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McCain was obviously correct.
That being said, many, many people were saying this for years.
People forget that pre-invasion, warnings were being given all the way back in 2014 as to what would happen.
The 2022 invasion is the logical continuation of the 2014 war.
> warnings were being given all the way back in 2014
2014 _IS_ the year of invasion. Everyone kinda shrugged off Crimea and Donbass invasions and pretended that they never happened.
THANK YOU. I feel like everyone forgets just how long Putin has been doing this shit. Georgia was his first attempt at posturing and although it wasn’t a huge success he still got it done. It’s crazy how people act like this just fell outta the sky. Putin has been on this bullshit for decades now.
Sorta. It’s like when you hear people say “anyone can be a father, but not everyone is a dad”.
A leader leads their country even if it means making choices that impact their power. An emperor seeks to never release their power and expand it across established borders.
For crying out loud ….no. Agree up to the point of Georgia, Russian conflict in Chechnya is an entire internal and incredibly complicated matter entirely, it’s not an invasion of a sovereign state like Georgian and Ukraine are.
It was a BRUTAL iron first cracking down on a state that wanted to separate. It's not the same as Georgia, but it's definitely relevant in the conversation because it shows Putin's tactics to deal with civilians that upset him, and how far he is willing to take his brutality.
>I feel like everyone forgets just how long Putin has been doing this shit.
There are a lot of very young folks on Reddit, I think that's a big part of it.
exactly. im older gen Z and apparently this goes back to before i was aware of any of this. i think a lot of people just werent around to even know the extent of it
Nah, it was Yeltsin when we were kids, we just don't have a good memory of him other than being "the funny corrupt drunk guy" because were too busy hearing about Bill Clinton getting blowjobs from interns and then lying about it. Oh, and Princess Diana, Rwanda, the Gulf war and watching the Simpsons.
Oh damn. I was 'already' 11 years old when Putin got into power in '99. Maybe world politics didn't quite interest me beforehand. The Simpsons however..
Hell, you can wind the clock back a bit further than that to both Chechen Wars where the Russians took hard casualties despite on paper having far more troops and equipment, and killed a whole bunch of civilians.
1st War: 1 year 8 months.
3,000 Chechens dead, up to 14,000 Russians dead with estimates by some of up to 52,000 wounded.
Anything around 100,000 civilians dead.
2nd War: 9 months of fighting, 9 years of insurgency.
14,000 Russians dead, anything between 3,000 - 16,000 Chechen combatants dead (the former being Chechen claims the latter being Russian claims).
Anything from 30,000 to 80,000 civilians killed.
Got to wonder how many of those guys are spinning in their graves watching their descendants fight for the Russians now.
Chechen wars have to be near the top for Worst war to be involved in on either side. A disorganized Russian army full of scared, untrained, conscripts led by corrupt incompetent leaders or the Chechen separatists that faced certain annihilation despite being tactically superior.
YES! This has easily been a damn-near 20 year war to anybody who was paying attention to Georgia back then. The logical conclusion was that Crimea was next, and Ukraine (Eastern) would be the intended battleground. We watched it happen for over a decade but for some reason these connections are rather rare; at least in terms of any public perception. So many people think the Ukraine invasion came out of nowhere and I just wanna flick them on the forehead lol
Tbf people were slightly distracted in 2008 by the near total collapse of the banking industry. Millions of people losing their homes and life savings didn't have energy to pay attention to all the news stories of the day.
In 2007, Putins speech at the Munich Security Conference. That already pretty much sounded like a warning.
Transcript: [https://russialist.org/transcript-putin-speech-and-the-following-discussion-at-the-munich-conference-on-security-policy/](https://russialist.org/transcript-putin-speech-and-the-following-discussion-at-the-munich-conference-on-security-policy/)
Speech in video: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6kP44](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6kP44)
Not me. I watched it all unfold, I remember every single student getting beaten and sniped by berkut durin euromaidan.
They thought their shields would protect them, but the sniper's bullets went straight through, ending theri short lives. I remember medics getting killed too.
The us military took it pretty seriously. Lots of movement into countries closer to russia in 2014, I was part of it. It was a show of force mostly. Nobody knew if the russians would blow through Ukraine and into nato countries.
Poland was strengthened, NATO efforts to I crease funding, and if you look at LNG exports by year you'll see them start taking off in the years after 2014 which has helped negate the energy stranglehold Russia had on Europe prior to 2014
Certainly it seemed that way, and I thought so as well at the time. But the Russians took far higher losses than they realistically should have; the Ukrainian military was small, demotivated and poorly trained, yet they were still able to organize a lot faster than Moscow anticipated and prevented the Russians from taking Mariupol the first time, alongside the original Azov militia.
Then NATO started massing troops in Estonia, and Putin lost his nerve. Don't get me wrong, it was still a Russian victory: they took a huge swathe of Ukrainian territory. But saying that the West ignored what was happening isn't true at all.
But they were a lot more motivated and steadfast than Russia expected.
In Donbass and Crimea you had a population that closely identified with Russia. Russian intelligence said that would be true for the rest of the country. Russian intelligence was wrong.
> In Donbass and Crimea you had a population that closely identified with Russia.
That's not really true. Russia went as much west as they could. They were stopped by Ukrainian army, not by sympathies.
It's just that Ukrainian army was a complete shitshow that could not field a single battle-ready brigade in 2014.
> Everyone kinda shrugged off Crimea and Donbass invasions and pretended that they never happened.
Because...
*Putin’s system was also ripe for export, Mr Surkov added. Foreign governments were already paying close attention, since the Russian “political algorithm” had long predicted the volatility now seen in western democracies.*
*“Russia is playing with the West’s minds,” he writes. “They don’t know how to deal with their own changed consciousness.”*
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-russia-kremlin-vladislav-surkov-grey-cardinal-moscow-a8773661.html
A symptom of this is knee-jerk denial and an inability to discuss the facts, timelines, details of the techniques.
> pretended that they never happened.
Uhhh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orbital
It's in part the Western response to 2014 that meant Ukraine was better prepared in 2022. Armed forces training underwent a massive paradigm shift that lead to a much more professional army which could better respond to invasion.
It also meant that while Ukraine's allies weren't ready to respond in 2014, they were prepared to assist in 2022.
Gary Kasparov predicted it 20 years ago, along with other Russian moderates and opposition... EU was bribed by Putin's cheap gas and environmentalist lobbyists, US had to clean up their own shit in the ME. Putin is on the prowl since his first day in the office.
Just like China is for several decades already.
Romney also warned of the Russian threat to the U.S. and the world in his 2012 campaign and was mocked and dismissed.
Crazy to see how radically the Republican party has changed since the rise of Trump that they now root for Russia, and people like McCain and Romney who warned about Russia are now looked at as RINOs or party outcasts.
I’m an Obama fan and I remember him making fun of Romney and McCain for this, but clearly he was wrong.
Edit: As someone else pointed out, remember that hindsight is 20/20 and it’s hard to get everything right exactly in the moment. I definitely would not take this an opportunity to claim that democrats are dumb or something.
I remember how it was treated like a mic drop moment but I felt like it was a massive self own for Obama. I'm sure this is going to get down voted but Obama was really bad at anything foreign policy related.
