I doubt an article like this will survive on HN. But I can't help hope that it will - it lays bare some of the "other side" that most people have no inkling of. We're so used to see the world in black and white, us against them, that we have not yet realized that peace is in everyone's best interest - a new arms race is not.
That said, if and when these viewpoints serve to minimize the Russian atrocities as it has on several of these alternate news sites that I follow then it crosses a red line.
There needs to be a name for this phenomenon: a denial of reality as part of a possibly-reasonable argument.
ie, I don’t think the argument being offered here is unfounded, and the “denial of reality” I’m noting here does not actually attack the argument itself.
Lazier invocations of this same idea often invoke identity politics issues. Often the line is implied, and goes something like this: “Here’s a movie with a successful lead [woman/african-american/etc.] which really isn’t something we’re used to seeing.”
Well it’s something I’m used to seeing, and I think it’s something everyone else is used to seeing. Despite the commonality of the event, people are very worried about how common a portrayal is, and often something which was common 40 years ago is felt as “common today,” even when the world has moved on.
If so then the premise of my argument would seem moot? and so people have already realized that peace is in everyone's best interest. Which doesn't really tally with what I see around me, but I could be wrong. I really hope that I am.
It seems to me that Media Lens is mostly known for the Assange trial in HN---the submitter has been very passionate about that if you look at the records. So my bet is slightly more positive.
I agree to your last paragraph though. It helps that Media Lens does have a consistency; consistency matters in the modern society because other qualities are much harder to verify.
Should we always be hearing the other side though? Relitigating the obvious? Like the earth is round, invading a non-aggressive country is worse than inviting it into a defensive pact?
We can't keep going in circles like this. Yes the West is hypocritical, self serving and needs to reassess. But right now, less so than Russia.
There is a fundamental problem that this kind of thing, while critical that it is heeded, is presented exactly for its relevance to current events, and so, despite the author in this case explicitly stating that nothing here diminishes Putin's crime, the article's topic is inherently used as a tool for doing exactly that, in practice. E.g. I have already seen somebody use this article (not on HN) in an argument that Russia's actions are justified (I doubt they read the whole thing). Imagine how often writeups that are not so holistic are used this way.
There are, very broadly, two closely related topics:
1. X, Y, and Z past events, vs the current attitude toward Russia, are specific examples of, more or less, hypocrisy in the West. More charitably, they are evidence of a cultural disconnect and inability to sympathize that has badly needed bridging for all of human history, but is especially relevant right now.
2. The West are hypocrites and therefore should not oppose, neither with words nor with actions, the idea of Putin attacking Ukraine's capital to coerce them into surrendering their land.
I think if it's clear the article is not making the case for #2, we should really try not to bar them from rational discourse, despite their inevitable misuse in promotion of item #2.
> I doubt an article like this will survive on HN. But I can't help hope that it will - it lays bare some of the "other side" that most people have no inkling of.
You must be joking. Hacker News is absolutely riddled with "other-side-ism" (whataboutism). To a ridiculous degree.
Look at the comments on this recent submission, "Moscow police officers stop people, request their phones to read their messages"[0]. An incredible number of the comments are comparing the video to American policies like Stop and Frisk and TSA screening, or to London police searches.
Even in the most absurd cases imaginable HN commenters love whataboutism because it's a way of signaling "I know a fact that's tangentially related to this".
The HN content, community and moderation quality are away above average. But there is definitely some moderator that takes US criticism too personally
I have seen this several times, as soon as the conversation turns too far away from the mainstream it gets flagged as too political
It is always too political, but it is allowed, when it is against China, Russia, Trump...
Kyle Rittenhouse case was posted several times, bashing left and right, as soon as he was acquitted no article was allowed anymore, flagged almost immediately
> You think that HN is the home of black-and-white thinking and mindless, uncritical acceptance of main-stream media?
