Seems wild how it seems lately there's no room for gray, only black and white.
I got torn apart for saying the "ghost of Kyiv" wasn't real, followed by the "most level headed take" of a reply that went something like "hey, even if its fake, people need something to believe in right now so saying this stuff only helps Russia."
I am of course 100% against what Russia is doing. I just feel like we should all be very aware of what is real and what is fake. Otherwise we can't make good judgments.
I saw people calling for WWIII because of the missile incident. Just blows my mind. I truly think that some people feel so insulated from the effects they view it as some "event" that just takes place in a distant land where if you cheer loud enough and show enough support the "good guys will win" after a few months. The world doesn't need more destabilization. Of course, Russia can't keep killing people either... but at the end of the day, this isn't and shouldn't be solved by online commentators.
I really wish Putin would throw in the towel at this point... its barbaric, depressing and embarrassing.
It's not really about missing black and white. I'm inclined to say it's the opposite. Too many people have gotten used to bending or ignoring the truth in favor of their ideology (whoever you're thinking of: not just them). In their minds this seems to be a matter of defending some "higher truth", or rather keeping people from pesky details that might prevent them from coming to the "right" conclusion, but they forget reality is made of pesky details. Any ideology that drifts from reality is doomed to not only fail, but probably cause a lot of suffering on the way. Truth matters, all of it.
Anyway, in a war these pesky details usually blur the nice black/white, us/them narrative that gets people motivated to fight. I mostly agree with your post, just wanted to say my piece on that.
What I find interesting is among a few sites where you see amateurs talking about combat footage and news of that war, everyone is well aware how little they know.
It’s everyone else who seems to draw grand conclusions.
It's amazing how quickly fake news is able to spread through "credible" news sources, all without even the slightest bit of real verification. I don't know if its scary or comforting to consider that if the political establishment wanted WW3, they could have it had it right there. The same intelligence agencies that convinced the world Iraq had WMD could have simply agreed with the story/Zelensky/et al, declare anybody debating it to be a "conspiracy theorist promoting Russian misinformation/propaganda", invoke article 5, and away we go.
Have you read anything that the DoD says about this conflict? They very clearly do not want to get involved in this war first-hand. Nor would it make any sense for them to do so, the most selfish action here is to simply send weapons and let Ukraine do all the dirty work.
That is literally their only choice. Ukrainians and Russians are dying by the tens of thousands. American soldiers would be better trained and better equipped than both sides, but they would also be dying in large numbers. We lost nearly 5000 thousand soldiers in Iraq, with complete and unchallenged air superiority, to disorganized religious radicals running around with 1950s era rifles and low-grade improvised explosives. We're all just vulnerable sacks of flesh and bone in the end.
And Americans would tolerate this for approximately 0 seconds. Consider how we feel about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that died or were killed during our invasion of Iraq (high end figures putting it in the millions), contrasted against the 5000 Americans who died. It's an entirely different sort of care when speaking of people you have no connection to as opposed to your neighbor or even your own son dying. When its other people, the real cost isn't truly felt.
I agree. It is absolutely in the interest of the American government to have Ukrainians and Russians die, preferably through the use of American weapons. The fact that America and NATO have been supporting the war rather than pursuing peace seals the argument.
Any news story that keeps the good versus evil narrative going is desirable.
> It is absolutely in the interest of the American government to have Ukrainians and Russians die
It is in the US's interest for Russia to deplete their military capability, and for Ukraine to not become part of Russia.
> The fact that America and NATO have been supporting the war rather than pursuing peace seals the argument.
How does NATO "pursue peace" in a conflict they aren't a party to? What exactly do you think they should do? One side of this war has the unilateral power to end it, and it ain't NATO, the US, or Ukraine.
If the US stops sending endless weapons and money to Ukraine, the war ends. If Ukraine agrees to concede the predominately ethnic Russian areas that Russia has occupied, the war ends. If Russia surrenders said territories to Ukraine, the war ends.
But nobody wants to concede anything. So the war will continue, undoubtedly with plentiful more opportunities to find ourselves in WW3.
> But nobody wants to concede anything. So the war will continue, undoubtedly with plentiful more opportunities to find ourselves in WW3.
Giving in to the nuclear and other blackmail that Russia uses will never get lasting peace.
All it will do is get Russia to invade again in the future. You only need to see, Moldova, Georgia, Crimea, and Donbas to see this.
The only real peace for this war is a peace where Russia retreats entirely from Ukraine, militarily defeated and it becomes clear to Russia that any future invasion will be met with an even stronger force.
Otherwise the little green men will keep appearing and the Russians will keep invading countries.
Nobody has any reason to. Ukraine has made their biggest gains since the beginning of the war. Russia controls vast regions of land under no real threat, while Ukraine is facing a crippling energy crisis going into winter. And the US is weakening a geopolitical adversary and has been granted a defacto right to give the military industrial complex a blank check - something the political establishment has been longing for, for decades.
So I don't think anybody is anywhere near ready to concede. It's certainly going much worse for Russia than they expected, but being where we're at today is also far from what the US had in mind 9 months ago when this all started. It seems the most likely outcome for this war is a long, bloody, and expensive affair. The real issue is the specter of WW3 in the backdrop. There's an argument to be made that Zelensky sees that as a win condition (as per the topic of this thread), but fortunately it seems that neither the US nor Russia do. And they are the ones that get to decide if/when that happens.
I'm pretty sure that's just so they don't feel like they have to go all Article 5 on Ukraine. That would be really awkward, going to war against a country you were donating arms to yesterday, right? So sure, there's an agenda, but it seems like a morally defensible one, and not one supported by lies (at least not where it intersects with US interests).
Okay, but consider the fact that they didn't as evidence that NATO doesn't actually want to escalate this war. It's going pretty well for NATO, at relatively low cost (to NATO at least).
> The same intelligence agencies that convinced the world Iraq had WMD could have simply agreed with the story/Zelensky/et al, declare anybody debating it to be a "conspiracy theorist promoting Russian misinformation/propaganda", invoke article 5, and away we go.
