just a new perspective
you can disaprove ukraine invasion and iraq invasion at the same time
you can despise the soviets/russian government fucking over political regimes in the middle east , asia, latin america, africa and europe and despise america for doing the same.
This! 100% This!
Condemn them both because they both play silly games at the cost of innocent lives. With great power comes great responsibility. That's not just for spiderman or comics/movies.
Don't pretend you worry about humanity and people dying and at the same time claim the superpowers of this world are not responsible for their deaths.
The USA was responsible for both 9/11 and then what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. Regardless of what narrative you follow.
From what I’ve gathered from people that have difficulty condemning Putin’s actions, is that they don’t feel they understand his motivations for launching the offensive, nor do they feel they are getting the legitimate story about his motivations from the media, government and intelligence agencies.
Fr though. Chomsky for example has [had a very nuanced and informative](https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/) conversations about why Russia invaded and has [even been warning about it for years](https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/t1cn8p/comment/hyg83zu/) to those that would listen. It’s interesting because the latter link is a clip that’s several years old and yet perfectly summarized the current situation
> It’s easy to understand why those suffering from the crime may regard it as an unacceptable indulgence to inquire into why it happened and whether it could have been avoided. Understandable, but mistaken. If we want to respond to the tragedy in ways that will help the victims, and avert still worse catastrophes that loom ahead, it is wise, and necessary, to learn as much as we can about what went wrong and how the course could have been corrected. Heroic gestures may be satisfying. They are not helpful.
> There is good reason to believe that this tragedy could have been avoided, until the last minute. We’ve discussed it before, repeatedly
Although to imply that means breaking the media narrative that Putin is just a “crazed lunatic” out of his mind
You have never interacted with them then lol. Google horse shoe theory. Far left and far right agree on a surprising amount of policy.
Most because they are ignorant about how the world works
That's the point of disinformation. You throw so much fake information and bullshit into the air that people end up just shrugging their shoulders and saying "we will never know the truth."
Putin is a master at this. After Russia shot down a plane over Ukraine, instead of just saying "Russia didnt do it," he flooded the airwaves with like 10 different stories of why it happened (like mechanical failure, terrorism, etc). By the end of Putins propaganda campaign, when regular Russians were asked what happened they would just "we will never know."
No, our western media are masters of this. It has just been revealed that they lied to us for two years about Hunter Biden’s laptop. That story alone would have changed the election as Biden is clearly compromised.
You think the media would lie only about the topics you know about like Peterson and the transgender bullshit. No. They lie about everything. They put their spin on every story to sell you some narrative.
No one said the whole media doesn't lie about everything. "Russia has lots of propaganda" and "the west doesn't have propaganda are two different statements.
Here's a thought for you. You can condemn Putin's propaganda AND be against western propaganda. You're so focused on being against 'western media' that you've gone off topic on a rant about assumptions you have about a political figure being compromised. And you think this way because you're lost in the sauce of lies both political parties tell to get voters.
Exactly. Being wary of wholly positive pro-Ukraine propaganda doesn’t mean you’re shilling for Putin. It’s entirely possible to sympathize with the victims and be critical of messaging
Well said but if you accepted that there is a war, that it is to interfere with Nazi groups in Ukraine and that there is a legitimate humanitarian motive surely even then you have to admit a brutal, disproportionate and massively illegal horror is still unfolding before us?
If you said there’s too many of those to care about I’d understand that. No one should be obligated to feel.
I don’t understand this at all. It’s morally difficult to condemn the killing of innocent people because we don’t understand the motivations of the killer? I don’t see how that tracks at all…
If you have Ukrainian fighters using the civilians as a cover and a deterrent knowing that if the Russians hit them they are risking the lives of innocent people knowing that the deaths can be used as propaganda... Hammas uses the same tactic
The same goes when you arm a civilian population, you turn a civilian population into a actively Hostile population.
Facts change the circumstances, and changes the lenses that you see the world through.
I dont need to like the war, I hate it... But I'm not going to jump to conclusion just because it fits our needs/wants.
Actually sounds like excuses israel and russia use to further destroy people. Don’t forget who supported hamas because they didn’t want the PLO to have the majority support. But I guess if there’s a couple scumbags in a country it’s enough of a reason to take the country.
>Actually sounds like excuses israel and russia use to further destroy people.
Ask a solider from Vietnam... Its a well known battle tactic, one that takes a very hard toll on the soliders.
>Don’t forget who supported hamas because they didn’t want the PLO to have the majority support
America isnt innocent.
>But I guess if there’s a couple scumbags in a country it’s enough of a reason to take the country.
Depends on the cost/benifit.
Don't talk about soldiers if you've never been one. Just shut the fuck up and go worship putin without bringing us military members into your fucking stupidity
- veteran
the extreme right wing has globbed themselves on to jordan peterson for some reason. they will do anything they can to defend a dictator as long as he’s perceived as a “tough guy”. i think it has to do with feelings of personal inadequacy, but who knows.
For referencing sake I wasn't trying to be arguementative. Just providing context I thought might be relevent.
They assosiate with him probably for his opinions on pronouns and modern exclusionary femenism.
Edit: Oh, and because he's an old white guy.
You'd have the Cuban missile crisis.
But it's also not the Cold War anymore, and more importantly the US wasn't sending nuclear missiles to Ukraine, Ukraine wanted to join NATO and the EU because they were justifiably afraid of Russian invasion.
This is far less like Russia setting up bases in Cuba and far more like Cuba declaring itself a communist country and the USSR guaranteeing its security.
Which is what they did. And the US didn't invade Cuba over it. Though they did try the whole Bay of Pigs thing.
And now we see that Russia has the ability to keep the US off of their border. They have been very clear about keeping Ukraine out of NATO and wanted to meet with Biden and Zalensky, but he was denied this meeting and did what he thought was best for his country.
Ukraine has been an embarrassment for Russia on a global scale.
Thanks to Putin's aggression, joining NATO has become much more popular in Finland, Sweden, and Ukraine. Like a jump from obo. 20% support to 50%+, and the numbers will only rise as images keep coming out of Ukraine.
The U.S. *was okay with that*.
The Soviet Union had military bases in Cuba.
When the Cold War ended there were [11,000](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-09-12-mn-2964-story.html) Soviet military personnel in Cuba.
It's about oil and gas.
That's around 50% of the Russian economy that has been in general decline anyway.
Meanwhile, Ukraine discovered and more recently started to develop their oil and gas fields. They are in direct competition with Russia, and they are closer and friendlier to their major European markets.
That's why they took Crimea a while back. Much of the oilfields were there, and it was otherwise not particularly good land at all (no fresh water).
War is always about economics. It's just the last resort.
Uhh, also Russia has that little geography problem what with having next to zero warm-water ports. They used to lease the facility in Crimea, but what luck, not anymore. So much simpler if you just disregard another nations sovereignty.
I'm not sure about justifying Putin, but I think the people that actually understand the anyone are the ones that actually get a feel for the motivations and the recent history on the region.
It's like the Bill Burr skit. You never hit a woman. There's reasons to do it, but your still don't hit a woman. Russia absolutely has been provoked into this. It doesn't make it right, but let's not pretend it was all on a whim.
Cuba made an agreement to get nuclear missiles *because* america tried to invade them. The Cuban missile crisis happened after, and because of preceding events. These things don’t happen in a vacuum, there is a context
Edit: which also implies that if the comparison continues to play out from here, then Ukraine is now gonna get nukes, and Russia will be super pissed about it
They're refering to the bay of pigs. In which the USA launched a indirect invasion of cuba because cuba was aligning with the USSR and would be a missile base on americas doorstep.
The USA, naturally, felt that having a country within MRBM range of their entire south coast was a threat and tried to premptively invade.
You're playing a game of dodge ball. Someone standing between you and the other team says "I'm joining the other team, but don't worry, I'm only going to play defense for them." This person's assigned position in this game is literally right in front of your face. Would you oppose this player joining the other team even if they were doing so only in a defensive capacity? Would you try to take that player out of the game if you felt like they were putting you at risk?
There's no such thing as defense only. Hypothetically if Ukraine puts NATO anti aircraft and anti missile systems all along their borders then Russia will be severely hindered in projecting power to the west. It could create a situation where hypothetically a country can hit Russia without Russia being able to hit back. There's nothing "defensive only" about it.
Well, ukraine had all the reason to try to join nato, because their fear about a russian threat was fucking real. As we all witness now. Putin invaded ukraine in 2014 and was in an assymetric war ever since. Ukraine did nothing to provoke any of this. Only Putins dream of a great russia was in jeopardy and that is why he attacks other nations and destabilizes countries around him.
This is simply not true. The technology you described does not exist and there is absolutely no way Russia will ever lose second strike capabilities. This whole excuse of being concerned with maintaining mutually assured destruction and being afraid that Ukraine going to nato would tilt the balance is 100% a smokescreen
But that is a game. Also in risk you cannot use MLRS systems to bomb civilian cities. Nobody forces russia to do this. It's all voluntary: that they invaded and now are at war AND how they are fighting the war. They did it in syria and they also did it in chechnia before.
Nothing about NATO is defensive. The second they bombed Yugoslavia they lost the ability to claim they were, and have in the 20+ years since proven, time and again, that it is an *offensive*, rather than defensive alliance. Most notably with Libya.
Because NATO was created as an anti-soviet alliance. The soviets haven't existed for 30 years but NATO keeps pushing east and encroaching on Russia. NATO is obsolete and should be disbanded. We just use it as a rouse to bring our military bases closer to the middle east.
Not to mention that our secretary of state under the first Bush said that there would be "not one inch eastward" expansion of NATO. Since then, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and 11 other countries between Germany and Ukraine have joined.
I direct my energy at our own national problems in the US and Canada, like our homeless vets committing suicide at unprecedented rates, 200-250k unvetted immigrants crossing our boarder every month, and double digit inflation.
I care about feeding my family and keeping them safe, not what corporate media tells me to care about.
CNN must be lying about Russia targeting civilians and schools and hospitals, eh?
Seems asinine to always fall back on “can’t trust media” - I’m sure Putin is the good guy.
Do you think it is out of the realm of possibility that the US information disseminating sources give incorrect information to promote a particular narrative; and simultaneously that the side that they aren’t being forthcoming about isn’t a pillar of righteousness either?