Not really. It wasn't so much a reflection on HN in general as "HN when a ruthless dictatorship invades a democratic country in a flagrant breach of international law". I'm happy that my apprehension was proven wrong, the post survived and at least some intelligent discussion ensued.
implicitly drawing an equivalence between Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad and the government of Ukraine is an absurd place to start an analogy, regardless of your thesis.
Also, in the tables of moral calculus, incompetence in pursuit of noble goals ("depose evil dictator and establish democracy") is significantly less offensive than overtly evil goals ("overthrow democracy and install kleptocracy that rules the natives at gunpoint").
It looks to me that you are expressing a preference for democracy relative to autocracy. I assume this preference is based on a historical evaluation of the performance of democratic and autocratic governments? For example, Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union were autocratic regimes that killed millions of non-combatants in the 20th century, while America and the UK, both democratic regimes, did nothing of the kind in the 20th century?
But then if you saw enough autocratic regimes not doing these things, (Singapore?), could you be brought around to preferring autocracy?
> Are you arguing that there is no a priori reason to prefer democracy?
I suggest these definitions, but am open to revisions.
def: a government is the smallest set of people with a (almost) monopoly of force in a particular geographic region.
def: democracy is a government where the set size is at least 10% of the total number of people occupying the geographic region.
def: autocracy is government where the set size is one.
Presently, it is not clear to me how to make a persuasive and coherent a priori argument in favor of democracy. I believe you have a nomination for such an argument, please share.
A government only needs to be able to exert as much force as is needed to incentivize its citizens, and who actually wields that force is very distributed, even in an autocracy. If you are absolutely insistent upon this definition and sole function of government (which is empirically dubious) then you must at least recognize that there are other properties of this "monopoly" which are not captured by the number of "shareholders".
There is no such thing as a true monopoly on force, since I require other people to fight for me. They could instead choose to do nothing, so I must always operate in this context. I won't speak to the full set of ways to accomplish it, but it seems clear that there are at least two.
In order to meaningfully be an autocrat, it must be possible for you to wield this force in a manner inconsistent with its own majority interests. If you do not maintain that power, you are de facto operating in a democracy.
This is a real downside to running an autocracy. The autocrat now forever engaged in a game of don't-let-the-balloon-touch-the-floor, and the cost is that for every gun you want pointed at your personal objective, you have to point a gun at the person holding the gun you want pointed and so on. As you can imagine, this is expensive and fragile, since there are, by an absolute law of mathematics, fewer guns at the top than the bottom, and you have to possess a lot more guns than if you didn't need to point guns at the people actually executing the force. Technology can lower the number of guns you need to point in between layers in order to reach pseudo-stability, but never to zero, and there is always a risk that the force will figure out how to organize in its own interests and depose you.
There is another way, of course, in which the organizational structure of the military is designed around ensuring that its aggregate interests are met, including the meta interest of maintaining that property. This is roughly identifiable as democracy, and it should be clear that the difference between this case and the previous one is qualitative, which makes it a much more sensible way of drawing a line between the two governments.
I still claim that this is a bad definition of government.
Through starvation, incompetence, corruption, violence over the decades Saddam was responsible for waaay more deaths than Al-Baghdadi. You're only looking through one lens.
Everyone from Henry Kissinger to Joe Biden is on record saying NATO expansion would lead to a confrontation with Russia.
As for Iraq, it takes a special kind of wilful ignorance to think that deposing a strongman, leaving a power vaccum and excluding the existing power structure would lead to anything but chaos.
> Do you think that most Iraqi people were pro-Saddam or against him?
Either the people of Iraq supported Saddam, in which case the justification of liberating Iraq was BS. Or the majority did not support Saddam, in which case there is absolutely no justification for the suffering inflicted on them.
Putin predicted it too. In fact he acted to ensure his predictions would come true. Don't downplay his agency in this.
> Either the people of Iraq supported Saddam, in which case the justification of liberating Iraq was BS. Or the majority did not support Saddam, in which case there is absolutely no justification for the suffering inflicted on them.
