The Coming Battle: ‘Who Lost Ukraine?’

An effort to rewrite history is happening in real time.

James W. Carden Aug 7, 2023 12:03 AM

As it becomes more and more difficult to deny what is happening on the
battlefield in Ukraine, a grinding war with hundreds of thousands of
casualties, establishment media continue to present a picture of the war
designed to rally the public, should its enthusiasm for this latest
American overseas adventure begin to flag in the face of long and hard
realities.

In June, the Atlantic published a cover story by Anne Applebaum and
Jeffery Goldberg which asserted that “The future of the democratic world
will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break a stalemate
with Russia and drive the country backwards—perhaps even out of Crimea for
good.”

On July 12, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof informed his
reader(s) that “The Ukrainians are sacrificing for us. They’re the ones
doing us a favor, by degrading the Russian military and reducing the risk
of a war in Europe that would cost the lives of our troops.”

National Review put it even more starkly. Two days later, July 14, senior
editor Jay Nordlinger wrote, “The nationalists among us, as much as
anyone, ought to be inspired by what the Ukrainians are doing: fighting
for their national survival, trying to fend off a behemoth neighbor that
seeks to re-subjugate them.”

As Gore Vidal quipped, “There is little respite for a people so routinely—
so fiercely—disinformed.”

Yet the above examples also appear to be part of an effort by these
individual writers to decontextualize the Ukraine War, to wipe away its
messy history and present it in its most simplistic form: as a battle
between good and evil. It is a strategy that seeks to avoid a substantive
conversation about how and why Russia and the West arrived at this, the
most dangerous point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

These sorts of pieces are an elite project designed to shrink the
parameters of permissible thought with regard to the war in Ukraine. And
it serves to purposely confuse and infantilize Americans’ understanding of
what is actually happening in Ukraine—and why. But that, one might
suppose, is the point: Applebaum and the rest are laying the foundation
for what is to come, once it becomes undeniable that Ukraine has lost the
war.

In the nearly ten years since the Maidan Revolution, a handful of us have
been sounding the alarm over the possibility of war breaking out between
Russia and the West. For nearly ten years, a small minority of writers and
thinkers have relentlessly advocated for a peaceful solution to the
Ukraine crisis, and in the process have, at various times, been smeared,
mocked, marginalized, denied employment opportunities, branded “terrorist”
sympathizers, and placed on a Ukrainian kill-lists for the crime of
telling the truth about what has been happening in eastern Ukraine since
2014.

And as the war in Ukraine grinds on to its disastrous denouement, we can
reasonably expect those who are responsible for helping set off this
conflagration—along with those who cheered this ludicrous and unnecessary
war from the beginning—to pay about as severe a price as that paid by the
architects and cheerleaders of the Iraq fiasco: none at all.

Advocates of a restrained and sensible foreign policy ought to prepare for
an even nastier period of recrimination and finger-pointing that will make
the Russiagate years (2016-2021) look like a time of national serenity.
Indeed, it is all too easy to imagine that 2024 and the years following
will be dominated by a “Who lost Ukraine?” crusade not unlike the
poisonous “Who lost China?” debate that midwifed the McCarthy period of
the 1950s. The coming campaign will no doubt consist of a litany of
accusations of unpatriotic disloyalty leveled against American opponents
of the war by a parade of Eastern Europeans and their vocal and powerful
lobby in Washington.

The corporate media and their many progressive and liberal allies in
Congress will, with great enthusiasm, link arms with their neocon friends
in order to cast blame and further shrink the bounds of the sayable and
the thinkable. They will continue to police the parameters of public
discourse with the same sadistic efficiency with which they treated
critics of the now discredited idea of “collusion” between the Trump
campaign and the Russian government.

The tragedy that of course they fail to see is that Ukraine need not have
been lost. Moreover, it would have been helpful if there had been a wider
understanding that it was not ours to lose in the first place. Had the
advice proffered by a small minority of us, that neutrality was the best
course of action for Ukraine to survive, been heeded, the horrible ordeal
that the Ukrainian people are now going through would have been avoided.

_A simple declaration by the U.S. and NATO withdrawing its pledge, made in_
_Bucharest in 2008, that Ukraine and Georgia “shall become” members of the_
_alliance, would have gone a long way toward establishing a peaceful way_
_forward between Russia and Ukraine. But no._ For the past four U.S.
administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden) the ideologues were at the
wheel. And the idea that Ukraine had “a right to choose its own
alliances,” and we had a duty to enable it, came to be treated as holy
writ.

A Ukrainian defeat will reinforce the narrative, so painstakingly built up
over the past decade by the very same people who drove this country to
disaster in Iraq, that American interests are inseparable from the welfare
of an ethno-nationalist kleptocracy 4,000 miles from our shores.

Two centuries ago, the British statesman John Bright warned against
“following visionary phantoms in all parts of the world while your own
country is becoming rotten within.” Yet for these people, visionary
phantoms are all they see. To these people (many only very recently
arrived in the country for which they presume to speak) a “good” American
is one who disclaims any responsibility or care for their fellow citizens
in favor of a feverish identification with a foreign country.

And if that becomes the baseline measure of what a good American is, then
the future of our country will be a dark one. Yet it doesn’t have to be
this way.

In the coming year the voting public will have an opportunity to send a
message to the administration regarding its handling of the war. There are
alternatives, however imperfect, to the claque of liberal and progressive
war hawks now in power, and who for years have not only given Ukrainian
leaders wondrously bad and reckless advice, but have serially misled the
American people about the extent of the dangers involved.

Remember at the polls, the choice between war and peace is too important
to leave to those whose mistakes got us here in the first place.

