This is a strong contender for dumbest commentary on the situation in the Ukraine:
Russians tend to strike neighbors in US election years: Hung 56, Czech 68, Afg 80*, Ga 08, Ukr/Crimea 14
*late Dec 79
— Charles Lane (@ChuckLane1) March 2, 2014
by DougJ| 139 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes
This is a strong contender for dumbest commentary on the situation in the Ukraine:
Russians tend to strike neighbors in US election years: Hung 56, Czech 68, Afg 80*, Ga 08, Ukr/Crimea 14
*late Dec 79
— Charles Lane (@ChuckLane1) March 2, 2014
Comments are closed.
Omnes Omnibus
The Crimean War started in 1853. Just saying.
Alex S.
Charles Lane was probably thinking how he could tie this crisis to an existing Village narrative. He chose narrative nr.2: the perpetual horserace.
Alex S.
Charles Lane was probably thinking how he could tie this crisis to an existing Village narrative. He chose narrative nr.2: the perpetual horserace.
SP
When you’re saying it’s significant that five things “tend to” happen that each have a 50% chance anyway, and then one of your examples you have to muddle with an asterisk, well, don’t go submitting your p value to any high quality journals.
Omnes Omnibus
I wonder if Lane has noticed that the Olympics tend to take place in US election years as well. Coincidence or nefarious plan?
Gin & Tonic
They do it in Olympic years, too. It’s all Avery Brundage’s fault.
For an interesting take on the Olympic aspect, read up on the USSR-Hungary water polo match in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics (held, to be summer in Australia, in December, just a month after Russian tanks rolled into Budapest.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I didn’t realize Putin was such a fan boi of the US Congress election calender.
MattF
“Pardon me, my head is full of shit.”
Michael Bersin
Olympics, also, too. Russian hosted Olympics even.
WereBear
Gee, Village, narcissistic much?
Michael Bersin
@Omnes Omnibus: American network television is in on the plot, also, too.
Cermet
The ball is in Ukraine’s court – if they do anything serious in the way of fighting – this will get ugly in a big way really fast. The FSB isn’t gonna allow its puppet and total ass wipe putin to back down or will the FSB tolerate any attack on Russian troops and especially, allow the loss of the Crimea with its critical naval base. What Russia does is currently irrelevant now that it controls the Crimea (adding more troops/guns means little since that is Russian, now); all hangs on Ukraine’s counter actions after this fact. If they shoot at some random troops in a non-plained manner, Russia will not be happy. If they foolishly attempt to attack the Crimea, game over for the Ukraine … .
No matter what anyone says, this is and remains the ONLY factor – everyone else outside these two players are just farts in the winds, The Ukraine overstepped and is in the shit big time.
Chris
…
Every other year is a U.S. election year.
colby
How did Ukraine overstep?
Matt McIrvin
At the other extreme, but related, I’ve been seeing a certain amount of people in other countries cheering on Putin just because they perceive the invasion of Ukraine primarily as a rebuff to US imperialism.
Cacti
@Matt McIrvin:
Other countries?
You’ll see plenty of it from a quick visit to any Ukraine-related thread on Democratic Underground.
You can hear it from “progressive” radio personalities like Thom Hartmann.
Mike Dixon, BFA
Of course, Democrat victories in the ’44 midterms led to the Battle of the Bulge just a month later.
Cacti
@colby:
Because they opposed Putin the magnificent, noble protector of the world’s greatest hero, Edward Snowden.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
Because everyone recalls how the 1914 election hinged on American voter attitudes toward the Crimean peninsula.
Chris
RWNJ friend: “The problem is today it’s Ukraine tomorrow it could be Poland.”
… why are they SO STUPID?
Seriously.
Why the fuck are they SO. FUCKING. STUPID!
Davis X. Machina
@Cermet:
The Russians expected to lose access to the base at Sevastopol at some point, or Putin wouldn’t have begun the process of building a new one, at Novorossiysk, in 2003. The Russians only started to slow-walk the project and the Ukrainians decided to extend the lease on Sevastopol, after the 2010 Ukrainian election.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: I am going with because they are stupid.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
A certain amount of people in every country support every position imaginable. The stupider the position, the more loudly they support it. If you can find proof that even double digits percentages of any country around Ukraine believes this is push back against American meddling, that will be relevant. If you can find proof that double digit percentages in countries nowhere near Ukraine believe that, it will be interesting.
maya
This is what happens when we let Jesus Christ Holy Ghostwrite our Constitution.