But... they didn't. The people with the power put on their big boy pants and said "No, I don't think this is right", refused to engage with the outrage machine, and shared what intelligence they could to refute the story. And the new media retracted the piece within 24 hours and has now fired the author after an investigation.
Isn't that evidence that the system is working? Shouldn't you be celebrating it as a victory instead of complaining about things that didn't happen?
In wartime the cost for reporting false information can be catastrophic. And wartime is also when everybody has a very strong motivation to lie, and even some moral rationalizations for such. This news article put the US in a situation where the US had to say "our media is lying, our military ally is lying, our anonymous senior intelligence source is lying, and our enemy is telling the truth" or start WW3.
The one and only reason they did so is because the cost of this lie would have been too high. If the cost had simply been "Russia will be even more demonized" do you think, even for a second, that they would have "corrected the record"? And beyond this, also consider that the news sources running these stories had to realize the potentially massive implications of this. Yet they seemingly themselves did effectively 0 fact checking before running with it.
No, the system is most assuredly not working. The only system that is working is the desire to avoid Mutually Assured Destruction.
I'm always confused by arguments like that. The only way it works is if you assume bad faith (c.f. your six uses of the word "lie") on the part of everyone involved.
Isn't the much (!) simpler answer that the journalist had what he thought was a juicy scoop, the editors wanted to run it for clicks and eyeballs, and the system of checking and verification broke down. But that's just a mistake, and it happens everywhere in journalism. And it was corrected rapidly, by everyone involved.
You want this to be somehow morally different because of the "ZOMG WW3" situation, I guess? But I don't see how that works logically. People are going to make mistakes even in wartime, the question is if we trust folks in power to handle those mistakes correctly.
And, to repeat: people in power absolutely handled this responsibly. That's a good thing, not a bad thing, and I think we're much better off by rewarding that responsible use of power vs. screaming hyperbole.
> The same intelligence agencies that convinced the world Iraq had WMD
To be more accurate about something that matters, no intelligence agency in the US, the UK, AU, or other major intell nation claimed that Iraq had WMD's.
That was completely and utterly a senior US political position that demanded non existeant evidence to support a bizarro "known unknowns" claim .. backed by then UK politicians and tacitly agreed with by the then AU Prime Minister.
US Colin Powell did the worst dog and pony show at the UN talking up cartoons as "evidence" and agencies did what they do and made no public comment but . . .
Nobody with a clue and eyes on the ground from the Intell community thought WMDs were a thing, that one was all from the political sphere.
>>That was completely and utterly a senior US political position that demanded non existeant evidence to support a bizarro "known unknowns" claim
Asking people to "Prove a negative" is such a logical stupidity that is hard to understand how often people get into this.
Imagine you ordering something online on Amazon. And not getting it delivered. And then when you complain to Amazon about this, they asking you to provide a proof that it was not delivered and you don't have it.
How does somebody prove they don't have something? How do they get punished for not showing the absence of something they don't have?
This is a declassified section from the National Intelligence Estimate 2002, which was used as one of the primary justifications for the invasion:
--------------------------
Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction
We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and
restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as
well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if
left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during
this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these
Key Judgments.)
We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD
efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception
efforts. Revelations after the Gulf war starkly demonstrate
the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information.
We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's
WJMD programs.
Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its
chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and
invested more heavily in biological weapons; in the view of
most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons
program.
In the midst of war, if you dared to call such thing a "dog and pony show" you'd be called a Saddam shill. War propaganda is a hell of drug, and we often only realize what's happening long after its over. And then we rewrite history in some sort of cognitive dissonance, failing to learn from the past.
> According to the French academic Dominique Reynié, between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war.
> In the United States, even though pro-war demonstrators have been quoted as referring to anti-war protests as a "vocal minority", Gallup Polls updated September 14, 2007 state, "Since the summer of 2005, opponents of the war have tended to outnumber supporters. A majority of Americans believe the war was a mistake."
Edit:
My bad, I should have clipped from the good-sized section down the page that list numerous pre-invasion protests. Lots of your fellow citizens knew the war was bogus, the excuses invented.
Outside the US I daresay most knew it was bullshit. Hans Blix’s opinion was widely published, “because his daddy didn’t win” was the memed reason, and the coalition that supported Bush’s prosecution of Osama was not all on board with expanding TWOT to Iraq.
Whether intentionally or not, you're giving results of polls years after the invasion. Wars look very different after the fact. In the midst of the war you're surrounded by endless lies, misrepresentations, and propaganda. And most people simply follow along. After all, who wants to be called a Saddam shill?
Wiki has a series of poll results on public opinion of Iraq during after the war. [1] In May 2003, 79% of Americans thought the war was justified, regardless of whether or not WMD existed. And by the time the war had kicked off 90% of Americans believed it "at least somewhat likely" that WMD would be found.
Well, that's Central North Americans for you - still reeling after the 9-11 attacks and looking hard for revenge, however unjustified, and thus easily manipulated by politicians and the press.
In the UK and AU, the two principal partners of the "coalition of the willing", few in the public felt the situation justified and the bulk of those with exposure to global policy, military intell, travel abroad etc. definitely felt it was a bogus war.
Tony Blair was all too aware the supporting intelligence was thin and inadequate at the time - which came out in followup Royal Commissions(?) (they had a big UK inquiry into the matter), and John Howard (AU) was happy to play along despite a lack of backing from ASIO et al on the intel as it was a treaty obligation for AU and not pushing back gave leverage for other US-AU deals.
Altogether it was much less a coalition of the willing than it was a tagging along of the bribed.
The story was retracted the next day. Sure some madman could launch a bike whenever they want, I don’t think this ap story has anything to do with that.
Getting fired for almost starting WW3 due to a fake story you wrote seems like a pretty light punishment. Maybe the AP will do a better job fact checking in the future before causing a war.
Could have been chasing missiles, though this is improbable given all reports on the S300's have concluded 100% effectiveness. Another potential could be someone in Ukraine being overzealous and trying to trigger a false-flag to force NATO into the action. Ukraine's president has been making continuous efforts to pull NATO into their war and may be getting desperate especially given they are going into deep winter and both sides will have to make significant strategic changes. It would not be the first time a major war started from a false flag. Thankfully either way cooler heads prevailed this time.