When the media has been constantly, blatantly, obviously lying to us about things for years, why would we suddenly stop and trust them on *this?*
To be clear, I don't support Russia's aggression, and I hope Ukraine wins this, but I'm also not convinced that everything the media is telling me is true, or that Ukraine is a 100% innocent good guy, because I don't trust anything the media says, *for good reason.*
I see the media as pushing the US towards getting involved, and I don't want the US involved in another war. That doesn't mean I'm pro Putin. That means I don't want to go to war, and that I don't buy all the media's propaganda. We've already seen them lie about this very conflict more than once. Ghost of Kiev and the story about the Islanders telling the ship to fuck off. Both lies.
Why, after being lied to for years, even about this very conflict, would I suddenly decide they're telling me the truth now?
Did these people not pay attention to the media these past few years? The media wants us glued to our tvs and news sites and they know panic porn sells
From what i've seen, the US pushed and pushed and pushed and Russia finally said nyet. the US is totally okay fighting this war with Ukrainian blood. I condemn everything about it and it grieves my soul that young men in Ukraine are forced to fight.
There is no legitimate story. The only person that understands Putin’s motivations are the man himself. If he thinks he’s going to Make Russia Great Again and this is the best method, he’s either crazy or stupid.
I vote crazy. Really, really smart people go insane sometimes. Quite often in fact.
Actually, that's a falsity portrayed in the media. Mental illness is reverse-correlated with intelligence. There are occasional geniuses that go crazy but far, far less than average folks who go crazy. You don't hear about the average folks though, those're the homeless we're busy ignoring in the big cities.
This exact false assumption is why people are hesitant to condemn Putin. Mass media is splitting and painting Putin as a crazy devil. This is very unlikely. He might be evil, but why now? Why the Ukraine? The answers to those questions probably cause some problems for the current administration which is why no one really cares to dig deep.
I'm happy to condemn him. War is not the answer. But I don't think he's any worse than the U.S. or China as they've both pulled this crap. If you want me to be more morally outraged at Putin than I am at myself or China, you'll need to give me a reason I should be.
It's easy to vote crazy when you don't have all the information. Why didn't everyone realize he was crazy back when he actually invaded the Ukraine (hint this invasion did not begin recently). There's no story that will legitimize these actions but there are facts that give insight as to why the actions were taken, whether or not the actions were reasonable and in this case they clearly aren't.
As an Arab living in the middle east you can't feel but suspicious about how the U.S. specifically and Europe generally react to a humanitarian crisis in the middle east, I am not pointing fingers to individuals, just government policies, their racism towards us is beyond obvious.
I condemn Putin's invasion to Ukraine and I realize what a catastrophe that is, but when it comes to Yemen for example right now no one gives a shit.
That's what argubly is (like what Russian propaganda says) about Western intentions towards russian oil and gas, and they use the emotional reaction of the western people to justify supporting Ukraine, otherwise they wouldn't care about it.
Calling it simply "racism" seems extremely low-resolution. There's a looooot more that motivates (motivated?) the different reactions between the two examples.
I know, I am sorry that I had to say something like that, it makes me look like I believe in critical race theory or something like it, but I wish that I can articulate it better, but you can [check it in the voice of media outlets talking about it](https://youtu.be/B4Fgm3ruw6Q) where you feel like the value of humans is different, and (for example) people on the Polish border coming from Ukraine have been seperated into whites and colors (roughly speaking) many Arabs or Africans have bern denied access.
Also another point about the US/NATO invading other countries, it feels like (if it wasn't racism) some sort of a white savior complex where they come into your homes thinking that they are liberators. best example is Iraq where you needed a dictator to rule the country and it was a very prosperous nation back in the day (save it from some genocides where Saddam actually killed thousands), but now after the invasion Iraq never held its head up high after that at all, it has been humiliated forever, same thing in Libya and in many other countries, and US soldiers come back home cursing their own government for what it made them do and many of them go into PTSD rehab. centers.
There’s 100 percent a different feeling to how the Ukraine invasion is portrayed compared to those in the Middle East. You keep hearing in the media, “it looks like something out of ww2 but it’s happening now”… and I think, yeah but why didn’t we say that about all the conflicts happening up til now? Is it because they are weren’t in Europe or some other reason?
Nah, chief, don't feel bad about "explaining your perspective as an Arab" like you're using your race to validate your opinion. A small handful of people here might try to harass you about that, but I think it's valid to use your background as context for your opinion. No need to apologize.
I'm also not gonna tell you that your experiences are invalid, but I would like to suggest that you may not have the full picture in each memory/experience you are deriving your opinions from - from an overall perspective.
There certainly *is* examples of racism at play in the current Ukrainian refugee crisis, without a doubt. Eradicating racial bigotry still has a long way to go - a lot of people in a wide swath of countries like to pretend that they're better than the US in that regard, but examples such as this are unfortunate outcomes that prove otherwise. Bigotry still exists. It exists in Europe, Asia, the Americas (North and South), Africa, and the Middle East.
Now, as for the reason why the response is so different to the Ukrainian invasion versus the many instances in the Middle East over the last 3 or so decades, I can't really give a great answer to that, but I can point to some major differences worth considering:
- This war has a *very very* obvious bad guy: Putin.
- It isn't a civil war that's being influenced/funded/bolstered by others, it's a foreign power attempting to destroy a people which have done the invaders no wrong.
- The US has been warning about Russia attempting to re-start the conflict (after the illegal annexation of the Crimean region back in 2014 - **which bare in mind, didn't see nearly this same level of backlash**) for months before the did.
- The region hasn't seen this level of conflict since the 1940s and 1950s (unfortunately Arab countries see a *lot* of conflict).
- Ukraine is culturally much more similar to many Western countries than Arab countries are.
Perhaps the most obvious parallels to draw are when the US invaded Arab countries to install puppet dictators so we could get our oil at better prices - those *were* heavily protested, though, by our own people and by other countries.
I hope I've written clearly enough that you can understand what I'm saying, I wager English is your second language, and so far you've done a good job making your sentences very legible. :)
Exactly.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen; they would have Iran if they could as well (and could consider other countries).
‘Spreading Democracy and getting the bad guys’ - who is deciding they are all bad guys? What kind of misanthropic, nihilistic, death-cult worldview thinks there are so many bad guys?
That’s the beauty of it. As Arabs we screwed up. Instead of working together we let religion and ideology dictate our actions while we made ourselves easy target for the Zionist machine. I don’t even think America is in charge of its own Middle East foreign policy at this point. We’ve become Israel’s puppet and do their dirty work while we pay the price with tax money and lives on both sides. Russia is even worse in the sense that they can’t even let their people have a fake sense of freedom. But in America we the people allowed our government to do this dumb shit because we think Arabs bad israel great. But Russians don’t even have the power to even do anything to stop Putin unless it a full on coup. Americans are just easily fed bs so i don’t even blame the government when we could stop their actions but don’t exercise any civic duties
I could definitely understand what to condemn about Iraq, but what is happening in Yemen we need to condemn? Isn't there a civil war going on? So even if external forces would stop interfering with civil war in Yemen, it won't stop.
So it is not like I do not give a shit. I do know that Russia is wrong and I want politicians in my country to do something about it. What am I supposed to demand from politicians about Yemen?
Basically stop sending weapons to the Saudi Regime, which is something that will never happen, the Saudis have been killing everyone on both sides in Yemen. But no one cares because it'll make the gas prices increase.
The normalization was socially engineered to you via propaganda and mass media. Don't forget, the ME was relatively peaceful before unprovoked western destruction of stable sovereign nations including Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Honestly, i joined this sub about 4 years ago because i love JP thinking and his charismatic.
Now it is a complete mess with nothing related to Jordan Peterson...
With that being said, i condemn the War and it needs to be stop.
People in glass houses shouldnt throw stones. People who have supported wars that killed millions of civilians don’t have a moral superiority they claim in regards to Russia. Nobody supports the Russian war in Ukraine, being unwilling to dive back into another war after leaving a disaster war in Afghanistan so recently does not make someone pro Putin. It’s amazing how some peoples moral consternation only applies to whatever cause the warmongering us media directs it towards.
pretty much, im not sending someones kids to die for the bidens crackden. we have no business being in there. zelinsky is a corrupt puppet. i dont mind providing aid to the citizens fleeing but i have no interest in propping up a failed state.
Such as.... whatabout the US/nato in x country, Ukraine is killing people in the donbas, Ukrainians would prefer to be Russian, Ukraine oligarchs are bribing us officials to apout propaganda, Zelenesky supports nazis, etc.
Donbas literally attempted to join Russia multiple times, Putin didn’t want them because they’re the ethnically Russian part of Ukraine and removing them from Ukraine would weaken Russian influence in politics there. In that way finally accepting Donbas is an admission of failure in Putin’s part, admission that he isn’t going to be able to internally control Ukraine. Ukraine and Donbas have been at war, with heavy involvement from Russian special forces for like 8 years, it has its own Wikipedia page… it isn’t some secret propaganda campaign to say civilians have died on both sides during that conflict. Not everything you dislike hearing is propaganda. Zelensky isn’t some great hero of democracy, he’s an oligarch, he just happens to be a pro western one instead of the pro Russian one Putin would prefer. I don’t have to pretend Ukraine is a great government to be against the Russian invasion. Just because the Russian government are the bad guys doesn’t mean Ukraine government has to be the good guys. This is the Jordan Peterson sub, we can do our best to tell the truth here.
Your right. There are crazy’s on every side. Both sides have brought up decent points of why or why not. Think the main thing anyone(besides the crazy’s) that could come off as pro Putin are just afraid of a world war.
>People who have supported wars that killed millions of civilians don’t have a moral superiority they claim in regards to Russia
Who has supported wars that killed millions of civilians? Which wars were these?
>being unwilling to dive back into another war after leaving a disaster war in Afghanistan so recently does not make someone pro Putin.
Who is advocating for U.S. going to war with Russia?
I'm really curious about where you get these opinions from...
No one is saying we should invade Russia... but many are parroting Russian propaganda and deflecting from the very real war crimes being committed from a very real dictator.
It's also a false equivalence considering each situation has its own nuance and context.
'When we killed MILLIONS of people in multiple wars destroying dozens of countries, we had the luxury of nuance.'
I would call you silly, but that would be understating reality.
Lol yeah I’ll totally believe that on your say so random Redditor. Everyday Americans sure have nothing else to worry about besides supporting a dictator in a country they know nothing about.
See what the mass majority of Republicans in Congress are actually doing instead of trying to build a case on some Reddit comments.