Michael Bersin
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor:
Absolutely. And the last Passenger Pigeon died in 1914, too. A coincidence? I think not.
Marc
Hey, if you consider presidential elections, midterm elections, and years before midterm or presidential elections, he’s absolutely right!
Elizabelle
Low hanging fruit for this blogpost.
Look who it’s from.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
This isn’t new. In the 80’s, it was “If we don’t stop them in Nicaragua, we’ll have to stop them on the Rio Grande.”
They’re fuckheads. It’s their nature.
Suffern ACE
@Chris: maybe to keep the peace in the world, the US should have fewer elections. Maybe we should just let Obama stay on indefinitely. For the sake of peace, you know. I didn’t know how altruistic authoritarianism can be.
kc
Are you sure that’s not Roland Hedley’s Twitter feed?
Villago Delenda Est
@Marc:
Lane has always had cause and effect issues. This is just one of the most blatant examples of just how full of shit he always is.
schrodinger's cat
Why are our Punditubbies so innumerate? If we replaced them all with kids who run college newspapers we would see a marked improvement in the discourse.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Hell, if we replaced them with kittens, you’d get the same results as the college students (a marked improvement), and the kittens would be cute!
Duane
sorta like saying the Russians are quite considerate since they only attack on days that end in Y.
PJ
@Cermet: You are so right, daring to demand a government not run by kleptocrats was just begging for a spanking and land grab from daddy Putin.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Narcijingoism?
Surprised he didn’t mention Chechnya.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, my mind went right to Saint Ronnie’s Nicaragua quote.
Everything since World War Two has been a new Sudetenland for them. Regardless of the enemy-of-the-week’s behavior and actual capabilities.
gene108
@Chris:
2013 was an election year for NJ and VA.
There’s probably a school board vote going on in off-off year elections. as well.
There’s always an election going on in the USA.
Mandalay
@Davis X. Machina:
Not entirely O/T, this also explains why Russia will always be BFF with Assad.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
a/k/a “we’re fighting the
terristscommiesoverdown there so we don’t have to fight themoverup here.”Roger Moore
I notice he conveniently left out the Soviet invasion of Poland and the Winter War with Finland, both started in 1939.
Jay C
@Chris:
Actually, to be more exact, for most neocon/RW critics of US foreign policy, everything since WWII (except under Republican Administrations) has been a new “Munich” – nor so much the underlying “crisis”, but the reaction to it: i.e., in most RW narrative, a weak-willed “sellout” or “cowardly” cave to the villain-of-the-day: which of course, could always have been better dealt-with by a heroic display of “will” or “resolve” (i.e. force).
Though the “Sudetenland” analogy, today, is actually spot-on as regards the Crimean crisis: a move – by force – by a major power to reclaim/annex an ethnic enclave of “their” citizens in a geographically contiguous part of a neighboring country. However, unlike Hitler in 1938, Pres. Putin didn’t bother with a preliminary PR campaign to work up an excuse to grab the Crimea: he just sent in troops. I guess things move quicker nowadays….
Marc
@Villago Delenda Est: To say nothing of the Village’s general innumeracy.
GregB
Word has it that Putin was trying to influence the special election in Florida’s 9th Congressional District.
He also plans to re-invade Georgia in May in order to effect the Texas Agricultural Commissioner’s election.
Cermet
@colby: Just got back – the overthrow of the previous policy of “Balance the line between placating Russia and alignment to the West” suddenly became a government of future alignment with the West. Russia wasn’t going to tolerate any such realignment. That is over stepping; not unlike we would not tolerate any direct threat (by anyone) to “our” asses to middle east oil.
Chris
@Jay C:
Which kind of makes it ironic that in 1938, most conservatives were only beginning to wake up to the fact that this Hitler character and his Nazism thing might not, in fact, be the greatest thing since sliced bread. The people who called the fascism threat correctly and from the beginning were almost all on the left.