I’m glad cooler heads prevailed. A lesson for the rest of us to wait for facts and stop being outraged by everything the press throws at us.
That being said, Russia still is shit; and we wouldn’t be in this situation if they weren’t attacking civilian infrastructure in an attempt to freeze Ukrainians to death.
Two-decade-stale whataboutism doesn't change anything about the morality of the war in Ukraine or what our response to it should be. There are plenty of bad guys in the world for you to hate. The question should be what are you going to do about it today? Today, it's clear where the bad guys are. Tomorrow it may be different.
>>Today, it's clear where the bad guys are. Tomorrow it may be different.
Actually bad guys have been the same. It is hard for people to understand or even stand the fact that their country and their countrymen could be evil. That is pretty much all there is to this. Everybody likes to believe the war they are fighting is for a just cause and will make the world a better place, and they think every other country doing the very same is evil.
We should all agree on the fact when we say "War for X reasons is evil" the real issue there is "War", not X which could be {religion, democracy, economic order, ...}
But honestly mostly people do if for things like resources, and influence and but like to sell as X. This is why everything you do is ok, but others doing it isn't. There are only finite resources, and this is a race condition.
I’m sure Ukraine doesn’t feel like it’s fighting a puppet dance. Just because the US has made bad decisions before doesn’t mean that it’s doing a bad thing now, nor does it means that there’s anything wrong with incentives being aligned. All international relations are based on aligned incentives of self interest, not just those of the US.
That both are abhorrent but we wouldn’t be where we are today if NATO hadn’t been extending its membership eastwards since the end of the cold war and running arms deals with countries on Russia’s border.
I agree with you. The root cause is the complete erosion of civil society in Russia, the failure of the state to create and maintain a democracy and the failure of the West to turn Russia into a North Korea early on, when everyone figured out that the gangsters are actually running the country.
Why should the West do anything on the opposite side of the globe? Why does the West only care about democracy in the countries with a lot of natural resources? Oh yea, that must be a pure coincidence.
Yes, that would be the Russian neo-imperial ambitions becoming mainstream. I watched it happening gradually back when I lived in the country - fiction books about war "against Nazis" in Ukraine started showing up in mid-00s, and one first became a hit in 2008.
The americans, germans, french and every other country in the world are all “shit” by those standards - they have all done the same and would do the same again if their “national security objectives” required it. Ukraine would do the same to Russia if it could, the reason they aren’t is logistic, not moral.
In every war, the propagandists try to promote the view that this war is a “good” or “just” war - they are all wrong, just slightly different in their degree of “wrongness”.
So what's your point? Should we join hands and welcome Russia to help themselves in Ukraine?
This whataboutism around Ukraine is emblematic of the problem with misaligned postmodern thinking. The fact of the matter is that Russia has violently invaded Ukraine and they are trying to bend Ukraine against its will. It's wrong and the world _should_ come to their side. Likewise if the tables were turned.
Every US president since the end of the cold war has authorized eastward expansion of NATO, an alliance whose enemy no longer exists.
The current president was brokering arms deals with Ukraine. The previous president was delivering on those deals.
After the 2014 coup, a major Ukraine energy company, which was cozy with Putin, hired the Vice President’s son in order to cozy up with the new America-friendly regime.
The previous president was impeached for asking Ukraine to investigate corruption by the former Vice President.
Putin warned that arming or granting membership to Ukraine’s belligerent new government was a red line Russia could not tolerate. NATO did it anyway.
The players in the great game fucked around. Pretending nothing happened prior to 2022 is willful ignorance.
The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in an effort prevent war in Europe.
...and here we are today with war in Europe.
NATO is more relevant now than it ever has been since it was first established, and I think their current list of applicants is a clear testament to that.
> Every US president since the end of the cold war has authorized eastward expansion of NATO, an alliance whose enemy no longer exists.
If those countries wish to join NATO why do they need to ask permission to Russia? This argument really doesn't make sense unless you take away sovereignty of states from the equation, some countries decided they wanted to join NATO, should they be blocked to join a defensive military alliance for what reasons?
> After the 2014 coup, a major Ukraine energy company, which was cozy with Putin, hired the Vice President’s son in order to cozy up with the new America-friendly regime.
> The previous president was impeached for asking Ukraine to investigate corruption by the former Vice President.
What? Trump was clearly asking for a quid pro quo from Ukraine and keeping aid hostage unless he got some dirt on a political opponent. I'm not American so I really can't grasp why you'd bend reality this way to fit your narrative...
> Putin warned that arming or granting membership to Ukraine’s belligerent new government was a red line Russia could not tolerate. NATO did it anyway.
Ukraine wanted to join NATO, again a defence alliance, with a democratically elected government that came after ousting their previous Russian-puppet president which was openly propped up by Russia/Putin. Putin tolerating it or not it's not his decision to make over the wants of a foreign government. If you support this kind of meddling then you should not have any qualms against other nation-states directly meddling into other countries policies and politics, right? Like you don't have anything against the USA constant meddling into others' affairs, am I correct?
Please, source where exactly was the new government of Ukraine belligerent, that's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
I have far more contempt for the USA running proxy wars and meddling in border and ethnic disputes halfway across the world than I do for the principals involved in those border disputes.
When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine decided they didn’t want to be a part of Ukraine anymore, Ukraine shelled them. There aren’t any good guys over there. But there didnt need to be a war, and NATO didnt need to instigate it.
> When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine decided they didn’t want to be a part of Ukraine anymore, Ukraine shelled them.
Oversimplification. Ukrainian constitution says that all referenda needs to go through a vote by all people, not only the ones concerning a region. It was unlawful under Ukrainian law. On top of that there were all the little green men coming from Russia to "help" those ethnic Russians, also there are recordings of Barkashov openly stating how the votes for the referendum in Donbass should look like [1]:
> The recording was of a phone call that the security service said took place between a pro-Russian political operative named Aleksandr Barkashov, who was identified as being in Moscow, and Dmytro Boitsov, a leader of rebels in Donetsk.
