I can tell why none of you give two fucks about Yeminis, and maybe if you think really hard you can figure it out too. And BTW I’m not the one strutting around like a half baked rooster struggling with reading comprehension and calling people losers and cowards because they aren’t rooting for Ukraine hard enough LMFAO. But continue to post like a fucking child man. Hopefully it fills the time in between ripping people off with your clever scripts.
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Actually, no I haven’t. I couldn’t care less what you think. And in any case, it’s not me that should be worrying about how people perceive my creepiness.
Incredible. The invasion of Ukraine was not? How about you fill me in on step 3 here.
- Russia does not annex any of Ukraine in 2014 or 2022
- Hypothetically even, Ukraine joins NATO.
- ???
- Russia ceases to exist
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I mean to turn this around, do you think that anyone in this thread genuinely, in their heart of hearts, believes that what is going on with JBro or Keeed, say, is that they are cowards, or sociopaths who don’t care at all that people have been tortured and killed? If “no”, then why is this thread currently full of screeds to this effect?
Just pointing at some human rights travesty and being like “I support using force to stop this and if you don’t, that makes you a worse person than me” is the dumbest shit ever. I’m old enough to remember when what was being pointed at was SADDAM GASSING THE KURDS and UDAY AND QUSAY’S RAPE ROOMS or whatever the fuck. It’s just exploiting the fact that it’s hard for people to openly say “I think there are times when innocent people are getting tortured and murdered where we should just do nothing and let it happen” even though that is the position of literally everyone. There are full on Nazi-style concentration camps in North Korea right now, as I’m typing this, and the position of everyone ITT is that we should all stand by and allow this to continue to happen. If you judge the probability of blowback as low enough, you get to pretend this unpleasant calculus doesn’t exist and that anyone worried about it is just morally inferior. This doesn’t make you a better person, and what it frequently makes you is a dumbass, as we saw in the leadup to the Iraq War.
So the appeals to hypocrisy about the Iraq and Yemeni wars and so forth are basically pointing out that this whole method of browbeating people about morality is a cheap rhetorical trick. If Keeed is wrong about opposing US intervention in Ukraine (which for the record I think he is), then he’s wrong because he is overestimating the chances of very bad consequences. He is not wrong because of this childish bullshit like HE LUVS PUTIN or that pro-interventionists in here are more heroic and macho than him about the prospect of nuclear war. Just fucking lol at that.
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If this is true, then the opposite, pointing at some abuse and declaring that you oppose the use of force to stop it, and anyone who supports the use of force is a worse person, is equally inane, and then really, that the entirety of abstract ethical discussion is meritless.
I don’t even oppose intervention in Ukraine. I just think this thread is fucking gross. Calling all Russians orcs is gross. Defending volunteer US soldiers because they are your friend on the internet then turning around and saying Russians kidnapped and forced to serve bear some responsibility for the “genocide” is gross. Wanting to punish Russian people living abroad by seizing their wealth and otherwise making their lives miserable is gross, particularly when a bunch of Americans on this forum bristle at any criticism of US policy by non-Americans. Watching and getting thrilled by war porn is gross. Not questioning why travesties in Ukraine must be stopped while many others all over the world are allowed to continue without a thought is gross. Not even being liberal enough to consider thinking or doing anything except what they’re being led to think and believe by the war machine is the grossest thing of all. And then the icing on the cake: the “why are you even bringing this shit up when Ukrainians are getting raped and murdered, you must be a Putin stooge” BS, LMFAO.
Nice forum you all have here.
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This is indeed inane. I haven’t seen a lot of that except as a frustrated response to the inverse.
I think it is fair to say, though, that historically people have typically erred on the side of handwaving away potential negative consequences of military action. That’s why I said the other day that the example of erring in the other direction is always 1938, because it’s the only good example of erring in that direction (and it’s not even clear that declaring war on Germany earlier would have changed anything). I’m sure I don’t have to list examples of military actions which turned out to have much nastier consequences than anyone thought they would.
Ethical discussion here is almost entirely a red herring. Everyone agrees that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is bad and also that military intervention can have unintended negative consequences. The disagreement is over the likely nature and severity of the consequences here.