Whoops.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cermet:
“access” perhaps?
Still time to edit!
Cermet
@Davis X. Machina: Building a base with inferior access and port is not the same’ also,I’d think that for Russians, that is a only a backup plan for the future. This change right now is a direct threat to the people Russian knew were dependable. Nuclear superpowers do not tolerate unknowns when it comes to access and control to the ocean; just ask anyone who negotiates with the US about its navy.
Cermet
@Jay C: Uh, the troops were already stationed there at the naval base. You forget that this is one of two primary Atlantic naval bases for the Russians. Hardly, in any manner the same situation as the Sudetenland.
Villago Delenda Est
Warm Water Ports!
Warm Water Ports!
Warm Water Ports!
This has been brought to you by the staff at Russian History 101!
Cermet
This is really funny in a terribly tragic way when Kerry says on “Face the Nation”:
”You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” he said.
Really? Lets see, how many HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS died at our hands on the trumped up WMD’s in Iraq? When the Russians start killing even just 10,000 Ukrainians I’ll consider their occupation a crime. We, however, are guilty of war crimes on a massive scale.
As I said before – this isn’t our problem nor should we give two shits about it. If the Ukraine’s want to die by the tens of thousands to protect their fragmented country, that is their business. Our’s is to watch and cry Crocodile tears – I mean they are white; not like those brown Arabs in Iraq.
Suffern ACE
@Jay C: ummm. Putin has in fact been playing PR. For the west, he’s letting us know he’s restoring order from the threat of Ukranianian Nazis. For the East, he’s restoring order from gay Jewish Western Europeans.
Cermet
@Villago Delenda Est: Does that really matter on this site? Some people here don’t even use capitalized letters to start a sentence – try being consistent before being pointless.
Chris
@Cermet:
I preemptively nominate this for Self-Awareness Fail Award and Black Humor Award of the year.
It would be a little less biting if he, personally, hadn’t voted for the Iraq War, but…
Cermet
@Suffern ACE: Putin is a piece of shit and a soulless FSB puppet for the real powers in Russia. Strange, but their 0.001%, unlike here”, do not really control their country.
Suffern ACE
@Jay C: the Munich thing dominates now, sure. It would have been better to start the war earlier, yadayadayada.
This is the new Yalta, where Obama is going to be playing the part of FDR, giving away Poland when he should have been pressing for more war with the Commies, or something like that.
Cermet
@Chris: Agreed.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: There was a causal relationship between Saigon and San Diego back in the sixties.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cermet:
Here’s the sentence in question:
Which is why I suggested “access” might have been what you were shooting for, but the spellchecker let you slide.
Yes, yes, the readers can usually make the leap…lord knows, in my posts, sometimes they are compelled to do so, as I commit some spelling or grammatical faux pas with distressing frequency, but I think we should all strive to be as clear as we can in written communications. I know I spend a great deal of time fixing stuff that I submitted on the fly that is ambiguous or poorly worded…and even then, I don’t always get the correction in or make myself suitably clear.
Cermet
The one good thing this whole episode will have is the Nig … I mean the black gentleman in the White House … will get attacked by all sides – the wing nuts, the thugs, tea baggers, some extreme crazies on left, the media and some other under the rock dwellers. This is a golden opportunity to teach that one a lesson. The Ukraine’s are irrelevant relative to those ass wipes.
Chris
@Suffern ACE:
Nah, I think they realized a while that they’d done Cold War references to death and that they’d just never pack the same punch as World War Two references, especially now that the Cold War’s over.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland:
It was fulfilled, too, when Saigon fell. Except we didn’t get Viet Cong invaders, we got ARVN refugees.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
WWII was “the good war”, unless you’re Pat Buchanan and you’re convinced we fought on the wrong side.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cermet:
Well, given the history of the 20th Century, one need not go back to the 19th to drag up examples.
“What about Poland?”
Cermet
@Villago Delenda Est: You are correct. Also, as you point out, typo’s occur by all of us and they can cloud meaning a good bit. But the issue of starting sentences without capitals occurs far, far too often and I feel that is a major transgression of grammar.