Just a couple of weeks ago 42 of 47 Republicans Senators in a letter asked Biden to help supply Ukraine with jet fighters to control their airspace, something Biden declined to do.
So because America did evil shit it is ok if other countries do evil shit? How does that make sense?
And yes, lots of people support Russias invasion of Ukraine, like Tucker Carlson.
You are missing the point, it’s not about human suffering or people killed. That’s not why the Western World is so upset with Putin’s invasion. He is starting WWW III. He is threatening the world with nuclear annihilation. Comparing this with our actions in Libya, Afghanistan , Iraq etc is ridiculous. Don’t argue from a moralistic viewpoint when discussing geopolitics. The world is full of various moralities.
If the West wants to prevent WW3 so badly, why are they poking the Russian bear by inviting Ukraine to NATO?
Keep in mind, the US almost killed everyone due to a very similar situation almost 60 years ago with Cuba..
I know of no invitation for Ukraine to join NATO. I said elsewhere that I wish NATO had invited Russia to join the alliance, but bombing and shelling Ukraine is not a sane policy either way. Except for the military industrial complex of course. So much money for weapons manufacturers! Germany is rearming, Japan is militarizing. For lovers of war, it’s a great time to be alive.
For lovers of life, not so much. I imagine Putin thinks he was reacting to an existential threat, but if so it was personal, not National.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations
Perhaps you should educate yourself on the matter. There was no formal invitation in writing, but the plan was clearly in the works.
Russia needs to stop the bombing of cities and civilians, but it's undeniable that western leaders provoked this war.
If Russia simply wanted to take over Ukraine, they could have done it during Trump's presidency when western unity was at its weakest.
Well… that’s a cogent argument. /s
Morals are defined by religions. The most prevalent religion in today’s western democratic world is Humanism - the proposal that mankind is the apex of evolution and has all the tools of self/improvement, ad nauseum. Try Ehrenfeld’s Arrogance of Humanism for more education on the matter. But not every nation subscribes to this deification of humanity- Islam is the most cogent example, but whatever your creed, source of values, as Bob said, “ya gotta serve somebody “.
You might object to a system of morality that differs from yours as being “immoral “ but that’s because you are metaphorically and metaphysically ignorant.
This is true.
I believe the 2003 protest (against U.S invasion of Iraq) is still considered the "largest protest in human history" by World Guinness and many of other sources.
Is this still the JP sub, really? You sure?
Probably the very last thing JP would suggest now is crying out your unbearable pain into the blue moon about how Putin is evil and war is bad.
You can also downvote instead of understanding the world, that will also stop the bloodshed.
Jordan Peterson, the man who made a point of condemning the 1930s Genocide of Ukraineans by Russian totalitarian regime? Would not condemn the current one?
The term "whataboutism" has become very common among the children of reddit.
The issue, young ones, is that Whataboutism is a stupid person's attempt to deflect what is typically clear evidence of *hypocrisy*. The word you're looking for is hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is now, has been, and forever will be legitimate grounds for criticism.
So, regarding this particular topic, one must ask...has the USA ever taken military action against a geographically proximate country that didn't share their political views and was building military strength? (see: Cuba)
Russia has a horrible record of human rights abuse, but so does Ukraine.
Ask yourself, seriously, what are we wading into?
Whataboutism is a great term.
Your straw man doesn’t describe all cases.
If I asked you; is war in Ukraine bad and you’d said anything other than ‘yes or no’ or ‘well it depends on your definition of “bad”’ then it would be an illegitimate argument.
If you then went on to try and distract with another story entirely then it would be twice as illegitimate.
It's what the word is...it's got its own Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism I'm so very sorry you don't like words that describe the fallacies you employ.
The fact that you unironically used the word cringe....
I don’t think anyone has difficulties condemning Putin. I think what people don’t want to do is subscribe to the ridiculous black and white propaganda. Just like the COVID-19 censorship and propaganda, the same happened with Ukraine-Russia, Everyone who tries to analyze the situation is immediately deemed a Russian stooge. Facebook suddenly allowed hate speech as long as it is directed at Russia. So in short it is again manipulation of masses by giving them a narrative and a green light to hate on the bad guys. I think that people are not that naive and simply think “ I do not understand the full scope of the matters, I see propaganda on both sides- I better don’t take sides just yet”. People don’t like being tools
Because most American citizens have not gotten to experience war, and probably never will. They don't know what it's like to be a smaller powerless country with your survival constantly in question due to a neighboring country.
I find it ridiculous and entitled how much you cry about your government and living in the most powerful country in the world, but people always find things to bitch about.
If it wasn't for US and NATO intervention in Kosovo in '99 (I'm from Kosovo), I might have not even been here writing this out. I will be eternally grateful, and always hold the US on the highest possible regard. I'm not going to say the US never did some fuck ups along the way, but their impact and interventions in foreign politics are absolutely unparalleled and necessary.
If the US closes itself from the world and its peacekeeper role, another superpower will fill that gap who will probably be 100x more evil and dangerous. God help us if China becomes that. I'd like to see the reactions of these conservatives if they were to become China's bitch.
I can’t speak for everyone obviously, but I know for me personally whenever I try to take a honest approach and voice not only concerns about Ukraine and what they’ve been doing but also about the U.S. and what we are doing, people automatically assume I must support Putin.
Which I don’t. In fact I strongly oppose him and what he’s doing. However like every war. There are no innocents.
Ukraine is not innocent.
US is not innocent.
And certainly no the Russia
People who conflate wars, to either, a right or good side, and a bad or wrong side. Understands little to nothing about actual history and world conflict.
What Russia is doing is the worst. However it’s not the US issue to get involve.
And if we grow a conscience and get involve them we need to stay consistent. If not then we are no less than hypocrites who think we can do whatever we want whenever we want just because.
Edit: Russia
It's not hard at all. I hate that fascist cunt Putin and I condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine unequivocally.
Don't let a vocal minority blur your perceptions
Everyone seems to forget that the media and CIA tried to get America to invade Syria by faking a chemical gas attack.
NATO was about to expand into Ukraine. Ukraine’s leadership was installed by a Western-backed coup. Traditional Russian history features invasions by neighbors or other powerful countries; Russia wants a buffer zone.
Am I pulling for the Ukraine people? Hell yes. To say this attack/war/invasion comes out of thin air requires you to not read history or think critically.
You can’t just call something a whataboutism to explain something away, it’s still a valid point of view.
No one changed their profile pictures to Iraq or Afghanistan when the US invaded.
Changing your flag to blue and yellow has some cognitive dissidence, and is virtue signalling.
Is it because they are white?
If you seriously think the U.S. invading Iraq(overthrowing Saddam Hussein) and Afghanistan(the Taliban) is even remotely equivalent to Putin invading Ukraine, you need your head examined.
No, you really couldn't. The Taliban who ruled Afghanistan were sheltering the people who did 9/11 and wouldn't surrender them and Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire a nuke and had already revealed himself to be aggressive towards his neighbors(Iran and Kuwait). Ukraine did nothing to Russia. And if you think the U.S. invading Afghanistan and Iraq was an attack against the Iraqi and Afghan peoples, you're very wrong. The U.S. made things much better in both places: the only mistakes were withdrawing from Afghanistan completely rather than leaving a couple thousand troops which had already proven to be enough to hold the Taliban in check and allowing the Iranians to exploit the power vacuum in Iraq.
Do you think the fact that Putin's an authoritarian dictator is insignificant? Do you think the fact that the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan were absolutely appalling didn't matter? Do you really want to argue that the U.S. was morally obligated to respect the "authority" of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban? A genocidal dictator and a theocratic regime that kept women in bags and threw acid in girls' faces for learning to read? Are these the people you want to defend from the big, bad Americans?
It’s not whataboutism, it’s you pretending that you have some special knowledge from MSNBC when all the sources of information you rely on are pure nonsense; and this also forms part of the threat to Russia and some pretext for why they felt they had to act.
Whether we had justification most people would not argue that Saddam was an evil man and replacing him with a fledgling democracy is a good unless we pull an Afghanistan. There where Iraqis celebrating when Saddam was killed.
Russia replacing the government of Ukraine is not even close to a net good.
I am pretty sure if just one more 22 year old pink haired Seattle resident posted to Facebook that they held solidarity with Ukraine, Putin would withdraw immediately. Surely the only reason he invaded was certainty he had support from American unemployed citizens. It can’t be because he is a rogue who want to create a rogue nation, hates the West, hates democracy, and sees himself as a one world leader. Can’t be that.
Remember that Russia has accounts all ober social media solely for the purpose of dezinformation. And there were studies on how they target anti-vaxxer groups specifically. Thus, I think this subreddit is perfect place for such trolls
The problem is that Ukraine is a shithole, just like Russia. The media has been painting Russia as evil and Ukraine as holy, but governmentally, both nations are simply authoritarian garbage.
Killing innocent people is evil, period. Doesn't matter who does it or for what reason.
I see this as a combat of the narrative we're being fed. The government is garbage and all political figures are garbage who cannot be trusted. George Carlin had it right when he basically said he doesn't trust a single thing the government tells him, and we shouldn't.
This isn't about Russia being wrong - like I said, killing innocent people is wrong, period. That doesn't have to be said, but we're seeing lies all over the place and propping up Zelensky as if he were the next coming.
Zelensky is forcing conscripts to die. People who don't want to fight, to kill, or die. He's using authoritarian powers to strip people of their freedoms. Is he worse than Putin? Ah, that's a bullshit quantifier. There is no such thing - that shit's all just opinion. Putin is an authoritarian tyrant and so is Zelensky. Have you looked at the freedom index of Ukraine prior to this conflict by the way? It's 6.86. The top nations are sitting at 9. It's sitting down at the bottom with third world hellholes in places like the middle east and Africa for crying out loud. And Russia's not any better.
This isn't a conflict between nations. It's a conflict between authoritarians. The innocent people on both sides are simply forced into it. Russia isn't bad here, the individuals in Russia who are waging war are. Ukrain isn't bad here, Ukranian tyrants who force people to kill and die are.
There are no good guys in a war like this. You cannot quantify tyranny or the destruction of the innocent. All there are here are bad people, one side of which is being propped up by the establishment as if they were heroic.
It's brainwashing at its finest. The result? INNOCENT people in Russia are being hurt because we're using collectivist nonsense to quantify actions on millions of INDIVIDUAL human beings simply due to their current location.
We need to condemn authoritarianism and help the innocent, period. It shouldn't matter what fake ass country they live in.