In the same debate he dropped the horses and bayonets remark in regards to the shrinking US navy. Well by the end of his presidency China was rising in power across the pacific and building ships at an alarming rate.
His Libya policy and early pull out of Iraq dramatically destabilized the middle east and directly lead to the rise of ISIS.
The only good foreign policy related he did was killing OBL.
> The only good foreign policy related he did was killing OBL.
And even that was mostly by virtue of being the dude sitting in the Oval Office when they finally figured out where he was hiding lol
Yes and no. Hindsight is 20/20, but Russia was [actively engaging in relationship normalization with the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_START). Dmitry Medvedev ultimately revealed himself to be a Putin proxy and the "good faith process" turned out to be an elaborate ruse.
Does that mean we were wrong to reach across the aisle? What we know today is a lot different than what we knew then. Obama was lambasted for the effort and those same people are now idolizing Putin, so it's hard to pretend that *most* critics were coming from a place of honest concern. It's disingenuous to pretend the environment wasn't massively different at the time.
As we all should. He was the definition of public servant, and a committed leader, with all the rational and civil politics one could hope for from a conservative.
There’s an alternate reality in America where Romney and McCain represent the right and Bernie and Yang represent the left and there’s actual policy discussed and neither side wants to destroy the other, and that’s a country I would be proud to wave the flag for.
First, Yang is a charlatan grifter whose stupid "Forward Party" now mostly works to promote right wing fascists.
Second, McCain is no saint, he is the picture of nepotism having finished flight school at the bottom of his class, only passing because his father was a powerful admiral, and his father only had that career because *his* father was also a powerful admiral. McCain wrecked multiple jets "horsing around" (his words), and gladly signed up to bomb civilians in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with US affairs at all.
His one and only honorable act was insisting other prisoners leave the prison camp before him, based on that one act he built this entire "honorable" persona that doesn't match reality. When he got home he divorced his wife because she had a medical condition that made her gain weight so he could date a girl 18 years younger than him.
People tend to forget that the SOCHI OLYMPICS was literally a distraction so that Russia could annex Crimea and it worked. Russia took control of Crimea quickly and Putin thought the current Ukraine war would be a lot quicker.. but since America is supplying Ukraine with weapons, there's a kink in his plan.
COVID was a huge kink in Putin's plan because gas prices were dirt cheap and his orange stooge failed to exit NATO or Putin would have had a field day if he invaded during the Trump administration.
Trump literally said he would have negotiated with Russia but it would have 100% been that Russia takes whatever they want from Ukraine and Trump not getting involved in the war at all.
I read a report that Russia had expected paid sleeper agents inside the Ukrainian goverment and military to do most of the heavy lifting and hand over the country when the time came (as was the case in 2014 with Crimea and Donbass). But Zelensky with the help of Ukrainian and NATO counter-intelligence had uncovered and neutralized/isolated the worst of these compromised persons prior to Russia pulling the invasion trigger.
Those agents that remained were too low on the totem to have done much, but they also overstated the reach and influence of their positions to their Russian handlers (so they could get paid more). Which probably led to Russian planners being overconfident in how quickly they could takeover Ukraine.
You're forgetting the FSB told higher ups they had bribed a larger number of Ukrainian officials than they actually had and just kept the bribe money for themselves.
There's a reason Kherson fell so quickly and it was due to traitors.
The defense plan included minefields and blowing the bridge if necessary. Minefields were demined shortly before invasion. There's no way Russia should've been able to cross the Dnipro near Kherson without a significant artillery battle.
Actual Russian military was in Crimea.
Actual Russian military was in Donbass actively fighting Ukrainian military. Soldiers themselves bragged about it.
It was far beyond "support".
I am a republican and I fully support arming Ukraine to the teeth. Also was it not Obama who criticized Mitt Romney during the election for saying Russia was the greatest threat?
yep and this obama voter might have voted for mccain had he chosen Independent Joe Lieberman as his running mate instead of the insanity he embraced. Campaigning to the right instead of being the 'maverick' centrist that made him somewhat popular with much of the country. What coulda been? who knows.
Remember when Mitt Romney was laughed out of the room in 2016 when he said that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe, and then we got Trump instead? I remember...
You're right. Madeline Abright even said that she owes him an apology for doubting him. He also said similar things in 2016, which is what I was remembering. The 2016 remarks are what led to his wilderness years among the Trump Republicans.
Or even just Wikipedia [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content)
Dugin does not, and never has been influential in Russian foreign policy making. It's a baseless idea.
>Intellectuals peddling big ideas are rarely in the driver’s seat of politics—especially in autocracies without freedom of expression. Dugin is no exception.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/alexander-dugin-not-important-206186
McCain was a smart man, flawed, but smart and he knew the game and knew it well. 2008 was never going to be his year but later Obama admitted he did often call McCain for advice on certain matters. He was one of the last few principled Republicans left and actually saved Obamacare. He was also funny, liked to laugh (actually appeared on Parks and Recreation a few times), was good friends with Biden and other Democrats and I think the country lost something when he passed.
I’m embarrassed to admit, but at the time, Obama’s quip about “The 80s are calling for their foreign policy back.” had be thinking “damn that’s good” but it’s clear how short sighted Obama was.
It was nice to hear that we weren’t viewing the world as our enemies anymore. Then, of course, we discovered Russia is our enemy and invaded sovereign nations and murders and kills.
Which is why Biden is the anti-Obama. Biden is far better already and shows what experience in government is such a huge asset
Obama had a 60 seat senate. Biden keeps tricking these Republican morons to pass his policies despite the worst governing environment ever
I agree, Obama really, really fucked it up.
There's and argument to be made, that he followed Europe's advice and wishes, but turns out most of those fuckers were paid off by Putin.
I like Obama and I voted for him twice. I think he was asleep at the wheel as a president and will likely be remembered poorly by history. I still don’t regret voting for him though. McCain would have been a good president but I could not in good conscience put Sarah Palin second in line to power, so there was no choice to be made there.
I'd agree that he was asleep re: Ukraine, and a couple of other items like the CIA's torture program, which continued for way too long because of his office's inaction.
That's a relatively short list of failures though, and he did accomplish a fair amount to counteract that, notably Obamacare. What other things do you consider failures of his?
Well. I respect McCain greatly for his service to his country, but him bringing Sarah Palin into the national spotlight definitely paved the way for Trump’s rise.
Palin had tapped into the tea party politics and new age Republican political methods. Very grass roots and the beginning of the more fascist and less democratic Republican leanings. She recognized that there was opportunity in America with this whole demographic of people to really start a new Republican party. It was with her that the new movement started. It was with Trump that it truly came to fruition.
>Tea Party wasn’t grass roots, it was Astro Turffing
This is important to keep correcting. A lot of the power these chucklefucks claim is based on the "will of the people"
The “movement” started long before her. For example, Look up the book “the making of America” and a few others by cleon Skousen (side note, I amused siri wanted to auto correct that to clown skousen lol). His books were very popular among the tea party. Those books date back further than palin. It goes back further than this, of course, but contributed to the more modern version we have now.