About The Author

James W. Carden served as advisor on U.S.-Russian affairs at the State
Department during the Obama administration.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-coming-battle-who-lost-ukraine/

И това ли мнение според онзи е без значение?

--
«地 球 誕 生 在 牛 市 的 小 時 — Earth is born in the Bull's hour»

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 12:22:11 PM UTC+3, Nick wrote:
> The Coming Battle: ‘Who Lost Ukraine?’
>
> An effort to rewrite history is happening in real time.
>
> James W. Carden Aug 7, 2023 12:03 AM
>
> As it becomes more and more difficult to deny what is happening on the
> battlefield in Ukraine, a grinding war with hundreds of thousands of
> casualties, establishment media continue to present a picture of the war
> designed to rally the public, should its enthusiasm for this latest
> American overseas adventure begin to flag in the face of long and hard
> realities.
>
> In June, the Atlantic published a cover story by Anne Applebaum and
> Jeffery Goldberg which asserted that “The future of the democratic world
> will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break a stalemate
> with Russia and drive the country backwards—perhaps even out of Crimea for
> good.”
>
> On July 12, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof informed his
> reader(s) that “The Ukrainians are sacrificing for us. They’re the ones
> doing us a favor, by degrading the Russian military and reducing the risk
> of a war in Europe that would cost the lives of our troops.”
>
> National Review put it even more starkly. Two days later, July 14, senior
> editor Jay Nordlinger wrote, “The nationalists among us, as much as
> anyone, ought to be inspired by what the Ukrainians are doing: fighting
> for their national survival, trying to fend off a behemoth neighbor that
> seeks to re-subjugate them.”
>
> As Gore Vidal quipped, “There is little respite for a people so routinely—
> so fiercely—disinformed.”
>
> Yet the above examples also appear to be part of an effort by these
> individual writers to decontextualize the Ukraine War, to wipe away its
> messy history and present it in its most simplistic form: as a battle
> between good and evil. It is a strategy that seeks to avoid a substantive
> conversation about how and why Russia and the West arrived at this, the
> most dangerous point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
>
> These sorts of pieces are an elite project designed to shrink the
> parameters of permissible thought with regard to the war in Ukraine. And
> it serves to purposely confuse and infantilize Americans’ understanding of
> what is actually happening in Ukraine—and why. But that, one might
> suppose, is the point: Applebaum and the rest are laying the foundation
> for what is to come, once it becomes undeniable that Ukraine has lost the
> war.
>
> In the nearly ten years since the Maidan Revolution, a handful of us have
> been sounding the alarm over the possibility of war breaking out between
> Russia and the West. For nearly ten years, a small minority of writers and
> thinkers have relentlessly advocated for a peaceful solution to the
> Ukraine crisis, and in the process have, at various times, been smeared,
> mocked, marginalized, denied employment opportunities, branded “terrorist”
> sympathizers, and placed on a Ukrainian kill-lists for the crime of
> telling the truth about what has been happening in eastern Ukraine since
> 2014.
>
> And as the war in Ukraine grinds on to its disastrous denouement, we can
> reasonably expect those who are responsible for helping set off this
> conflagration—along with those who cheered this ludicrous and unnecessary
> war from the beginning—to pay about as severe a price as that paid by the
> architects and cheerleaders of the Iraq fiasco: none at all.
>
> Advocates of a restrained and sensible foreign policy ought to prepare for
> an even nastier period of recrimination and finger-pointing that will make
> the Russiagate years (2016-2021) look like a time of national serenity.
> Indeed, it is all too easy to imagine that 2024 and the years following
> will be dominated by a “Who lost Ukraine?” crusade not unlike the
> poisonous “Who lost China?” debate that midwifed the McCarthy period of
> the 1950s. The coming campaign will no doubt consist of a litany of
> accusations of unpatriotic disloyalty leveled against American opponents
> of the war by a parade of Eastern Europeans and their vocal and powerful
> lobby in Washington.
>
> The corporate media and their many progressive and liberal allies in
> Congress will, with great enthusiasm, link arms with their neocon friends
> in order to cast blame and further shrink the bounds of the sayable and
> the thinkable. They will continue to police the parameters of public
> discourse with the same sadistic efficiency with which they treated
> critics of the now discredited idea of “collusion” between the Trump
> campaign and the Russian government.
>
> The tragedy that of course they fail to see is that Ukraine need not have
> been lost. Moreover, it would have been helpful if there had been a wider
> understanding that it was not ours to lose in the first place. Had the
> advice proffered by a small minority of us, that neutrality was the best
> course of action for Ukraine to survive, been heeded, the horrible ordeal
> that the Ukrainian people are now going through would have been avoided.
>
> _A simple declaration by the U.S. and NATO withdrawing its pledge, made in_
> _Bucharest in 2008, that Ukraine and Georgia “shall become” members of the_
> _alliance, would have gone a long way toward establishing a peaceful way_
> _forward between Russia and Ukraine. But no._ For the past four U.S.
> administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden) the ideologues were at the
> wheel. And the idea that Ukraine had “a right to choose its own
> alliances,” and we had a duty to enable it, came to be treated as holy
> writ.
>
> A Ukrainian defeat will reinforce the narrative, so painstakingly built up
> over the past decade by the very same people who drove this country to
> disaster in Iraq, that American interests are inseparable from the welfare
> of an ethno-nationalist kleptocracy 4,000 miles from our shores.
>
> Two centuries ago, the British statesman John Bright warned against
> “following visionary phantoms in all parts of the world while your own
> country is becoming rotten within.” Yet for these people, visionary
> phantoms are all they see. To these people (many only very recently
> arrived in the country for which they presume to speak) a “good” American
> is one who disclaims any responsibility or care for their fellow citizens
> in favor of a feverish identification with a foreign country.
>
> And if that becomes the baseline measure of what a good American is, then
> the future of our country will be a dark one. Yet it doesn’t have to be
> this way.
>
> In the coming year the voting public will have an opportunity to send a
> message to the administration regarding its handling of the war. There are
> alternatives, however imperfect, to the claque of liberal and progressive
> war hawks now in power, and who for years have not only given Ukrainian
> leaders wondrously bad and reckless advice, but have serially misled the
> American people about the extent of the dangers involved.
>
> Remember at the polls, the choice between war and peace is too important
> to leave to those whose mistakes got us here in the first place.
>
> About The Author
>
> James W. Carden served as advisor on U.S.-Russian affairs at the State
> Department during the Obama administration.
>
> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-coming-battle-who-lost-ukraine/
>
> И това ли мнение според онзи е без значение?
>
> --
> «地 球 誕 生 在 牛 市 的 小 時 — Earth is born in the Bull's hour»