> The authenticity of the recording could not be independently verified.
> In the conversation, riddled with expletives, Mr. Boitsov suggests canceling the referendum and Mr. Barkashov insists that it must go forward, but says that it is ridiculous to consider holding a real vote.
> “Are you going to walk around and collect papers?” he asks incredulously, his words punctuated by curses. “Are you insane?”
> Mr. Barkashov adds: “Let’s say that 89 percent voted for the Donetsk Republic and that’s it.”
On this point:
> But there didnt need to be a war, and NATO didnt need to instigate it.
You keep saying NATO instigated it, again, how exactly did NATO instigate it? Ukraine wasn't posed to join NATO in 2014, Ukraine had a peace agreement with Russia since the denuclearisation, a treaty that wasn't respected even after Ukraine stating it wasn't planning on joining NATO. A Russian puppet was deposed from Ukraine's leadership, the people seem to be pretty happy with his replacement since then, and are able to vote for whomever they want.
If Ukraine wanted to join NATO, how is that instigation by NATO? I seriously don't understand this repetition of Mearsheimer's realpolitik take on it, yeah, Russia doesn't like it but Russia's neighbours have pretty clear reasons and motives to want to join a defensive alliance to avoid exactly what happened to Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine. Russia's will to have lebensraum doesn't give then any validity or justification to invade a neighbour country, you are just catering to the whims of a Russian government that's been pretty clear about its objectives towards its neighbours, why do you keep trying to justify their actions?
Illegal referenda, annexation of territories (specifically productive ones with industries and natural resources) and so on are never going to be justified by the ghost of an ever-encroaching NATO. Russia just needed to stop being a fucking asshole to its neighbours, why can't they do that? Because it's an imperialist shell of a country trying to survive by sheer brute force over its vast expanse of land, something that would never be held together if the people had any say over their future, there's always an iron fist hammering down and subjugating all of its regions.
It's absurd and shameless to actually try to defend this, even worse by simply parroting Russia propaganda. You aren't smarter because you found and chose a contrarian position to be the hill you die on... Quite the opposite.
Similarly, Cuba, a sovereign nation, chose to ally itself with the Soviet Union, another sovereign nation. When the Soviet Union decided to put nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 103 miles from the US mainland, did the US support Cuba and the Soviet Union’s “sovereign rights”? No, they were willing to start a potentially nuclear war with the soviet union over the issue. Do you maybe see an analogy here? The key operating principle in international relations is NOT the sovereignty of nations, its that nations states will do whatever is necessary to maintain their power and protect themselves
The previous president was impeached for taking aid from ukraine lest they investigate invented allegations of corruption.
That putin warned of something is meaningless. Are we expected to roll over whenever a foreign country makes a threat? Most of these threats are empty; even when they aren't, some things they have no right to threaten us about. A country arming itself to protect from a (demonstrably) belligerent neighbour is one such thing. I'm surprised people eat this ridiculous excuse from putin so easily.
Nope, false, you are literally spreading falsehoods and Russian propaganda, not sure if on purpose or just by sheer ignorance [1]:
> Joe Biden leveraged aid to remove top prosecutor as part anti-corruption efforts
> It's true that Joe Biden leveraged $1 billion in aid to persuade Ukraine to oust its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in March 2016. But it wasn't because Shokin was investigating Burisma. It was because Shokin wasn't pursuing corruption among the country's politicians.
> John F. Solomon is an American journalist who was a contributor to Fox News until late 2020
> in recent years he has been accused of magnifying small scandals, creating fake controversy,[6][7][8] and advancing conspiracy theories.
> During the Donald Trump presidency, he advanced Trump-friendly stories including questioning reporting that women who had accused Trump of sexual harassment had also sought payments from partisan political donors[10] and questioning the legitimacy of criminal charges against Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Is that someone who you really want to listen to and agree with? If so, best of luck.
You are still spreading the words of people who peddle falsehoods, can't you really see that? Are you so ingrained in this point of view that you will die on that hill?
I do not support Russia. But I do understand why Russia is doing what they are doing. There is a logical chain of events that led to the conflict. I do strongly support the idea that the US is the core issue here. Unfortunately, the US is not a free speech country. I'm not allowed to share "incorrect" opinion, which is why I use a throwaway account. I have more than 15 YoE and work at Google–pay a shit ton of taxes due to a sky-high FAANG compensations. The US is the sole coordinator of this war and my taxes go towards sponsoring the war. That is why I'm angry.
> There is a logical chain of events that led to the conflict.
No, there's theorising by John Mearsheimer which you subscribe to. It's an ideology of realpolitik/offensive realism, I've read it, I've watched it, I know what you mean and that's just a take, a view on the situation, please be mindful of that.
Or even worse, you are subscribing to Putinism, you are validating Putin. And saying you are Ukrainian, what the actual fuck? Stop hiding behind that throw away and deceiving us, like I told you before: it's boring and tiresome.
And still, you don't fucking expand anywhere on your "logical sequence of events". I asked before for you to expand on it and you didn't do it. Worse, you tried using that bizarre sequence of pseudo-rhetorical questions to drive no argument in the end. You are not participating in any discussion...
> Unfortunately, the US is not a free speech country. I'm not allowed to share "incorrect" opinion, which is why I use a throwaway account.
What the actual fuck? You're absolutely free to say whatever you want, you aren't free of the consequences of said speech.
You are not being persecuted, your views are, accept that just like I accept mine to be challenged and do not hide behind a throw away like a coward.
Like, you don't even comprehend what free speech actually means and think you are equipped enough to have not only a political opinion that's being regurgitated from somewhere else, but also that this opinion is the holier than thou one, where it's better because you thought of it. When you didn't even came up with your reasoning, you are copycatting it and not even completely because you can't even start to expose your argumentation.
Get off your high horse, you are being incredibly shallow in your argumentation. I don't care how much taxes you pay, or that you work at some Google-like place with Google-like pay, none of that is even close to relevant to any of the arguments you are trying to shove into this discussion...
