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Ukraine V

It’s one thing Russian propagandists like Simonyen and Solovyev openly masturbating in public but to have leader of the party of government, former President and Prime Minister of Russia suggesting a hypersonic missile strike on the International Criminal Court is an indication of how self- intoxicated the latter day Politburo has become:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dmitr...with-missile-strike-over-putin-arrest-warrant
 
TheDecameron said:
In the context of what this thread is about, I see no value in retrospective hand wringing. Putin has said a major European country has no right to exist and is systematically destroying it because the population has resisted. The task is to support the Ukrainians to expel Russia from their country and prevent Russia from returning or attempting the same with other neighbouring sovereign states. It really is no more complicated than that.
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I agree that it shouldn't be more complicated than that. The unfortunate thing is that, in having acted less than honourably in pursuit of national interests in the recent past, the US and the UK provides some cover for Russia to do what it did, at least in terms of the line it sells to its own people but arguably also in claiming it is just following recent historical precedent. It's a smokescreen, of course, and the underlying moral case is somewhat murkier, but if the US and UK had not behaved as they did, there wouldn't be this figleaf of justification available to Russia at all.
 
ks.234 said:

Absolutely. Saddam and his family were deplorable, but if we are to deplore them, we also have to ask how they got there? Why did the West fund the Kurds against Iraq at the behest of the Shah of Iran, a murderous Tyrant put in place by the US after they toppled the elected president Mohammad Mosaddegh, and why the US funded Saddam against Iran after the Shah was deposed, and supplied intelligence to enable Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran.

So yes Saddam was guilty of mass atrocities, but if we are making moral judgements, we have to ask how he got into the position where he was capable of committing such horrendous acts against humanity.

We should also consider the US use of chemical weapons and the price of which is still being paid by ordinary Iraqi people who still suffer from cancers and deformed babies.

An excellent post cast on Iraq from a US perspective here https://open.substack.com/pub/ralph...-years-later?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Not sure what you mean here. ISTM that nation’s do not make foreign policy decisions based on morality but on strategic and political considerations, hence it was deemed beneficial to support Saddam, then to depose him and why the Kurds were encouraged to take up arms, then abandoned. Maybe we should have a foreign policy driven by moral considerations, but we don’t. It is a mistake to think that the US is supporting Ukraine for moral reasons, the real reasons are strategic.

Shame we are back to the use of the word “you”. It means I have to respond in kind. You have no idea what I would do under any circumstances let alone the ones you consider here.

Our respective democracies have been frayed for decades for internal, not external causes. Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK threw up threats to democracy that still persist today (and in the UK have grown) and have nothing to do with Putin. The threats to our democracy are homegrown and we would do well to look at those causes before going on any moral crusade.

Besides, counterfactuals are not particularly useful, if Putin had won a quick victory in Ukraine, he would only have been able to declare the final death of Western imperialism if it no longer still existed and a victory in Ukraine would not be sufficient to do that.

When it comes to declaring the death on one ideology and the final victory of another, there were many commentators ready to accept the final victory of liberal democracy at the collapse of the USSR, but this supposed ‘end of history’ turned out to be somewhat premature making such pronouncements redundant
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YOU, and I have to address you directly, are once again hijacking the thread about war in Ukraine, to flog your horse of Ultimate Culpability for Anything Always Rests with the West and Particularly the US.

All of the "historical examples" you flood the thread with are always the same - bad thing X happened, and look, the West did Y before, which some say contributed to X, so we can firmly conclude that West is at fault - and here is a Substack missive that proves my point.

Your calls for countries to put morality at the center of their policies are myopic on multiple levels. First, morality is a flexible and changing concept that isn't the same in time and place. Only a few hundred years ago, most people thought it was just and moral to own slaves, but today it's an international crime. In some countries in the world today men take several wives - blessed by morality, while in others, it's immoral and illegal. Second, morality has been used for multiple important decisions in history, however the outcomes were often not demonstatively better for it. The US Civil War, for example, was fought for the noble reason to end slavery, but after a million dead, only succeeded in improving the life of the African-American slaves for a decade before the Reconstruction ended and the South instituted Jim Crow. Finally, I am sure that almost all the world leaders that historically committed horrible crimes - Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc. have not for a moment thought they were doing bad things - but rather were paragons of virtue and morality - certainly in how those terms were understood in time and place - and in their own heads. And they used very similar "examples" why their actions aren't different from those by self-declared "moral nations" that you use here today.