Дане кажеш че има цензура. Веднага го публикуваха и на български:
https://trud.bg/%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%8A%D1%82-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BE-%D1%89%D0%B5-%D0%B1%D1%8A%D0%B4%D0%B5-%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%8A%D0%B7%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%B5-%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B0-%D1%87%D0%B5-%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B5-%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B3%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B0-%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B9/

https://glasove.com/na-fokus/nablizhava-momentat-kogato-shte-bade-nevazmozhno-poveche-da-se-otricha-che-ukrayna-e-izgubila-voynata

On Thu, 10 Aug 2023 07:54:47 -0700 (PDT), ИлиевBG wrote:

> On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 12:22:11 PM UTC+3, Nick wrote:

>> The Coming Battle: ‘Who Lost Ukraine?’

>> An effort to rewrite history is happening in real time.

>> James W. Carden Aug 7, 2023 12:03 AM

>> As it becomes more and more difficult to deny what is happening on the
>> battlefield in Ukraine, a grinding war with hundreds of thousands of
>> casualties, establishment media continue to present a picture of the
>> war designed to rally the public, should its enthusiasm for this latest
>> American overseas adventure begin to flag in the face of long and hard
>> realities.

>> In June, the Atlantic published a cover story by Anne Applebaum and
>> Jeffery Goldberg which asserted that “The future of the democratic
>> world will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break a
>> stalemate with Russia and drive the country backwards—perhaps even out
>> of Crimea for good.”

>> On July 12, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof informed his
>> reader(s) that “The Ukrainians are sacrificing for us. They’re the ones
>> doing us a favor, by degrading the Russian military and reducing the
>> risk of a war in Europe that would cost the lives of our troops.”

>> National Review put it even more starkly. Two days later, July 14,
>> senior editor Jay Nordlinger wrote, “The nationalists among us, as much
>> as anyone, ought to be inspired by what the Ukrainians are doing:
>> fighting for their national survival, trying to fend off a behemoth
>> neighbor that seeks to re-subjugate them.”

>> As Gore Vidal quipped, “There is little respite for a people so
>> routinely— so fiercely—disinformed.”

>> Yet the above examples also appear to be part of an effort by these
>> individual writers to decontextualize the Ukraine War, to wipe away its
>> messy history and present it in its most simplistic form: as a battle
>> between good and evil. It is a strategy that seeks to avoid a
>> substantive conversation about how and why Russia and the West arrived
>> at this, the most dangerous point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

>> These sorts of pieces are an elite project designed to shrink the
>> parameters of permissible thought with regard to the war in Ukraine.
>> And it serves to purposely confuse and infantilize Americans’
>> understanding of what is actually happening in Ukraine—and why. But
>> that, one might suppose, is the point: Applebaum and the rest are
>> laying the foundation for what is to come, once it becomes undeniable
>> that Ukraine has lost the war.

>> In the nearly ten years since the Maidan Revolution, a handful of us
>> have been sounding the alarm over the possibility of war breaking out
>> between Russia and the West. For nearly ten years, a small minority of
>> writers and thinkers have relentlessly advocated for a peaceful
>> solution to the Ukraine crisis, and in the process have, at various
>> times, been smeared, mocked, marginalized, denied employment
>> opportunities, branded “terrorist” sympathizers, and placed on a
>> Ukrainian kill-lists for the crime of telling the truth about what has
>> been happening in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

>> And as the war in Ukraine grinds on to its disastrous denouement, we
>> can reasonably expect those who are responsible for helping set off
>> this conflagration—along with those who cheered this ludicrous and
>> unnecessary war from the beginning—to pay about as severe a price as
>> that paid by the architects and cheerleaders of the Iraq fiasco: none
>> at all.

>> Advocates of a restrained and sensible foreign policy ought to prepare
>> for an even nastier period of recrimination and finger-pointing that
>> will make the Russiagate years (2016-2021) look like a time of national
>> serenity.

>> Indeed, it is all too easy to imagine that 2024 and the years following
>> will be dominated by a “Who lost Ukraine?” crusade not unlike the
>> poisonous “Who lost China?” debate that midwifed the McCarthy period of
>> the 1950s. The coming campaign will no doubt consist of a litany of
>> accusations of unpatriotic disloyalty leveled against American
>> opponents of the war by a parade of Eastern Europeans and their vocal
>> and powerful lobby in Washington.

>> The corporate media and their many progressive and liberal allies in
>> Congress will, with great enthusiasm, link arms with their neocon
>> friends in order to cast blame and further shrink the bounds of the
>> sayable and the thinkable. They will continue to police the parameters
>> of public discourse with the same sadistic efficiency with which they
>> treated critics of the now discredited idea of “collusion” between the
>> Trump campaign and the Russian government.