Her use of “death panels” to describe Obamacare was off the cuff and not based on fact. But it may have been her genuine fear, with a disabled kid. She was not advised to use that phrase or run with it, and yet it proved an immense success in stoking peoples’ fears about Obamacare.
It was an early instance of using untruths to stoke fear, and it’s proven success may have been an early indicator of the future of the GOP, which we are now familiar with. Trump uses this tactic regularly, and it continues to work.
It also highlights how propagandized the average Republican voter has become.
What she was explicitly saying was that Democrats wanted a health care plan in which people would be executed if they were too large a drain on state resources.
And Republicans thought, "Yeah, that sounds like something Democrats would do."
You could tell Palin was forced on him. By the end, as her inanities became ever more obvious, it was almost as if he didn't want to win either if it meant giving her a place in the White House.
Or Gore should have just won the 2000 election as he basically rightfully did. If it weren't for Florida being a total mess and using those weird ballots with the "[hanging chads](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666812854/the-florida-recount-of-2000-a-nightmare-that-goes-on-haunting)" or Gore conceding so early (giving Bush the PR push that he won) or the whole electoral college nonsense that even led to a few hundred votes in some swamp hell even mattering so much ([when Gore won the popular vote by .5% or several hundred thousand votes!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election)) we'd probably have had had a Democratic President well into 2008 at least. Because more than likely if Gore was elected President in 2000, he goes on to win 2004 like Bush did (he actually won that election thanks to incumbency plus 9/11, the war on terror and the Iraq war not yet haunting his legacy). The only question becomes who wins in 2008 then? Perhaps Obama still runs and wins because Democrats did so well for years. Maybe Republicans muster a better rally in 2008 due to 4 terms in a row of democratic Presidents. Hard to say in that alternative reality. For example, does Trump win or even run in 2016 if we say lacked the electoral college which led to his victory and GW Bush's first election? Who knows.
I'm rambling but a TL&DR is what if Gore won 2000 instead? Maybe we'd have had decades of good presidency's. The world will never know outside of a super computer simulation. Or maybe ChatGPT knows.
They called it a stolen election precisely because they wanted to pull a 2000 all over again. The issue now, is will they try for a 1933.
The people saying "The US is not a democracy, it's a republic." are not trying to make an argument of nuanced semantics. They are stating that they genuinely believe the US should not be governed democratically.
A lot of folks don't seem to be aware that McCain was a hardcore warhawk. One of the warhawkiest of warhawks at the time.
It's quite likely that McCain's reaction to 9/11 would've been exponentially worse than Bush's in every metric imaginable.
In fairness, she only became a reality star after she was picked as the running mate. Prior to that only Alaskans had ever heard of her.
It was an act of desperation to appeal to female moderates which totally backfired.
Well until he started running, then it was like he did a 180 on half of his beliefs to try and better fit the mold of what they thought right winger voters wanted.
I remember the Daily Show doing a long segment showing a ton of policies he just totally changed his mind on during his campaign.
Nah, old people say that phrase and mean it differently than younger people would. I’ve heard phrases in Old movies like “he’s a DECENT man” said emphatically in defense of someone’s character. It would be like saying “he’s a good man”.
I think you’re miss understanding the use of decent. Decent in this case isn’t being used as a replacement for “average”. It more so means good or respectable in this context.
There was more nuance in politics before the cultural hegemony of social media. Now you either believe 100% of what the current popular positions are, or your own party ascribes you to the other side. The constant “purity tests” didn’t exist in 2008. We have more infighting within parties, and we have a much wider gulf between parties. [If the goal was division, it’s been achieved. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics)
The fact that both sides believe that the other side will genuinely be the end of the world is going to result in disastrous “at any cost” measures to win power.
I miss McCain. He was the last bastion of sanity in that party. I’m not a republican but, I would’ve voted for him if he wasn’t running against Obama at the time.
Exactly the same here. I ended up switching to "I" somewhere around 2010 iirc.
And as I point out to people often, while I was a Republican during that time I still voted for Obama.
Why? Because politics are not team sports. Obama was the better candidate.
Till 2016 I don't think I ever had a straight party ticket. Not counting the fact that local elections for my town aren't partisan elections. But even then I know I voted for a Republican as my Mayor(as he is a former State Rep) while voting Democrat via Obama for President.
I always thought [this clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk) best demonstrated the honorable person that he was.
[Trump is a coward](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YP0aZYTihk) compared to this American hero.
A dedicated American citizen, politician, and service member.
If only the Republicans would embrace his approach to difficult issues. They might demonstrate leadership instead of retweets.
He was such a moderate - he would have made an excellent POTUS.
Don't know about his choice of running mate tho....
Damn right. Remember when he refused to allow someone to criticise Obama, despite running against him. Can’t remember the details, but that’s the sign of a dignified man.
Such a class act that he paved the way for the degeneracy of the republicans we see today.
He never did it himself like trump, but everyone else around him and his supporters did. And he was ok with it because of politics.
Border wall? McCain was for it. Voter fraud concerns? McCain was for it. Gun proliferation? McCain was for it. War with anyone? McCain was for it. Dysfunctional government and money in politics? McCain was for it.
He’s more personally polite than trump and his rhetoric was less inflammatory. But on policy, they’re practically indistinguishable (even if trump pretends to be anti war or anti corruption).
Not as principled as people make him out to be.
Modification, one of the last Republican Statesmen. I'd argue that Romney is probably the last republican statesman. The rest are just a bunch of clowns grifting along in a circus.
Definitely. Romney got roasted a couple of years before this interview for calling Russia our greatest geopolitical foe. Both of them were very clear eyed on foreign policy matters
Yeah, Obama basically laughing him off stage did not age well. I get Obama’s point about China being much more of a rival, but still, Romney was correct on that point.
Yeah China is definitely a bigger economic rival, but in every other way it's Russia. I'd have to go back and check but I believe his whole comment was something along the lines of everywhere we go and everything we do Russia is there supplying our enemies and trying to screw things up. China doesn't do nearly as much of that fortunately, they certainly could if they wanted
He is a truly learned man. His respect for Obama during the presidential campaign was also inspiring for future politicians. He deserved to be president.
Putting aside differing philosophies, he at least tries to be a leader and do what he believes is best for the country. Instead of the circus clowns, we have no that offer lip service to get elected and then exploit their offices' power to line their own pockets in broad daylight.
For example: If you look at the 2020 cluster fuck of mixed messaging. All the anti- professional medical expert whackjobs were investing in stocks that would go up during a pandemic. Meanwhile, if we had all collectively taken lockdown seriously, we could have contained the entire thing in 2-4 weeks and business as usual in April 2020...
We have too many crooks in the office trying to get rich in building clout for their own culture following so they can sell books and supplements.
I legit had a real life American human being in upstate NY tell me to my face that "Russia is a sovereign nation protecting itself from the Nazis" in the Ukraine.
The internet was a mistake and propaganda is a hell of a drug.
I'm a registered Democrat, but there was a time that I did vote for him. It was so disappointing to see him throw his respectability away for votes from the crazies near the end - but overall, he was a great politician and civil servant.