In fact it's the second one, Shia were a repressed majority. But how would the first justify their suffering? Saddam had nothing to do with 911.
Russia can GTFO from any country foreign policy. If they would control it how would it be different from the old soviet grip on East European countries?
Russia has to beat into submission so it is no longer a threat. Just like it was done with Germany in WW2, Stalin did get away from that.
so if I get the double negation (of sort) you suggest that it hasnto be the same grip on EE to make Russia happy?
Well, that ship sailed thankfully and Russia can expect a strong fist from those countries. Hitler and WW2 Germany had smaller negative impact on those countries than Soviet Russia.
The Sunnis (about 24% of the pop.) supported Saddam.
The Shi'ites (about 37%) opposed him.
The rest (mostly Kurds, about 15%, plus Turkmen, Azadis, etc.) generally opposed him.
The Sunnis dominated the country politically and militarily, until the Americans took out their army in 1991 and established autonomy for the Kurds, and finally deposed Saddam in 2003.
> “Now, when I go past that statue, I feel pain and shame,” said Kadhim al-Jabouri in 2016. “I ask myself”: Why did I topple that statue?” He regretted the fall of Saddam’s regime. What came after, in his opinion, was a disaster: “Saddam has gone, but in his place we now have one thousand Saddams.” Kadhim even wanted the statue back. “I’d like to put it back up, to rebuild it,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’d be killed.”
So every country is the same, everyone invades for a "good" reason, and all violence is the same. Every invaded country suffers the same, and people live worse after
Authors just don't get that it's okay to be opposed to imperialism in all it's forms, simultaneously and regardless of its practitioners. They say they do, but then implore us to 'look over there'.
1. This is a very American-centric piece of navel gazing. Much of the world was strongly opposed to several of the conflicts mentioned here, including the invasion of Iraq. This is what-about-ism. The fact that some of the countries now opposing Russia have spotted pasts does not justify the largest invasion on European soil since WWII.
2. The Yemen war, as deplorable as it may be, has not posed the risk of global thermonuclear war.
3. Yes, the Ukrainians are using some propaganda and disinformation, just as the Russians are. They are in a war for their nations survival and are using all the tools they have at their disposal.
4. The argument that Russia is invading Ukraine because it wants "space" around its borders to separate it from NATO is hogwash. This invasion, if successful, will accomplish precisely the opposite. If Ukraine had joined NATO, Russia would have 1 more NATO country on it's borders. After taking over Ukraine Russia will gain all of Ukraine's NATO neighbours as it's own and potentially drive Finland and Sweden into NATO as well.
5. A big part of why the EU has enjoyed peace since WWII, even if other parts of the world EU members have become embroiled with haven't, is because European countries do not invade European countries anymore. The UN, NATO, and the world's economy are all designed to bring about this stability. If Russia manages to profit from this invasion, that order is overturned. The problem with this is that there are multiple nuclear states in Europe. A move away from defined, stable borders risks the entire world's fate. The stakes are higher in this invasion than in any since WWII.
6. The opposition to Russia, aside from Ukraine, is trying to use non-violent methods to force Russia to abandon the invasion. It's debatable if they will work. Economic sanctions haven't worked in the past, but we haven't seen economic sanctions like these before. Targeting oligarchs directly in particular is an interesting play. Self-flagellation, navel gazing, and moral relativism all have their place in Western society, but one must hope that we apply adequately firm will to bring the World back from the brink of nuclear war that Putin seems so willing to casually flirt with. The real double standard here is, in truth, a nuclear one.
1. I agree with you to a certain extent. Saying "what-about-ism" to somewhat invalidate any discussion making parallels to other events is not good. Look the premise "...not justify the largest invasion on European soil since WWII". As long as our values align together, we'll condemn but tolerate.
2. Again, as long as we morally condemn the act but tolerate actions not affecting me ("...has not posed the risk of global thermonuclear war"), it's ok.