>> The tragedy that of course they fail to see is that Ukraine need not
>> have been lost. Moreover, it would have been helpful if there had been
>> a wider understanding that it was not ours to lose in the first place.
>> Had the advice proffered by a small minority of us, that neutrality was
>> the best course of action for Ukraine to survive, been heeded, the
>> horrible ordeal that the Ukrainian people are now going through would
>> have been avoided.

>> _A simple declaration by the U.S. and NATO withdrawing its pledge, made
>> in_ _Bucharest in 2008, that Ukraine and Georgia “shall become” members
>> of the_ _alliance, would have gone a long way toward establishing a
>> peaceful way_ _forward between Russia and Ukraine. But no._ For the
>> past four U.S. administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden) the
>> ideologues were at the wheel. And the idea that Ukraine had “a right to
>> choose its own alliances,” and we had a duty to enable it, came to be
>> treated as holy writ.

>> A Ukrainian defeat will reinforce the narrative, so painstakingly built
>> up over the past decade by the very same people who drove this country
>> to disaster in Iraq, that American interests are inseparable from the
>> welfare of an ethno-nationalist kleptocracy 4,000 miles from our
>> shores.

>> Two centuries ago, the British statesman John Bright warned against
>> “following visionary phantoms in all parts of the world while your own
>> country is becoming rotten within.” Yet for these people, visionary
>> phantoms are all they see. To these people (many only very recently
>> arrived in the country for which they presume to speak) a “good”
>> American is one who disclaims any responsibility or care for their
>> fellow citizens in favor of a feverish identification with a foreign
>> country.

>> And if that becomes the baseline measure of what a good American is,
>> then the future of our country will be a dark one. Yet it doesn’t have
>> to be this way.

>> In the coming year the voting public will have an opportunity to send a
>> message to the administration regarding its handling of the war. There
>> are alternatives, however imperfect, to the claque of liberal and
>> progressive war hawks now in power, and who for years have not only
>> given Ukrainian leaders wondrously bad and reckless advice, but have
>> serially misled the American people about the extent of the dangers
>> involved.

>> Remember at the polls, the choice between war and peace is too
>> important to leave to those whose mistakes got us here in the first
>> place.

>> About The Author

>> James W. Carden served as advisor on U.S.-Russian affairs at the State
>> Department during the Obama administration.

>> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-coming-battle-who-lost-
ukraine/

>> И това ли мнение според онзи е без значение?

> Да не кажеш че има цензура. Веднага го публикуваха и на български:

Нямам спомен да съм твърдял някога нещо за цензура. Авторът намеква за
нещо подобно обаче.

--
«地 球 誕 生 在 牛 市 的 小 時 — Earth is born in the Bull's hour»