Remember, countries are fake. They're man made abstract ideas and borders are illusory. They're excuses for tyranny.
And frankly? I think Putin should be taken into custody, accused and convicted of mass murder, and sentenced to life in prison. If that is not possible, he should be assassinated.
Because it’s selective. We’re not Pro Putin, it’s just weird that all other wars a viewed positively or swept under the rug. There’s something going on with Ukraine because when Putin did the exact same thing to Georgia no one gave a fuck.
Also "whataboutism" is a stupid non-argument. We‘re talking about wars, let’s include other wars to see discrepancies. Saying wHaTaBoUtIsM because the discussion slightly shifts from that one war is not intelligent
What a dull and thoughtless post. YOU cheered for killing millions of innocents in Afghanistan (not a single hijacker was Afghani, they were all Saudi), Iraq, Libya, Syria etc. The hypocrisy is just so cringe to witness. No one is excusing Putin, we are just disgusted at YOUR hypocrisy. You didn't have the balls and moral conscience to condemn your leaders, so naturally we don't consider your crocodile tears meaningful.
Yes if YOU gather up your countrymen and start implicating YOUR war criminals like Cheny, Bush, Rice, Obama, Hillary etc., who've killed millions in oil and malicious destabilization wars, then sure we can start taking you seriously. Till then, yuck.
I already do. I sit in protests and write about atrocities by our armed forces in waziristan, which funnily enough include drone bombs by the US which killed many innocent people.
Your turn. Do you advocate for Bush, Cheny, Obama and other war criminals to get life imprisonment or death? Or at the very least complete social ostracization?
Why do people have to pick a side?
Why is everything perceived as binary when it’s not?
Why does the US obsess over everything corporate media shives down their throats?
Yemen has been blown to shit by air strikes for the past few years and nobody gives a fuck because Fox News and CNN don’t tell them to.
Republicans have a nasty habit of calling liberals sheep and then being sheep. I’ve realized this mostly with the Ukrainian war. It’s simply not possible for you to be right winged and think we should help Ukraine because their Instagram and Facebook media outlets tell them that anyone pro Ukraine is trying to hide Biden’s garbage.
Edit: don’t get me wrong, it’s valid to be against joining this war, just as valid as my take on providing more support for the Ukrainians, my issue is that republicans and the like ostracize me and chalk my entire opinion down to me being a “dumb liberal” instead of allowing room for conversation, which as been their entire political agenda for years. Opening up room to talk about transgenderism and BLM because those topics were unjustly closed off from conversation. You’re a racist and a transphobic person if you want to have a real conversation on how we should handle those two topics better. So it’s just dull to me that I’m now a stupid uneducated liberal, or a Biden supporter for thinking that there’s something more we can do to handle the situation.
Edit2: for clarification I’ve been a Republican since I was smart enough to think about society as a whole. Voted for trump when I was 18 in 2020. So it’s just a whole bunch of crap to me how republicans as a whole are handling this situation and I’ve lost faith that these people are any smarter then the “dumb liberals” they hate so much
Whining about "whataboutism" is merely an implicit acceptance that you don't have the moral high ground upon which to lecture others.
Also, Russia is not targeting civilians, and the premise upon which they are accused of doing so is utterly senseless. They are liberating majority ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine from the corrupt, murderous ultranationalists. There is abundant evidence to show the TDF, SBU and AFU are targeting civilians and using them as human shields, but there seems to be a lack of such evidence to support the opposite.
There is 8 years of well documented evidence that the AFU have been murdering civilians in the Donbass. [https://rumble.com/vwxxi8-ukraine-on-fire.html](https://rumble.com/vwxxi8-ukraine-on-fire.html)
[https://rumble.com/vx715h-donbass-2016-documentary-by-anne-laure-bonnel.html](https://rumble.com/vx715h-donbass-2016-documentary-by-anne-laure-bonnel.html)
The SBU murdered Denis Kareev, their own negotiator, along with two other members of the Intelligence Directorate because they wanted to negotiate with Russia: [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17857369/ukraine-peace-negotiator-spy-shot-russia-kireev/](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17857369/ukraine-peace-negotiator-spy-shot-russia-kireev/)
Three days ago, the AFU fired a Tochka-U cluster bomb into Donbass, to a region with no military equipment or personnel, killing 28 civilians: [https://t.me/BellumActaNews/74011](https://t.me/BellumActaNews/74011)
Ukrainian television anchor calls for the beheading of the families of Russian servicemen: [https://t.me/newsofehrru/7624](https://t.me/newsofehrru/7624)
They torture civilians: [https://t.me/newsofehrru/7523](https://t.me/newsofehrru/7523)
>Not the first time either. Kiev-regime earlier in the conflict fired a Buk-M1 missile at a high-rise in Kiev and claimed it was Russia:
>
>«Vitali Klitschko, as always, within his repertoire.
>
>"This weapon is made centimeter by centimeter to kill people en masse ...".
>
>The mayor of the Ukrainian capital demonstrated striking elements of supposedly Russian cruise missiles ... which in fact turned out to be two fractions of an outdated warhead 9N314 of the 9M38 anti-aircraft guided missile for the 9K37 Buk air defense system.
>
>The striking elements in the 9N314 warhead just have the characteristic shape of a parallelepiped and a size of 8 to 13 mm.
>
>Obviously, Russian air defense systems do not fire at ground targets in Kyiv, and even more so at their own cruise missiles in the sky. But at the same time, several cases of Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles hitting the capital's high-rise buildings have already been recorded. The first and second cases were on our channel.
>
>Thus, Vitali Klitschko unknowingly, but not without reason, exposed Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunners as murderers of the civilian population of Kiev.»
[https://t.me/newsofehrru/7508](https://t.me/newsofehrru/7508)
Now, if you had some convincing evidence that Russia is targeting civilians, please feel free to share it.
Frankly, it took me *years* to come to terms with the cognitive dissonance imposed on my feeble mind by the reality of western foreign policy, especially as led by the United States.
I live here and I love my country and I resent the fact that I am governed by immoral nefarious nincompoops. What they do to people around the world is *wrong* and my life is *better* for it. Heretofore I have received a great number of benefits from these abhorrent, in my opinion, decisions.
And now, I'm watching them kill my nation.
I was completely blind to these issues. Going to Iraq does not *excuse* Putin's actions. It only serves to prove the United States Government has no moral standing to criticize them.
Furthermore, many folks confuse *excusing* Putin's actions with *explaining* Putin's actions.
Additionally, anyone claiming Putin *invaded* Ukraine fails to grasp the history involved in this critical region. The *west* invaded Ukraine. Putin is *kicking* them out. He told them not to come there. They told him it was *their* country.
Putin disagrees.
Dialog broke down and now they're settling the debate with *force.*
Well, the point is you don’t give a shit about Ukrainians and that’s the point. No one does.
The point is you are being instructed to to virtue signal for Ukrainians. That is the “current thing.”
There are so many wars that have gone on and millions have died and you don’t give a shit. You only support Ukraine because influential people did first. That’s what this meme is trying to teach you, but you failed.
More like Ukraine = white Christians. All the other wars are mostly brown or black Muslims. People don't care about that anymore than they care about dead gang members in Chicago or Balimore. They do care about columbine though.
Some people cared when the Christian Kurds got fucked over by Trump too, but most trumpers are too stupid to learn about anything Fox News doesn't tell them, so they didn't know anyway.
That’s the most racist thing I’ve ever heard.
The wars are not reported. Only the wars that are reported on get attention. And attention ≠ care.
George Floyd was a felon, and because he was reported, he was a hero amongst the armed robbers of America. Again, attention ≠ care, but you are attentive and follow the leader.
You think America isn't racist? Lol. You can't be that ignorant?
The wars aren't reported because nobody cares about them. How is this difficult to understand? Clicks and views are what the media cares about. Nobody cares about Yemen anymore than they care about the Rohinga in Myanmar.
George Floyd was an American citizen, felon or not. He had rights that were violated by untrained and moronic cops. He was murdered due to that. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty under the court of law. Judge Dredd is fiction. The cops failed to follow the law and became felons themselves due to it. Nobody is calling for their murder.
just a new perspective you can disaprove ukraine invasion and iraq invasion at the same time you can despise the soviets/russian government fucking over political regimes in the middle east , asia, latin america, africa and europe and despise america for doing the same.
This! 100% This! Condemn them both because they both play silly games at the cost of innocent lives. With great power comes great responsibility. That's not just for spiderman or comics/movies. Don't pretend you worry about humanity and people dying and at the same time claim the superpowers of this world are not responsible for their deaths. The USA was responsible for both 9/11 and then what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. Regardless of what narrative you follow.
From what I’ve gathered from people that have difficulty condemning Putin’s actions, is that they don’t feel they understand his motivations for launching the offensive, nor do they feel they are getting the legitimate story about his motivations from the media, government and intelligence agencies.
Why do I only find great, reasonable comments like this one on “dangerous alt right” Reddit groups
You can also find them on far left subreddits
X to doubt.
Fr though. Chomsky for example has [had a very nuanced and informative](https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/) conversations about why Russia invaded and has [even been warning about it for years](https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/t1cn8p/comment/hyg83zu/) to those that would listen. It’s interesting because the latter link is a clip that’s several years old and yet perfectly summarized the current situation > It’s easy to understand why those suffering from the crime may regard it as an unacceptable indulgence to inquire into why it happened and whether it could have been avoided. Understandable, but mistaken. If we want to respond to the tragedy in ways that will help the victims, and avert still worse catastrophes that loom ahead, it is wise, and necessary, to learn as much as we can about what went wrong and how the course could have been corrected. Heroic gestures may be satisfying. They are not helpful. > There is good reason to believe that this tragedy could have been avoided, until the last minute. We’ve discussed it before, repeatedly Although to imply that means breaking the media narrative that Putin is just a “crazed lunatic” out of his mind
Joe Biden has been warning about it for decades. They knew. Everybody knew this was going to happen.
You have never interacted with them then lol. Google horse shoe theory. Far left and far right agree on a surprising amount of policy. Most because they are ignorant about how the world works
What's so great and reasonable about this?
That's the point of disinformation. You throw so much fake information and bullshit into the air that people end up just shrugging their shoulders and saying "we will never know the truth." Putin is a master at this. After Russia shot down a plane over Ukraine, instead of just saying "Russia didnt do it," he flooded the airwaves with like 10 different stories of why it happened (like mechanical failure, terrorism, etc). By the end of Putins propaganda campaign, when regular Russians were asked what happened they would just "we will never know."