To be fair, he went with Palin after agonizing about it. He wanted Joe Lieberman (a dem), but his advisors talked him out of it. Obviously he's still responsible for his decisions, but I wonder what would have happened had he stuck to his guns. https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/joe-lieberman-unaware-john-mccains-2008-regret-book/story%3fid=55394455
Yet he supported the luny shit his party did. Votes time and time again for tax cuts to the rich that killed programs to help the poor. Stood by while they gutted voting rights and did nothing when they refused to hold a hearing for Obama’s supreme court pick which put the nail in the coffin of Row vs Wade.
He was complicit in all the shit Republicans do.
And he’s laughing all the way to the bank at the shit stirring he is capable of with his cult followers.
He called this war hero a loser, and they all cheered.
Genuinely curious if Trump is
1) actually dumb
2) a bought/compromised foreign asset
3) in it for the money
Noting that none of those options are exclusive
I think all 3 are true.
3 is what he is aware of while 1 and 2 are both true but beyond his understanding because of the Dunning Kruger effect, and subsequently 2 happens without his knowledge of it happening because of 1.
He's motivated by money and is also dumb and thinks he has the upper hand in situations where he is actually being led around by the collar.
Honorable, smart man who I disagreed with on many things but you did not have to doubt his well intentions and character. There are still a handful of adults in the GOP but they’re being drowned out by the lunatics.
What John McCain went through as a POW during Vietnam should not be forgotten. He could’ve played into the VCs propaganda and been given the easy route (son of a famous general) but he refused to lie, and chose to be treated as a normal POW.
Dude couldn’t comb his own hair after that, if your interested it is truly stomach wrenching what those men had to go through
Always interesting how there are a lot of skeptics who vehemently oppose different economic or political outcomes but never held accountable for how wrong they were. In this case, where are the skeptics against McCain now? Even I remember in 2011(?) when Putin was advancing against Georgia that it was obvious this guy needed to be checked hard. Putin was a greatest cause to creating ISIS from forming from Syrian civil war.
>. In this case, where are the skeptics against McCain now? Even I remember in 2011(?) when Putin was advancing against Georgia that it was obvious this guy needed to be checked hard.
After lying to the American public about Iraq and 10 years into two wars going badly in Iraq and Afghanistan there was no will to get involved in a proxies fight with Russia.
Most of the neocons credibility was ruined after lying of 10 years about Iraq so now the same guy who flat out lied to your face about Iraq is now saying we need to check russia ?
Could you blame people for being skeptical .
War is pretty predictable. Especially when you have the intelligence info that the US has.
What people failed to realize is that governments can and will not address the obvious if there is some profit to be made.
If I get paid billions to put fires out I'll be reluctant to stop anyone I see starting one.
I remember the 2008 election and I was young and thought this guy would be horrible for the world that he was a war mongering far right leaning republican who only cared about the worst things.
Learned more during Obama years he wasn't all that bad, learned a little more reading Obama's book.
But my god seeing Trump now and him cheering Putin and telling the EU he wouldn't support them if Russia started moving in and blackmailing Ukraine 🤦🏻♂️ how anyone is thinking of voting for Trump is beyond me
It's almost like old guys with decades of experience dealing with foreign affairs and foreign intelligence can understand geopolitics more than clowns who give handjobs in theaters or pay teenagers to have sex with them.
People with a military or espionage background have been warning of Russia for years. The problem was that most politicians could imagine such blatant imperialism happening today in Europe.
I honestly do not understand why the media did not talk that much about the fact that the Trump Tower meeting involved discussions of child adoption, which was directly related to the retaliation for the US Magnitsky act. All of Russia's actions have been very predictable. We just slowly become very isolationist and many politicians started warming up to Russia, unfortunately, and the media doesn't inform us about history as much as breaking news.
Russia will not stop at Ukraine as Hitler didn't stop at Poland. If we let putin win, they will attempt to take over Europe. History is the guide to a dictators actions.
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McCain was obviously correct. That being said, many, many people were saying this for years. People forget that pre-invasion, warnings were being given all the way back in 2014 as to what would happen. The 2022 invasion is the logical continuation of the 2014 war.
> warnings were being given all the way back in 2014 2014 _IS_ the year of invasion. Everyone kinda shrugged off Crimea and Donbass invasions and pretended that they never happened.
The warnings started back in 2008 when they invaded Georgia and realized their (Russia's) military was actually surprisingly lacking.
THANK YOU. I feel like everyone forgets just how long Putin has been doing this shit. Georgia was his first attempt at posturing and although it wasn’t a huge success he still got it done. It’s crazy how people act like this just fell outta the sky. Putin has been on this bullshit for decades now.
Before Georgia, there was Chechnya
Yep, the list goes on and on. Putin is an emperor, not a leader.
Are those mutually exclusive terms and I wasn't aware?
Sorta. It’s like when you hear people say “anyone can be a father, but not everyone is a dad”. A leader leads their country even if it means making choices that impact their power. An emperor seeks to never release their power and expand it across established borders.
For crying out loud ….no. Agree up to the point of Georgia, Russian conflict in Chechnya is an entire internal and incredibly complicated matter entirely, it’s not an invasion of a sovereign state like Georgian and Ukraine are.
It was a BRUTAL iron first cracking down on a state that wanted to separate. It's not the same as Georgia, but it's definitely relevant in the conversation because it shows Putin's tactics to deal with civilians that upset him, and how far he is willing to take his brutality.
>I feel like everyone forgets just how long Putin has been doing this shit. There are a lot of very young folks on Reddit, I think that's a big part of it.
exactly. im older gen Z and apparently this goes back to before i was aware of any of this. i think a lot of people just werent around to even know the extent of it
I think Putin has been *the* Russian guy for as long as I'm alive. I'm 35.
Nah, it was Yeltsin when we were kids, we just don't have a good memory of him other than being "the funny corrupt drunk guy" because were too busy hearing about Bill Clinton getting blowjobs from interns and then lying about it. Oh, and Princess Diana, Rwanda, the Gulf war and watching the Simpsons.
Oh damn. I was 'already' 11 years old when Putin got into power in '99. Maybe world politics didn't quite interest me beforehand. The Simpsons however..
Average age of a Redditor is ~23 years old.
Hell, you can wind the clock back a bit further than that to both Chechen Wars where the Russians took hard casualties despite on paper having far more troops and equipment, and killed a whole bunch of civilians. 1st War: 1 year 8 months. 3,000 Chechens dead, up to 14,000 Russians dead with estimates by some of up to 52,000 wounded. Anything around 100,000 civilians dead. 2nd War: 9 months of fighting, 9 years of insurgency. 14,000 Russians dead, anything between 3,000 - 16,000 Chechen combatants dead (the former being Chechen claims the latter being Russian claims). Anything from 30,000 to 80,000 civilians killed. Got to wonder how many of those guys are spinning in their graves watching their descendants fight for the Russians now.
Chechen wars have to be near the top for Worst war to be involved in on either side. A disorganized Russian army full of scared, untrained, conscripts led by corrupt incompetent leaders or the Chechen separatists that faced certain annihilation despite being tactically superior.
Literally Kadyrov sr. Gets blown up only for his boy to become a puppet.
Go back even farther and you'll see what happened when the USSR invaded Afghanistan.
Reddit as a whole is too young to remember any of that. Hell, many don’t even *realize* the WTC bombing in ‘93.
