You can think what you want, but I think there is a substantial difference between the war in Iraq which a majority of the American Left correctly opposed, and providing self-defense to Ukraine, which a majority of the American Left correctly support.
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My definition isn’t leftism=Marxism, it’s leftism=anti-capitalism, differentiating between left and center-left.
Why not? Saddam was a known large scale human rights abuser and in favour of genociding ethnic groups.
Seems to contradict your views on Ukraine.
I don’t think it’s optimal to define your movement mainly as the antithesis of something else.
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He has a long history of political posting on the Internet. My guess is that if he once supported the Iraq War, you could find evidence of it.
So it’s suboptimal to define pacifism as the antithesis of war?
I didn’t say they were the same. I said that the idea that human rights and freedom and democracy are all values that we ought to spread with force of American arms is the justification for the last twenty years of American militarism. Each individual intervention is, of course, unique.
The Ukraine intervention is less like Iraq and a lot more like the later wars. Small American footprint, not many American body bags, practically invisible to people at home. I never said the neocons weren’t clever. Rebrand as liberals and make your endless wars invisible and painless. Smart!
Too scared to look in case I see more peaens to mid-20s virginity, and racism justifiably punished by a punch in the face.
Too scared and lazy to do the work that might disprove your point because it’s more fun lobbing bombs?
I mean kinda? For one thing, pacifism is more than being anti-war. Secondly, If I was arguing for pacifism I’d rather positively emphasize that I’m promoting peace, security, and safety for everyone, and discuss the preferred means to achieve those.
Another example is when you do yourself a disservice by defining yourself by your hatred of libertarians.
If wookie contends that he opposed the Iraq invasion then we should take his word for it until evidence turns up, even if it is hard to believe as he’s at the intersection of centrists and capitalist Christians who were both very much in favour of it.
Yawn. How about you read up on the differences between the two for a bit and get back to me.
I hate libertarians because they define themselves as the antithesis of what I support.
Great reply.
Your reason for supporting Ukraine is because you say you want to prevent genocide there even at the cost of a large number of lives, right?
Why weren’t you in favour of toppling Saddam to stop the continuing genocide of marsh Arabs and Kurds?
There’s a lot of debate about this. People who rigorously and critically study these issues generally put him in a heterogeneous basket of leftists and/or pragmatic anarchists, while proud non-readers generally call him a Putin-loving tankie.
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Bit too tan
It’s not quite that simple, and I don’t necessarily agree that supporting Ukraine is a net cost in lives.
I can think of a few important differences. Can you?
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Docked 10 points for interruption, even if it was the correct answer.
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Not sure why some people think that leftist thought should be unified on the war in Ukraine.
It’s nice to see so many in this thread embrace the wisdom of Trump’s foreign policy. Do you all think the US should join the international criminal court?
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