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 5:22:11 AM UTC-4, Nick wrote:
> The Coming Battle: ‘Who Lost Ukraine?’
>
> An effort to rewrite history is happening in real time.
>
> James W. Carden Aug 7, 2023 12:03 AM
>
> As it becomes more and more difficult to deny what is happening on the
> battlefield in Ukraine, a grinding war with hundreds of thousands of
> casualties, establishment media continue to present a picture of the war
> designed to rally the public, should its enthusiasm for this latest
> American overseas adventure begin to flag in the face of long and hard
> realities.
>
> In June, the Atlantic published a cover story by Anne Applebaum and
> Jeffery Goldberg which asserted that “The future of the democratic world
> will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break a stalemate
> with Russia and drive the country backwards—perhaps even out of Crimea for
> good.”
>
> On July 12, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof informed his
> reader(s) that “The Ukrainians are sacrificing for us. They’re the ones
> doing us a favor, by degrading the Russian military and reducing the risk
> of a war in Europe that would cost the lives of our troops.”
>
> National Review put it even more starkly. Two days later, July 14, senior
> editor Jay Nordlinger wrote, “The nationalists among us, as much as
> anyone, ought to be inspired by what the Ukrainians are doing: fighting
> for their national survival, trying to fend off a behemoth neighbor that
> seeks to re-subjugate them.”
>
> As Gore Vidal quipped, “There is little respite for a people so routinely—
> so fiercely—disinformed.”
>
> Yet the above examples also appear to be part of an effort by these
> individual writers to decontextualize the Ukraine War, to wipe away its
> messy history and present it in its most simplistic form: as a battle
> between good and evil. It is a strategy that seeks to avoid a substantive
> conversation about how and why Russia and the West arrived at this, the
> most dangerous point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
>
> These sorts of pieces are an elite project designed to shrink the
> parameters of permissible thought with regard to the war in Ukraine. And
> it serves to purposely confuse and infantilize Americans’ understanding of
> what is actually happening in Ukraine—and why. But that, one might
> suppose, is the point: Applebaum and the rest are laying the foundation
> for what is to come, once it becomes undeniable that Ukraine has lost the
> war.
>
> In the nearly ten years since the Maidan Revolution, a handful of us have
> been sounding the alarm over the possibility of war breaking out between
> Russia and the West. For nearly ten years, a small minority of writers and
> thinkers have relentlessly advocated for a peaceful solution to the
> Ukraine crisis, and in the process have, at various times, been smeared,
> mocked, marginalized, denied employment opportunities, branded “terrorist”
> sympathizers, and placed on a Ukrainian kill-lists for the crime of
> telling the truth about what has been happening in eastern Ukraine since
> 2014.
>
> And as the war in Ukraine grinds on to its disastrous denouement, we can
> reasonably expect those who are responsible for helping set off this
> conflagration—along with those who cheered this ludicrous and unnecessary
> war from the beginning—to pay about as severe a price as that paid by the
> architects and cheerleaders of the Iraq fiasco: none at all.
>
> Advocates of a restrained and sensible foreign policy ought to prepare for
> an even nastier period of recrimination and finger-pointing that will make
> the Russiagate years (2016-2021) look like a time of national serenity.
> Indeed, it is all too easy to imagine that 2024 and the years following
> will be dominated by a “Who lost Ukraine?” crusade not unlike the
> poisonous “Who lost China?” debate that midwifed the McCarthy period of
> the 1950s. The coming campaign will no doubt consist of a litany of
> accusations of unpatriotic disloyalty leveled against American opponents
> of the war by a parade of Eastern Europeans and their vocal and powerful
> lobby in Washington.
>
> The corporate media and their many progressive and liberal allies in
> Congress will, with great enthusiasm, link arms with their neocon friends
> in order to cast blame and further shrink the bounds of the sayable and
> the thinkable. They will continue to police the parameters of public
> discourse with the same sadistic efficiency with which they treated
> critics of the now discredited idea of “collusion” between the Trump
> campaign and the Russian government.
>
> The tragedy that of course they fail to see is that Ukraine need not have
> been lost. Moreover, it would have been helpful if there had been a wider
> understanding that it was not ours to lose in the first place. Had the
> advice proffered by a small minority of us, that neutrality was the best
> course of action for Ukraine to survive, been heeded, the horrible ordeal
> that the Ukrainian people are now going through would have been avoided.
>
> _A simple declaration by the U.S. and NATO withdrawing its pledge, made in_
> _Bucharest in 2008, that Ukraine and Georgia “shall become” members of the_
> _alliance, would have gone a long way toward establishing a peaceful way_
> _forward between Russia and Ukraine. But no._ For the past four U.S.
> administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden) the ideologues were at the
> wheel. And the idea that Ukraine had “a right to choose its own
> alliances,” and we had a duty to enable it, came to be treated as holy
> writ.
>
> A Ukrainian defeat will reinforce the narrative, so painstakingly built up
> over the past decade by the very same people who drove this country to
> disaster in Iraq, that American interests are inseparable from the welfare
> of an ethno-nationalist kleptocracy 4,000 miles from our shores.
>
> Two centuries ago, the British statesman John Bright warned against
> “following visionary phantoms in all parts of the world while your own
> country is becoming rotten within.” Yet for these people, visionary
> phantoms are all they see. To these people (many only very recently
> arrived in the country for which they presume to speak) a “good” American
> is one who disclaims any responsibility or care for their fellow citizens
> in favor of a feverish identification with a foreign country.
>
> And if that becomes the baseline measure of what a good American is, then
> the future of our country will be a dark one. Yet it doesn’t have to be
> this way.
>
> In the coming year the voting public will have an opportunity to send a
> message to the administration regarding its handling of the war. There are
> alternatives, however imperfect, to the claque of liberal and progressive
> war hawks now in power, and who for years have not only given Ukrainian
> leaders wondrously bad and reckless advice, but have serially misled the
> American people about the extent of the dangers involved.
>
> Remember at the polls, the choice between war and peace is too important
> to leave to those whose mistakes got us here in the first place.
>
> About The Author
>
> James W. Carden served as advisor on U.S.-Russian affairs at the State
> Department during the Obama administration.
>
> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-coming-battle-who-lost-ukraine/
>
> И това ли мнение според онзи е без значение?
>
> --
> «地 球 誕 生 在 牛 市 的 小 時 — Earth is born in the Bull's hour»

Глупости на търкала, както можем да очакваме от "The American Conservative".
Между другото - войната в Украйна нито е сред първите 10 грижи на американците
преди следващите избори нито се очертава да стане такава в идните 15 месеца
(освен ако Путин не използва ядрени оръжия в Украйна).

А долкокото помня Украйна е на три дни от пълен разгром и загуба на войната
от 24 февруари 2022 та чак до днес.

On Sun, 13 Aug 2023 15:47:51 -0700 (PDT), Ivaylo Ivanov wrote:

> On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 5:22:11 AM UTC-4, Nick wrote:

>> The Coming Battle: ‘Who Lost Ukraine?’

>> An effort to rewrite history is happening in real time.

>> James W. Carden Aug 7, 2023 12:03 AM

>> As it becomes more and more difficult to deny what is happening on the
>> battlefield in Ukraine, a grinding war with hundreds of thousands of
>> casualties, establishment media continue to present a picture of the
>> war designed to rally the public, should its enthusiasm for this latest
>> American overseas adventure begin to flag in the face of long and hard
>> realities.

>> In June, the Atlantic published a cover story by Anne Applebaum and
>> Jeffery Goldberg which asserted that “The future of the democratic
>> world will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break a
>> stalemate with Russia and drive the country backwards—perhaps even out
>> of Crimea for good.”

>> On July 12, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof informed his
>> reader(s) that “The Ukrainians are sacrificing for us. They’re the ones
>> doing us a favor, by degrading the Russian military and reducing the
>> risk of a war in Europe that would cost the lives of our troops.”

>> National Review put it even more starkly. Two days later, July 14,
>> senior editor Jay Nordlinger wrote, “The nationalists among us, as much
>> as anyone, ought to be inspired by what the Ukrainians are doing:
>> fighting for their national survival, trying to fend off a behemoth
>> neighbor that seeks to re-subjugate them.”

>> As Gore Vidal quipped, “There is little respite for a people so
>> routinely— so fiercely—disinformed.”

>> Yet the above examples also appear to be part of an effort by these
>> individual writers to decontextualize the Ukraine War, to wipe away its
>> messy history and present it in its most simplistic form: as a battle
>> between good and evil. It is a strategy that seeks to avoid a
>> substantive conversation about how and why Russia and the West arrived
>> at this, the most dangerous point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

>> These sorts of pieces are an elite project designed to shrink the
>> parameters of permissible thought with regard to the war in Ukraine.
>> And it serves to purposely confuse and infantilize Americans’
>> understanding of what is actually happening in Ukraine—and why. But
>> that, one might suppose, is the point: Applebaum and the rest are
>> laying the foundation for what is to come, once it becomes undeniable
>> that Ukraine has lost the war.