Bob In Portland
Expect to see happy pro-Soviets in Crimea waving flags and eating cake. That would be the proper propaganda move, folks there saying that they want nothing to do with Kiev. I expected Russia to seize the entire east, but maybe they’re waiting for the usurpers to do something stupid, three, two, one.
And the US/EU can’t say anything about the duly-elected government on the Sunday talk shows. Well, maybe on Fox…
Villago Delenda Est
@Cermet:
Well, we share that concern. I suggest we convene a death panel at once, and deal with the offenders in some vague sort of medieval way.
Suffern ACE
@Cermet: oh, screw you and you’re capitalisation fetish.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Fulfilled? By those Vietnamese sandwich shops along Clement Street in San Francisco?
Cermet
@Villago Delenda Est: If I recall, the Russians won WW II before a single US soldier ever touched a foot in North Africa, much less Europe. Exactly who was it that died by the millions so the so-called “greatest generation” could face less than 30% of the German armies and many second level ones at that.
Cermet
@Suffern ACE: Touchy little child, aren’t you?
Cermet
@Villago Delenda Est: That will work well if we can just get the Germans to invade Western Ukraine as the Russians take Eastern Ukraine. Might just solve this whole issue.
Davis X. Machina
@Cermet: Half a billion rubles worth of backup…. that’s how sure they were going to still be in Sevastopol.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not everyone gets the memo.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cermet:
It is a sad, but true, fact that most Americans have no fucking idea that untold millions died over on the Eastern Front. They also have no idea that the US provided a great deal of materiel for that fight, such as the reliable Studebaker truck, which Uncle Joe himself praised. Freed up a lot of Russian industry to make all those T-34s, artillery (always a Russian forte), and Sturmoviks that caused Hitler’s armies so much distress.
Cermet
@Davis X. Machina: They spent over 50 billion rubles on the games. You are serious? That is all they have spent? That is amazing even for the Russians – I would expect them to make a serious effort in building that critical of a backup base.
Been fun but time to get to work. I need to finish making some armour for testing against a hyper-sonic weapon (the navy will provide that weapon.) I use the name cermet for a reason … .
vhh
Poland, 1981. The stupid, it burns.
Cermet
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, our material supplies were useful but far from critical. We even, for a short time, had a B-17 bomber base in (wait for it) the Ukraine area of Russia. They lost about 20 million people in that war and were driving the Germans back before our soldiers fired a single shot in anger at the German land forces (our bombers, on the other hand, were more active.) We do forget who really died in mass to save our soldiers; yes, they were fighting for there own skins but facts are facts – our blood was spared by their efforts. This does not excuse what the Russians are doing in Crimea but that is a fight we just don’t have any dogs in … .
Origuy
@Cermet: No, they spent over 50 billion DOLLARS on the Olympics. That would be about 150 billion rubles.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat: Er … maybe not including Dinesh D’Souza, Laura Ingraham, Ross Douthat, and so on.
Bob In Portland
There’s an article in the NY Times this a.m. (sorry, can’t link to it on this device) which says that the interim government is planning on naming oligarchs as governors of the eastern provinces that lean towards Russia.
First, what’s wrong with the governors already there who were elected? And oligarchs? Usually fascists are less obvious, but apparently not in the new Ukraine. They’ve streamlined democracy.
Ernest Pikeman
@Cermet:
Who, pray tell, is this “us” you keep talking for? Maybe you don’t give two shits for anything beyond your little town or county or state or whatever provincialist identity you hold. Other people happen to care about other people in the world.
Origuy
@Bob In Portland: @Bob In Portland: Provincial governors of Ukraine, like those of Russia and other countries, are appointed from above, not elected from below. The Wikipedia article says:
I happen to think this is a bad idea, but it seems popular. I remember hearing about governors in Egypt being replaced a while back.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Cermet:
Holy bad fucking history!