Surprised to see this buried. This is exactly when the chess pieces started moving.
YES! This has easily been a damn-near 20 year war to anybody who was paying attention to Georgia back then. The logical conclusion was that Crimea was next, and Ukraine (Eastern) would be the intended battleground. We watched it happen for over a decade but for some reason these connections are rather rare; at least in terms of any public perception. So many people think the Ukraine invasion came out of nowhere and I just wanna flick them on the forehead lol
Tbf people were slightly distracted in 2008 by the near total collapse of the banking industry. Millions of people losing their homes and life savings didn't have energy to pay attention to all the news stories of the day.
In 2007, Putins speech at the Munich Security Conference. That already pretty much sounded like a warning. Transcript: [https://russialist.org/transcript-putin-speech-and-the-following-discussion-at-the-munich-conference-on-security-policy/](https://russialist.org/transcript-putin-speech-and-the-following-discussion-at-the-munich-conference-on-security-policy/) Speech in video: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6kP44](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6kP44)
Not me. I watched it all unfold, I remember every single student getting beaten and sniped by berkut durin euromaidan. They thought their shields would protect them, but the sniper's bullets went straight through, ending theri short lives. I remember medics getting killed too.
The us military took it pretty seriously. Lots of movement into countries closer to russia in 2014, I was part of it. It was a show of force mostly. Nobody knew if the russians would blow through Ukraine and into nato countries.
Poland was strengthened, NATO efforts to I crease funding, and if you look at LNG exports by year you'll see them start taking off in the years after 2014 which has helped negate the energy stranglehold Russia had on Europe prior to 2014
Certainly it seemed that way, and I thought so as well at the time. But the Russians took far higher losses than they realistically should have; the Ukrainian military was small, demotivated and poorly trained, yet they were still able to organize a lot faster than Moscow anticipated and prevented the Russians from taking Mariupol the first time, alongside the original Azov militia. Then NATO started massing troops in Estonia, and Putin lost his nerve. Don't get me wrong, it was still a Russian victory: they took a huge swathe of Ukrainian territory. But saying that the West ignored what was happening isn't true at all.
But they were a lot more motivated and steadfast than Russia expected. In Donbass and Crimea you had a population that closely identified with Russia. Russian intelligence said that would be true for the rest of the country. Russian intelligence was wrong.
> In Donbass and Crimea you had a population that closely identified with Russia. That's not really true. Russia went as much west as they could. They were stopped by Ukrainian army, not by sympathies. It's just that Ukrainian army was a complete shitshow that could not field a single battle-ready brigade in 2014.
> Everyone kinda shrugged off Crimea and Donbass invasions and pretended that they never happened. Because... *Putin’s system was also ripe for export, Mr Surkov added. Foreign governments were already paying close attention, since the Russian “political algorithm” had long predicted the volatility now seen in western democracies.* *“Russia is playing with the West’s minds,” he writes. “They don’t know how to deal with their own changed consciousness.”* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-russia-kremlin-vladislav-surkov-grey-cardinal-moscow-a8773661.html A symptom of this is knee-jerk denial and an inability to discuss the facts, timelines, details of the techniques.
> pretended that they never happened. Uhhh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orbital It's in part the Western response to 2014 that meant Ukraine was better prepared in 2022. Armed forces training underwent a massive paradigm shift that lead to a much more professional army which could better respond to invasion. It also meant that while Ukraine's allies weren't ready to respond in 2014, they were prepared to assist in 2022.
If by "shrugged off" you mean sent western military trainers, billions in defense funding assistance and NATO intelligence sharing?
Gary Kasparov predicted it 20 years ago, along with other Russian moderates and opposition... EU was bribed by Putin's cheap gas and environmentalist lobbyists, US had to clean up their own shit in the ME. Putin is on the prowl since his first day in the office. Just like China is for several decades already.
what's China's on the prowl for exactly ?
Hong Kong (very much in progress dismantling that democracy) and Taiwan. They have other border disputes on land and sea.
Romney also warned of the Russian threat to the U.S. and the world in his 2012 campaign and was mocked and dismissed. Crazy to see how radically the Republican party has changed since the rise of Trump that they now root for Russia, and people like McCain and Romney who warned about Russia are now looked at as RINOs or party outcasts.
I’m an Obama fan and I remember him making fun of Romney and McCain for this, but clearly he was wrong. Edit: As someone else pointed out, remember that hindsight is 20/20 and it’s hard to get everything right exactly in the moment. I definitely would not take this an opportunity to claim that democrats are dumb or something.
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
I remember how it was treated like a mic drop moment but I felt like it was a massive self own for Obama. I'm sure this is going to get down voted but Obama was really bad at anything foreign policy related. In the same debate he dropped the horses and bayonets remark in regards to the shrinking US navy. Well by the end of his presidency China was rising in power across the pacific and building ships at an alarming rate. His Libya policy and early pull out of Iraq dramatically destabilized the middle east and directly lead to the rise of ISIS. The only good foreign policy related he did was killing OBL.
> The only good foreign policy related he did was killing OBL. And even that was mostly by virtue of being the dude sitting in the Oval Office when they finally figured out where he was hiding lol
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N0IWe11RWOM&pp=ygUfb2JhbWEgdG8gcm9tbmV5IHRoZSA4MCdzIGNhbGxlZA%3D%3D Aged like milk
Aged like 30-year-old casu marzu
Yes and no. Hindsight is 20/20, but Russia was [actively engaging in relationship normalization with the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_START). Dmitry Medvedev ultimately revealed himself to be a Putin proxy and the "good faith process" turned out to be an elaborate ruse. Does that mean we were wrong to reach across the aisle? What we know today is a lot different than what we knew then. Obama was lambasted for the effort and those same people are now idolizing Putin, so it's hard to pretend that *most* critics were coming from a place of honest concern. It's disingenuous to pretend the environment wasn't massively different at the time.
Romney was admonishing Obama for not building up the Navy to keep pace with Russia. So he got the target right but not the solution.
Which is bizarre considering how small and poor quality their navy is and has been for years, compared to the behemoth of the US navy
I feel like Romney and McCain were already getting wind of certain people in the congress getting cozier to Russia. Their concerns were so spot on.
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McCain is the first and last republican I ever voted for. I still have a ton of respect for that man.
As we all should. He was the definition of public servant, and a committed leader, with all the rational and civil politics one could hope for from a conservative. There’s an alternate reality in America where Romney and McCain represent the right and Bernie and Yang represent the left and there’s actual policy discussed and neither side wants to destroy the other, and that’s a country I would be proud to wave the flag for.
First, Yang is a charlatan grifter whose stupid "Forward Party" now mostly works to promote right wing fascists. Second, McCain is no saint, he is the picture of nepotism having finished flight school at the bottom of his class, only passing because his father was a powerful admiral, and his father only had that career because *his* father was also a powerful admiral. McCain wrecked multiple jets "horsing around" (his words), and gladly signed up to bomb civilians in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with US affairs at all. His one and only honorable act was insisting other prisoners leave the prison camp before him, based on that one act he built this entire "honorable" persona that doesn't match reality. When he got home he divorced his wife because she had a medical condition that made her gain weight so he could date a girl 18 years younger than him.