>> In the nearly ten years since the Maidan Revolution, a handful of us
>> have been sounding the alarm over the possibility of war breaking out
>> between Russia and the West. For nearly ten years, a small minority of
>> writers and thinkers have relentlessly advocated for a peaceful
>> solution to the Ukraine crisis, and in the process have, at various
>> times, been smeared, mocked, marginalized, denied employment
>> opportunities, branded “terrorist” sympathizers, and placed on a
>> Ukrainian kill-lists for the crime of telling the truth about what has
>> been happening in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

>> And as the war in Ukraine grinds on to its disastrous denouement, we
>> can reasonably expect those who are responsible for helping set off
>> this conflagration—along with those who cheered this ludicrous and
>> unnecessary war from the beginning—to pay about as severe a price as
>> that paid by the architects and cheerleaders of the Iraq fiasco: none
>> at all.

>> Advocates of a restrained and sensible foreign policy ought to prepare
>> for an even nastier period of recrimination and finger-pointing that
>> will make the Russiagate years (2016-2021) look like a time of national
>> serenity.

>> Indeed, it is all too easy to imagine that 2024 and the years following
>> will be dominated by a “Who lost Ukraine?” crusade not unlike the
>> poisonous “Who lost China?” debate that midwifed the McCarthy period of
>> the 1950s. The coming campaign will no doubt consist of a litany of
>> accusations of unpatriotic disloyalty leveled against American
>> opponents of the war by a parade of Eastern Europeans and their vocal
>> and powerful lobby in Washington.

>> The corporate media and their many progressive and liberal allies in
>> Congress will, with great enthusiasm, link arms with their neocon
>> friends in order to cast blame and further shrink the bounds of the
>> sayable and the thinkable. They will continue to police the parameters
>> of public discourse with the same sadistic efficiency with which they
>> treated critics of the now discredited idea of “collusion” between the
>> Trump campaign and the Russian government.

>> The tragedy that of course they fail to see is that Ukraine need not
>> have been lost. Moreover, it would have been helpful if there had been
>> a wider understanding that it was not ours to lose in the first place.
>> Had the advice proffered by a small minority of us, that neutrality was
>> the best course of action for Ukraine to survive, been heeded, the
>> horrible ordeal that the Ukrainian people are now going through would
>> have been avoided.

>> _A simple declaration by the U.S. and NATO withdrawing its pledge, made
>> in_ _Bucharest in 2008, that Ukraine and Georgia “shall become” members
>> of the_ _alliance, would have gone a long way toward establishing a
>> peaceful way_ _forward between Russia and Ukraine. But no._ For the
>> past four U.S. administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden) the
>> ideologues were at the wheel. And the idea that Ukraine had “a right to
>> choose its own alliances,” and we had a duty to enable it, came to be
>> treated as holy writ.

>> A Ukrainian defeat will reinforce the narrative, so painstakingly built
>> up over the past decade by the very same people who drove this country
>> to disaster in Iraq, that American interests are inseparable from the
>> welfare of an ethno-nationalist kleptocracy 4,000 miles from our
>> shores.

>> Two centuries ago, the British statesman John Bright warned against
>> “following visionary phantoms in all parts of the world while your own
>> country is becoming rotten within.” Yet for these people, visionary
>> phantoms are all they see. To these people (many only very recently
>> arrived in the country for which they presume to speak) a “good”
>> American is one who disclaims any responsibility or care for their
>> fellow citizens in favor of a feverish identification with a foreign
>> country.

>> And if that becomes the baseline measure of what a good American is,
>> then the future of our country will be a dark one. Yet it doesn’t have
>> to be this way.

>> In the coming year the voting public will have an opportunity to send a
>> message to the administration regarding its handling of the war. There
>> are alternatives, however imperfect, to the claque of liberal and
>> progressive war hawks now in power, and who for years have not only
>> given Ukrainian leaders wondrously bad and reckless advice, but have
>> serially misled the American people about the extent of the dangers
>> involved.

>> Remember at the polls, the choice between war and peace is too
>> important to leave to those whose mistakes got us here in the first
>> place.

>> About The Author

>> James W. Carden served as advisor on U.S.-Russian affairs at the State
>> Department during the Obama administration.

>> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-coming-battle-who-lost-
ukraine/

>> И това ли мнение според онзи е без значение?

> Глупости на търкала, както можем да очакваме от "The American
> Conservative".
> Между другото - войната в Украйна нито е сред първите 10 грижи на
> американците преди следващите избори нито се очертава да стане такава в
> идните 15 месеца (освен ако Путин не използва ядрени оръжия в Украйна).

> А долкокото помня Украйна е на три дни от пълен разгром и загуба на
> войната от 24 февруари 2022 та чак до днес.

Това според кого? Според теб? Ти изобщо прочете ли статията?

