oh yes, I did see those.

And your thoughts on how democracy, despite being the least effective approach to extracting resources and suppressing dissent, was pushed on them by the US?

Afghanistan wouldn't be under Taliban control today, if the US had installed a dictator and given them a free hand.

I think it worked out pretty well to enrich a handful of corporations and individuals at the expense of American taxpayers and brown lives.

That could have been done easily and better with an autocracy.

Pro-democracy movements don't need prison camps, death squads, and institutional corruption. All of which - unfortunately - seem to happen fairly regularly when the US brings democracy to a small country which happens to be resource rich.

Can we stop pretending these are anything other than resource wars, combined with an excuse to throw money at the defence industry?

Russia looked at US actions in Iraq etc and apparently had an irrational attack of atrocity envy, blended with greed over the mineral-rich areas of Eastern Ukraine.

Neither empire is wholesome and good, but the Russians are completely crap at militarised colonialism while the US is fairly competent at it.

However... Russia is much better at subversion and bribery. Given Jan 6 and the wholesale co-option of the far right of the Republican party - which is most of it - only someone very naive would believe that the US and NATO aren't in danger of being subverted from within.

My suspicion is that Ukraine is part distraction, part attrition campaign against NATO, and part proxy war with China, with Russia as willing (because naively stupid) intermediary.

The real front is the internal politics of each NATO state.

Hungary is already lost, the UK is severely weakened by Brexit, Germany was compromised but is recovering, and the US has some very serious problems with infiltration and subversion. Which aren't being taken seriously enough.