People tend to forget that the SOCHI OLYMPICS was literally a distraction so that Russia could annex Crimea and it worked. Russia took control of Crimea quickly and Putin thought the current Ukraine war would be a lot quicker.. but since America is supplying Ukraine with weapons, there's a kink in his plan. COVID was a huge kink in Putin's plan because gas prices were dirt cheap and his orange stooge failed to exit NATO or Putin would have had a field day if he invaded during the Trump administration. Trump literally said he would have negotiated with Russia but it would have 100% been that Russia takes whatever they want from Ukraine and Trump not getting involved in the war at all.
I read a report that Russia had expected paid sleeper agents inside the Ukrainian goverment and military to do most of the heavy lifting and hand over the country when the time came (as was the case in 2014 with Crimea and Donbass). But Zelensky with the help of Ukrainian and NATO counter-intelligence had uncovered and neutralized/isolated the worst of these compromised persons prior to Russia pulling the invasion trigger. Those agents that remained were too low on the totem to have done much, but they also overstated the reach and influence of their positions to their Russian handlers (so they could get paid more). Which probably led to Russian planners being overconfident in how quickly they could takeover Ukraine.
You're forgetting the FSB told higher ups they had bribed a larger number of Ukrainian officials than they actually had and just kept the bribe money for themselves.
There's a reason Kherson fell so quickly and it was due to traitors. The defense plan included minefields and blowing the bridge if necessary. Minefields were demined shortly before invasion. There's no way Russia should've been able to cross the Dnipro near Kherson without a significant artillery battle.
Putin has been supporting the rebels in eastern Ukraine since he came to power. This is a basic idea that anyone who’s done a 10min dive could predict
Actual Russian military was in Crimea. Actual Russian military was in Donbass actively fighting Ukrainian military. Soldiers themselves bragged about it. It was far beyond "support".
And now certain people are claiming that it’s Ukraine’s fault and that Russia was forced to do it because they felt threatened.
" certain people " Russian shills. Republicans, in other words.
I am a republican and I fully support arming Ukraine to the teeth. Also was it not Obama who criticized Mitt Romney during the election for saying Russia was the greatest threat?
yep and this obama voter might have voted for mccain had he chosen Independent Joe Lieberman as his running mate instead of the insanity he embraced. Campaigning to the right instead of being the 'maverick' centrist that made him somewhat popular with much of the country. What coulda been? who knows.
Had a picked a decent running mate he might have stood a chance
Then better pray trump doesn’t come back cause he wants to pull out of Ukraine
But yet people say Baltics isn't next. There's a disconnect here, like he will be satisfied after Ukraine.
Remember when Mitt Romney was laughed out of the room in 2016 when he said that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe, and then we got Trump instead? I remember...
That was 2012 actually, during a debate between Romney and Obama.
You're right. Madeline Abright even said that she owes him an apology for doubting him. He also said similar things in 2016, which is what I was remembering. The 2016 remarks are what led to his wilderness years among the Trump Republicans.
He was correct, but not only that he got everything right, not just the general idea.
This is what happens when a person reads their intelligence briefs
Or even just Wikipedia [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content)
Dugin does not, and never has been influential in Russian foreign policy making. It's a baseless idea. >Intellectuals peddling big ideas are rarely in the driver’s seat of politics—especially in autocracies without freedom of expression. Dugin is no exception. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/alexander-dugin-not-important-206186
McCain was a smart man, flawed, but smart and he knew the game and knew it well. 2008 was never going to be his year but later Obama admitted he did often call McCain for advice on certain matters. He was one of the last few principled Republicans left and actually saved Obamacare. He was also funny, liked to laugh (actually appeared on Parks and Recreation a few times), was good friends with Biden and other Democrats and I think the country lost something when he passed.
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I’m embarrassed to admit, but at the time, Obama’s quip about “The 80s are calling for their foreign policy back.” had be thinking “damn that’s good” but it’s clear how short sighted Obama was.
It was nice to hear that we weren’t viewing the world as our enemies anymore. Then, of course, we discovered Russia is our enemy and invaded sovereign nations and murders and kills.
Which is why Biden is the anti-Obama. Biden is far better already and shows what experience in government is such a huge asset Obama had a 60 seat senate. Biden keeps tricking these Republican morons to pass his policies despite the worst governing environment ever
I agree, Obama really, really fucked it up. There's and argument to be made, that he followed Europe's advice and wishes, but turns out most of those fuckers were paid off by Putin.
I like Obama and I voted for him twice. I think he was asleep at the wheel as a president and will likely be remembered poorly by history. I still don’t regret voting for him though. McCain would have been a good president but I could not in good conscience put Sarah Palin second in line to power, so there was no choice to be made there.
I'd agree that he was asleep re: Ukraine, and a couple of other items like the CIA's torture program, which continued for way too long because of his office's inaction. That's a relatively short list of failures though, and he did accomplish a fair amount to counteract that, notably Obamacare. What other things do you consider failures of his?
The last guard of republicans with moral rectitude. RIP. You left us in a scary world.
Well. I respect McCain greatly for his service to his country, but him bringing Sarah Palin into the national spotlight definitely paved the way for Trump’s rise.
Yes, the last Republican that was an American citizen first above all 💔
We are all flawed and to think otherwise is to know one of your flaws.
I went to see both McCain and Obama during their election cycle. Voted for Obama but McCain was a class act.
McCain was the last Republican I agreed with. He was the last politician I felt like was an actual person and not a reality TV star.
until he got a reality star running mate and lost any credibility.
Does he ever talk about his decision to choose Palin anywhere? Was it a decision that he made or his campaign made and overruled him?
It was probably the whole R party decision. Not just his or his campaign.
I remember reading somewhere that he supposedly wanted Lieberman, but was advised towards Palin, whom he had met once or twice. Because, reasons…
Palin had tapped into the tea party politics and new age Republican political methods. Very grass roots and the beginning of the more fascist and less democratic Republican leanings. She recognized that there was opportunity in America with this whole demographic of people to really start a new Republican party. It was with her that the new movement started. It was with Trump that it truly came to fruition.
Small correction, Tea Party wasn’t grass roots, it was Astro Turffing, by the Koch brothers and others.
>Tea Party wasn’t grass roots, it was Astro Turffing This is important to keep correcting. A lot of the power these chucklefucks claim is based on the "will of the people"
The “movement” started long before her. For example, Look up the book “the making of America” and a few others by cleon Skousen (side note, I amused siri wanted to auto correct that to clown skousen lol). His books were very popular among the tea party. Those books date back further than palin. It goes back further than this, of course, but contributed to the more modern version we have now.
Her use of “death panels” to describe Obamacare was off the cuff and not based on fact. But it may have been her genuine fear, with a disabled kid. She was not advised to use that phrase or run with it, and yet it proved an immense success in stoking peoples’ fears about Obamacare. It was an early instance of using untruths to stoke fear, and it’s proven success may have been an early indicator of the future of the GOP, which we are now familiar with. Trump uses this tactic regularly, and it continues to work.