--
«地 球 誕 生 在 牛 市 的 小 時 — Earth is born in the Bull's hour»

On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 12:00:09 AM UTC-4, Nick wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Aug 2023 15:47:51 -0700 (PDT), Ivaylo Ivanov wrote:
>
> > On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 5:22:11 AM UTC-4, Nick wrote:
>
> >> The Coming Battle: ‘Who Lost Ukraine?’
>
> >> An effort to rewrite history is happening in real time.
>
> >> James W. Carden Aug 7, 2023 12:03 AM
>
> >> As it becomes more and more difficult to deny what is happening on the
> >> battlefield in Ukraine, a grinding war with hundreds of thousands of
> >> casualties, establishment media continue to present a picture of the
> >> war designed to rally the public, should its enthusiasm for this latest
> >> American overseas adventure begin to flag in the face of long and hard
> >> realities.
>
> >> In June, the Atlantic published a cover story by Anne Applebaum and
> >> Jeffery Goldberg which asserted that “The future of the democratic
> >> world will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break a
> >> stalemate with Russia and drive the country backwards—perhaps even out
> >> of Crimea for good.”
>
> >> On July 12, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof informed his
> >> reader(s) that “The Ukrainians are sacrificing for us. They’re the ones
> >> doing us a favor, by degrading the Russian military and reducing the
> >> risk of a war in Europe that would cost the lives of our troops.”
>
> >> National Review put it even more starkly. Two days later, July 14,
> >> senior editor Jay Nordlinger wrote, “The nationalists among us, as much
> >> as anyone, ought to be inspired by what the Ukrainians are doing:
> >> fighting for their national survival, trying to fend off a behemoth
> >> neighbor that seeks to re-subjugate them.”
>
> >> As Gore Vidal quipped, “There is little respite for a people so
> >> routinely— so fiercely—disinformed.”
>
> >> Yet the above examples also appear to be part of an effort by these
> >> individual writers to decontextualize the Ukraine War, to wipe away its
> >> messy history and present it in its most simplistic form: as a battle
> >> between good and evil. It is a strategy that seeks to avoid a
> >> substantive conversation about how and why Russia and the West arrived
> >> at this, the most dangerous point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
>
> >> These sorts of pieces are an elite project designed to shrink the
> >> parameters of permissible thought with regard to the war in Ukraine.
> >> And it serves to purposely confuse and infantilize Americans’
> >> understanding of what is actually happening in Ukraine—and why. But
> >> that, one might suppose, is the point: Applebaum and the rest are
> >> laying the foundation for what is to come, once it becomes undeniable
> >> that Ukraine has lost the war.
>
> >> In the nearly ten years since the Maidan Revolution, a handful of us
> >> have been sounding the alarm over the possibility of war breaking out
> >> between Russia and the West. For nearly ten years, a small minority of
> >> writers and thinkers have relentlessly advocated for a peaceful
> >> solution to the Ukraine crisis, and in the process have, at various
> >> times, been smeared, mocked, marginalized, denied employment
> >> opportunities, branded “terrorist” sympathizers, and placed on a
> >> Ukrainian kill-lists for the crime of telling the truth about what has
> >> been happening in eastern Ukraine since 2014.
>
> >> And as the war in Ukraine grinds on to its disastrous denouement, we
> >> can reasonably expect those who are responsible for helping set off
> >> this conflagration—along with those who cheered this ludicrous and
> >> unnecessary war from the beginning—to pay about as severe a price as
> >> that paid by the architects and cheerleaders of the Iraq fiasco: none
> >> at all.
>
> >> Advocates of a restrained and sensible foreign policy ought to prepare
> >> for an even nastier period of recrimination and finger-pointing that
> >> will make the Russiagate years (2016-2021) look like a time of national
> >> serenity.
>
> >> Indeed, it is all too easy to imagine that 2024 and the years following
> >> will be dominated by a “Who lost Ukraine?” crusade not unlike the
> >> poisonous “Who lost China?” debate that midwifed the McCarthy period of
> >> the 1950s. The coming campaign will no doubt consist of a litany of
> >> accusations of unpatriotic disloyalty leveled against American
> >> opponents of the war by a parade of Eastern Europeans and their vocal
> >> and powerful lobby in Washington.
>
> >> The corporate media and their many progressive and liberal allies in
> >> Congress will, with great enthusiasm, link arms with their neocon
> >> friends in order to cast blame and further shrink the bounds of the
> >> sayable and the thinkable. They will continue to police the parameters
> >> of public discourse with the same sadistic efficiency with which they
> >> treated critics of the now discredited idea of “collusion” between the
> >> Trump campaign and the Russian government.
>
> >> The tragedy that of course they fail to see is that Ukraine need not
> >> have been lost. Moreover, it would have been helpful if there had been
> >> a wider understanding that it was not ours to lose in the first place.
> >> Had the advice proffered by a small minority of us, that neutrality was
> >> the best course of action for Ukraine to survive, been heeded, the
> >> horrible ordeal that the Ukrainian people are now going through would
> >> have been avoided.
>
> >> _A simple declaration by the U.S. and NATO withdrawing its pledge, made
> >> in_ _Bucharest in 2008, that Ukraine and Georgia “shall become” members
> >> of the_ _alliance, would have gone a long way toward establishing a
> >> peaceful way_ _forward between Russia and Ukraine. But no._ For the
> >> past four U.S. administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden) the
> >> ideologues were at the wheel. And the idea that Ukraine had “a right to
> >> choose its own alliances,” and we had a duty to enable it, came to be
> >> treated as holy writ.
>
> >> A Ukrainian defeat will reinforce the narrative, so painstakingly built
> >> up over the past decade by the very same people who drove this country
> >> to disaster in Iraq, that American interests are inseparable from the
> >> welfare of an ethno-nationalist kleptocracy 4,000 miles from our
> >> shores.
>
> >> Two centuries ago, the British statesman John Bright warned against
> >> “following visionary phantoms in all parts of the world while your own
> >> country is becoming rotten within.” Yet for these people, visionary
> >> phantoms are all they see. To these people (many only very recently
> >> arrived in the country for which they presume to speak) a “good”
> >> American is one who disclaims any responsibility or care for their
> >> fellow citizens in favor of a feverish identification with a foreign
> >> country.
>
> >> And if that becomes the baseline measure of what a good American is,
> >> then the future of our country will be a dark one. Yet it doesn’t have
> >> to be this way.
>
> >> In the coming year the voting public will have an opportunity to send a
> >> message to the administration regarding its handling of the war. There
> >> are alternatives, however imperfect, to the claque of liberal and
> >> progressive war hawks now in power, and who for years have not only
> >> given Ukrainian leaders wondrously bad and reckless advice, but have
> >> serially misled the American people about the extent of the dangers
> >> involved.
>
> >> Remember at the polls, the choice between war and peace is too
> >> important to leave to those whose mistakes got us here in the first
> >> place.
>
> >> About The Author
>
> >> James W. Carden served as advisor on U.S.-Russian affairs at the State
> >> Department during the Obama administration.
>
> >> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-coming-battle-who-lost-
> ukraine/
>
> >> И това ли мнение според онзи е без значение?
> > Глупости на търкала, както можем да очакваме от "The American
> > Conservative".
> > Между другото - войната в Украйна нито е сред първите 10 грижи на
> > американците преди следващите избори нито се очертава да стане такава в
> > идните 15 месеца (освен ако Путин не използва ядрени оръжия в Украйна).
>
> > А долкокото помня Украйна е на три дни от пълен разгром и загуба на
> > войната от 24 февруари 2022 та чак до днес.
> Това според кого? Според теб? Ти изобщо прочете ли статията?