Are you angry that your taxes go to war? Boo-fucking-hoo, you live in the US, you chose to continue living there due to higher paying salaries and so on, for that you need to also accept the other facet of your country: it's a hyper-militaristic power and due to that you have the privilege of being well paid, your taxes are funding exactly what enables the US to be the superpower it is.
You can't have the cake and eat it too. If you live in the US your taxes will very likely always be funding some war.
And you are angry about funding a war against an oppressor? Against a regime explicitly calling for the genocide against the people of Ukraine? A state explicitly saying that another state doesn't exist and trying to annex it. Against a real adversary of your country, which has been bled dry by peanuts of spending. That's fucking rich... It's one of the best investments your country has done for its own foreign policy. That's probably one of the wars where the US is actually on the good side of it, fighting for what's morally right.
Seriously look inside yourself and what you are spewing, it makes absolutely no logical sense that you hold all these views at the same time, it's a hodge-podge of idiotic reasoning. And it's disgusting.
I thought FAANG was supposed to hire mostly smart people, guess I was wrong.
> No, there's theorising by John Mearsheimer which you subscribe to. It's an ideology of realpolitik/offensive realism, I've read it, I've watched it, I know what you mean and that's just a take, a view on the situation, please be mindful of that.
It's _not_ only Mearsheimer, but aside from that, why is this view incorrect?
> Or even worse, you are subscribing to Putinism, you are validating Putin.
What if Putin is not lying? There is a mathematical chance that the so called "propaganda" is actually an uncomfortable truth for an average Joe living outside of Russia.
> I asked before for you to expand on it and you didn't do it.
I did. Read my other comment.
> Worse, you tried using that bizarre sequence of pseudo-rhetorical questions to drive no argument in the end. You are not participating in any discussion...
WTF? I brought up straight _facts_. Did you read my comment? 1991 -> 2007 -> 2008 -> Crimea -> etc. What's not clear?
> You're absolutely free to say whatever you want
No, I'm not. Example: BLM is a hoax. The BLM leaders purchased a shit ton of real estate in Manhattan. $200,000 were spent on clubs and prostitutes (see IRS filings). I can't say that in public. I'll be cancelled and my career is done within minutes.
> Boo-fucking-hoo, you live in the US, you chose to continue living there due to higher paying salaries and so on
I chose to live here because my kids were born here. I actually thought of moving back to Ukraine (before the war). I love my country, I lived there for 30 years, but its corruption is so high that I decided to punt that decision. Later, when I helped Ukrainians with aid, I received a _direct_ phone call on my cell phone from one of the organizations telling me that if I keep sending aid to Ukraine, they'll find me in the US and the conversation will be different. I got that call from Lviv.
> You can't have the cake and eat it too. If you live in the US your taxes will very likely always be funding some war.
Isn't that exactly why the war is happening in Ukraine? The US needs its military bases around the world to have a leverage. How hard is that to understand?
> Seriously look inside yourself and what you are spewing, it makes absolutely no logical sense that you hold all these views at the same time, it's a hodge-podge of idiotic reasoning. And it's disgusting.
The reason why I won't is because I always question any decisions irrespective whether they were made by the US or Russian leaders. Both parties have an opportunity to lie. Historically, there was a shit ton of lies against Russia. All these lies, again, according to the history, were pretty much always benefiting the US––not to save lives or promote democracy and throw rainbows around the world.
Let's imagine what Putin is saying is truth. Work backwards from that.
Now image the US is telling the truth. Work backwards from that.
The two paths outlined above will give you a picture in which the US is the sole reason of all the shit that is happening today. Dive fucking deeper. DO NOT READ NYT/CNN/WAPO. Look at the freaking historical facts and make your own conclusion.
You might call me a conspiracy theorist, but I mind you - there are endless number of conspiracy theories that end up being true. Never trust mass media - I worked in the largest mass media agency in NY - they are fucking driven by ad revenue only - there is zero trust. That is obviously a whole separate topic.
Your views are the US propaganda. How cool is that?
I'm exhausted, you live in a fantasy land of post-modernism where the truth can be anything, I really don't know what to say to you except for "bless your heart and farewell". Because, really, there's nothing I can actually say that will change your mind at all, you are subscribed to this world view and that's it, you're a follower and true-believer in it.
Just think about the type of government that Putin and the Kremlin currently are, do you believe this is a good moral standpoint? If so, good luck, if not, then question the fucking propaganda you've been eating.
I'm not from the US, I come from a country that the USA fucked over for decades, the US fostered a dictatorship in my country that killed one of my uncles, it's a country directly under the US sphere of influence because it's in South America, I have all the personal reasons to just hate the USA and go against its propaganda.
And I still can see how, from a moral standpoint, Russia is wrong here. No matter what comes from 1991, 2007, 2008, they fucked up, they are trying to annex neighbours and their regime doesn't care about human rights or anything that I stand for. Stuff that I hope you don't stand for either.
Defending Russia in this is defending Putin's and the Kremlin's morals, if you do you are completely fucked in the head, dude.
Bless your heart and farewell, you are just too far gone. I'm too old to have to keep fighting bullshit, it just takes too much to go around finding sources and giving you other points of view when you can just simply write whatever is living inside your head, bullshit is just too hard to combat. Unfortunately.
Your morals are rotten, I don't think we can really start having a proper conversation when our code of ethics is so different. You believe that in the 21st century it's justified for a country to invade a neighbour, that's absolutely fucked up to me.
Edit:
On this:
>> You're absolutely free to say whatever you want
> No, I'm not. Example: BLM is a hoax. The BLM leaders purchased a shit ton of real estate in Manhattan. $200,000 were spent on clubs and prostitutes (see IRS filings). I can't say that in public. I'll be cancelled and my career is done within minutes.
Yes, you are free to say whatever the fuck you want. What you want is having no consequences for the shit you say. The government is not gonna persecute you for it, society probably won't take it lightly but if you have a way to actually back it up with facts then you'll very likely even get some followers.