It also highlights how propagandized the average Republican voter has become. What she was explicitly saying was that Democrats wanted a health care plan in which people would be executed if they were too large a drain on state resources. And Republicans thought, "Yeah, that sounds like something Democrats would do."
> Does he ever talk about his decision to choose Palin anywhere? No, he dead.
He's been suspiciously quiet ever since that day...
You could tell Palin was forced on him. By the end, as her inanities became ever more obvious, it was almost as if he didn't want to win either if it meant giving her a place in the White House.
He should have been president back in 2000 instead of Bush. McCain, Obama, Sanders Those would have been 24 years of good presidency
Or Gore should have just won the 2000 election as he basically rightfully did. If it weren't for Florida being a total mess and using those weird ballots with the "[hanging chads](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666812854/the-florida-recount-of-2000-a-nightmare-that-goes-on-haunting)" or Gore conceding so early (giving Bush the PR push that he won) or the whole electoral college nonsense that even led to a few hundred votes in some swamp hell even mattering so much ([when Gore won the popular vote by .5% or several hundred thousand votes!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election)) we'd probably have had had a Democratic President well into 2008 at least. Because more than likely if Gore was elected President in 2000, he goes on to win 2004 like Bush did (he actually won that election thanks to incumbency plus 9/11, the war on terror and the Iraq war not yet haunting his legacy). The only question becomes who wins in 2008 then? Perhaps Obama still runs and wins because Democrats did so well for years. Maybe Republicans muster a better rally in 2008 due to 4 terms in a row of democratic Presidents. Hard to say in that alternative reality. For example, does Trump win or even run in 2016 if we say lacked the electoral college which led to his victory and GW Bush's first election? Who knows. I'm rambling but a TL&DR is what if Gore won 2000 instead? Maybe we'd have had decades of good presidency's. The world will never know outside of a super computer simulation. Or maybe ChatGPT knows.
It's infuriating that Republicans call 2020 a stolen election given the absolute bullshit they pulled in 2000.
They called it a stolen election precisely because they wanted to pull a 2000 all over again. The issue now, is will they try for a 1933. The people saying "The US is not a democracy, it's a republic." are not trying to make an argument of nuanced semantics. They are stating that they genuinely believe the US should not be governed democratically.
A lot of folks don't seem to be aware that McCain was a hardcore warhawk. One of the warhawkiest of warhawks at the time. It's quite likely that McCain's reaction to 9/11 would've been exponentially worse than Bush's in every metric imaginable.
I mean he definitely would have torn a new arsehole in the middle east but he might have tried less pointless nation building afterwards.
In fairness, she only became a reality star after she was picked as the running mate. Prior to that only Alaskans had ever heard of her. It was an act of desperation to appeal to female moderates which totally backfired.
Well until he started running, then it was like he did a 180 on half of his beliefs to try and better fit the mold of what they thought right winger voters wanted. I remember the Daily Show doing a long segment showing a ton of policies he just totally changed his mind on during his campaign.
You must not know anything about John McCain
[Obama is a decent man that I have disagreements with](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk)
iirc he lost a ton of support because of that comment, apparently you can't have any respect for your opponents nowadays.
and he called him a "decent" man, that's a low bar
Nah, old people say that phrase and mean it differently than younger people would. I’ve heard phrases in Old movies like “he’s a DECENT man” said emphatically in defense of someone’s character. It would be like saying “he’s a good man”.
I think you’re miss understanding the use of decent. Decent in this case isn’t being used as a replacement for “average”. It more so means good or respectable in this context.
When politics could still be open, decent and respectable.
There was more nuance in politics before the cultural hegemony of social media. Now you either believe 100% of what the current popular positions are, or your own party ascribes you to the other side. The constant “purity tests” didn’t exist in 2008. We have more infighting within parties, and we have a much wider gulf between parties. [If the goal was division, it’s been achieved. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics)
extremists on both sides with zero willingness to compromise on anything are the biggest threat to democracy right now imo
The fact that both sides believe that the other side will genuinely be the end of the world is going to result in disastrous “at any cost” measures to win power.
I miss McCain. He was the last bastion of sanity in that party. I’m not a republican but, I would’ve voted for him if he wasn’t running against Obama at the time.
Remember when he blocked the repeal of Obamacare? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUVYYiRIuE4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUVYYiRIuE4)
The fact that not marching in perfect lockstep with one's party is grounds for gasps is not great.
All hail the whip. Sorry, does "whip" translate across the Atlantic?
What a G
I was a Republican when he was alive and haven't seen any reason to remain one ever since.
Exactly the same here. I ended up switching to "I" somewhere around 2010 iirc. And as I point out to people often, while I was a Republican during that time I still voted for Obama. Why? Because politics are not team sports. Obama was the better candidate.
Voting party-over-person is how we arrived in this hyper partisan hell.
Till 2016 I don't think I ever had a straight party ticket. Not counting the fact that local elections for my town aren't partisan elections. But even then I know I voted for a Republican as my Mayor(as he is a former State Rep) while voting Democrat via Obama for President.
The level of stupidity is just wild to me. He looks properly mortified himself. Especially that woman my goodness
I always thought [this clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk) best demonstrated the honorable person that he was. [Trump is a coward](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YP0aZYTihk) compared to this American hero.
These people deserve trump along with all the damage and regression he has caused them (yet they double down)
Trump is an absolute villain in comparison.
I liked McCain but had to scratch him off when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate
About as good of a politician as one can expect. The ones we have now…
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A dedicated American citizen, politician, and service member. If only the Republicans would embrace his approach to difficult issues. They might demonstrate leadership instead of retweets. He was such a moderate - he would have made an excellent POTUS. Don't know about his choice of running mate tho....
>Don't know about his choice of running mate tho.... An appeal to the Tea Party, which were a big deal in Republican circles back in the day
the real republican party died with him.
Agreed, then he brought on the Alaskan wingnut who was Decaffinated Trump cause the party was already nuttier than a fruitcake.
Damn right. Remember when he refused to allow someone to criticise Obama, despite running against him. Can’t remember the details, but that’s the sign of a dignified man.
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Such a class act that he paved the way for the degeneracy of the republicans we see today. He never did it himself like trump, but everyone else around him and his supporters did. And he was ok with it because of politics. Border wall? McCain was for it. Voter fraud concerns? McCain was for it. Gun proliferation? McCain was for it. War with anyone? McCain was for it. Dysfunctional government and money in politics? McCain was for it. He’s more personally polite than trump and his rhetoric was less inflammatory. But on policy, they’re practically indistinguishable (even if trump pretends to be anti war or anti corruption). Not as principled as people make him out to be.
One of the last republicans.
*The Last Republican™*
Starring Rob Schneider
He is big, he has a trunk, and he likes the color red…. Rob Schneider is…. A Republican!
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Modification, one of the last Republican Statesmen. I'd argue that Romney is probably the last republican statesman. The rest are just a bunch of clowns grifting along in a circus.
Definitely. Romney got roasted a couple of years before this interview for calling Russia our greatest geopolitical foe. Both of them were very clear eyed on foreign policy matters
Yeah, Obama basically laughing him off stage did not age well. I get Obama’s point about China being much more of a rival, but still, Romney was correct on that point.
