It hasn't crossed my mind. More than a few times.

n/t

And we also don't know if trump was involved with the first chemical attack also, and the PR event staging the airfield attack. I trust nothing coming from trump's mouth. If its shown he was involved, he will have committed war crimes, and be align with terrorists , and war criminals, so it wouldn't surprise me any. Trump migrates to these types of people from being corrupt throughout his career. As more gets exposed its looking like trump's very involved in things with putin all along. Is it all another trump performance and act, probably. He's capable of anything, especially lying.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. IDK. We will find out some day.

Russia likes to fight proxy wars and create problems for the US.

The first is Russian-flavored. They find a dissenting group in the country, one that may want to fight or take over but has no clear possibilities of not being crushed in short order. And they help it, give it supplies, encouragement, and when violence breaks out there's enough support to make a real mess. (In the '70s Russia had proxies do the actual supporting, too--Cuba was a middleman for weapons and often supplied actual fighters, Russia just providing the high-level advisors, thereby keeping the USSR's hands clean.) That was Georgia in the early '20s, some African and 'New World' conflicts. And Crimea and the Donbas.

"Sowing dissent" seldom starts with zero dissent + Russian activity. There's always a pre-existing level of dissent and militaristic though pushing for revolution/uprising/rebellion that Russia evaluates and decides to back. Even in Crimea, the guy who was put in charge after the take-over had run for election on a platform of rejoining Russia and got something like 1-2% of the vote, with some pretty much Russo-fascist supporters at his side.

Those conflicts are puppet conflicts. Russia has a truly outsized say in how things go.


The second is indigenous-flavored. A conflict starts and Russia steps in on one side. That side was usually closer to them ideologically, and it forced the West to either allow a bad left-leaning government to take over or intervene on the side of a bad right-leaning government. This was also true for a series of old conflicts, for example Ukraine in the early '20s, or some conflicts in the New World and Africa, Vietnam, but now Syria. These are local conflicts. Russia supports, Russia has a voice and is heard, but Russia is not always obeyed. If Russia is kicked out, life gets harder for the locals, esp. if the US has moved in forcefully on the other side, but defeat isn't a sure thing. On the other hand, neither is victory. And since Russia is there for Russia's interests, being kicked out would also hurt Russia. Meaning it's a balance at all points that both sides strike: How much say in what's run versus how would one's interests be affected if the marriage of convenience is ended?


(There's a third, actually, but it's pretty much a closed set at this point. Things like N. Korea where Russia actually was responsible for setting up one of the parties in the conflict under Russian occupation.)

in both NK and Syria Russia can arm one side and inflame them. Can even provide nuke or chem assistance. Seems like modern NK's nuke/missile program was helped a lot by the Russians.

"There's always a pre-existing level of dissent"

Yes, and that's what Russia exploited in America too. Racism, xenophobia, hatred for city dwellers, and the media, and liberals -- all of this was inflamed by the right wing propaganda machine to get votes for billionaires. Republican billionaires, through Fox and Limbaugh and Drudge and Cato and Breitbart, created the divide in America. Russia only jumped into the breach.

Fixing this country will require fixing the right wing propaganda machine.