3. I agree with you.
4. Now, this is an interesting take. I don't know why Russia thinks the EU is its enemy. I don't think the EU wants to go to war with Russia over resources. The other side of the coin: back in the 90's, US + EU + Russia "agreed" no more expansion to the East. NATO kept expanding itself. If I (Russia) was to make an stand, I'll definitely find a diplomatic way to avoid more eastern countries to join NATO. That doesn't work? Well, Since I won't want anyone to put any type of weapon just in case I go "rogue", I'll use any means necessary to avoid that.
5. I agree with you. The EU is so intertwined it'll be next to impossible for someone like Hitler to raise up again. None of us know war and we don't want to know it. Much less a nuclear war.
6. There so much Russia will take until things get sour for the rest of the world. If Russia "wins" this will polarize the world again (Cold War 2). If Russia "loses", this will create or increase bitterness against the West. Other countries will start making alliances to counteract NATO's economical power.
I'm trying to be as impartial as possible. The conflict is complex. The US won't tolerate any type of action near them (ie. Cuba) nor the EU for that matter.
I can't imagine what Ukrainians are going through right now. Let's hope the conflict doesn't escalate and they can agree to stop this war.
Just regarding your point #4: actually, the Russians are opposed to Ukraine joining NATO and that is probably their main reason for invading. Were Ukraine to become a full NATO member, it would be forever immune from Russian aspirations of reconstituting the old USSR empire which of course included Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakstan, and several others. Furthermore, if Ukraine joined, Georgia might be next, constituting a ring of NATO military installations right on Russia's western and southern flanks, and in the heart of what they consider the "near frontier". From their point of view, this would be unacceptable, and the few remaining Russia experts in the U.S. government and in western Europe are surely aware of this.
This is not to say the Russians are justified in their very violent action in Ukraine, but it's important to understand their motivations if they are to be countered on any level short of all-out conventional war or, God forbid, nuclear armageddon.
I do agree with your point #6, that "firm will to bring the world back from the brink" is required here. I don't think the various "cancel culture" sanctions will do anything useful -- might put pressure on the oligarchy, or might not. Does a billionaire care that Portugal (or whoever) has impounded his $20m yacht? Or that suddenly his UK bank accounts are frozen? I don't really know. But it's important to keep in mind human nature. Pushing the Russians too hard, e.g. cutting off Visa/Mastercard/Paypal, boycotting Russian athletes, etc., may backfire and create more sympathy for Putin's stance, thus prolonging the conflict and maybe escalating it disastrously.
So Russians are afraid of the countries joining NATO because they won't be able to invade them, got it. I mean, that's actually true as far as public Russian opinion goes but it also means that the NATO expansion is the most ethical thing to possibly do in the international politics.
Probably they feel about as happy about NATO on their doorstep, as the U.S. would feel about Mexico entering into a Chinese or Russian military alliance. The U.S. would not accept it, in other words.
Except the US have not committed genocides in Mexico in the past, not planning on invading Mexico now or in the future, and there is DEFINITELY no talk of "Mexicans and Americans are same people" so that kind of whataboutism is really grasping at straws.
I've read that the reasons for both wars could be that GDP/hab of Ukraine threaten to surpass Russia. Each time. They cannot accept than an ex USSR state could do that much better economically than them.
I'm hugely disappointed by the comments here. I expected better of HN.
As the article extremely rightly points out, this is _the_ time to examine these issues. We cannot allow the West to begome complacent we-do-no-evil-to-others we-see-no-evil-in-us we-hear-no-evil-from-us. If something leads to dystopia, it's what we are doing to ourselves.
Except the West isn't doing anything wrong at the moment! Helping arm a non-aggressive country to defend itself from an invader, taking in refugees, pushing back non-militarily are all objectively right things to so.