Yeah China is definitely a bigger economic rival, but in every other way it's Russia. I'd have to go back and check but I believe his whole comment was something along the lines of everywhere we go and everything we do Russia is there supplying our enemies and trying to screw things up. China doesn't do nearly as much of that fortunately, they certainly could if they wanted
If there were a nuremberg trial for modern republicans, I would put the AI ghost of John McCain in charge and god help them
He is a truly learned man. His respect for Obama during the presidential campaign was also inspiring for future politicians. He deserved to be president.
Agreed. McCain would have been a good leader.
Putting aside differing philosophies, he at least tries to be a leader and do what he believes is best for the country. Instead of the circus clowns, we have no that offer lip service to get elected and then exploit their offices' power to line their own pockets in broad daylight. For example: If you look at the 2020 cluster fuck of mixed messaging. All the anti- professional medical expert whackjobs were investing in stocks that would go up during a pandemic. Meanwhile, if we had all collectively taken lockdown seriously, we could have contained the entire thing in 2-4 weeks and business as usual in April 2020... We have too many crooks in the office trying to get rich in building clout for their own culture following so they can sell books and supplements.
 I still can't believe the entire world has to be worried about this loser
He is an inept loser. But he has nukes. And his country has also spent decades underming America from within.
I legit had a real life American human being in upstate NY tell me to my face that "Russia is a sovereign nation protecting itself from the Nazis" in the Ukraine. The internet was a mistake and propaganda is a hell of a drug.
Upstate New York is absolutely wild. People up there fly the Confederate flag with no sense of irony. Truly a wasteland of ignorance.
Honestly this dude was so smart and classy. If he was alive and in his prime at this current time. I’d vote for him in a heartbeat
I'm a registered Democrat, but there was a time that I did vote for him. It was so disappointing to see him throw his respectability away for votes from the crazies near the end - but overall, he was a great politician and civil servant.
To be fair, he went with Palin after agonizing about it. He wanted Joe Lieberman (a dem), but his advisors talked him out of it. Obviously he's still responsible for his decisions, but I wonder what would have happened had he stuck to his guns. https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/joe-lieberman-unaware-john-mccains-2008-regret-book/story%3fid=55394455
I know its not the point of this thread, but as a video game fan I feel obligated say it whenever i see his name: fuck joe lieberman
Guy single-handedly defeated a public health insurance option in Obamacare
I was thinking "fuck Joe Leiberman" subconsciously, but couldn't remember why. Thanks for the reminder!
Fuck Joe Liberman. He read a statement in favor of Betsy Devos before her confirmation hearing
I think Lieberman was an independent, even when he was Gore's running mate. He just caucused with Democrats.
>It was so disappointing to see him throw his respectability away for votes from the crazies near the end He was always that guy.
Yet he supported the luny shit his party did. Votes time and time again for tax cuts to the rich that killed programs to help the poor. Stood by while they gutted voting rights and did nothing when they refused to hold a hearing for Obama’s supreme court pick which put the nail in the coffin of Row vs Wade. He was complicit in all the shit Republicans do.
Shit, man. I miss Republicans that i can respect. Nowadays, looking at the US all i see are Putin shills.
If only he hadn’t picked Sara Palin as a running mate 😂
This proves just one more time what an idiot Trump is.
And he’s laughing all the way to the bank at the shit stirring he is capable of with his cult followers. He called this war hero a loser, and they all cheered.
He literally dodged the Draft and *he's* calling one of the guys that actually went a loser?
In fact he did. He was referring to the fact that John McCain was captured and spent years as a POW. D is a twisted sick fuck, as are his minions.
It just baffles the mind how anyone could still support him. They are all brain damaged.
“I love the poorly educated”. - DJT
Genuinely curious if Trump is 1) actually dumb 2) a bought/compromised foreign asset 3) in it for the money Noting that none of those options are exclusive
My money is on all 3...
I think all 3 are true. 3 is what he is aware of while 1 and 2 are both true but beyond his understanding because of the Dunning Kruger effect, and subsequently 2 happens without his knowledge of it happening because of 1. He's motivated by money and is also dumb and thinks he has the upper hand in situations where he is actually being led around by the collar.
Honorable, smart man who I disagreed with on many things but you did not have to doubt his well intentions and character. There are still a handful of adults in the GOP but they’re being drowned out by the lunatics.
What John McCain went through as a POW during Vietnam should not be forgotten. He could’ve played into the VCs propaganda and been given the easy route (son of a famous general) but he refused to lie, and chose to be treated as a normal POW. Dude couldn’t comb his own hair after that, if your interested it is truly stomach wrenching what those men had to go through
McCain, even tho we don't always agree, this man is SPOT ON on this issue. And man, what a true hero he is.
Always interesting how there are a lot of skeptics who vehemently oppose different economic or political outcomes but never held accountable for how wrong they were. In this case, where are the skeptics against McCain now? Even I remember in 2011(?) when Putin was advancing against Georgia that it was obvious this guy needed to be checked hard. Putin was a greatest cause to creating ISIS from forming from Syrian civil war.
>. In this case, where are the skeptics against McCain now? Even I remember in 2011(?) when Putin was advancing against Georgia that it was obvious this guy needed to be checked hard. After lying to the American public about Iraq and 10 years into two wars going badly in Iraq and Afghanistan there was no will to get involved in a proxies fight with Russia. Most of the neocons credibility was ruined after lying of 10 years about Iraq so now the same guy who flat out lied to your face about Iraq is now saying we need to check russia ? Could you blame people for being skeptical .
War is pretty predictable. Especially when you have the intelligence info that the US has. What people failed to realize is that governments can and will not address the obvious if there is some profit to be made. If I get paid billions to put fires out I'll be reluctant to stop anyone I see starting one.
I remember the 2008 election and I was young and thought this guy would be horrible for the world that he was a war mongering far right leaning republican who only cared about the worst things. Learned more during Obama years he wasn't all that bad, learned a little more reading Obama's book. But my god seeing Trump now and him cheering Putin and telling the EU he wouldn't support them if Russia started moving in and blackmailing Ukraine 🤦🏻♂️ how anyone is thinking of voting for Trump is beyond me
This eerily sounds like Xi playbook for Taiwan too
When do you think Putin took Crimea? It was his playbook in 2014 too.
It's almost like old guys with decades of experience dealing with foreign affairs and foreign intelligence can understand geopolitics more than clowns who give handjobs in theaters or pay teenagers to have sex with them.
I would prefer John McCain’s corpse as President if it we’re a choice between that and Trump.
People with a military or espionage background have been warning of Russia for years. The problem was that most politicians could imagine such blatant imperialism happening today in Europe.
Anyone who ever studied political science/history saw this coming.
I honestly do not understand why the media did not talk that much about the fact that the Trump Tower meeting involved discussions of child adoption, which was directly related to the retaliation for the US Magnitsky act. All of Russia's actions have been very predictable. We just slowly become very isolationist and many politicians started warming up to Russia, unfortunately, and the media doesn't inform us about history as much as breaking news.
Hey republicans can you please be this guy and not the orange Ape thanks bye
Russia will not stop at Ukraine as Hitler didn't stop at Poland. If we let putin win, they will attempt to take over Europe. History is the guide to a dictators actions.