Aviator glasses
Combat boots
Pre-popped popcorn
Rice
Tacticool knives
Western riding gear
XXL Sandwiches
I traveled in Eastern Europe in 1999 and got a lot of abuse from train conductors and the like who did not like our air war in the former Yugoslavia. I think people in Ukraine, however, appreciate what we are doing for them today but wish we would do more.
Indians seem to like the US enough that many of them want to come here, but they have an awful time with the immigration authorities here and I know many of them feel bad about that.
You mean the 78 days straight of NATO bombing? Nobody likes war, who would have thought of that?
> I think people in Ukraine, however, appreciate what we are doing for them today
What percentage of the people in Ukraine appreciate what the US is doing? Is it possible that this number would go down or up in the future once the dust settles? Should the other part have any say in this?
Can you go back to any US war from the past 70 years and ask those populations if they appreciate what the US has been doing for them?
Is that even a question? By all indications, the percentage is extremely high (outside of the Crimea, and some parts of the Donbass).
Nobody there "likes war" or wants to be in this fight as a matter of patriotic belief or some other abstract principle. They're doing what they have to do so they don't end up getting killed or permanently enslaved, period. It's really extremely straightforward and simple for them.
So yes, they greatly appreciate whatever help they can get - and will continue to do so long after the dust settles.
I'd find it hard to believe people in South Vietnam were broadly supportive of the US involvement there but there were certainly individuals who either benefited commercially from that presence or who hated the North worse. (They were not nice folks, if they couldn't fool the US into assassinating the village elders they would do it themselves.)
I think people in Kuwait were glad to see the Iraqis evicted in 1991.
(There was a great photo of General Petraeus being served a Naan by a boy at a street food stand in Afghanistan who had a very ambiguous look on his face like he wasn't sure it was safe being caught in that photo...)
I think some Ukrainians wouldn't have minded being part of the Russian Federation if it had happened peacefully or relatively bloodlessly like the 2014 invasion of Crimea. If it involves bombing residential apartment buildings, leveling cities with artillery, or using cruise missiles to wipe out the electric grid I think there is little support for Russia.
More killings to stop killings? The same could be said about the US attempts when dropping the 2 nuclear bombs on Japan with Japan being already defeated, but not surrendered. Again, if you can justify that you can justify everything. And they sure did. My point is that the reasons presented are hardly honest or factual when in the moment. The first victim of any war is the truth.
> I'd find it hard to believe people in South Vietnam were broadly supportive of the US involvement there but there were certainly individuals who either benefited commercially from that presence or who hated the North worse. (They were not nice folks, if they couldn't fool the US into assassinating the village elders they would do it themselves.)
I had a hard time believing the level of damages inflicted upon Vietnam when reading Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky.
> I think people in Kuwait were glad to see the Iraqis evicted in 1991.
I agree with you on this, but Iraq was partly able to invade Kuwait also with the support/arms they previously got from the US when they were friends in the Irak-Iran conflict from just a few years earlier. Even the WMD's they supposedly still had in 2005 were from that earlier period from their then allies and not locally manufactured.
> (There was a great photo of General Petraeus being served a Naan by a boy at a street food stand in Afghanistan who had a very ambiguous look on his face like he wasn't sure it was safe being caught in that photo...)
Afghanistan was in such a poor state before the US invasion, that things could have only improved during the 20 years occupation. I'm now reading a history book on Afghanistan that goes from the WW2 up right before the US invasion and it's not a pretty reading.
> I think some Ukrainians wouldn't have minded being part of the Russian Federation if it had happened peacefully or relatively bloodlessly like the 2014 invasion of Crimea.
I beg to differ. I think Ukrainians most certainly wouldn't have liked to be part of the Russian Federation. Even the Donbass wanted its independence, and not annexation, after the 2014 coup. With that not possible, they went for the second best thing from their point of view.
Oh, and I'm not Russian. Funny how, whenever someones diverges even a little bit from the official narrative, they get stamped as "russian".
This is true American logic...