Ukraine has already lost the war

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

Imagine a different world where Russia’s economy and military might are vastly larger than America’s. Imagine also that our our northern and southern neighbors are far more prosperous than is presently the case and are both nuclear powers. Imagine if Russia had formed an alliance with Canada and Mexico and regularly held military “exercises” just across their borders and imagine that their warships are tooling around off our shores and holding war “games” with Canada’s and Mexico’s navies.

When you think like that, it helps to explain Russia’s behavior.

The U.S. has a civil war going on to it’s South in the form of the Mexican Government vs. the Cartels. Millions swarm our borders totally unaccounted for, including Cartel members and gangs who take turf wars to our streets.

We’ve been subject to countless incidents of industrial espionage and cyberattacks from Russia, Red China, North Korea, Iran, and other nations.

We have a whole nest of enemies inside our borders who condemn the U.S. and our allies every day at our taxpayers’ expense in the form of the United Nations Headquarters.

And yet with all of this going against us, we’ve never threatened any of these nations and rogues with NBC weapons the way Putin threatened to use nukes over a “special military operation” in the Donbass.

Hell, before Putin invaded Ukraine, I thought the Donbass was Trump paying Ichthyologists to name a really bigly yuge fish after himself. 😁😉

Anyway, there’s no military or moral equivalence here between what Putin has done and how the U.S. has or continues to deal with foreign threats.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

No, talking about the col Douglas MacGregor, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration. You know, just another guy ticking Trumps balls as he blows Putin.

Oh, I see. It’s hard to keep up with all of these.

Macgregor could have had promise early on if he just stuck to being a tactician, but around 2014, it looks like he went down a rabbit hole of pro-Putin propaganda and never came out. Of late, according to his Wiki page, he’s even gotten into Antisemitism:

Douglas Macgregor–Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Macgregor

[_Robert_Participant]

The Republican knuckleheaded Bush’s did get the US into wars that destabilized entire regions. However, the Putin-like thug Saddam Hussein was the root cause when he invaded his neighbor.

After invading Crimea with his little green men and getting sanctioned, Putler decided to respond by saving the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad with a massive air campaign, hitting apartment buildings, killing civilians and sending a stream of Syrian refugees to Europe. These immigrants caused that right-wing backlash that precipitated knucklehead moves like Brexit. This is when Putler’s nuts got bigger than his brain.

[jakelafortParticipant]

There is some merit in Unseen’s hypothetical.

During Cuba Missile crisis Kennedy and the defense boys freaked the fuck out over far less threatening circumstances. Kennedy nearly got us into nuclear war. And i have no doubt that if the civil war had gone differently and an enclave of USA had gotten its independence that if the USA attempted militarily to absorb the independent state that any perceived foreign interference would be met with outrage. I am not however asserting that is Putin’s motivation for invading Ukraine.

In terms of moral equivalence? The list of horrific US shit is clear. The US in the Philippines after taking it from Spain in the Spanish American war. The genocide against natives. The internment of citizens during WW11. The interference/destabilization of countries around the world prioritizing our political interests over their desire to have civil rights/democracy. Iraq with a BS pretext. Slavery. The failure to interfere in genocides when our mighty military could have done some good. (I wonder why nodody suggests invading the countries to the south that are run by cartels and are the major cause of people at our border trying to get in) And if it is Putin’s goal to retake those nations that were taken in the immediate aftermath of the second world war it must be noted the outsized sacrifice of the Russians in winning world war 2-not that it is a justification however..

[_Robert_Participant]

jakelafort wrote:

There is some merit in Unseen’s hypothetical. During Cuba Missile crisis Kennedy and the defense boys freaked the fuck out over far less threatening circumstances. Kennedy nearly got us into nuclear war. And i have no doubt that if the civil war had gone differently and an enclave of USA had gotten its independence that if the USA attempted militarily to absorb the independent state that any perceived foreign interference would be met with outrage. I am not however asserting that is Putin’s motivation for invading Ukraine. In terms of moral equivalence? The list of horrific US shit is clear. The US in the Philippines after taking it from Spain in the Spanish American war. The genocide against natives. The internment of citizens during WW11. The interference/destabilization of countries around the world prioritizing our political interests over their desire to have civil rights/democracy. Iraq with a BS pretext. Slavery. The failure to interfere in genocides when our mighty military could have done some good. (I wonder why nodody suggests invading the countries to the south that are run by cartels and are the major cause of people at our border trying to get in) And if it is Putin’s goal to retake those nations that were taken in the immediate aftermath of the second world war it must be noted the outsized sacrifice of the Russians in winning world war 2-not that it is a justification however..

Hmm, Ukraine raised huge armies to fight Nazis. Official data says that at least 8 million Ukrainians lost their lives in WW2: 5.5 – 6 million civilians, and more than 2.5 million natives of Ukraine were killed at the front. This is on par with Russian casualty figures.

Who says the US has a spotless record? The big difference is that the US admits it’s mistakes and tries to do better. Our public owns it, we write songs about it and make movies about it and try to make-up for past wrongs and have casinos and shit. We are way relatively transparent compared to dictatorships. We have greedy capitalists who do all sorts of bad shit. However, we don’t just assassinate them like Putler did to another oligarch just yesterday. How many is that now? Stay away from the stairs and windows.

None of us have any idea of all the horrors that went down under Russian’s big hero, Stalin.

[UnseenParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:

When you think like that, it helps to explain Russia’s behavior.

Since when did torturing and raping civilians become a reasonable response? Putin is a humiliated bully.