I could pointy out that the Torch landings occurred while the Nazis were still pushing the Soviets backwards, but that wouldn’t be the first shots fired by the US- those were fired at sea, something the Soviets didn’t do much. I could point out that it was the US Navy that protected convoys that supplied the Soviets with the materiel required to push the Nazis back.. I could point out that navies are really, really expensive to build, and that the US had to build a navy large enough to fight on multiple fronts. I could make all of these points and plenty more, but there are the more important points:
The Soviets, in an alliance formed with the Nazis, invaded Poland in September of 1939. In November of 1939, the Soviets invaded Finland. In June of 1940, the Soviets invaded and annexed Lithuania. Estonia and Latvia.
So, sure, the Soviet Union fired shots in anger in WWII before the U.S.. Congratu-fuckin’-lations.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: First, what’s wrong with the governors already there who were elected?
What’s wrong? The fact that the governors (Heads of Local State Administration) are *not elected*. They are Presidential appointees.
Another day ending in “y” is another day Bob needs to do some homework before spouting off here.
Davis X. Machina
@Cermet: It was on-again, off-again depending on the government in Kiev, and the state of negotiations.
Gin & Tonic
@Origuy: Off by a factor of 10. The official exchange rate is 35 rubles to the dollar, the unofficial rate as of today is about 40 and climbing. So it’s close to two trillion rubles.
James E. Powell
@Chris:
The people who called the fascism threat correctly and from the beginning were almost all on the left.
Not according to right-wing historians.
Origuy
@Gin & Tonic: No wonder my Russian trip last year cost so much! Actually, math fail. I dropped a zero by doing it in my head.
Roger That
Russia only invades in months that end with ь or т*.
* and sometimes й
SFAW
@James E. Powell:
Whose primary sources were noted Nazi-haters such as Prescott Bush and Chuckles Lindbergh.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: So they normally reappoint governors around the Ides of March? They have no existing governors?
Your snotty little remark pretty much reflects the non-democratic aspects of the current regime. Replace the president by force. Replace the governors maybe by force. Maybe because the governors of that region don’t recognize the coup-created government. That should sit well with the people in the east. Abolish the official language.
Well, we see how this is going to end, don’t we? More pure Ukrainian blood to be spilled for the Fatherland.
And it doesn’t discount that this arrangement fits nicely into the classic definition of fascism. Maybe President McCain can appoint that Papa John’s guy to be governor of Tennessee. He’s got a big enough house, and he’s got the right attitude.
Bob In Portland
@Origuy: As I mentioned elsewhere, at least one of the governors to be replaced announced that he did not recognize the coup-created government. I’m guessing that this will not sit well with the people in the East. Three, two, one.
Also, the oligarchs themselves might be thinking, “Hmm, do I want to be an oligarch in Russia or do I want to be an oligarch in a bankrupt Ukraine?” And being an oligarch in Russia comes with the added bonus of fuel to run your factory. Heck, even Timonshenko (sic) might go for that.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Did you even read the article you mentioned?
Do you know anything about the current or proposed governors of Donetsk or Dnipropetrovsk? Do you know how the oligarchs work in Ukraine or Russia, how they’ve worked for the last 20 years? Do you know who Rinat Akhmetov is, how he got to where he is and whom he backs? Is he “left” or “right” by any (meaningless) Western European standards? No, it’s not democratic, and hasn’t been for decades. Political parties are known to be on this or that oligarch’s payroll. Some, like Poroshenko, are pretty clearly on one side; most of the rest are hedging their bets. Appointing Taruta and Kolomoysky is, at the very best, a sign of an attempt to reconcile with the east on the part of the current government; in the eyes of westerners it is closer to capitulation.
Sorry that things don’t fit into your black and white world view, but your ignorance of current events seems bottomless, yet you come here do demonstrate it anew every day.
And nobody “abolished an official language.” Russian briefly had a status of a “regional language”, but it was and remains the de-facto language in some of the East. Nobody makes a big deal about it, just as nobody makes a big deal about street signs in Hungarian in parts of the southwest. Most people are bi- or multi-lingual. I know Ukrainian-speakers in Sevastopol, who get along just fine speaking Ukrainian; Russian tourists are all over Lviv, getting along just fine; the leading journalist of the Maidan movement is an Afghani Muslim who writes exclusively in Russian. It’s both more complicated and less tense than you imagine, reading your steady diet of Russian propaganda.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: And being an oligarch in Russia comes with the added bonus of fuel to run your factory
Worked out so well for Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. How many Ukrainian oligarchs have been killed or imprisoned?