If it's full of "untruths" and "whataboutism", then point them out, it should be easy because you said there are so many, provide sources etc. Your comment actually makes this article more believable, because it makes it look like people who hold your viewpoint don't have a leg to stand on.
Is it? The special military operations (US didn't declare war anytime in the past 3 decades) that the US has done are not popular.
People have wanted out of Afghanistan, Syria, etc for a long time now. Sure some TV anchor thinks its cool how missiles look when they kill non-europeans but the actual population of the US did not.
It's time now to figure out how to not have these issues in the future. We don't need to re-examine the past anymore to convince gen. pop. it was wrong; they know.
Putin is a totalitarian dictator who is waging a war against Ukraine to conquer it and bring it under his control because he doesn't like how their democratically elected government is behaving.
That is not the same thing as the US and UK invading and overthrowing totalitarian dictator Saddam Hussein.
The idea that people should pretend the merits of these two things are the same is dumb, or atleast it's dumb if you value democracy or freedom over totalitarian dictatorships.
It's also the case that right now, the UK, EU and NATO are in the right. They're standing up for a democratic country's right to self-determination and independence, and the right for Ukraine's citizens to live free lives. And since that is the case, making the argument "Well you guys invaded Iraq 20 years ago" is a dumb argument - let's concede you're right, the US shouldn't have invaded Iraq (a position most people probably actually agree with right now), Fine. What the hell has that got to do with what's happening now? Should the West not stand up for Ukraine now? Don't be absurd.
This article is written as if the invasion of Iraq is happening today, a fiction which is pretty transparent.
> That is not the same thing as the US and UK invading and overthrowing totalitarian dictator Saddam Hussein.
Either violation of a nation's sovereignty is a crime or it isn't. If being an authoritariann dictatorship is the criteria when is Saudi Arabia getting invaded?
> Should the West not stand up for Ukraine now? Don't be absurd.
> Either violation of a nation's sovereignty is a crime or it isn't. If being an authoritariann dictatorship is the criteria when is Saudi Arabia getting invaded?
Ah but here you are changing the goalposts, the OP never said it was a crime, they said it was different. And it IS different. I marched against the Iraq war and was against those wars from the beginning, and I still would argue that they are being fought for a very different reason, a reason that is a big cause for concern. Afghanistan and Iraq, for all the folly, were not attacked with a clear goal of expanding territory and maintaining long term control of each country. US and allies were only too eager to get out if they could get some stability and not have it look like a big L. They were attempting to allow the locals to vote in a self determined government, however miserably those attempts ended up.
Russia is very clearly expanding its territory at the cost of a peoples right to self determination.
Now you can say, well in terms of the consequences, what's worse? If many more civilians die in the first case, maybe it's worse?
My counter would be, we don't know where this ends, and I don't think we can measure impact only in civilian deaths.
Additionally, I would recommend the R2P (responsibility to protect) doctrine as a good rule of thumb for when we may consider it necessary to overthrow a totalitarian dictator.
Pirating WinRAR is a crime. Murdering someone is also a crime. Just because two things are described by a single word, doesn't make them equal on a moral landscape.
>Either violation of a nation's sovereignty is a crime or it isn't. If being an authoritariann dictatorship is the criteria when is Saudi Arabia getting invaded?
Violation of the sovereignty of a free and open democracy isn't the same as violation of the sovereignty of a brutal dictatorship, and pretending that Putin's regime is somehow as legitimate as a free open democracy is absurd and it's not difficult to see how people come to the conclusion that people pushing that idea are carrying water for Putin. It's also just straight up ignorant to pretend that the US actions in Afghanistan look anything like the straight carpet bombing conducted in Syria. It's also not particularly difficult to see how you would be strategic about where you would intervene.
>Can you point to where TFA makes this argument?
To quote the article I'm "reading between the lines". We're not stupid, when Russia invades a sovereign nation and you spend time talking about everything bad the west has done in the last 30 years, we're going to point it out. When people try and manufacture false equivalencies between what the west has done and what Russia is doing, we're going to point it out.