Do you have the data? The cold hard facts to say that BLM is a hoax? Did you do the investigation and have the threads to back this up? If you do, share it with the world, if you don't then you are just "believing" in it because of some tenuous connection and of course that people will frown at you. No one has to listen to all the crazies someone believe or thinks of but definitely some people will listen if you can expose it.
Because I will not go looking for IRS fillings, you have to show it, you are the one with extraordinary claims, it requires extraordinary evidence, not a call to "do your reserarch, sheeple", that's just fucking dumb.
Why is only Mearsheimer's reasoning correct and the one you subscribe to? You are ignoring a plethora of other political scientists, because you've subscribed to his ideas. That's why you are fucking stupid.
Mearsheimer has as his political philosophy his own offensive realism theory, where great powers only act only on their desires to become hegemonies, that's why I believe he is not entirely correct (not fucking stupid as you) on his take on Russia, there's more at play than just this real politik of offensive realism.
I don't think that great powers will only act to achieve hegemony (as does a number of other political scientists that aren't Mearsheimer). And if those powers do, we carrying the values of human dignity and rights believe that nations shouldn't annex other nations in the 21st century and so it doesn't matter that by offensive realism he states that Russia is correct, morally Russia is wrong and we judge the actions of nations by this morality.
He has developed this theory and so has to be the main supporter of it, and the real believer in it. It doesn't make it true because he has decades of political science studies. People like Herman Lundborg studied medicine and developed a theory where he stated some people of a specific skin colour were genetically better than another set of people of a different skin colour, he studied it for decades, doesn't make him right.
You didn't answer: where does your morality take you? You are not answering any of my prompts and focusing on one aspect to try to focus my attention into it, stop this bullshit and answer: what are your morals? Do you align yourself with Putin's morals? Do you believe it's right for a country to invade a neighbouring country in the 21st century? Do you believe it's right for the government of a country to call for the annihilation of a different nation?
CATO Institute is something that I would not touch with a 10m pole, you are agreeing with the think tank backed by Charles Koch, I hope I don't have to expand much on that after naming him. Yes, CATO Institute is fucking dumb :)
So yes, I'm exhausted, you are a coward hiding behind a throwaway and throwing dumb shit around, that's life I guess.
And again, stop running away from my morality questions, fucking coward.
I support Mearsheimer's reasoning because there is a logic behind it. There are no scientists that would provide an opposite reasoning as logical as the Mearsheimer's one.
> CATO Institute is fucking dumb :)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Do you believe it's right for a country to invade a neighbouring country in the 21st century?
I do not support wars. But you can't ask a question like that. It doesn't make sense.
War is a mechanism for dispute resolution. Yes, we, people, don't like such mechanisms. But such is the life. These mechanisms are used by the US all the time. The US shows the world that this mechanism can be used. So, the US can, but Russia can't? It doesn't even matter whether it's Russia or any other country.
In the case of Russian-Ukrainian war, the dispute that the war is trying to resolve comes from the expansion of NATO and military bases next to the Russian borders. No expansion -> no war.
> Do you believe it's right for a country to invade a neighbouring country in the 21st century?
It doesn't matter which century we are in. The society hasn't reached a state in which a fairly complex dispute can be resolved without a war. Right now there is no state in which war is an impossible option. To make it more clear, for example, we are in a state in which the humanity cannot travel with the speed of light. We are simply not there yet. When it comes to wars, we are in state in which a war is a possibility.
When Putin asked the US (early 2000s) why NATO is expanding, they just mumbled some bullshit in response. How can military bases across the world create peace? You can't create peace by throwing weapon around the world. There will always be someone who won't like it.
The US should've take Putin more seriously in the first place, but they kept belittling his requests to stop the expansion for 15+ years.
> I support Mearsheimer's reasoning because there is a logic behind it.
There was a logic behind Hegel. Marx believed it.
There was a logic behind Marx. Lenin believed it.
There was a logic behind Lenin. Both Stalin and Mao believed it.
There was a logic behind Schopenhauer. There was a logic behind Nietzsche. Hitler believed it.
If the 20th century taught us anything, it was to be extremely wary of fine-sounding philosophers with their arguments about "logical necessity" and "historical inevitability". Way too often it was a rationalization of evil, or at least it was used by evil men to put a veneer of "necessity" on their evil.
Mearsheimer's position may be pragmatic, but it is deeply morally nihilistic. Are you also? Can you even spell "wrong"?
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is wrong. Russia's missile attacks to destroy infrastructure are wrong. Russia's actions toward civilians in the territory they conquered are wrong.
Why is NATO expanding? It's really simple. Because nations on the periphery of Russia are terrified of Putin! They're terrified of Russia's "sphere of influence" being a "sphere of military operations". They've seen it too many times. Why did Sweden and Finland just decide to join NATO, after more than half a century of neutrality? Because they saw what Russia is doing in Ukraine, that's why! It wasn't because they were pushed into it by the US. They were pushed into it by Russia! They wanted a very clear sign that told Putin in no uncertain terms: "Don't try that here."
Your morals are leaving victims to their oppressors because "realpolitik". That's Quisling's morals, and Chamberlain's, and it's sickening.
> Why did Sweden and Finland just decide to join NATO, after more than half a century of neutrality?
It's a nitpick but one I believe just expands your point here, I live in Sweden and this country has been neutral and out of wars for more than 200 years. Putin has broken a 200 years stance on neutrality and forced Sweden, under a Social Democrat government nonetheless, to join NATO, something that was unthinkable and unsupported by the population barely a year ago.
Why is Russia so threatened about having a defensive alliance around its borders? Ukraine has been abused by Russia, the Baltics as well, Eastern Europe, these countries chose to protect themselves against Russia, why do you still push the narrative that Russia was threatened? No one was planning to attack Russia, they have fucking nukes, that's preposterous.
Putin is a fascist, looking for lebensraum/spazio vitale, if you don't see that you are a fucking dumb puppet.
You are on the wrong side of history, I hope you can forgive yourself in 20 years. Or probably not, you are deep in it and a true believer, you'll always think you are right.
