So, do you think Ukrainians are idiots, or puppets? I mean, from my perspective, I think they are people who want to get out from under Russia’s thumb and are willing to fight and die to make that happen, but you don’t seem to consider that a “real world” possibility at all.
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Are we really seriously just going to allow someone to call Ukraine an oppressive genocidal regime?
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The problem is that y’all think the state of Ukraine winning, is the people within Ukraine’s borders winning, so you assume my position is that Russia is justified, or should win, or whatever. That Russia winning is better for the people within the current borders of Ukraine, I guess.
The war is the people losing. Losing to the extemely murderous states and “treaty organizations”
Every point conveyed by y’all conflates the people and the state. It’s why y’all go “Ukraine wants to fight instead of give in to Russia” when the majority of people within the borders of Ukraine absolutely did not really feel that way or vote that way, and in fact, NATO nations had to fund nazis to kill and terrorize people who felt and voted that way, to tip the scales. So now Ukraine won’t even let people flee instead of fighting a war those fleers don’t want to fight. Ukraine has banned opposition parties, eliminated all but state media, is using nazis and prisoners to fight, and is getting it’s people killed and infrastructure destroyed. Because NATO wanted to gain a stronger economic position relative to Russia. And they wanted to do that without offering Ukraine full NATO protection. They wanted to do it spending Ukranian lives. It wasn’t worth it to tell Russia that attacking Ukraine is attacking NATO, but it was worth it to tip the scales towards a proxy war and just let the people within Ukranian borders pay all the blood.
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AQ Ukraine isn’t doing this willingly. They aren’t fighting for simple political control. When they don’t fight or lose, things like this happen:
They are facing genocide and annihilation if they lose.
Your position is heinous.
Should the US care about human rights in other countries and should self-determination be viewed as a human right?
Of course. And that there’s still draconian sanctions on Cuba for the grave crime of not doing exactly what the US empire demands is a grotesque joke.
Sending money and weapons to Ukraine does not even come close to making up for all the terror and lives lost due to NATO taking the chickenshit middle option instead of either leaving the situation alone or stating years ago that attacking Ukraine is attacking NATO
Maybe. Does the US care about human rights and self determination? Only when it serves as a convenient cudgel to do what the US empire machine already wants. Which is to say, no it doesn’t but sometimes finds it useful to pretend that it does. No one that seriously looks at US post WW2 foreign policy would think that human rights and self determination are serious principles of US foreign policy.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but it reads like y’all are rooting for the state
I’m rooting for the people to achieve whatever mixture of life and liberty they feel is optimal. NATO seriously cut down on the options there, and it’s completely absurd to say that stating this fact lets Russia off the hook in any way whatsoever
This is an obvious attempt to avoid defending your own preposterous position by making other people defend a strawman
Doing the right thing for many reasons, some of which you consider the wrong reasons, is still doing the right thing.
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Right. That’s the marketing tagline. So if you believe that line, and then go into learning about Ukraine with that in mind, that’s how you twist into all these factual inaccuracies and exclamations of “That’s whataboutism” at any contextual items. The USA is fucking with Ukraine, at the expense of widespread bloodshed, the same way it has fucked with dozens of other places after 1945. “Let’s fund right wing death squads to further our geopolitical aims” is the same thing they’ve done in Ukraine as in Latin America. And this time it comes with the added bonus of poking the big genocidal bear on the other side of the border.
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And then to expand on this, should US foreign policy try to promote these values? Again, maybe. But the methods matter. That’s what Dick Cheney and GWB said they were doing in Iraq. Well everyone believes that was a mistake now and, indeed, everyone apparently thought so at the time, let’s all give ourselves a pat on the back for our wisdom and foresight. So bringing self determination and human rights through massive combined arms invasions is out. How about the other preferred method of US freedom evangelism, draconian sanctions? It’s been tried, but have such sanctions ever brought a country into a free and democratic enlightenment? If it happened I missed it. Seems like it mostly causes poverty and suffering among the very common people a humanitarian ought to be concerned for most.
So of course I would want to promote those values worldwide, but certainly not how US empire goes about it when that’s what it says it’s doing.
wat
you see.
whatever you think of freedom and democracy, Sk/aq consider them just imperfect anglo-saxon ideals, not to be shared or forced onto anyone else via wars of conquest, independence or revolution. they think it just won’t work for people in russia, ukraine, afghanistan, iraq, colombia, vietnam. just like democracy didn’t work in people in america, england, korea, japan, germany, spain, india, etc.
they think that instead, we (the collective west) should democratically arrive at non-interventionist mindset, and communicate to those countries that they would be better off if they simply made peace with the anglo-saxon ideal of offensive realism.
since when are you in the business of paraphrasing Olga Skabeeva?
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the optimal mixture of life and liberty for ukraine obviously includes kherson and zaporozh’e and donetsk and luhansk and crimea. Russia cut down on those options by invading. nato did not. period.
you are omitting obvious parts of the discussion to make a mutual defense pact (possibly most durable military treaty in history) seem like a unilateral invasion force. there are legitimate criticisms of military industrial complex, and foreign influence institutions. those criticisms don’t compare to the destruction the red army brings in its wake. for one thing nato actions are not unilateral, but collective. the russian invasion is literally the brainchild of one boomer.
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A state bans an ethnic group’s political parties, media, and language(!)
The state prevents that ethnic group from leaving its borders, and conscripts it to fight in an ongoing war
The state’s brownshirts that killed and terrorized that ethnic group for a decade, is now an official part of the state. Perhaps the most decorated/celebrated part of that state.
Lots of reasonable people and institutions call that genocide. Not all, but it’s at least oppressive.
But if that ethnic group is orcs, not people, I can see how one would think this state is much better for people than most alternatives