This article, frankly picks out a tonne of quotes to try and paint the west as some massive war mongering groupthink, but the truth of it is that there has been huge criticism of the western interventions in the middle-east and it's ridiculous to cherry pick war hawks and pretend that's a homogenous view from the west. The truth is that even by 2008 Obama was running against the Bush-era wars, and there have been massive campaigns from both sides of the the aisle in the US to take the US out of foreign wars.
There's something very 'woke' - or maybe 'concern trolling' - about the various attempts to chastise the West for caring about Ukraine more than <name your international conflict>.
Look I'm not afraid to own it, I feel more of a kinship with Europoeans than with other global citizens. Ukrainians watch the same superhero movies, they play the same video games. They are all over reddit, not just on the news reddits but also posting to r/shittyfoodporn joking about their war-zone meals.
I don't feel the same kinship with Iraquis or Yeminis. You can call it racism or a double standard, but it’s human nature. You may as well say I have double standards for caring about my family more than yours.
Also Europeans have not only reacted because they relate to Ukrainians, Russia has become a direct military threat to Europe, and I think is the primary reason why the European reaction has been that strong.
In fact many of the measures taken (providing weapons to Ukraine) will make Ukraine a prolonged war-zone and goes against the life and safety of the Ukrainian citizens. But 1) Putin needs to be stopped, 2) the Ukrainians seem to be willing to pay that price for freedom.
I think the pattern is pointing to hypocrisy and assuming that beats all other arguments.
Consistency is a component of justice and it's something people sometimes aim for, but it's not necessarily more important than other values. You have to make the case for why it's important in a particular situation.
The text is not asking anyone to care about all humans equally.
It is pointing out to a bias in reporting: one can never read "fact X". One can only read "fact X from source Y". Depending on one's alignment with source Y, one is more or less inclined to believe or care about fact X.
The text points out examples of multiple Ys and how they choose how to report on X.
Much of what you call "woke" is realizing that human rationality has many biases, and in order to reify what we in the West agreed upon in text back in 1789, we will have to learn what these biases are and learn to actively compensate for them.
Much progress has been done, but much is still left to do.
Of course you care more about your family than anyone else's, and about Ukrainians and Russians more than Iraqis or Yemenis. It's a great starting point to think about that, and what unintended consequences everyone's individual biases can have for the future of our society.
This is not an exercise that people go through often enough.
I came to the conclusion about biases back in high school, and IMHO, what people call woke is just the stupidest idea to fight them I've ever heard: forcing counter-biases on everyone, including people who are not initially biased (relatively speaking).
We should have stronger requirements for education in mathematical logic, and perhaps probability theory in schools instead of teaching countless anecdata.
But that’s beside the point; it’s pretty shallow to base sympathy on superficial things like entertainment choices. Preferring the company of like-minded people is understandable, but extending that to include sympathy for innocent victims of war crimes?
Edit: for the record, fuck Bush (father and son, actually), Obama, Trump, Putin, Saddam, Gaddafi, and Assad.
Edit1: No, I am not a nihilist. But I do despise pretty much every government out there. Don’t ask me for a solution, I don’t know what it is. But yeah, the leaders of Western democracies are less harmful than Putin and the CCP. The politicians themselves might be just as bad, but having to work in a democratic framework limits what they can get away with.
Most of us understand the need to employ reason to overcome the worst elements of our nature. After all you could argue it's in our nature to want the benefits of making people work for you without having to pay them. Fighting that was 'wokeness' at one point too.
Modern tribalism has been shit for humanity. It's an impulse we also need to ditch.
Everyone with a brain can see these sorts of double standards.
Only people with a spine are A) willing to accept them as necessary/good/whatever to achieve the desired outcome on an issue by issue basis B) able to have frank discussions about death and destruction and act like an adult while doing it in the absence of a biased selection of the facts. (B is a necessary prerequisite for evaluating whether A is the correct course of action in a given situation or ever and if so to what extent)
And brains are much common than spines.
