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Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33
You and Stewart must have no historical knowledge of Reagan's economic, military and political actions that ultimately destroyed the USSR. Let's also remember the USSR then and now are completely different. Reagan didn't want to launch into a full scale war with the Soviets when he knew the economic pressure, along with the US military build-up and threat of SDI were working to destroy the USSR....without the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives that would've been lost in an all-out war with them.
Contrast Reagan's actions prior to KAL 007 with Obama's open-mike statement to having more "flexibility" to work with Putin and the USSR after the 2012 election and you see the result is an aggressive Russia that has no fear whatsoever of a strong US response to their aggressive actions in the region. US weakness only emboldens our enemies and those that want to expand their power through evil and aggression against their neighbors.
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First off, I'm merely commenting about Reagan's/Obama's response to a plane shot down. I don't recall formulating a stance that Reagan was weak with Russia, but I can guarantee you that he would not have done ANYTHING about the invasion of Ukraine. Did they do anything with Afghanistan? Nope. Well, they did train and fund Mujahideen fighters, which end up turning around and being some of the same guys that caused 9/11, but that's another story.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY (Reagan/Romney/Bush/etc) would be sending troops to Ukraine to fight off an invading Russian army. First off, we can't afford it. We are to our eyeballs in debt, and simply cannot afford another war anytime soon. Secondly, Russia still has nukes, and no matter how bad we could wipe the floor with Russia, at the end, would you trust a lunatic like Putin with his finger on a nuke? Nope.
Also, I'd say the USSR had more to do with their collapse than Reagan or the US. The USSR invested all their money into military instead of opening up the economy and letting it flourish. (which is what we did) Hey, it's kind of the route we are heading down now.
Putin has brought some prosperity back to Russia, but he's still a old KGB man with dreams of a unified USSR. The bad news for him is even if he did get back the USSR, it will NEVER EVER reach the might they once had. All Putin is doing now is cutting economic strings to his country and eventually the oligarchs in Russia will turn on him.
I'm no Obama supporter, but I'm not sure what you all expect Obama to do? At the end of the day, Ukraine isn't a valued resource for us so the juice isn't worth the squeeze.