How the ICC can issue an arrest warrant against Putin but not for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc and Blair and Straw is ridiculous.
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It strikes me as similar in effect to Biden’s language calling Putin a war criminal and saying this guy has got to go. It serves no tangible purpose but it does make negotiating a settled peace more difficult or maybe impossible. How can you call a guy a war criminal who must be ousted in one breath and negotiate a peace with him in with the next. I suspect that’s the point.
Why would anyone want to negotiate with Putin even without this?
This is also important in the US, where people like Tucker, Desantis, Trump, Gaetz, MTG, and the rest will be tied to an internationally sought war criminal.
People need to be reminded that just as Hitler had many supporters and apologists in the US, they were basically just making excuses for a genocidal psychopath. Supporting wanted war criminals may be fine in Florida but it won’t play in the suburbs.
Important in what way? What’s an actual consequence for anyone you’ve named?
Public exposure and recognition of who they are and what they support. Knowledge of their friends and families and some effect on their influence and elections. Supporting Putin will be referenced in Congress now as supporting a war criminals sought for genocide, as it should be.
In what way have these guys “supported Putin,” other than opposing military aid to Ukraine? If that’s all it takes to be a treasonous Putin supporter then add me to your list.
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So it’s a free advertisement for their campaigns? The Trumpy MAGA base doesn’t give a rip what some globalist org thinks, they’re 100% behind whatever military adventure Putin is up to. Zero Fox News viewers are switching off Tucker because of what the international community says --they’re totally okay with the war and its methods!
It’s like: if the SPLC releases a report saying that Trump is an enormous racist, that’s not going to hurt him politically. His base is okay with the racism!
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There’s obviously a continuum of support, from actively cheering him on to merscheimeresque, “well, they can do genocide in their sphere of influence, but I find it distasteful (and Iraq was bad)”. Trump is closer to the former, while people in the latter half are merely cowards or moral nihilists, like yourself.
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Unlike brave simplicitus, stalwartly hammering on his keyboard five thousand miles away from all the death and destruction.
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If Russia didn’t have nukes and NATO/Europe could provide Ukraine with an overwhelming amount of force to end the war, or just step in and end it themselves, would you support that?
What is this, alt history fan fiction? That’d basically be Iraq/Kuwait in 1991 but in Europe and without the compelling US national interest of energy security/stability at stake. I wouldn’t be inclined to get involved, no. Doesn’t matter what I think though, the neocons in charge of US foreign policy would certainly get directly involved right off the bat. We’d wipe the floor with the Russians in about twenty minutes and Lee Greenwood could compose a new song about being super fucken proud to be an American.
Anyway, who cares, turns out they have a whole shit ton of nukes and have for like seventy years.
Well, which is it? Is arming the Ukrainians a terrifying proposition risking nuclear annihilation, or is it risk-free keyboard warrior shit that is removed from the death and destruction? It’s not both.
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I had thought that the principal reason you were against military aid to Ukraine was because you didn’t want to risk a broader nuclear war. If you’re not inclined to support Ukraine even in the hypothetical case where Russia has no nukes, seems to me that the charge of moral nihilism becomes stronger.
Are there any interventions you can conceive of supporting when one party is clearly the victim of indiscriminate violence and genocide?
I don’t think the US should be the world policeman and don’t think the US should get involved in wars that don’t directly impact American interests. A pretty standard restrained foreign policy view.
If there was no oil in Kuwait, do you think that the US should have done the Gulf War?
Yeah, maybe the US should invade Tel Aviv and Riyadh to help the poor Palestines or Yemenis. I could get behind that maybe, although an intermediate step might be to stop supplying weapons and intelligence to their oppressors.
Or, less snarky, when has one nation state ever intervened in a war with that intention and that effect? As far as I know it’s never happened. Ever.
I think there’s a significant difference between initiating an intervention for transparent self-interest, like initiating a war of aggression, and initiating an intervention in response to the aggressive actions of others. Like I know there is a view out there that this war is great for American energy & defense interests, but ssc.gif I’m pretty sure the current administration would have vastly preferred that Russia did not invade Ukraine, and I’d bet the house that Europeans would have vastly preferred injecting that sweet cheap Russian gas for a hundred years.
I ~basically agree that interventions are never undertaken for strictly altruistic reasons, but stopping a genocide in a stable, sovereign nation might just be the exception to the rule. Reasonably low cost, no nation building, actually greeted as liberators this time. Sure they’re going to be grateful and buy your weapons going forward, but that’s a drop in the bucket.
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NATO peace-keeping mission in Kosovo. NATO mission in Somalia. NATO Mission Iraq (2018) against Isis.
Clinton famously said that his administration should have sent troops to Rwanda, hopefully saving upto a million lives from genocide, with no other upside for the US.
you are just repeating things from kremlin stooges, with no actual review of past policies.
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But listen to what the administration people are saying. Yes, of course they say they’re supporting Ukraine for all their wonderful freedoms and democracy, but these people always say shit like that. They said the Iraq war was to bring freedom and democracy to the middle east. During the Gulf War, Saddam was pulling infants out of incubators. But sometimes they’ll tell you what the war is actually about. Bush Sr said that the war was about oil. Didn’t stop the administration making up ancillary propaganda to help sell the war and tell us how evil Saddam was, but nevertheless they told us what that war was about. Here with Ukraine, one of the main themes is what a bargain we’re getting by giving arms to Ukraine to hurt Russia. I think that’s the actual goal of the war and I guess it’s going great. I just don’t value killing tens of thousands of Russian boys and men as highly as Lindsey Graham and Vicky Nuland and Joe Biden and all that crowd. And there’s certainly nothing you can say that will convince me that these neocon ghouls actually give a shit about Ukrainians’ freedom and democracy and who ends up controlling which part of eastern Ukraine. Any more than you’ll convince me that GHWB cared about Saddam ripping babies out of incubators or the sacred integrity of the borders of the Kingdom of Kuwait.
But maybe this time these guys are actually telling the truth. First time for everything, I suppose.