Why the heck do people assume USA needs to intervene in Russia/Ukraine?

Dwayne wrote:

The majority of the population want to stay with Russia and not move over to the EU.

This is absolutely false. While there are areas of Ukraine that are pro-Russia i.e. Crimea, the VAST majority of Ukrainians are pro-Ukraine as an independent nation and pro-sovereignty. These people do not want USSR overlords part deux.

Dwayne wrote:

Nothing but a typical media beat up trying to make the situation bigger than it is in order to score a few more ratings points. The majority of the population want to stay with Russia and not move over to the EU. The EU doesn't want them as a member for a number of reasons. There would be a flood of organised crime streaming in, making a bad situation in the EU even worse. Ukraine doesn't have the financial stability to meet criteria for EU membership, the EU doesn't want to be stuck with another Spain/Italy/Greece.

Well, either you are a troll or you are ignorant.

Of course the EU has interests in Ukraine - if it didn't, it wouldn't have been dealing so much with it over the past couple decades, and some of its members wouldn't have guaranteed it's sovereignty.

And if the majority of the population want to stay with Russia and not "move over to the EU", the Euromaidan protests probably wouldn't have even happened or at least succeeded.

just saying been there wrote:

there are areas of Ukraine that are pro-Russia i.e. Crimea

Try half the country. And when giving examples, use "e.g." not "i.e."

WWRD... wrote:

To me it's not so much that we have to intervene, especially in a physical way, it's that if we had a good President, this never would have happened and the fact that he continues to be the one who has to deal with Russia makes it more likely there will be worse situations to deal with in the future. Obama is completely over his head, thus we are completely over our heads.

Explain yourself.

Wisard of Odd wrote:

WWRD... wrote:

To me it's not so much that we have to intervene, especially in a physical way, it's that if we had a good President, this never would have happened and the fact that he continues to be the one who has to deal with Russia makes it more likely there will be worse situations to deal with in the future. Obama is completely over his head, thus we are completely over our heads.

Explain yourself.

Apparently, the President of the US is leader of the world, and anything good or bad (or neutral) is due to his influence.

Having interests and wanting them as co-members is not the same thing. The EU is interested in a lot of other countries, Ukraine being one of them. Still doesn't mean that they want them as members, and that was what the protest was originally about. That protest will never succeed, it didn't work for Turkey either.

Dwayne wrote:

Having interests and wanting them as co-members is not the same thing. The EU is interested in a lot of other countries, Ukraine being one of them. Still doesn't mean that they want them as members, and that was what the protest was originally about. That protest will never succeed, it didn't work for Turkey either.

The Euromaidan protests were about the government backing out of plans towards closer European integration (that was a bi-lateral agreement that Ukraine's leadership backed out of, and it wasn't specific as to when or if Ukraine would join the EU as a member nation). That happened on November 21. The protest started three days later.

Any prospective Ukraine membership in the EU wasn't part of the agreement that Yanukovych's cabinet broke - it was always only about closer economic and political ties with an EVENTUAL POSSIBILITY of inclusion in the EU. The protests wasn't about a desire for Ukraine to immediately join the EU, but rather to continue on the path towards closer ties to EU rather than closer ties to Russia.

And the protest did succeed - the pro-Russian leadership was overthrown and replaced with a more EU-friendly leadership, who will likely fulfill the requirements to sign the agreement with the EU that was scheduled to happen last November - part of the process has already been completed when Yulia Tymoshenko was released from her imprisonment.

What we should do while Russia is preoccupied with Ukraine is to go bomb their friend Assad to kingdom come.

Somebody has to say it. wrote:

The combined military spending of the UK, France, Germany, and Italy is over twice as much as what Russia spends.

I just thought I would throw out that fact for people to think about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

Great, they can intervene if they want. The US should stay out of it.

watchout wrote:

And the protest did succeed - the pro-Russian leadership was overthrown and replaced with a more EU-friendly leadership

This is the essence of what is wrong with western media viewers. Show them torches and pitchforks, and they're instantly convinced that the mob represents the general population and the pursuit of some noble cause.

This despite repeated revelation later that the mob, in fact, was not a spontaneous gathering of the people on some grand freedom crusade, but a front for shadowy political forces with dubious agendas. Egypt. Libya. Syria. Three years into this pseudo-covert campaign of insurrection and there are still people who haven't caught on.

The worst thing is that it never bothers them that the "protesters" always demand the overthrow of the government. Right from the start, in all these countries, the mob's unwavering goal is that their leader leave office. In the case of Ukraine, that leader was democratically elected. Never have they pursued anything other than simple coup d'etat, except for causes du jour which they abandon as soon as they win. Where's the democracy the Egyptians and Libyans were on about? It was never about democracy. And what's going on in Ukraine is not about the EU either.

I never said the protesters were some sort of angels who are only good, and the people they protested against were purely evil.