Click here to read the complete article

On Mon, 14 Aug 2023 08:20:21 -0700 (PDT), Ivaylo Ivanov wrote:

> Виж, ако Русия нападне
> НАТО (и Тръмп не е президент) нещата ще са съвсем други.

По-скоро ще стане обратното.

On Mon, 14 Aug 2023 08:20:21 -0700 (PDT), Ivaylo Ivanov wrote:

> On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 12:00:09 AM UTC-4, Nick wrote:

>> On Sun, 13 Aug 2023 15:47:51 -0700 (PDT), Ivaylo Ivanov wrote:

>> > On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 5:22:11 AM UTC-4, Nick wrote:

>> >> The Coming Battle: ‘Who Lost Ukraine?’

>> >> An effort to rewrite history is happening in real time.

>> >> James W. Carden Aug 7, 2023 12:03 AM

>> >> As it becomes more and more difficult to deny what is happening on
>> >> the battlefield in Ukraine, a grinding war with hundreds of
>> >> thousands of casualties, establishment media continue to present a
>> >> picture of the war designed to rally the public, should its
>> >> enthusiasm for this latest American overseas adventure begin to flag
>> >> in the face of long and hard realities.

…

>> >> About The Author

>> >> James W. Carden served as advisor on U.S.-Russian affairs at the
>> >> State Department during the Obama administration.

>> >> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-coming-battle-who-lost-
>> ukraine/

>> >> И това ли мнение според онзи е без значение?
>> > Глупости на търкала, както можем да очакваме от "The American
>> > Conservative".

>> > Между другото - войната в Украйна нито е сред първите 10 грижи на
>> > американците преди следващите избори нито се очертава да стане такава
>> > в идните 15 месеца (освен ако Путин не използва ядрени оръжия в
>> > Украйна).

>> > А долкокото помня Украйна е на три дни от пълен разгром и загуба на
>> > войната от 24 февруари 2022 та чак до днес.

>> Това според кого? Според теб? Ти изобщо прочете ли статията?

> Прочетох статията, да. Глупости на търкала, както написах. Не зная от
> къде да започна ако трябва да я обсъдя сериозно.

Ами започни от началото.

> Между другото, какво според _теб_ би представлявала украинската загуба
> във войната? Какво би представлявала руската победа? Без отговор на тези
> въпроси всякаква дискусия по темата е безсмислена. А самата теза, че

За да задаваш такива въпроси, доброто възпитание предполага ти пръв да
отговориш на тях. Но ти и възпитание?!

Украинците вече са загубили и загубата им започна още през 2014 г. Преди
време ти казах да се поинтересуваш за волинското клане през втората
световна война. Ако го беше направил, нямаше да пишеш глупости сега.

Ти нали беше некрофил и все за руските жертви говореше тук - погледни
украинските. Има един доклад на института Джеферсън за Украйна, потърси го
и го прочети. Между другото, този институт е американски, не руски. Само
не казвай, че и докладът е нелеп.

> американския елит ще се вайка "кой загуби Украйна", каквото и да
> представлява тази загуба, е нелепа. На Байдън и американския елит им
> дреме на оная работа за Украйна. На определени хора от елита може да им
> дреме, но ако ЕС не беше реагирал, така както реагира в началото,
> администрацията в САЩ нямаше дори да си мръдне пръста за Украйна. Виж,
> ако Русия нападне НАТО (и Тръмп не е президент) нещата ще са съвсем
> други.

Я, просветление ли виждам - че САШ воюват с Русия в Украйна до последния
украинец. В този смисъл на елита ви не му пука за Украйна и украинците.
Иначе за останалото си помисли пак.

А тезата ти, че ЕС има самостоятелна политика спрямо Украйна и Русия е
също толкова нелепа.

Нещата щяха да са съвсем други, ако не бяхте организирали преврата в
Украйна през 2014 г. И Крим щеше още да е украински, и Донбас също, и
война нямаше да има. Така, че избягвай да говориш, че Русия ще нападне
НАТО - по-скоро ще е обратното, както ти казва и Чорби.

И си потърси признанията на Меркел и Оланд за споразуменията от Минск.
Само не ме питай какви са, няма да ти кажа.

--
«地 球 誕 生 在 牛 市 的 小 時 — Earth is born in the Bull's hour»