Bob In Portland
You never answered that question but I can guess why you don’t see fascists in the streets. I see your blind spot, Gin.
A shadow government? When you open up a dictionary you’ll understand how fascism works everywhere, including the US.
You need to know what Parrington knew.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: No big deal? That’s not what the ethnic Russians are saying. But then you don’t seem to pay much attention to them either. Maybe there’s a language difference.
You know, you can’t snark your way to a smooth regime change. The fascists in Kiev had a half-assed coup without bringing the east on board, and they have no reason to get on board as long as there are parades for Stephan Bandera and swastikas and Confederate flags hanging in city hall in Kiev.
I hear the Ukrainian navy is defecting to Russia, so it sounds like this is going to have to be a land war, eh fuhrer? Where are the Panzers when you need them?!?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: *Every* government there for a hundred years has been more or less undemocratic. You’re the one pretending that after having been vanquished by the glorious Red Army in the Great Patriotic War 70 years ago, fascistic tendencies reappeared two weeks ago. The oligarchs didn’t suddenly appear.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Fuhrer?
Fuck you, Bob.
mike in dc
@Bob In Portland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
It’s good to know that other countries can rely on our security assurances when they’re giving up their nuclear arsenals.
Bob In Portland
Gin, if you rely on rioters in the streets for your moral authority and justification you may get Kerry to wave a flag, but it doesn’t seem to be working in the eastern Ukraine, soon to be named something else. Your farmers in the west, after they burn down the synagogues, can build tanks out of straw for the Great War to come.
Hey, be happy. You got what you wanted. Deal with it. Maybe Kiev can be a tourist attraction for anti-Semites around the world. Maybe have “Hunt-A-Jew” safaris followed by a steamy hot bowl of porridge. Good luck.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Petit fuhrer.
sm*t cl*de
a strong contender for dumbest commentary on the situation in the Ukraine
I see that people are already taking this as a challenge.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Their artillery was used effectively and en masse, but they never were particularly accurate or good at things like pinpoint counter battery fire. If you simply flatten a grid square, you will hit the target within it.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Bob In Portland: How good is the pay rate from the FSB, comrade?
Roger That
The Russian sympathizers are what’s keeping Ukrainian antisemitism in check? ahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahaa
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: In this case they seemed to be Australian and Turkish radical lefties, some of whom were also 9/11 truthers. But, yeah, I suspect this is not super-mainstream.
David Koch
`
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Bob In Portland:
You’re quite the piece of work, bub.
Toddle off to Democratic Underground, or DKos, please. Seriously, please leave.
mike in dc
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/
opiejeanne
@Chris: In California it’s almost every year.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mike in dc: Thanks for the pointer. That’s a a really good read.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike E
Heh, mebbe two buck Chuck is dot-dot-dashing out some super secret plea for Pooty to come over and rid us of this worrisome “elections” business, especially when dems, blahs and wimmins win the darn things…
tybee
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
yeah, some need a bit of understanding of exactly what the west sent to the soviets during the war.
http://ww2-weapons.com/History/Production/Russia/Lend-Lease.htm
also note exactly what the soviets did with japan prior to may of 1945 while the west was fighting that front, too.
the rooskies certainly didn’t win it all by themselves.
Gin & Tonic
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Timothy Snyder is one of the leading authorities on the region. If you have the stomach, read his book Bloodlands. It is a very difficult book.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic: Yes.
Also I’d recommend the following, by Roman Szporluk:
A collection of essays written over two or three decades: Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (2000).
And “The Making of Modern Ukraine: The Western Dimension,” in A Laboratory of Transnational History, G. Kasianov & P. There, eds. (2009).
Szporluk is a good historian. These works are not hot off the presses but they are well worth reading.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes: Thanks for the recommendations from both of you.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cermet
@vhh: Just got back; yes, the stupid does burn. When next you jump into a thread try reading it first, stupid. We were talking about WW II. If you then draw a parallel about Poland in a thread about WW II, and add no other information, it follows the thread’s logic – otherwise, if you jump to 1981, then you need to add that to your first post. Yes, the stupid that burns is you.