Further, whether there was any outside support for the protests, polls within Ukraine have always shown it to be more pro-EU than not, and has nothing to do with whether or not the protest succeeded in its original goals - or even its expanded goals as the protest evolved.

When you look at the parallels between Russia and Nazi Germany, it's really quite startling. They're even having their own version of kristallnacht with mobs attacking gay people. This whole Ukraine thing is very reminiscent of the annexation of the Sudetenland, Austria and Alsace-Lorraine. So if we don't fight them now then we'll be fighting them later.

Even calling them "protesters" shows you are as brainwashed as those who think the rebels in Syria are "activists."

Protesting is when you say "we don't like this, it should change." When you say, "we will disrupt everything until the government collapses," that is insurrection. They didn't say, "Yanukovich should honor EU agreement," they said "down with Yanukovich." That was their goal. The US ambassador's taped call and their refusal to power-share is enough to reveal it to even the political novice.

As I said before, it was not about the EU.

You have shown that all you need to fool the western TV viewer is a short chain of bad logic.

1) Ukraine polls show most favoring ties to EU

2) the insurrection says it favors ties to EU

3) therefore most Ukrainians favor the insurrection.

If these things were to happen in the United States, you would recognize that logic as ridiculous. If the tea party were to stage a months-long takeover of the mall in DC, demanding that Obama resign so they can reduce the deficit, you wouldn't be their supporter just because you also favor reducing the deficit. Most of the country would see them as wing nuts out to cause trouble, led by people who don't give an f about the deficit one way or another and just want political power. But when this shit happens overseas, you don't see what the general population thinks, all you see is the torches and pitchforks.

A protest can incite insurrection. When a protest incites insurrection, it does not mean the protest was not a protest, nor that the people participating in the protest were not protesters.

If the protesters are lying about what they were protesting, just what do you think they were rallying for, and why do you think they were lying and pretending to protest against something else (and just what do you think would that accomplish, exactly? to take your "what if this happened in the US" example, if people marched on Washington demanding ... immigration reform, but what they REALLY wanted was ??? more progressive taxation, just how would that make sense, and how would their protest accomplish anything they desire?)

BTW, I never made those 3 leaps. I also never said that most Ukranians favored the protest (whether or not they favored overthrowing the government is another discussion and I have no idea if they did, but I'd venture a pretty safe guess that more people were for overthrowing the government by late February than were for the protest itself due to the government's handling of the situation)

Similarly, to take your "what if this happened in the US" example - if a protest which at its peak included nearly 6 million people (the relative proportion of the United States population) in DC on any given popular issue, PLUS multiple instances of hundreds of thousands protesting in other major cities across a significant portion of the nation, and the government responded with force resulting in hundreds of deaths and thousands of casualties, there would be a marked increase in pressure on the government beyond the original purpose of the protest (re: public opinion would certainly start to turn on the government once the government started killing citizens).

Also, since you brought it up, according to polls conducted in Ukraine in December, about half the nation (45-50% of the population) supported the Euromaidan protests while 42-50% opposed it. In other words: Euromaidan was a popular movement.

WWRD... wrote:

To me it's not so much that we have to intervene, especially in a physical way, it's that if we had a good President, this never would have happened and the fact that he continues to be the one who has to deal with Russia makes it more likely there will be worse situations to deal with in the future. Obama is completely over his head, thus we are completely over our heads.

Do you know that Russia invaded Georgia with a bloody offensive while Bush and Cheney were in power. Useless hypocrites. Clowns like this never offer any solutions. All they do is expose their bitterness at the fact that Obama trounced the republican party twice. He won OK ? Get over it and wait for 2016.

[Some] Americans assume intervention is needed because of a deep-seated liberal bias that has been instilled in them since elementary school. They are generally unaware of this bias but it shades all of their perspectives and unfortunately makes commonsense conservative fiscal reform seem inhumane and immoral when the opposite is in fact the truth.

Why do we have all these intertwining treaties? Was it not a similar arrangement that set-off a chain reaction that led to WW1?

go Putin go wrote:

Jews are afraid. Putin already kicked most of the Jews out of Russian office. Next up the Ukraine!!! Drive those anti-whites to the sea!!

Putin took back much of the nation's wealth from the handful of Jews who had stolen it (the so called "Oligarchs"). The USA could use some of that

medium_pace wrote:

[quote]WWRD... wrote:

To me it's not so much that we have to intervene, especially in a physical way, it's that if we had a good President, this never would have happened

Would you be willing to explain how a "better" U.S. President prevents corruption in Ukranian politics to the point that the government needs to be overthrown?

So naïve. The regime change in the Ukraine was achieved by outside interests.

watchout wrote:

Usa_UKraina_RUssia wrote:

I mean why would we?

because

1. The US has guaranteed Ukraine's independence

2. The UK (our allies) has guaranteed Ukraine's independence

3. The EU (with most members being our allies) has significant interest in Ukraine

Textbook of causes of WWI. Good idea