The events of the last 2yr have brought these selective information issues into the public conscience. The "concern trolling" is just a way to make a buck off of this.
I'm on Ukraine's side in this or a variety of reasons but it would be nice if we didn't have to do the whole double standard song and dance about this sort of thing. Russia is gonna kill a lot of people here. They killed a lot of people in Syria. I wasn't pissed off when they did that because <laundry list of reasons>.
Also, let's talk about various attempts to chastise some countries for not caring about the conflict enough i.e. for not fully aligning with US' point of view.
It's also a lot easier to care about a country who doesn't declare on a daily basis how much you should be killed and your country destroyed. Go figure.
That is NOT every Middle East country. Those that cry down with the west etc. are almost always an extreme, vocal, political minority. This idea, essentialisation, is the basis of all bigotry.
It's not every Middle East country. And it's often not the civilians. And many of those countries have completely legitimate gripes with the US.
However, in a lot of the modern Middle East conflicts (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, for example) ALL the leaders are hot garbage (even and especially the ones that the US chooses to support), and the world would be better off if they all died in a fire.
And, quite often, when the invaders go home, the sects and tribes go back to killing each other with vigor.
None of this is a recipe for sympathy from the West.
This is an amazing argument considering what the US is going through right now.
Also, considering how many of these 'conservative' countries were created by US & European regime change policy. Your elected officials shoved these fuckers on us.
And for a time it was punishable in the US too. That they haven't caught up yet is a reflection of their governments more than their people. Or is it our genes that make us enlightened?
> Ukrainians watch the same superhero movies, they play the same video games.
The people you've "othered" do the same.
This is an absolutely disgusting comment and instead of you taking this as a moment of introspection and an opportunity to humanize and relate to the "others", you just "own" your xenophobic views and then come here to proudly justify them.
The bar to humanize people is reddit and disney apparently.
JFC.
Also, it's spelt Iraqis. Not Iraquis. Literally any spellchecker would've told you, but I guess they're not human enough to care.
Depends on which timeframe you're talking. But even if so - who cares???
Watch a Ukrainian or Iraqi child die from a mortar and tell me if you feel any difference. If you don't you haven't got a point and if you do you haven't got a soul.
Rambling, nearly interminable and staggeringly one-sided screed. Victim blaming Ukraine with the "she was asking for it" by flirting with NATO defence. The usual "Only Western Imperialism Is Bad" appeasement talking points, spurious comparisons to other scenarios to 'expose' Western hypocrisy, apparently Putin is the real victim being treated unfairly and that we're here because it's the West's fault:
- Mentions US interference in Ukraine, ignores Russia's
- Calls the resulting protests violent while ignoring Russian demands to shoot the protesters before Yanokovic was ousted
- Quotes Mearsheimer, a realist who admits he doesn't consider the moral dimension to helping Ukrainians determine their own future
- Apologises for the annexation of Crimea by stating Putin's speculated fears for Sevastopol naval access - set against and ignoring Ukrainians ACTUAL fears of being invaded
- Complains Corbyn et al being reprimanded by their party for falsely equivocating Russian invasion to NATO expansion, calls it a loss of their 'freedom' to criticism NATO again all in contrast to the literal loss of actual freedom of Ukrainians
And on and on.
This is pro-imperialist apologia. YES the West is hypocritical and self-interest too, obviously. YES Western governments have behaved despicably and should be scrutinised more. YES the media is biased toward laziness and sensationalism. YES it hasn't written this week about the few hundred nazis fighting for Ukraine. YES the public has a short memory and has forgotten Syrians on the other Polish border. Yes to all of that. NONE of that exonerates Putin as this tries to suggest.
Framing it this way, at this time, is done to blunt the criticism of and excuse a brutal, corrupt, aggressive, nuclear armed dictator whose ambitions beyond Ukraine are not yet clear. That is the priority. This is the news now. Two or three actors can be simultaneously bad. Sorry it doesn't conform to your world view.
