fyp
Just to be clear what we’re talking about - no one really cares about McD pulling out. That is just performative and likely won’t really hurt anyone.
The issue is people here are calling for sanctions that lead to starvation of the population and trying to make their lives so miserable they revolt. That seems bad both because it’s not really effective while simultaneously causing lots of suffering.
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If we somehow had the ability to make them starve, wouldn’t that stop the genocide in Ukraine? Then we could figure out what to do about the sanctions? It’s theoretically possible to fuel an army to fight a sadistic war of choice while your population starves but seems like an awfully tall order.
But yeah, as played, we are doing the bare minimum stuff around the edges which makes the objections all the more laughable.
I agree we’re doing the bare minimum in a lot of ways but also doing lots of things that really only hurt average Russians. We are still mostly leaving the oligarchs alone - presumably because they are well connected. Instead we are taking the easy but less effective route of hurting average Russians.
Edit - things like making them starve and crippling the economy are also unlikely to help Ukraine. Russia probably has enough supplies for at least a few months which id long enough for the war. The devastation is only really going to kick in later and hurt them down the line.
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How do you feel about bombing German cities during WW2?
russian people will be starving because of putin’s actual policies. hell some of them already are, there is literally a subgenre of clips of old people rummaging through garbage outside supermarkets in russia.
it’s a regime that prioritizes military and police. so starving the regime is also starving the police apparatus that’s already beating up protesters.
Targeting bombing fine. Fire bombing entire cities not.
Targeted bombing did not exist in WW2.
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So bombers just randomly dropped their bombs over cities?
Basically.
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I guess I’ll have to read more, but I thought for instance that it was a big change in German tactics when they switched from bombing strategic targets to just bombing London in general.
I also thought that many bombing raids were focused on German industrial areas - even if perhaps they couldn’t pick a specific building - rather than just bombing anywhere in a city.
edit: I also thought there was a distinction between dive bombers - which were much more accurate - and carpet bombing - which at best could target a general area and dropped a shitload of bombs to make up for the lack of accuracy.
Well, I am sure they were aware of the basic laws of mechanics, the velocity and altitude of the plane, the mass of the bomb, and the value of acceleration due to gravity, but it’s hardly a sophisticated or reliable targeting system.
The Allied bombing of Dresden has been tough to justify as a military or industrial target, although many still try to claim it was.
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Come on. You’re saying the US is not responsible but it is responsible. If it is responsible then you and I are responsible. I don’t necessarily disagree with the conclusion but the way we get there matters if Realism and morality are useful concepts. I think one of them is not.
It’d be great if we could limit Russia’s ability to wage war to months instead of years or even decades.
Yup. Only way to justify it is to argue that it’s a mobilization of whole societies fighting total wars, which makes everything a target. (Not something I agree with, but that’s the argument)
Dive bombers are close air support that attack individual tanks or defense positions, not cities. Dive bombers over a defended city have a survival rate of 0%, if they even have the range to get there.
Anyway, my point is if a population does not get rid of a genocidal dictator themselves they have to accept that measures might not be laser-focused at just that dictator and the military.
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Kind of awkward to try to retcon these bombings when the British unabashedly described them as terror bombings in contemporary documents.
US bombers generally did try to hit stuff like factories or bridges or whatever, which is why we conducted our raids in daylight.
Yes, the US is responsible for increasing the chances of Russian invasion. The Russians are responsible for invading. There’s no conflict here, both parties can be in the wrong. The Soviets were wrong to put nukes in Cuba, the US was wrong in its unhinged and escalatory response, and both parties would have been responsible for the ensuing nuclear war if it happened.
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if anyone wants to hear ukrainian people discuss where they were on the day of invasion and how they found a safe place to stay, they are talking on Spaces here.