Bob In Portland
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
No.
Cermet
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Yes, we fought some very minor sea battles and had an aggressive bomber campaign – wow;sure that won the war with no ground troops; oops, it didn’t even slow German war production much less free any country. On the other hand, millions of German foot soldiers (entire Army Groups destroyed) were being killed and many more wounded by Russians. Our efforts were minor compared to that – World Wars are won on the ground, not on the sea or in the air. Try learning reality. The war was won by the Russian armies before we fought the Germans on the land.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: The war was won by Russian armies in early 1942?
dmbeaster
@Cermet: So what. The Germans decided to commit their maximum effort against the Russians, who overcame it at tremendous cost. That happened in part because Stalin thought it expedient to allow Hitler free hand to take apart the West before turning attention east. Reap what you sow.
liberal
@Cermet:
I always thought that way, and one time looked up some stats to try to come up with back-of-the-envelope numbers.
My recollection is that at least 5/6 of German casualties were inflicted by the USSR.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: That seems a bit off to me.
liberal
@Omnes Omnibus:
Western ground forces weren’t involved in way that posed an extreme strategic threat to the Germans until D-Day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Yes, it is quite a bit off.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@tybee:
And that doesn’t even include all of the Studebaker trucks that went there that helped move their soldiers and supplies.
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, it wasn’t, but you know that. It was the Soviet counter-offensives around Stalingrad that marked the beginning of the end, and those began on 11/9/1942, eleven days after the Torch landings. One might concede that it was Hitler’s goals- or, at least, his pigheadedness about taking Stalingrad, rather than cutting the Volga north or south of the city- in July of ’42 that signaled the beginning of the end, and that less because of the Soviets, but because the bombing/shelling of that city made it a perfect trap for the Soviets to exploit. The ruins of the city played to the Soviets advantage for a few reasons, the most important being that those ruins basically made worthless the Nazis’ tanks.
Bob In Portland
@Roger That: Huh?
As are most things, it’s a matter of degrees. The guy who keeps telling me to fuck myself seems to think I see things in black and white. I don’t. I don’t like coups, generally, and what happened in Kiev was a reactionary coup. The best description of my political leanings is that I’m an anti-fascist and there are a lot of fascists among the coup makers.
Anti-Semites? I guess you can find them in just about any country, but there are only a few countries that actually killed a million Jews. I would have hoped that Radio Liberty wouldn’t have broadcast anti-Semitic speeches into Ukraine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Have you read Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, I’ve got to get around to it. I’ve been reading a lot of Civil War history the last few years, and I’ve been mixing in some WWI reading lately. I figure I’ll get back to WWII in a few more years.
Cervantes
@liberal:
Interesting. Are you talking about military casualties only? If so, the best estimate I’ve seen is 2/3.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Employing 20/20 hindsight, Kursk (July and August of 1943) is where the Soviets really began to win the war. They lose there, and who knows how long it goes on?
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
This week, you mean?
Just to see if we’re on the same page, can I ask what you saw happen in the Maidan in 2004?
And how about in 1990?
I share your political leanings.
There are fascists in all sorts of places.
colby
@Cermet: I guess I can see how Russia would frame the issue that, but “overstep” makes it sound like Ukraine was the aggressor when all the really did was decide to go the dance with a different girl. And the comparison to our willingness to go to war for oil doesn’t really speak to the justice of Russia’s position here…
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Speaking of numbers, I just noticed that the Ruble is weaker now than at the height of the Great Recession.
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB&view=10Y
$1 = 36.55 RUB now vs 36.08 RUB in Feb 2009.
Perhaps that will cause Vlad to re-think things a little…
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@Cervantes: And now as Angela Merkel runs to Putin’s aid, it will be interesting to see who this week’s fascists are.
Gin & Tonic
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: It’s well over 40 in the unofficial market.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic:
It is a bitterly unfair aspect of this world that perception, knowledge, and argument all have to precede understanding.
Pat
Man, the post title was killing me until I gave up and Googled it. That’s a great song.