveness and diversity along with its promotion of LGBT and transexual agendas.
• As the post-rebel government of Ukraine began to persecute the Russophiles in Southern Ukraine, this left the people within the Russophile regions with no other option but to seek help from Russia.
• Zelensky has also instituted a regime of persecution against some Christian traditions, both within Ukraine and in those territories that chose to return to Russia.

Why’s the “madman” mad?

 

[Biblicist]

Why’s the “madman” mad?

It could be that attributing Zelensky’s increasingly erratic and genocidal behaviour as a form of madness could be hiding that he is simply an evil and degenerate individual.

When Zelensky first came to prominence within the West, he was loudly proclaiming that he wanted to reconcile with the people within those regions that his predecessor Poroshenko had been persecuting, I was certainly hoping that Zelensky would win the presidential elections within Ukraine as his election promises would have allowed for the persecuted Russophiles within Eastern/Southern Ukraine to rejoin Ukraine, this was even Putin’s preference as well.

But as we later discovered he had no intention of reconciling with those regions (or people) who had rejected the post-coup governments; so now we see this megalomaniac sending hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to their needless deaths.

So, is Zelensky mad, a megalomaniac or merely a useful tool for those globalists who are trying to maintain a particular anti-Christian world order – who knows!

 

[Pommer]

It could be that attributing Zelensky’s increasingly erratic and genocidal behaviour as a form of madness could be hiding that he is simply an evil and degenerate individual.

When Zelensky first came to prominence within the West, he was loudly proclaiming that he wanted to reconcile with the people within those regions that his predecessor Poroshenko had been persecuting, I was certainly hoping that Zelensky would win the presidential elections within Ukraine as his election promises would have allowed for the persecuted Russophiles within Eastern/Southern Ukraine to rejoin Ukraine, this was even Putin’s preference as well.

But as we later discovered he had no intention of reconciling with those regions (or people) who had rejected the post-coup governments; so now we see this megalomaniac sending hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to their needless deaths.

So, is Zelensky mad, a megalomaniac or merely a useful tool for those globalists who are trying to maintain a particular anti-Christian world order – who knows!

Are all “globalists” “anti-Christian”?

 

[Biblicist]

Are all “globalists” “anti-Christian”

When we speak of a unipolar world as against a multipolar world order, where most globalists support a unipolar world structure that is based on US hegemony, then as an Australian, I would be inclined to accept that most grassroots US and Australian Christians would either openly support such hegemony or that they do so without understanding that they are doing so.

Many such as myself have unwittingly accepted that Western globalism or through its influence, that it can be loosely equated with Christian values, but over at least the past two decades we have found ourselves being in bed with the devil so to speak.

As for the growing multipolar world system, I would not see this as being a Christian bulwark against that of US hegemony, where it could easily become a multi-head monster, but will this new multipolar world order restrict the spread of secular wokism – who knows!

 

[Ana the Ist]

Americans Differ on Ukraine and Gaza

American attitudes toward the wars in Ukraine and Gaza highlight the shifting political perspectives and public sentiment.

www.dailysignal.com

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Americans overwhelmingly supported Ukraine—as they did with Israel after Oct. 7. No wonder: Ukraine was surprise-attacked by Russia, and Israel was by Hamas.
It seemed an easy binary of good versus evil: Both the attacked Ukraine and Israel are pro-Western. Both their attackers, anti-Western Russia and Hamas, are not.
Now everything is bifurcating. And the politics of the wars in America reflect incoherence.
Both Ukraine and Israel are portrayed in the media as supposedly bogging down in their counteroffensives.
More pro-Israel Republicans are troubled by Ukraine’s strategy, or lack thereof, in an increasing World War I Somme-like stalemate.
Yet more pro-Ukrainian Democrats are turning away from Israel as it dismantles Gaza in the messy, bloody slog against Hamas. The Left claims either Israel cannot or should not defeat Hamas, or at least at the present cost.

So the Left pushes Israel to a cease-fire with Hamas.
It blasts Israeli “disproportionate” responses.
It demands that Israel avoid collateral damage.
It pressures it to form a wartime bipartisan government.
It lobbies to cut it off from American resupply.
It is terrified that Israel will expand the war by responding to aggression from Hezbollah and Iran.
Yet on Ukraine, the Left oddly pivots to the very opposite agenda.
It believes Ukraine should not be forced to make peace with Russian “fascists.” It must become disproportionate to “win” the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy deserves a pass, despite canceling elections while suspending political parties.
America must step up its resupply to Kyiv with more and far deadlier weapons.
Ukraine has a perfect right to hit targets inside Russia.
Russian threats to widen the war should be considered empty and thus ignored. America should hate Russia far more than Hamas.

Are these just shifting views on the left side of the aisle? Or a more general shift in views of the general pop?

 

[Ana the Ist]

It's not the Biden Administration's or DoD's job to have a strategy to win Ukraine's war with Russia. It is leadership of Ukraine responsible for winning their own war. (There have been many instances revealed of Pentagon suggestions or recommendations the Ukraine doesn't take or rejects.)

I would agree this is technically true...

It does beg the question of why are we dumping billions in cash and arms into a proxy war without a clear goal or path to it?

 

[Vambram]

Are these just shifting views on the left side of the aisle? Or a more general shift in views of the general pop?

I'm not sure. But I think it’s a general shift in views of the general population.