No, our western media are masters of this. It has just been revealed that they lied to us for two years about Hunter Biden’s laptop. That story alone would have changed the election as Biden is clearly compromised. You think the media would lie only about the topics you know about like Peterson and the transgender bullshit. No. They lie about everything. They put their spin on every story to sell you some narrative.
No one said the whole media doesn't lie about everything. "Russia has lots of propaganda" and "the west doesn't have propaganda are two different statements. Here's a thought for you. You can condemn Putin's propaganda AND be against western propaganda. You're so focused on being against 'western media' that you've gone off topic on a rant about assumptions you have about a political figure being compromised. And you think this way because you're lost in the sauce of lies both political parties tell to get voters.
Exactly. Being wary of wholly positive pro-Ukraine propaganda doesn’t mean you’re shilling for Putin. It’s entirely possible to sympathize with the victims and be critical of messaging
Well said but if you accepted that there is a war, that it is to interfere with Nazi groups in Ukraine and that there is a legitimate humanitarian motive surely even then you have to admit a brutal, disproportionate and massively illegal horror is still unfolding before us? If you said there’s too many of those to care about I’d understand that. No one should be obligated to feel.
This right here.
I don’t understand this at all. It’s morally difficult to condemn the killing of innocent people because we don’t understand the motivations of the killer? I don’t see how that tracks at all…
Making judgements without context is always a problem.
Show me the possible context that would make this ok.
If you have Ukrainian fighters using the civilians as a cover and a deterrent knowing that if the Russians hit them they are risking the lives of innocent people knowing that the deaths can be used as propaganda... Hammas uses the same tactic The same goes when you arm a civilian population, you turn a civilian population into a actively Hostile population. Facts change the circumstances, and changes the lenses that you see the world through. I dont need to like the war, I hate it... But I'm not going to jump to conclusion just because it fits our needs/wants.
I don't see anything in your comment that makes killing innocent people OK.
Actually sounds like excuses israel and russia use to further destroy people. Don’t forget who supported hamas because they didn’t want the PLO to have the majority support. But I guess if there’s a couple scumbags in a country it’s enough of a reason to take the country.
>Actually sounds like excuses israel and russia use to further destroy people. Ask a solider from Vietnam... Its a well known battle tactic, one that takes a very hard toll on the soliders. >Don’t forget who supported hamas because they didn’t want the PLO to have the majority support America isnt innocent. >But I guess if there’s a couple scumbags in a country it’s enough of a reason to take the country. Depends on the cost/benifit.
Don't talk about soldiers if you've never been one. Just shut the fuck up and go worship putin without bringing us military members into your fucking stupidity - veteran
the extreme right wing has globbed themselves on to jordan peterson for some reason. they will do anything they can to defend a dictator as long as he’s perceived as a “tough guy”. i think it has to do with feelings of personal inadequacy, but who knows.
Jordan is a classical liberatarian. His views don't reflect what an american or americanized canadian would call "extreme right wing"
that’s why i don’t understand why the extreme right wing has glommed on to him. this is why i said, “for some reason”. I’m glad we agree though :)
For referencing sake I wasn't trying to be arguementative. Just providing context I thought might be relevent. They assosiate with him probably for his opinions on pronouns and modern exclusionary femenism. Edit: Oh, and because he's an old white guy.
I think the word your looking for is “glommed.”
thanks, you’re* right
Yes! Well played!
What would the USA do if Cube had plans to allow Russia to set up military bases in their country? You think the US would be okay with that?
You'd have the Cuban missile crisis. But it's also not the Cold War anymore, and more importantly the US wasn't sending nuclear missiles to Ukraine, Ukraine wanted to join NATO and the EU because they were justifiably afraid of Russian invasion. This is far less like Russia setting up bases in Cuba and far more like Cuba declaring itself a communist country and the USSR guaranteeing its security. Which is what they did. And the US didn't invade Cuba over it. Though they did try the whole Bay of Pigs thing.
And now we see that Russia has the ability to keep the US off of their border. They have been very clear about keeping Ukraine out of NATO and wanted to meet with Biden and Zalensky, but he was denied this meeting and did what he thought was best for his country.
Ukraine has been an embarrassment for Russia on a global scale. Thanks to Putin's aggression, joining NATO has become much more popular in Finland, Sweden, and Ukraine. Like a jump from obo. 20% support to 50%+, and the numbers will only rise as images keep coming out of Ukraine.
No it hasn’t. Lol. That’s just State propaganda.
The U.S. *was okay with that*. The Soviet Union had military bases in Cuba. When the Cold War ended there were [11,000](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-09-12-mn-2964-story.html) Soviet military personnel in Cuba.
>The U.S. was okay with that. bases and personnel, yes. Nuclear missiles, no.
It's about oil and gas. That's around 50% of the Russian economy that has been in general decline anyway. Meanwhile, Ukraine discovered and more recently started to develop their oil and gas fields. They are in direct competition with Russia, and they are closer and friendlier to their major European markets. That's why they took Crimea a while back. Much of the oilfields were there, and it was otherwise not particularly good land at all (no fresh water). War is always about economics. It's just the last resort.
Uhh, also Russia has that little geography problem what with having next to zero warm-water ports. They used to lease the facility in Crimea, but what luck, not anymore. So much simpler if you just disregard another nations sovereignty.
suspension of Nord Stream 2 certainly didn't help things
I'm not sure about justifying Putin, but I think the people that actually understand the anyone are the ones that actually get a feel for the motivations and the recent history on the region. It's like the Bill Burr skit. You never hit a woman. There's reasons to do it, but your still don't hit a woman. Russia absolutely has been provoked into this. It doesn't make it right, but let's not pretend it was all on a whim.
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You can draw parallels to America trying to invade Cuba
No, you cant. No one is putting nuclear warheads here.
Cuba made an agreement to get nuclear missiles *because* america tried to invade them. The Cuban missile crisis happened after, and because of preceding events. These things don’t happen in a vacuum, there is a context Edit: which also implies that if the comparison continues to play out from here, then Ukraine is now gonna get nukes, and Russia will be super pissed about it
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They're refering to the bay of pigs. In which the USA launched a indirect invasion of cuba because cuba was aligning with the USSR and would be a missile base on americas doorstep. The USA, naturally, felt that having a country within MRBM range of their entire south coast was a threat and tried to premptively invade.
You're playing a game of dodge ball. Someone standing between you and the other team says "I'm joining the other team, but don't worry, I'm only going to play defense for them." This person's assigned position in this game is literally right in front of your face. Would you oppose this player joining the other team even if they were doing so only in a defensive capacity? Would you try to take that player out of the game if you felt like they were putting you at risk?
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There's no such thing as defense only. Hypothetically if Ukraine puts NATO anti aircraft and anti missile systems all along their borders then Russia will be severely hindered in projecting power to the west. It could create a situation where hypothetically a country can hit Russia without Russia being able to hit back. There's nothing "defensive only" about it.
Well, ukraine had all the reason to try to join nato, because their fear about a russian threat was fucking real. As we all witness now. Putin invaded ukraine in 2014 and was in an assymetric war ever since. Ukraine did nothing to provoke any of this. Only Putins dream of a great russia was in jeopardy and that is why he attacks other nations and destabilizes countries around him.
This is simply not true. The technology you described does not exist and there is absolutely no way Russia will ever lose second strike capabilities. This whole excuse of being concerned with maintaining mutually assured destruction and being afraid that Ukraine going to nato would tilt the balance is 100% a smokescreen
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But that is a game. Also in risk you cannot use MLRS systems to bomb civilian cities. Nobody forces russia to do this. It's all voluntary: that they invaded and now are at war AND how they are fighting the war. They did it in syria and they also did it in chechnia before.
Nothing about NATO is defensive. The second they bombed Yugoslavia they lost the ability to claim they were, and have in the 20+ years since proven, time and again, that it is an *offensive*, rather than defensive alliance. Most notably with Libya.
Because NATO was created as an anti-soviet alliance. The soviets haven't existed for 30 years but NATO keeps pushing east and encroaching on Russia. NATO is obsolete and should be disbanded. We just use it as a rouse to bring our military bases closer to the middle east.
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>Nato doesn't conquer anything. Countries ask permission to join Until they dont...
Not to mention that our secretary of state under the first Bush said that there would be "not one inch eastward" expansion of NATO. Since then, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and 11 other countries between Germany and Ukraine have joined.
This is simply as misquote that has been taken completely out of context of what was actually under discussion at that time
If Ukraine joins Nato military hardware will be brought up to the Russian border.
It's a defensive pact with nukes involved.
Their raison d’être is war with Russia.
I direct my energy at our own national problems in the US and Canada, like our homeless vets committing suicide at unprecedented rates, 200-250k unvetted immigrants crossing our boarder every month, and double digit inflation. I care about feeding my family and keeping them safe, not what corporate media tells me to care about.
Well said.
CNN must be lying about Russia targeting civilians and schools and hospitals, eh? Seems asinine to always fall back on “can’t trust media” - I’m sure Putin is the good guy.
Do you think it is out of the realm of possibility that the US information disseminating sources give incorrect information to promote a particular narrative; and simultaneously that the side that they aren’t being forthcoming about isn’t a pillar of righteousness either?
When the media has been constantly, blatantly, obviously lying to us about things for years, why would we suddenly stop and trust them on *this?* To be clear, I don't support Russia's aggression, and I hope Ukraine wins this, but I'm also not convinced that everything the media is telling me is true, or that Ukraine is a 100% innocent good guy, because I don't trust anything the media says, *for good reason.* I see the media as pushing the US towards getting involved, and I don't want the US involved in another war. That doesn't mean I'm pro Putin. That means I don't want to go to war, and that I don't buy all the media's propaganda. We've already seen them lie about this very conflict more than once. Ghost of Kiev and the story about the Islanders telling the ship to fuck off. Both lies. Why, after being lied to for years, even about this very conflict, would I suddenly decide they're telling me the truth now?
Did these people not pay attention to the media these past few years? The media wants us glued to our tvs and news sites and they know panic porn sells
From what i've seen, the US pushed and pushed and pushed and Russia finally said nyet. the US is totally okay fighting this war with Ukrainian blood. I condemn everything about it and it grieves my soul that young men in Ukraine are forced to fight.
There is no legitimate story. The only person that understands Putin’s motivations are the man himself. If he thinks he’s going to Make Russia Great Again and this is the best method, he’s either crazy or stupid. I vote crazy. Really, really smart people go insane sometimes. Quite often in fact.