There's a side here that's right and one that's wrong. The one murdering people, your people is the wrong one.
You stand for truth and justice, unfortunately you don't really know the meaning of that, you actually stand for nothing, you are an empty shell of morality, supporting Putinism based on some cynical view of the world called "offensive realism", you bought into that because of "logic" but your own logic doesn't allow you to see that murdering people (again, your own people) is not right. No matter what Putin wants, or warned against, it's simply and absolutely not morally right.
And you don't stand for that, what a fucking sad state of being.
I just can't stress enough the amount of US propaganda you've put in your mouth.
Chechen War has nothing to do with Georgia/Ukraine/NATO/etc. It's a different conflict.
Moldova was attacked by both Russia and Ukraine you simpleton.
The war in Georgia was the result of NATO welcoming Georgia.
Not a single country before the 2007-2008 events joined NATO to get protected from Russia. You are throwing misleading facts and misrepresenting the reality.
NATO knew that Russia would attack Ukraine because that's what they did in Georgia–for the same fucking reason. That's why the US was packing Ukraine with weapon since 2014.
The US doesn't like China's rising economy and the fact that they are friends with Russia, because this partnership negatively affects the US dollar. The US doesn't like they have less leverage in Europe, because it's the Russia who keeps the Europe warm and hooked.
You are naïve as a 5 year old.
I lived in Ukraine for 30+ years and then 10+ years in the US. I know these two countries very well. You know shit.
> Chechen War has nothing to do with Georgia/Ukraine/NATO/etc. It's a different conflict.
Yes, but it's just another example of Russia being imperialist and invading other countries it feels it has a right to.
> Moldova was attacked by both Russia and Ukraine you simpleton.
The Ukrainians were volunteers, but I guess it was a simple mistake to make, leaving that part out wasn't it.
> The war in Georgia was the result of NATO welcoming Georgia.
So you're saying Georgia was invaded because it tried to join an alliance to defend itself?. Super justifiable war.
> Not a single country before the 2007-2008 events joined NATO to get protected from Russia. You are throwing misleading facts and misrepresenting the reality.
Poland would disagree with this, Poland joined NATO in 1999, inpart at least to protect itself from Russia.
> NATO knew that Russia would attack Ukraine because that's what they did in Georgia–for the same fucking reason. That's why the US was packing Ukraine with weapon since 2014.
NATO has been providing weapons and training to Ukraine to defend itself since 2014, since Russias invasion first started.
> You are naïve as a 5 year old.
Insults like this are against the hackernews rules, please be more respectful in the future.
> I lived in Ukraine for 30+ years and then 10+ years in the US. I know these two countries very well. You know shit.
Appeal to authority is a great logical fallacy but unfortunately, even this appeal is impossible to check as you are using a throwaway. regardless though, just because you "lived" in a country doesn't mean you know anything.
Do yourself a favour and read "Fascism: A Warning" by Madeleine Albright. After that we can discuss how similar you are falling to Putinism as many other seemingly level-headed people fell for Mussolini, Hitler, Henlein and so many other fascists of the 1920s and 1930s. Seriously, just read this book and get back to me.
You don't believe in the values of democracy, you don't like wars but is supporting the side that's starting a war in name of Fascism and you don't even see it.
Do yourself a favour before you repeat history.
And once more you are a coward trying to evade a simple question: what ars your morals? What do you stand for? And I mean for, standing against stuff is an anti-model, it's meaningless as morality. So far you only showed to stand for the justification of Putin's flavour of Fascism, you're eating that and it's sad and enraging to watch.
>The US cannot simply lie about NATO's good intentions, because in Eastern Europe they are not.
NATO is a voluntary defense alliance, and countries from Eastern Europe want to join NATO due to the (don't even say it's only perceived, as history shows over and over again) risk of being invaded by Russia.
The US are not forcing countries to join NATO.
What do you think is not good about NATO's intentions from Eastern Europe's perspective, besides Russia not being able to invade their neighbors anymore?
If you stop Russia, you'll stop the war. They started it, they can also just put their tanks in reverse and get out.
This is a proxy war between the US and Russia. Nobody gives a shit about Ukraine. Why do you think the US is pouring money into this war like crazy? There was no threat from Russia before 2007. There were no events to push other countries to join NATO.
The root problem is that there is a troubled subset of our population who delight in smearing shit on the walls. We’ve all seen it in real life public toilets, in that literal fashion, but it also comes in the form of ratfucking, like Stone, and in QAnon-style promotion of crazy conspiracy theories, and in many variations in-between. They engage in acts of destruction against the public good; they are destroyers of peace, of reason, of society, and of democracy. Some are legit mentally ill, but other are very savvy and are doing it with deliberation. Social media has broadened their reach and increased the volume of their smear.
It sounds like you're saying that anybody who diverges from your status quo opinions is some sort of mental terrorist. Excuse me, "stochastic terrorist."
Thanks for illustrating both the problem and the reductionist rhetoric so popular by those invested in making things worse.
I imagine there are people out there who are fooled by the lazy syllogism "you're condemning those who make up lies for personal gain and nihilism / people who make up these lies are contradicting status quo opinions / therefore you are condemning anyone who says anything contrary to the status quo".
But to most of us that's so obviously fallacious that it feels dirty to even engage with.
Bring me evidence of democrats drinking infant blood in the basement of a pizza parlor and we'll talk. But don't tell me that I must accept such things
because they are contrary to what every reasonable person believes. And don't tell me that I have to either accept or reject every contrarian opinion as a single proposition rather than considering each one individually.
TIL skepticism of US war propaganda ≈ belief in "democrats drinking infant blood in the basement of a pizza parlor". No, I think you've perfectly illustrated the problem, thanks.
When Ukraine hits Poland (even by mistake), people take step back and blame Russia, because Ukraine wouldn't have had to use an anti-missile system if there was no Russian missile in the first place. Fair enough.
Now, why don't people use the same analogy for Russia starting that war? Let's take a step back and ask a basic question - who escalated this all? Who benefits from this war? Who pours money there? Why is nobody asking these questions?