Yes, there are different standards for western powers vs totalitarians. Because the former are mostly good (at least about as good as you can generally expect from flawed humans) and the latter are bad.
Yes, the West does all kinds of bad stuff and I'm not excusing that.
But sitting on the sidelines is not always an option -- unless you are covered by U.S. military power. It's like being in a gated community with private security and criticizing police.
If you follow moral equivalence far enough, it's self-defeating. Because the totalitarians and tyrants don't bother with such nonsense.
That being said, it's good to reflect once in a while to make sure you haven't become the enemy. But we shouldn't sit in front of the mirror all the time and never bother to look out the window.
I think this is an important topic to discuss, but not right now, if only because whataboutism and deflecting criticism of Russia's aggression to aggression by the US has been part of Putin's rhetoric for a long time now.
Releasing such an article at this time is a good way to get people to roll their eyes and dismiss it as yet another mouthpiece of Putin's trolls. It's also borderline insensitive. At this moment, the western world doesn't want to hear these complaints, there's something more pressing to deal with.
While I'm sure there's more to the Russia/Ukraine conflict than most of us can understand or appreciate, it's more than a little disingenuous to compare Russia's attempt to forcibly annex Ukraine to America's efforts to push out terrorist-supporting dictatorships.
According to Russia they are fighting neo-nazis, which is same as the US saying that they are fighting terrorists.
It's only disingenuous to compare if you fully believe one side, if you look at it critically, you would be hard pressed to not see them as the same thing.
You have to be quite naive to believe that the US spends money attacking countries out of the kindness of their hearts and not to protect their interests(not other's), which sometimes means killing a "few" civilians or wrecking a country or two. Just look at all the horrible stuff China did and the Myanmar mass killings where the US didn't even bat an eye, because there was nothing to be gained.
Because Russian claims about fighting neo nazis are ridiculous on their face. I don't claim the US doesn't take its interests into account when taking action or judging other countries but that doesn't mean they don't take humanitarian concerns to heart as well. Even on massive fuckups like the invasion of Iraq
> Because Russian claims about fighting neo nazis are ridiculous on their face.
It's only ridiculous if you believe one side fully and become fully ignorant at the other one and if you look a little bit, you might find some ethnic cleansing done by the Ukrainians. It is at least as strong as the USA's reasons for attacking other countries.
As an actual European who happened to grow up 20km away from the Ukrainian border, I find it frustrating to see all these western media outlets talk like they know anything about the situation while being barely able to even find these countries on a map.
> but that doesn't mean they don't take humanitarian concerns to heart as well
They don't, just look at how happy they were to feed the Afghan people to the Taliban(I'm talking about not giving them a chance to evacuate). They even left some weapons for the Taliban. You can also look at the fact that the US causes problems and doesn't really take in refugees, it just lets Europe deal with the mess they started.
Please name a single country which became better after the US troops went in with their "democracy", if making the world a better place would be the goal for the US military they would be the biggest screwups in the universe.
Not including overseas colonies France 1939 was 40 million, Ukraine population 2021 (edit - and apparently 2022 as well) was 43.5 million.
And IMO overseas colonies don't count as they weren't invaded and also weren't included in the democratic process back then.
Also bigger is bigger. But the fact that the next biggest was France in WWII is a great example of how significant the invasion of Ukraine actually is...
This is like when people post trite aphorisms as if it's some sort of mic drop moment. As if the aphorism can't possibly apply to them as well. No, they're the chosen one, elected by the self to bring the wisdom to the sleeping masses.
No Billy, you're not some warrior poet bucking the system, you're a fucking dipshit who barely graduated high school who services vending machines.
That said, if and when these viewpoints serve to minimize the Russian atrocities as it has on several of these alternate news sites that I follow then it crosses a red line.