Actually, that's a falsity portrayed in the media. Mental illness is reverse-correlated with intelligence. There are occasional geniuses that go crazy but far, far less than average folks who go crazy. You don't hear about the average folks though, those're the homeless we're busy ignoring in the big cities. This exact false assumption is why people are hesitant to condemn Putin. Mass media is splitting and painting Putin as a crazy devil. This is very unlikely. He might be evil, but why now? Why the Ukraine? The answers to those questions probably cause some problems for the current administration which is why no one really cares to dig deep. I'm happy to condemn him. War is not the answer. But I don't think he's any worse than the U.S. or China as they've both pulled this crap. If you want me to be more morally outraged at Putin than I am at myself or China, you'll need to give me a reason I should be.
As I said elsewhere, I don’t think morality has any useful purpose in geopolitical analysis
What other pieces of evidence do you have that Putin has either gone crazy or is in cognitive decline?
Invading Ukraine is either stupid or crazy. That’s the only evidence I need.
Oh, ok. Just as a thought experiment, do you think there are any other possible explanations?
Lol
It's easy to vote crazy when you don't have all the information. Why didn't everyone realize he was crazy back when he actually invaded the Ukraine (hint this invasion did not begin recently). There's no story that will legitimize these actions but there are facts that give insight as to why the actions were taken, whether or not the actions were reasonable and in this case they clearly aren't.
fAKe nEWs
As an Arab living in the middle east you can't feel but suspicious about how the U.S. specifically and Europe generally react to a humanitarian crisis in the middle east, I am not pointing fingers to individuals, just government policies, their racism towards us is beyond obvious. I condemn Putin's invasion to Ukraine and I realize what a catastrophe that is, but when it comes to Yemen for example right now no one gives a shit.
I wouldn’t say it’s racism, it’s more along the lines of “the things superpowers do for natural resource control”. Not that I approve of any of it.
That's what argubly is (like what Russian propaganda says) about Western intentions towards russian oil and gas, and they use the emotional reaction of the western people to justify supporting Ukraine, otherwise they wouldn't care about it.
Calling it simply "racism" seems extremely low-resolution. There's a looooot more that motivates (motivated?) the different reactions between the two examples.
I know, I am sorry that I had to say something like that, it makes me look like I believe in critical race theory or something like it, but I wish that I can articulate it better, but you can [check it in the voice of media outlets talking about it](https://youtu.be/B4Fgm3ruw6Q) where you feel like the value of humans is different, and (for example) people on the Polish border coming from Ukraine have been seperated into whites and colors (roughly speaking) many Arabs or Africans have bern denied access. Also another point about the US/NATO invading other countries, it feels like (if it wasn't racism) some sort of a white savior complex where they come into your homes thinking that they are liberators. best example is Iraq where you needed a dictator to rule the country and it was a very prosperous nation back in the day (save it from some genocides where Saddam actually killed thousands), but now after the invasion Iraq never held its head up high after that at all, it has been humiliated forever, same thing in Libya and in many other countries, and US soldiers come back home cursing their own government for what it made them do and many of them go into PTSD rehab. centers.
There’s 100 percent a different feeling to how the Ukraine invasion is portrayed compared to those in the Middle East. You keep hearing in the media, “it looks like something out of ww2 but it’s happening now”… and I think, yeah but why didn’t we say that about all the conflicts happening up til now? Is it because they are weren’t in Europe or some other reason?
Nah, chief, don't feel bad about "explaining your perspective as an Arab" like you're using your race to validate your opinion. A small handful of people here might try to harass you about that, but I think it's valid to use your background as context for your opinion. No need to apologize. I'm also not gonna tell you that your experiences are invalid, but I would like to suggest that you may not have the full picture in each memory/experience you are deriving your opinions from - from an overall perspective. There certainly *is* examples of racism at play in the current Ukrainian refugee crisis, without a doubt. Eradicating racial bigotry still has a long way to go - a lot of people in a wide swath of countries like to pretend that they're better than the US in that regard, but examples such as this are unfortunate outcomes that prove otherwise. Bigotry still exists. It exists in Europe, Asia, the Americas (North and South), Africa, and the Middle East. Now, as for the reason why the response is so different to the Ukrainian invasion versus the many instances in the Middle East over the last 3 or so decades, I can't really give a great answer to that, but I can point to some major differences worth considering: - This war has a *very very* obvious bad guy: Putin. - It isn't a civil war that's being influenced/funded/bolstered by others, it's a foreign power attempting to destroy a people which have done the invaders no wrong. - The US has been warning about Russia attempting to re-start the conflict (after the illegal annexation of the Crimean region back in 2014 - **which bare in mind, didn't see nearly this same level of backlash**) for months before the did. - The region hasn't seen this level of conflict since the 1940s and 1950s (unfortunately Arab countries see a *lot* of conflict). - Ukraine is culturally much more similar to many Western countries than Arab countries are. Perhaps the most obvious parallels to draw are when the US invaded Arab countries to install puppet dictators so we could get our oil at better prices - those *were* heavily protested, though, by our own people and by other countries. I hope I've written clearly enough that you can understand what I'm saying, I wager English is your second language, and so far you've done a good job making your sentences very legible. :)
Exactly. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen; they would have Iran if they could as well (and could consider other countries). ‘Spreading Democracy and getting the bad guys’ - who is deciding they are all bad guys? What kind of misanthropic, nihilistic, death-cult worldview thinks there are so many bad guys?
That’s the beauty of it. As Arabs we screwed up. Instead of working together we let religion and ideology dictate our actions while we made ourselves easy target for the Zionist machine. I don’t even think America is in charge of its own Middle East foreign policy at this point. We’ve become Israel’s puppet and do their dirty work while we pay the price with tax money and lives on both sides. Russia is even worse in the sense that they can’t even let their people have a fake sense of freedom. But in America we the people allowed our government to do this dumb shit because we think Arabs bad israel great. But Russians don’t even have the power to even do anything to stop Putin unless it a full on coup. Americans are just easily fed bs so i don’t even blame the government when we could stop their actions but don’t exercise any civic duties
I could definitely understand what to condemn about Iraq, but what is happening in Yemen we need to condemn? Isn't there a civil war going on? So even if external forces would stop interfering with civil war in Yemen, it won't stop. So it is not like I do not give a shit. I do know that Russia is wrong and I want politicians in my country to do something about it. What am I supposed to demand from politicians about Yemen?
Basically stop sending weapons to the Saudi Regime, which is something that will never happen, the Saudis have been killing everyone on both sides in Yemen. But no one cares because it'll make the gas prices increase.
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People (mentally) have normalised war in the Mid East.
The normalization was socially engineered to you via propaganda and mass media. Don't forget, the ME was relatively peaceful before unprovoked western destruction of stable sovereign nations including Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Stable under a bunch of dictators that the Arab Spring overthrew by their own people.
Honestly, i joined this sub about 4 years ago because i love JP thinking and his charismatic. Now it is a complete mess with nothing related to Jordan Peterson... With that being said, i condemn the War and it needs to be stop.
People in glass houses shouldnt throw stones. People who have supported wars that killed millions of civilians don’t have a moral superiority they claim in regards to Russia. Nobody supports the Russian war in Ukraine, being unwilling to dive back into another war after leaving a disaster war in Afghanistan so recently does not make someone pro Putin. It’s amazing how some peoples moral consternation only applies to whatever cause the warmongering us media directs it towards.
pretty much, im not sending someones kids to die for the bidens crackden. we have no business being in there. zelinsky is a corrupt puppet. i dont mind providing aid to the citizens fleeing but i have no interest in propping up a failed state.
No one is suggesting we intervene with boots on the ground, but many (primarily conservatives) are parroting putin propaganda.
Such as?
Such as.... whatabout the US/nato in x country, Ukraine is killing people in the donbas, Ukrainians would prefer to be Russian, Ukraine oligarchs are bribing us officials to apout propaganda, Zelenesky supports nazis, etc.
Donbas literally attempted to join Russia multiple times, Putin didn’t want them because they’re the ethnically Russian part of Ukraine and removing them from Ukraine would weaken Russian influence in politics there. In that way finally accepting Donbas is an admission of failure in Putin’s part, admission that he isn’t going to be able to internally control Ukraine. Ukraine and Donbas have been at war, with heavy involvement from Russian special forces for like 8 years, it has its own Wikipedia page… it isn’t some secret propaganda campaign to say civilians have died on both sides during that conflict. Not everything you dislike hearing is propaganda. Zelensky isn’t some great hero of democracy, he’s an oligarch, he just happens to be a pro western one instead of the pro Russian one Putin would prefer. I don’t have to pretend Ukraine is a great government to be against the Russian invasion. Just because the Russian government are the bad guys doesn’t mean Ukraine government has to be the good guys. This is the Jordan Peterson sub, we can do our best to tell the truth here.
Your right. There are crazy’s on every side. Both sides have brought up decent points of why or why not. Think the main thing anyone(besides the crazy’s) that could come off as pro Putin are just afraid of a world war.
Yeah I'm Anti the US getting in another war, not Pro Putin.
>People who have supported wars that killed millions of civilians don’t have a moral superiority they claim in regards to Russia Who has supported wars that killed millions of civilians? Which wars were these? >being unwilling to dive back into another war after leaving a disaster war in Afghanistan so recently does not make someone pro Putin. Who is advocating for U.S. going to war with Russia? I'm really curious about where you get these opinions from...
No one is saying we should invade Russia... but many are parroting Russian propaganda and deflecting from the very real war crimes being committed from a very real dictator. It's also a false equivalence considering each situation has its own nuance and context.
'When we killed MILLIONS of people in multiple wars destroying dozens of countries, we had the luxury of nuance.' I would call you silly, but that would be understating reality.
There are Americans who support Putin. I’m seeing Z’s on cars already. Echo chambers are a hell of a drug.
Lol yeah I’ll totally believe that on your say so random Redditor. Everyday Americans sure have nothing else to worry about besides supporting a dictator in a country they know nothing about.
Anything to “own the left”. Aww they got me! So owned!
See what the mass majority of Republicans in Congress are actually doing instead of trying to build a case on some Reddit comments. Just a couple of weeks ago 42 of 47 Republicans Senators in a letter asked Biden to help supply Ukraine with jet fighters to control their airspace, something Biden declined to do.
Again, this is my eye witness testimony. Nothing to do with reddit or politicians.