Ukraine is not immune to having committed serious war crimes especially on Russian prisoners (remember, most Russian soldiers are there not by choice and many are simply trying to get through the war alive and without killing anyone). There is video of then shooting handcuffed Russians soldiers in the leg.

They taped a suspected (yes, suspected) looters to lampposts leaving them vulnerable to angry citizens. Ukraine has also been accused of false flag operations, such as some of the shelling around the nuclear plants and the iron works.

They are documented to have placed military installations on the roofs of civilian apartment buildings as well, which is a war crime, and also of commandeering private civilian facilities to be used as headquarters, thus inviting Russian attacks.

My point isn’t to support Putin or Russia but to point out that, with war comes war crimes.

[jakelafortParticipant]

According to wiki a quarter million Ukranians collaborated with Nazis.

Ya know when ya start examining the history of each nation ya see same shit different day. Humans the world over are capable of the most unspeakable cruelty and the most tender compassion. I long ago stopped playing the good/guy, bad/guy game. As i tried to get across to the guy who posted all the articles on racism and wrote, “what is wrong with you White People?” we are all capable of awful shit. It comes down to power. So where Blacks have had power we see them acting like Whites

Most cultures inculcate obediance, compliance, conformity and mindless citizens are swept along. When if ever will there be a concerted effort to alter our trajectory? The insanity of dictatorship is intolerable. Democracies and capitalism do enough damage without holding captive the world to the whims of the dictator.

[UnseenParticipant]

BTW, am I alone in having noticed that there’s lots of enthusiasm for identifying and prosecuting Russian war crimes and absolutely no interest in even seeing if Ukraine may be committing war crimes as well?

Why is that??

[jakelafortParticipant]

Unseen’s query: Why is that??

Cuz it is inconsistent with the good/guy bad/buy paradigm.

Cuz it is inconsistent with the narrative of the pro-Ukranians. Ya ever read/hear anti-Israel folks point out Palestinian terrorism or crimes? That is just how we are once having taken a side most everything is one-sided. It is like the internet-fueled polarization. One side fits one side and the other side says they’ve lied and each side will deride the other side. That shit i can’t abide. But serves few so few serve the truth.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Here’s an article from Reuters which reports on some Ukrainian war crimes.

https://www.reuters.com/world/un-finds-russia-responsible-vast-majority-potential-war-crimes-ukraine-2022-10-18/

[_Robert_Participant]

Or maybe it’s because if Russia just packed up and left, there would be no war crimes at all. Russia is shelling residential areas daily for fucks sake. If you just destroyed my home and killed my family, I’ll show you some war crimes.

[DavisModerator]

Just war theory is the principle on which the theory of “war crimes” is based. It is an attempt to find a balance between those who hold that you cannot find anything “more or less ethical” during a war (the whole enterprise is wrong) vs those who say “there are no rules during war, everything goes”. One of the least controversial principles amongst almost all just war theories is:

civilians are not touchable

Only active combatants and military targets. Civilian infrastructure, civilians, are untouchable. In some theories some collateral damage is acceptable, for example if civilians live near a base that is attacked etc. Damaging, hurting or impairing (let alone killing) civilians as an attempt to demoralise or pressure a country into ending a war or surrendering is a violation of just about every just war theory as well as international law, treaties almost all countries have signed. While war is mostly immoral, pointlessly killing civilians to demoralise a country is inherently evil. Blowing up power plants to make civilians suffer is evil. Britain firebombing Dresden was vile. America dropping not one but two murderous nuclear bombs on Japan was unspeakable. Torturing civilians, randomly executing them, or picking them off in the street (Russia has clearly done this) and making life pointlessly unliveable to demoralise are unambiguous war crimes. It’s the tip of the iceberg.

Ukraine has also committed war crimes, for which in a just world they should (and ought to) be tried. These pale in comparison with the premeditated and systematic war crimes of Russia, which I can only imagine will increase. Civilians should be untouchable. It is one of the most meaningful slippery slopes there are. If you can justify killing off civilians (or starving them of electricity) then the slippery slope to mass war rape, torture and execution of civilians is instantly there. If you can buy this argument, then you shouldn’t struggle much with the Dresden firebombing nor the completely unjustifiable nuclear bombs in Japan.

[_Robert_Participant]

All this to satisfy a single man’s ego. Millions supported Hitler when he started his invasions. There were justifications and all sorts of rationalizations from all over the world. They failed to see it for what it was and failed to act. This element is alive and well. There are those who admire aggressiveness and see authoritarians as “strong leadership”. They admire the wealthy and ruthless. Looking for human examples of their gods, I suppose.

[UnseenParticipant]

Every country fights to win a war, defining “victory” to suit their intentions and doing what will ensure that result. The question is, does the U.S. want this war over? Or does the U.S. benefit from keeping it going?

Say what you like abo9ut Russell Brand but he does quote from original sources. He’s footnoted, in other words.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Much obliged for bringing up Ukraine’s Holodolmor.

The Holodolmar is a textbook example of the failure of both government economic planning and of the anti-Genetic, anti-Natural Selection pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko, which was made official dogma in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin.

Meet Trofim Lysenko, The Russian Agronomist Whose Pseudoscience Doomed Millions
By Morgan Dunn | Checked By John Kuroski
Published February 9, 2021
Updated September 5, 2022
https://allthatsinteresting.com/trofim-lysenko

Collectivization and Lysenkoism took a country with the best farm land in the world and turned it into a place of desolation and cannibalism. And these practices spread famine elsewhere when tried in the Eastern Bloc and Red China.

The Ukrainians are very justified to fight like Hell to keep that from returning to their nation, especially since the cults of Stalin and Lysenko are making a comeback in Putin’s Russia.

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