For me it’s partly that I know there’s some technical legal definition of the word that someone would tell me I don’t understand even if I could quote it verbatim. It’s also scale and extent. I don’t know what the threshold should be so if people want to call it genocide I’m not going to contradict them. Hundreds of civilians have been killed. It’s a crime by any name.
I said killed. I meant murdered.
Go back to whatabouting America and saying Ukraine should not fight back
It’s tough for Victor, he’s really upset Ukraine didn’t roll over and we should take that into account when reading his posts.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians in Mariupol are being starved to death intentionally and you are still fumbling around saying there is no genocide happening.
Think critically for a second about that.
If Putin intentionally starves 10 000 Ukrainians to death in Mariupol = not genocide.
If Putin intentionally starves 100 000 Ukrainians to death in Mariupol = genocide.
Change and adjust the above numbers depending on how many civilians live in said city so definition of genocide and can change with it.
There is only 100 000 civilians left in Mariupol, so since it’s really hard to starve all 100 000 to death, chrisV can conveniently claim no genocide is happening.
Technically, if he only succeeds in starving 100 residents of Mariupol in service of his stated intent of wiping the existence of anything that is distinctly Ukrainian and not Russian off the face of the earth, it’s still fucking genocide.
But pay no attention to what Russia is saying, it’s really America that was agitating for this war, and really we shouldn’t help the Ukrainians stop this in any material way, outside of making sure they’re not starving before being executed.
To accept that a genocide is happening means we morally need to do more to help, maybe not boots on the ground and start WW3, but definitely a lot more than the west has done so far military equipment wise.
For some that took the original position of “let Ukraine fend for themselves, don’t send any weapons”, accepting that it is a genocide would mean they would have to change their original position.
Nobody likes being wrong on the internets.
And everybody loves being right!
I’ll admit I was wrong thinking Russian would never invade and I was wrong thinking Ukraine would fall within a week.
Yeah these debates over the meanings of words are always orthogonal to the point. When I say “genocide” in this thread I have meant “the mass extermination of people such as took place in Auschwitz and Majdanek”. This is because the mayor of Mariupol claimed that what was happening in the city was now on the level of Auschwitz and Majdanek, and using much the same methods. The question is whether that is true or not. Arguing about the precise meaning of the word “genocide” does not help answer this question. Two things can be covered by the same word and yet differ heavily in scale and extent.
Where these arguments about definitions are going is always something like this:
But this is pointless in terms of settling political questions. Like I would answer “yes” to “should NATO intervene militarily if a genocide were taking place in Ukraine”, if the definition of “genocide” is “the mass extermination of people such as took place in Auschwitz and Majdanek”. If the definition of “genocide” is something more expansive, then I’m just going to change my answer to “maybe”, and all the semantic argument achieved was settle whether you get to point-score by accusing me of “tolerating genocide” or whatever.
How can we even know that for sure? As Biden correctly pointed out, there is absolutely no reason for Western countries to openly divulge what planes, weapons, or anything else they are donating. In fact, the more quietly it’s done the better it is.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1511931823999361027
This is how atrocities happen - approval from authority figures, tacit or spoken.
I give Ukraine permission to wipe the Russian army from the face of the earth.
Would be interesting to know what the goal(red line) of the EU and US is. Now that we know what the Russians are doing with Ukrainians and what they are advocating for would we stand by if Russia somehow manages to overwhelm Ukraines defense and let them occupy a bigger part of the country? Will we stand by and let them commit their atrocities and just deal with the refugees or would we say “We cant let that happen again and move in?” Its a lot easier to help when Russia still only has little parts under control than trying to retake a whole country.