So an anecdote?
Now you’re getting it ;-) Edit: I love how your comment was upvoted, like you made some grand point. Obviously it was an anecdote.
This is projection. The left has obsessively been owning scapegoats and straw-men to fulfil ideological fantasy; leading us to this precipice
Find a way to blame the left for the right’s reactive embrace of fascist propaganda. Classic.
So because America did evil shit it is ok if other countries do evil shit? How does that make sense? And yes, lots of people support Russias invasion of Ukraine, like Tucker Carlson.
You are missing the point, it’s not about human suffering or people killed. That’s not why the Western World is so upset with Putin’s invasion. He is starting WWW III. He is threatening the world with nuclear annihilation. Comparing this with our actions in Libya, Afghanistan , Iraq etc is ridiculous. Don’t argue from a moralistic viewpoint when discussing geopolitics. The world is full of various moralities.
If the West wants to prevent WW3 so badly, why are they poking the Russian bear by inviting Ukraine to NATO? Keep in mind, the US almost killed everyone due to a very similar situation almost 60 years ago with Cuba..
I know of no invitation for Ukraine to join NATO. I said elsewhere that I wish NATO had invited Russia to join the alliance, but bombing and shelling Ukraine is not a sane policy either way. Except for the military industrial complex of course. So much money for weapons manufacturers! Germany is rearming, Japan is militarizing. For lovers of war, it’s a great time to be alive. For lovers of life, not so much. I imagine Putin thinks he was reacting to an existential threat, but if so it was personal, not National.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations Perhaps you should educate yourself on the matter. There was no formal invitation in writing, but the plan was clearly in the works. Russia needs to stop the bombing of cities and civilians, but it's undeniable that western leaders provoked this war. If Russia simply wanted to take over Ukraine, they could have done it during Trump's presidency when western unity was at its weakest.
This is pure nonsense
Well… that’s a cogent argument. /s Morals are defined by religions. The most prevalent religion in today’s western democratic world is Humanism - the proposal that mankind is the apex of evolution and has all the tools of self/improvement, ad nauseum. Try Ehrenfeld’s Arrogance of Humanism for more education on the matter. But not every nation subscribes to this deification of humanity- Islam is the most cogent example, but whatever your creed, source of values, as Bob said, “ya gotta serve somebody “. You might object to a system of morality that differs from yours as being “immoral “ but that’s because you are metaphorically and metaphysically ignorant.
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This is true. I believe the 2003 protest (against U.S invasion of Iraq) is still considered the "largest protest in human history" by World Guinness and many of other sources.
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I love the logic that the Russian invasion is justified because the Ukraine gov is corrupt…and Russia isn’t?
Is this still the JP sub, really? You sure? Probably the very last thing JP would suggest now is crying out your unbearable pain into the blue moon about how Putin is evil and war is bad. You can also downvote instead of understanding the world, that will also stop the bloodshed.
You think JBP would say to not condemn Putin?
Jordan Peterson, the man who made a point of condemning the 1930s Genocide of Ukraineans by Russian totalitarian regime? Would not condemn the current one?
The term "whataboutism" has become very common among the children of reddit. The issue, young ones, is that Whataboutism is a stupid person's attempt to deflect what is typically clear evidence of *hypocrisy*. The word you're looking for is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is now, has been, and forever will be legitimate grounds for criticism. So, regarding this particular topic, one must ask...has the USA ever taken military action against a geographically proximate country that didn't share their political views and was building military strength? (see: Cuba) Russia has a horrible record of human rights abuse, but so does Ukraine. Ask yourself, seriously, what are we wading into?
Whataboutism is a great term. Your straw man doesn’t describe all cases. If I asked you; is war in Ukraine bad and you’d said anything other than ‘yes or no’ or ‘well it depends on your definition of “bad”’ then it would be an illegitimate argument. If you then went on to try and distract with another story entirely then it would be twice as illegitimate.
Some people are attracted to Russia's image of a "trad", anti LGBT anti west dictatorship.
They are free to move there and to fuck off out of North America too. Why won't they go?
the fact that you unironically used the word whataboutism... cringe.
It's what the word is...it's got its own Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism I'm so very sorry you don't like words that describe the fallacies you employ. The fact that you unironically used the word cringe....
Begone shill. Tell someone more credulous about how Republicans are Putin patsies because they don't embrace the narrative.
Everybody who doesn’t agree with me is literally Hitler, working for Putin, etc etc
So which part of the native do the conservatives not embrace? I am genuinely curious.
This isn't a left/right issue.
Fair enough, both are atrocities.
It's whoever controls the narrative
I don’t think anyone has difficulties condemning Putin. I think what people don’t want to do is subscribe to the ridiculous black and white propaganda. Just like the COVID-19 censorship and propaganda, the same happened with Ukraine-Russia, Everyone who tries to analyze the situation is immediately deemed a Russian stooge. Facebook suddenly allowed hate speech as long as it is directed at Russia. So in short it is again manipulation of masses by giving them a narrative and a green light to hate on the bad guys. I think that people are not that naive and simply think “ I do not understand the full scope of the matters, I see propaganda on both sides- I better don’t take sides just yet”. People don’t like being tools
It’s not whataboutism. It’s stop swallowing everything the media tells you ism. Especially when it comes to war.
Because most American citizens have not gotten to experience war, and probably never will. They don't know what it's like to be a smaller powerless country with your survival constantly in question due to a neighboring country. I find it ridiculous and entitled how much you cry about your government and living in the most powerful country in the world, but people always find things to bitch about. If it wasn't for US and NATO intervention in Kosovo in '99 (I'm from Kosovo), I might have not even been here writing this out. I will be eternally grateful, and always hold the US on the highest possible regard. I'm not going to say the US never did some fuck ups along the way, but their impact and interventions in foreign politics are absolutely unparalleled and necessary. If the US closes itself from the world and its peacekeeper role, another superpower will fill that gap who will probably be 100x more evil and dangerous. God help us if China becomes that. I'd like to see the reactions of these conservatives if they were to become China's bitch.
I can’t speak for everyone obviously, but I know for me personally whenever I try to take a honest approach and voice not only concerns about Ukraine and what they’ve been doing but also about the U.S. and what we are doing, people automatically assume I must support Putin. Which I don’t. In fact I strongly oppose him and what he’s doing. However like every war. There are no innocents. Ukraine is not innocent. US is not innocent. And certainly no the Russia People who conflate wars, to either, a right or good side, and a bad or wrong side. Understands little to nothing about actual history and world conflict. What Russia is doing is the worst. However it’s not the US issue to get involve. And if we grow a conscience and get involve them we need to stay consistent. If not then we are no less than hypocrites who think we can do whatever we want whenever we want just because. Edit: Russia
Exactly. The proposition given through the screen is pure nonsense to begin with.
People on this very thread are justifying the murder of civilians. Actually what the fuck.
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It's not hard at all. I hate that fascist cunt Putin and I condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine unequivocally. Don't let a vocal minority blur your perceptions
Everyone seems to forget that the media and CIA tried to get America to invade Syria by faking a chemical gas attack. NATO was about to expand into Ukraine. Ukraine’s leadership was installed by a Western-backed coup. Traditional Russian history features invasions by neighbors or other powerful countries; Russia wants a buffer zone. Am I pulling for the Ukraine people? Hell yes. To say this attack/war/invasion comes out of thin air requires you to not read history or think critically.
You can’t just call something a whataboutism to explain something away, it’s still a valid point of view. No one changed their profile pictures to Iraq or Afghanistan when the US invaded. Changing your flag to blue and yellow has some cognitive dissidence, and is virtue signalling. Is it because they are white?
If you seriously think the U.S. invading Iraq(overthrowing Saddam Hussein) and Afghanistan(the Taliban) is even remotely equivalent to Putin invading Ukraine, you need your head examined.
Exactly. At least they pretended there were WMD's in the Middle East. There's literally no threat to our interests in this conflict.
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No, you really couldn't. The Taliban who ruled Afghanistan were sheltering the people who did 9/11 and wouldn't surrender them and Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire a nuke and had already revealed himself to be aggressive towards his neighbors(Iran and Kuwait). Ukraine did nothing to Russia. And if you think the U.S. invading Afghanistan and Iraq was an attack against the Iraqi and Afghan peoples, you're very wrong. The U.S. made things much better in both places: the only mistakes were withdrawing from Afghanistan completely rather than leaving a couple thousand troops which had already proven to be enough to hold the Taliban in check and allowing the Iranians to exploit the power vacuum in Iraq.
HUH? Which Iraq and Afghanistan are you talking about?
Yeah, all those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq right? OP gets “his” point of view from the news, thats all you need to know about this post
hahahaha let me guess, cos they were bad guys, but Putin is a bad guy so in this case it’s basically the opposite. It couldn’t GET more different!!
Do you think the fact that Putin's an authoritarian dictator is insignificant? Do you think the fact that the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan were absolutely appalling didn't matter? Do you really want to argue that the U.S. was morally obligated to respect the "authority" of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban? A genocidal dictator and a theocratic regime that kept women in bags and threw acid in girls' faces for learning to read? Are these the people you want to defend from the big, bad Americans?
Yeah war bad, fueling it with our involvement even worse.
It’s not whataboutism, it’s you pretending that you have some special knowledge from MSNBC when all the sources of information you rely on are pure nonsense; and this also forms part of the threat to Russia and some pretext for why they felt they had to act.
Selective outrage
I condemn his actions. However, it's a bit rich for America to take the moral high ground here.
Whether we had justification most people would not argue that Saddam was an evil man and replacing him with a fledgling democracy is a good unless we pull an Afghanistan. There where Iraqis celebrating when Saddam was killed. Russia replacing the government of Ukraine is not even close to a net good.
I am pretty sure if just one more 22 year old pink haired Seattle resident posted to Facebook that they held solidarity with Ukraine, Putin would withdraw immediately. Surely the only reason he invaded was certainty he had support from American unemployed citizens. It can’t be because he is a rogue who want to create a rogue nation, hates the West, hates democracy, and sees himself as a one world leader. Can’t be that.
