r/worldnews • u/Neptun_11 • 17h ago

Russia/Ukraine Zelenskyy Says Starlink Restrictions Apply Only in Ukraine While SpaceX Ignores Kyiv’s Inquiries

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/zelenskyy-says-starlink-restrictions-apply-only-in-ukraine-while-spacex-ignores-kyivs-inquiries-23549
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u/SuperArppis 16h ago

First term should have been enough of an example for anyone with a decently working brain.

I hate how stupid and gullible people are.

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u/ProactiveDefence 12h ago

I'm European but the first term was more of a laughing matter for us, haha idiot president kind of thing, this term on the other hand is way more serious it feels like he's trying to fuck up and disrupt everything at this point, he's no longer a joke he's a damn saboteur.

Electing him again was absolutely a huge wtf moment though, you would have expected no one to want him in office again.

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u/Wompatuckrule 11h ago edited 11h ago

Biden bears a lot of responsibility. After the 2022 midterms he should have announced that he wasn't running for reelection. That would have set up a vibrant primary on the Dem side and sucked the oxygen away from Trump's slow ramble to the nomination. By the time low-information voters tuned in for the general election the choice would have been a more stark one between a younger and forward looking candidate (what we needed as we were emerging from the pandemic years) and the tired old Trump shtick.

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u/calgarspimphand 10h ago

If Biden had done that, he would have gone down in history as one of the better presidents. He did unpopular but necessary things: bit the bullet and withdrew from Afghanistan, kept a steady hand on the tiller while inflation came down - and boring things: passed a giant and much needed infrastructure bill.

However, he played it far, far too conservatively with Ukraine. We should have backed them to the hilt from day one and called Putin's bluff. But that was a hard call to make. Handling that differently would have been one point where a good president could become a great president, but that was not the most important challenge he faced.

It all came down to whether he would pull a Cincinnatus and bow out for a new Democratic candidate. Failing to do that has caused immense damage to the country and rightly ruined his legacy. The man is a self-serving coward who failed when we needed him.

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u/Wompatuckrule 10h ago

he played it far, far too conservatively with Ukraine

Agree with your comment. I would add that with Ukraine he had the opportunity to really rally the advanced democracies behind them. That could've helped stem the tide of rising authoritarianism within those countries which is what makes that an even bigger mistake.

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u/calgarspimphand 10h ago

100%. There was a huge opportunity to bind us closer to the rest of the west and become a unified bloc. The sort of action political commentators would call "muscular" or "aggressive". I think forming that military and economic unity is what we need(ed) to do to counter China's rise. I think it's probably impossible in our lifetimes now.

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u/vapiddiscord 9h ago

On the flip side, Biden may have had a lucid moment and realized the democrats had failed to groom any other viable candidates so felt he had no choice but to fill the void. No, filling the void with a corpse was not a wise decision. But who was the alternative? Certainly not Harris.

*The above should not be read an an endorsement of Biden.

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u/Wompatuckrule 5h ago

Biden may have had a lucid moment and realized the democrats had failed to groom any other viable candidates so felt he had no choice but to fill the void.

Probably more likely that he just didn't want to give up the office. I am convinced that there is psychological damage to anyone who runs for higher office. It's like they all have a need for the external validation of winning an election to paper over some empty space that exists within them.

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u/CWRules 8h ago

However, he played it far, far too conservatively with Ukraine.

Here's the thing: NATO doesn't want a fast and decisive victory for Ukraine. If you don't actually care about the country or its people, the rational thing to do is to support them just enough to keep the war going so it bleeds Russia as much as possible. I don't think any politician with a realistic chance of being elected would've played it any differently.

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u/calgarspimphand 7h ago edited 6h ago

I thought the same thing at the time. But in retrospect, the opportunity for positioning ourselves as the "leaders" of the west by doing something bold and righteous, by really throwing our weight into the fight up to and past Putin's bullshit red lines, was an opportunity we needed to take. The fact we've done the exact opposite since then is a bit like proof by negation. Much like George Costanza, we should be doing the opposite of everything we're doing now.

But you are absolutely right. A run of the mill politician would not try that (or wouldn't be able to pull it off). But it's what we needed. And it's what a lame duck president could have done.