It really seems like you are part of Russian propaganda. In another comment you say that you pay taxes in the US.
> Now, why don't people use the same analogy for Russia starting that war? Let's take a step back and ask a basic question - who escalated this all? Who benefits from this war? Who pours money there? Why is nobody asking these questions?
You clearly want to make a point here, so why don’t you answer these questions yourself. Who, in your opinion, escalated the war?
The way you formulate your questions, it seems like you are spreading conspiracy theories. So please enlighten us with your brilliant insights into a war that kills thousands of innocent people and kids, destroys so many lives, just because a dictator wants to boost his ego. Territorial war is unnecessary and useless. So prove that you are not a Russian troll, and explain what you want message you want to convey with your stupid questions.
> Now, why don't people use the same analogy for Russia starting that war?
Because a war of invasion and annexation is something we've learned since WW2 that won't ever be tolerated in Europe again, history has shown why.
> Let's take a step back and ask a basic question - who escalated this all?
Pretty easy: Putin and Russia. First 2008, then 2014 and a full-scale invasion in 2022. Russia chose to invade a neighbouring country in 2008 (Georgia, hope you remember it), Russia decided to escalate that and annex Crimea in 2014. Russia shadow-invaded Ukraine in 2014 (or have you forgotten all the military personnel wearing Russian gear that went "on vacation" to Donbass and Crimea?). Russia downed a civilian airplane in 2014.
Or isn't any of that escalation?
> Who benefits from this war?
Very good question, if the war ended in 3 days as it was Putin's fantasy who would have benefited from this war?
As it didn't end in 3 days, no one is really benefiting from this except the military industry in multiple countries, mostly in Europe, which didn't have to arm themselves for decades of relative peace.
> Who pours money there?
All the Western countries are pouring money in there, to fend off an invasion, to keep the sovereignty of a state, a thing that wasn't really required to be taken care of since the end of WW2.
> Why is nobody asking these questions?
Because they are fucking dumb questions posed by Russian propaganda, that's why.
If you want to expand on your points, please be clear and expand on them. Asking me to answer rhetorical questions as some kind of bizarre argumentation mechanism is tiresome and clearly against the kind of discussions I expect to be fostered on Hacker News.
Either do your own work and expand your argumentation so myself and others can properly reply or stop with this bullshit, it's boring to have to interact with this.
Also, by the guidelines, use emphasis like this, ALL CAPS is frowned upon on this forum. Thank you very much.
I intentionally asked you these questions so that you could answer the main question by yourself.
Russia has always been reluctant to NATO–the expansion was one of the main topics post-USSR crash.
Munich, 2007-Putin gives a massive speech on NATO. In the speech Putin blames the US on the expansion and clearly states that NATO is not welcomed next to the borders of Russia. He asks the west an important question: "since the USSR no longer exists, who is the enemy? If there is no enemy, then the NATO should be either dissolved or repurposed." Early next year, despite his comments and concerns the US welcomes Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. What's the reaction of Putin? The US does not want to partnership and belittles his concerns. That year Putin said: "Ok, if they want Ukraine, they won't get Crimea". That was 2008. The decision to annex Crimea was a _reaction_ to the NATO's expansion.
I can keep going and going, but at the end of the day the core problem is NATO. Later, the director of FBI said that welcoming Ukraine and Georgia to NATO was the biggest mistake the US has made within the past several decades. That comment was made before the war started.
This is a proxy war started by the US. I won't be surprised if Ukraine/FTX drama is real. There is a huge chance it's all real, because Biden kept telling us that there were no deals between his son and Ukraine. Eventually, emails between Biden's son and Ukrainian oligarchs were cryptographically verified (DKIM records) and confirmed to be real. So Biden was _clearly_ lying. So, I'm sure there are more lies and FTX could be one of them.
One important note to add.
In January 2022, Putin asked the US to confirm if the expansion continues, because otherwise he'll invade Ukraine. The response of the US: "Yes". That is why everyone knew about the war-Biden, Putin, Zelenskyy. Everyone except the citizens of Ukraine. According to Ukrainian government and their public announcement - they knew about the war, but had to make a tough decision to keep it all in secret.
> not the country that continually attempts to annex and invade post soviet states
when? post the NATO expansion?
> Ah yes I keep forgetting the US forced Russia to invade and then after that they even forced Russia to rape and torture Ukrainian children.
This is a play of words. I can say the same about my fellow Ukrainian soldiers - it's just not in prime time.
> My only question for you is how can you support this war given the countless documented and even caught on video atrocities that the Russians commit?.
I _do not_ support the war. That is a misleading assumption. What about the countless atrocities that the Ukrainians commit? Those are f*cking public as well.
The Russian Federation, the country that since its existence started in 1991 has invaded.
- Chechnya
- Georgia
- Moldova
- Ukraine
And continues upto right now, to threaten every country under the sun with nuclear annihilation merely for _helping_ Ukraine.
> when? post the NATO expansion?
NATO keeps gaining members because Russia keeps invading countries, it's the exact reason Finland and Sweden are now joining.
This in no way justifies Russias brutal war.
> I _do not_ support the war. That is a misleading assumption. What about the countless atrocities that the Ukrainians commit? Those are f*cking public as well.
Then I suppose you want Russia to leave Ukraine then, and stay out of Ukraine?.
I got torn apart for saying the "ghost of Kyiv" wasn't real, followed by the "most level headed take" of a reply that went something like "hey, even if its fake, people need something to believe in right now so saying this stuff only helps Russia."
I am of course 100% against what Russia is doing. I just feel like we should all be very aware of what is real and what is fake. Otherwise we can't make good judgments.
I saw people calling for WWIII because of the missile incident. Just blows my mind. I truly think that some people feel so insulated from the effects they view it as some "event" that just takes place in a distant land where if you cheer loud enough and show enough support the "good guys will win" after a few months. The world doesn't need more destabilization. Of course, Russia can't keep killing people either... but at the end of the day, this isn't and shouldn't be solved by online commentators.
I really wish Putin would throw in the towel at this point... its barbaric, depressing and embarrassing.