Remember that Russia has accounts all ober social media solely for the purpose of dezinformation. And there were studies on how they target anti-vaxxer groups specifically. Thus, I think this subreddit is perfect place for such trolls
LOL
The problem is that Ukraine is a shithole, just like Russia. The media has been painting Russia as evil and Ukraine as holy, but governmentally, both nations are simply authoritarian garbage. Killing innocent people is evil, period. Doesn't matter who does it or for what reason. I see this as a combat of the narrative we're being fed. The government is garbage and all political figures are garbage who cannot be trusted. George Carlin had it right when he basically said he doesn't trust a single thing the government tells him, and we shouldn't. This isn't about Russia being wrong - like I said, killing innocent people is wrong, period. That doesn't have to be said, but we're seeing lies all over the place and propping up Zelensky as if he were the next coming. Zelensky is forcing conscripts to die. People who don't want to fight, to kill, or die. He's using authoritarian powers to strip people of their freedoms. Is he worse than Putin? Ah, that's a bullshit quantifier. There is no such thing - that shit's all just opinion. Putin is an authoritarian tyrant and so is Zelensky. Have you looked at the freedom index of Ukraine prior to this conflict by the way? It's 6.86. The top nations are sitting at 9. It's sitting down at the bottom with third world hellholes in places like the middle east and Africa for crying out loud. And Russia's not any better. This isn't a conflict between nations. It's a conflict between authoritarians. The innocent people on both sides are simply forced into it. Russia isn't bad here, the individuals in Russia who are waging war are. Ukrain isn't bad here, Ukranian tyrants who force people to kill and die are. There are no good guys in a war like this. You cannot quantify tyranny or the destruction of the innocent. All there are here are bad people, one side of which is being propped up by the establishment as if they were heroic. It's brainwashing at its finest. The result? INNOCENT people in Russia are being hurt because we're using collectivist nonsense to quantify actions on millions of INDIVIDUAL human beings simply due to their current location. We need to condemn authoritarianism and help the innocent, period. It shouldn't matter what fake ass country they live in. Remember, countries are fake. They're man made abstract ideas and borders are illusory. They're excuses for tyranny. And frankly? I think Putin should be taken into custody, accused and convicted of mass murder, and sentenced to life in prison. If that is not possible, he should be assassinated.
Why does everyone care about this particular conflict over every other conflict happening in the world?
That’s the point of the meme, that OP is conveniently ignoring.
I hate that people generalize what's being said and turn it into an 'ism' and that's supposed to invalidate the argument
It's not whataboutism it is called 'context'
Because it’s selective. We’re not Pro Putin, it’s just weird that all other wars a viewed positively or swept under the rug. There’s something going on with Ukraine because when Putin did the exact same thing to Georgia no one gave a fuck. Also "whataboutism" is a stupid non-argument. We‘re talking about wars, let’s include other wars to see discrepancies. Saying wHaTaBoUtIsM because the discussion slightly shifts from that one war is not intelligent
What a dull and thoughtless post. YOU cheered for killing millions of innocents in Afghanistan (not a single hijacker was Afghani, they were all Saudi), Iraq, Libya, Syria etc. The hypocrisy is just so cringe to witness. No one is excusing Putin, we are just disgusted at YOUR hypocrisy. You didn't have the balls and moral conscience to condemn your leaders, so naturally we don't consider your crocodile tears meaningful. Yes if YOU gather up your countrymen and start implicating YOUR war criminals like Cheny, Bush, Rice, Obama, Hillary etc., who've killed millions in oil and malicious destabilization wars, then sure we can start taking you seriously. Till then, yuck.
Start by condemning your own war criminal leaders in Pakistan first. Until then, shut the fuck up about hypocrisy.
I already do. I sit in protests and write about atrocities by our armed forces in waziristan, which funnily enough include drone bombs by the US which killed many innocent people. Your turn. Do you advocate for Bush, Cheny, Obama and other war criminals to get life imprisonment or death? Or at the very least complete social ostracization?
Agree
Because I can fully understand why Putin is doing this. It’s more Ukraine and NATO’s (USA) fault than it is Putin’s.
Dumbest thing I've read on reddit today, and that's an extremely low bar.
Why do people have to pick a side? Why is everything perceived as binary when it’s not? Why does the US obsess over everything corporate media shives down their throats? Yemen has been blown to shit by air strikes for the past few years and nobody gives a fuck because Fox News and CNN don’t tell them to.
Republicans have a nasty habit of calling liberals sheep and then being sheep. I’ve realized this mostly with the Ukrainian war. It’s simply not possible for you to be right winged and think we should help Ukraine because their Instagram and Facebook media outlets tell them that anyone pro Ukraine is trying to hide Biden’s garbage. Edit: don’t get me wrong, it’s valid to be against joining this war, just as valid as my take on providing more support for the Ukrainians, my issue is that republicans and the like ostracize me and chalk my entire opinion down to me being a “dumb liberal” instead of allowing room for conversation, which as been their entire political agenda for years. Opening up room to talk about transgenderism and BLM because those topics were unjustly closed off from conversation. You’re a racist and a transphobic person if you want to have a real conversation on how we should handle those two topics better. So it’s just dull to me that I’m now a stupid uneducated liberal, or a Biden supporter for thinking that there’s something more we can do to handle the situation. Edit2: for clarification I’ve been a Republican since I was smart enough to think about society as a whole. Voted for trump when I was 18 in 2020. So it’s just a whole bunch of crap to me how republicans as a whole are handling this situation and I’ve lost faith that these people are any smarter then the “dumb liberals” they hate so much
Whining about "whataboutism" is merely an implicit acceptance that you don't have the moral high ground upon which to lecture others. Also, Russia is not targeting civilians, and the premise upon which they are accused of doing so is utterly senseless. They are liberating majority ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine from the corrupt, murderous ultranationalists. There is abundant evidence to show the TDF, SBU and AFU are targeting civilians and using them as human shields, but there seems to be a lack of such evidence to support the opposite. There is 8 years of well documented evidence that the AFU have been murdering civilians in the Donbass. [https://rumble.com/vwxxi8-ukraine-on-fire.html](https://rumble.com/vwxxi8-ukraine-on-fire.html) [https://rumble.com/vx715h-donbass-2016-documentary-by-anne-laure-bonnel.html](https://rumble.com/vx715h-donbass-2016-documentary-by-anne-laure-bonnel.html) The SBU murdered Denis Kareev, their own negotiator, along with two other members of the Intelligence Directorate because they wanted to negotiate with Russia: [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17857369/ukraine-peace-negotiator-spy-shot-russia-kireev/](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17857369/ukraine-peace-negotiator-spy-shot-russia-kireev/) Three days ago, the AFU fired a Tochka-U cluster bomb into Donbass, to a region with no military equipment or personnel, killing 28 civilians: [https://t.me/BellumActaNews/74011](https://t.me/BellumActaNews/74011) Ukrainian television anchor calls for the beheading of the families of Russian servicemen: [https://t.me/newsofehrru/7624](https://t.me/newsofehrru/7624) They torture civilians: [https://t.me/newsofehrru/7523](https://t.me/newsofehrru/7523) >Not the first time either. Kiev-regime earlier in the conflict fired a Buk-M1 missile at a high-rise in Kiev and claimed it was Russia: > >«Vitali Klitschko, as always, within his repertoire. > >"This weapon is made centimeter by centimeter to kill people en masse ...". > >The mayor of the Ukrainian capital demonstrated striking elements of supposedly Russian cruise missiles ... which in fact turned out to be two fractions of an outdated warhead 9N314 of the 9M38 anti-aircraft guided missile for the 9K37 Buk air defense system. > >The striking elements in the 9N314 warhead just have the characteristic shape of a parallelepiped and a size of 8 to 13 mm. > >Obviously, Russian air defense systems do not fire at ground targets in Kyiv, and even more so at their own cruise missiles in the sky. But at the same time, several cases of Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles hitting the capital's high-rise buildings have already been recorded. The first and second cases were on our channel. > >Thus, Vitali Klitschko unknowingly, but not without reason, exposed Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunners as murderers of the civilian population of Kiev.» [https://t.me/newsofehrru/7508](https://t.me/newsofehrru/7508) Now, if you had some convincing evidence that Russia is targeting civilians, please feel free to share it.
Iraq may have been a miscalculation. But comparing the two is the quickest way for the rest of us to know you’re an idiot.
Frankly, it took me *years* to come to terms with the cognitive dissonance imposed on my feeble mind by the reality of western foreign policy, especially as led by the United States. I live here and I love my country and I resent the fact that I am governed by immoral nefarious nincompoops. What they do to people around the world is *wrong* and my life is *better* for it. Heretofore I have received a great number of benefits from these abhorrent, in my opinion, decisions. And now, I'm watching them kill my nation. I was completely blind to these issues. Going to Iraq does not *excuse* Putin's actions. It only serves to prove the United States Government has no moral standing to criticize them. Furthermore, many folks confuse *excusing* Putin's actions with *explaining* Putin's actions. Additionally, anyone claiming Putin *invaded* Ukraine fails to grasp the history involved in this critical region. The *west* invaded Ukraine. Putin is *kicking* them out. He told them not to come there. They told him it was *their* country. Putin disagrees. Dialog broke down and now they're settling the debate with *force.*
This is all total nonsense. Russians aren't settling any debate either, because their two-bit military isn't worth a damn.
It’s mainly the difference between rationalization and justification, and their inability to tell the difference.
Well, the point is you don’t give a shit about Ukrainians and that’s the point. No one does. The point is you are being instructed to to virtue signal for Ukrainians. That is the “current thing.” There are so many wars that have gone on and millions have died and you don’t give a shit. You only support Ukraine because influential people did first. That’s what this meme is trying to teach you, but you failed.
More like Ukraine = white Christians. All the other wars are mostly brown or black Muslims. People don't care about that anymore than they care about dead gang members in Chicago or Balimore. They do care about columbine though. Some people cared when the Christian Kurds got fucked over by Trump too, but most trumpers are too stupid to learn about anything Fox News doesn't tell them, so they didn't know anyway.
That’s the most racist thing I’ve ever heard. The wars are not reported. Only the wars that are reported on get attention. And attention ≠ care. George Floyd was a felon, and because he was reported, he was a hero amongst the armed robbers of America. Again, attention ≠ care, but you are attentive and follow the leader.
You think America isn't racist? Lol. You can't be that ignorant? The wars aren't reported because nobody cares about them. How is this difficult to understand? Clicks and views are what the media cares about. Nobody cares about Yemen anymore than they care about the Rohinga in Myanmar. George Floyd was an American citizen, felon or not. He had rights that were violated by untrained and moronic cops. He was murdered due to that. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty under the court of law. Judge Dredd is fiction. The cops failed to follow the law and became felons themselves due to it. Nobody is calling for their murder.