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And about the consequences and costs of not intervening, and about the logistics of interviewing vs the moral clarity of intervening. I think that the relative ease and lack of complication of arming the Ukrainians relative to the Uighurs is relevant, but others think that I am a hypocrite because I have not given sufficient lip service to the virtually impossible.
Again, I don’t think there’s a lot of disagreement about that. I think there was disagreement in the early stages about the efficacy of arming Ukraine (you know, like if Russia are going to demolish them eventually no matter what, then why bother, that kind of thing) but the disagreement now is almost entirely about how much blowback will result from further provocation of Russia. Since this is such a nebulous and fundamentally unknowable question, it suits people to pretend that the discussion is actually about other things.
To return to the North Korea example, if it’s argued that nobody can intervene in North Korea because they have artillery pointed at Seoul, nobody is like “but is it RIGHT that Kim Jong Un just gets to do whatever he wants?” or “don’t you think the North Korean people deserve the right to self-determination?”. But anytime people suggest that certain actions from the West might provoke aggressive Russian responses, the response is virtually always subject-changes of this kind. Doesn’t Ukraine have a right to exist? Aren’t they joining NATO of their own free will? Are you saying Putin just gets to do whatever he wants? All this seeks to pretend that the underlying disagreement is one of morality when it isn’t.
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For those that advocate surrender and ending Western support:
How many refugees are you willing to welcome in your respective countries?
We shouldn’t run away from necessary grossness.
It’s the trolley problem, if we know that switching the track will kill at least one person with the possibility that it might kill one hundred.
Should we be guided by consequentialism?
If people want a news aggregator, they should find the right lists to follow on Twitter.
But there’s also the open question of what US policy actually is. Is the US aiming for a costly stalemate? If they are that’s a cynical and monstrous foreign policy that’s really just about hurting Russia for the sake of hurting Russia. And if the US is in it to win it and drive Russia back to 2014 borders (the stated aims) then the escalation criticisms are the main critique.
The US doesn’t need to have a single dominant policy goal
The USA can have multiple goals which are all aligned under the current policies, they don’t need to pick one of these and say this is the “real” goal unless those come into conflict with each other.
The Biden admin probably considers all of these positives, some are cynical realpolitik, some are more propaganda idealism
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Support some sort of independent Ukraine that is allied with western democracies
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Make the invasion costly enough for Russia that it deters similar aggression from other powers
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Demonstrate the superiority of US arms relative to Russian both to friend, foe, and those on the fence (e.g.India). Also potential customers of our defense industry
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Significantly diminish the capability of a geopolitical rival who supports other nasty regimes
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Separate Europe from Russian energy dependence and increase European dependence on USA
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humanitarian goals from preventing further Russian atrocities, and refugee crisises
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punish Putin for getting too aggressive meddling in US politics
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others
edit: we could add… learn about capabilities and weaknesses in our systems as they are used in the field to develop better versions for when American troops might need them
Demonstrate to Europe how dependent they are on US military protection increasing arms sales and defense spending among NATO allies.
Strengthen the dollar relative to the Euro. Probably not the US plan but not an unfortunate side effect of an extended war in Europe and economic severing of Russia and EU
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Why do you guys keep putting “genocide” quotes? Putin explicitly says that he denies the existence of the Ukrainians as a people and he intends to make that a reality by force.
And for the “maybe it will work for us” bullshit, arming people against a foreign invader does indeed have a super high success rate with no nuclear Holocaust when the bad guys (yes, including the US as bad guys!) get forced out. But you guys are so determined to center everything around your Western domestic squables that you can’t see that applies in this case for some reason and in fact flip it on its head.
OK maybe we should differentiate between policy goals and desired outcomes on the battlefield. I agree that many of the policy goals you listed are probably what many US foreign policy elites want to accomplish. If their strategy is to accomplish those policy goals by supporting Ukraine just enough to stalemate Russia but not win, then I think that’s a monstrous and cynical foreign policy that is throwing away tens or hundreds of thousands of lives for little to no benefit. And if they’re in it to win it then that has its own dangers.
Weird how some people are selectively interested in the welfare of Ukrainian people depending on whether it costs US tax payer money or not.
I’m interested in the predictable outcome of spending US tax dollars on this war or that war.