I will leave it to sophisticated philosophy to argue why morality, such a nice concept, has been so misunderstood and misused by humans throughout history. However, ever since I read Napoleon's proclamation after he invaded Egypt (or was it Spain?), I stopped paying attention to declaration of morality by world leaders.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I agree that it shouldn't be more complicated than that. The unfortunate thing is that, in having acted less than honourably in pursuit of national interests in the recent past, the US and the UK provides some cover for Russia to do what it did, at least in terms of the line it sells to its own people but arguably also in claiming it is just following recent historical precedent. It's a smokescreen, of course, and the underlying moral case is somewhat murkier, but if the US and UK had not behaved as they did, there wouldn't be this figleaf of justification available to Russia at all.
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Agree, but why take this fig leaf, diligently make it into a nice coat and rush to cover Russia with it?
 
I don't think anybody is doing that, though. Admittedly I got a little behind and have skipped the last dozen pages or so, but from what I can see of the arguments on here, the suggestion of anybody using this argument to provide succour to Russia is not a fair one. In particular, I don't read ks.234's posts in that light.
 
notaclue said:
I would also say that the referencing of recent-ish historical US actions are particularly relevant because of the accusations that Ukraine was another attempt by the US at regime change. I imagine most people are aware of such accusations, particularly around events in 2014, but see, for example, John Mearsheimer for a respected academic opinion along these lines https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault if not.

Incidentally*, the US also attacked the power grid in Iraq as part of its 'shock and awe', as Russia is doing with Ukraine.

* For the over-excitable whataboutery crowd, please note that this is an incidental point.
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Accusation that Ukraine war is a result of the US "regime changing" is a main talking point of Putin.

Another great example of morality being used to justify anything.
 
DimitryZ said:
YOU, and I have to address you directly, are once again hijacking the thread about war in Ukraine, to flog your horse of Ultimate Culpability for Anything Always Rests with the West and Particularly the US.

All of the "historical examples" you flood the thread with are always the same - bad thing X happened, and look, the West did Y before, which some say contributed to X, so we can firmly conclude that West is at fault - and here is a Substack missive that proves my point.

Your calls for countries to put morality at the center of their policies are myopic on multiple levels. First, morality is a flexible and changing concept that isn't the same in time and place. Only a few hundred years ago, most people thought it was just and moral to own slaves, but today it's an international crime. In some countries in the world today men take several wives - blessed by morality, while in others, it's immoral and illegal. Second, morality has been used for multiple important decisions in history, however the outcomes were often not demonstatively better for it. The US Civil War, for example, was fought for the noble reason to end slavery, but after a million dead, only succeeded in improving the life of the African-American slaves for a decade before the Reconstruction ended and the South instituted Jim Crow. Finally, I am sure that almost all the world leaders that historically committed horrible crimes - Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc. have not for a moment thought they were doing bad things - but rather were paragons of virtue and morality - certainly in how those terms were understood in time and place - and in their own heads. And they used very similar "examples" why their actions aren't different from those by self-declared "moral nations" that you use here today.

I will leave it to sophisticated philosophy to argue why morality, such a nice concept, has been so misunderstood and misused by humans throughout history. However, ever since I read Napoleon's proclamation after he invaded Egypt (or was it Spain?), I stopped paying attention to declaration of morality by world leaders.
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Again nothing more than ad hom. It is you and posts like this that use ad hom as a tactic to constrain discussion about anything other than your own particular agenda. You have been very successful in making this a “toxic” in which dissenting views are attacked with nothing but ad hom

it is not yours to determine what this thread is about.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I don't think anybody is doing that, though. Admittedly I got a little behind and have skipped the last dozen pages or so, but from what I can see of the arguments on here, the suggestion of anybody using this argument to provide succour to Russia is not a fair one. In particular, I don't read ks.234's posts in that light.
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I am afraid making the thread about Russian invasion of Ukraine to be a discussion of US misdeeds is exactly that light.
 
ks.234 said:
Again nothing more than ad hom. It is you and posts like this that use ad hom as a tactic to constrain discussion about anything other than your own particular agenda. You have been very successful in making this a “toxic” in which dissenting views are attacked with nothing but ad hom

it is not yours to determine what this thread is about.
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You have repeated the last point often and it's true. But why is it important for you to force threads into a direction that you want against the will of most participants? You seem to absolutely delight in it - even when most participants ask you to not do so.

You are free to continue of course, but then this thread should be renamed "How the West Paved the Way for War in Ukraine."

Also, you are constantly either misunderstanding or misusing the Greek term Ad Hominem. None of my message fit that definition - it's a point by point refutation of your position.
 
A Ukrainian perspective.

https://medium.com/@rv818ua/what-john-mearsheimer-gets-wrong-about-ukraine-f7aad644c105

“The most offensive thing about John Mearsheimer’s article was not its historical inaccuracy, or even its misrepresentation of Ukrainian history, which was likely deliberate — after all, how could an academic who claims to have spent this much time studying Russia-Ukraine relations be this ill-informed. Rather, it was its complete lack of acknowledgement of what the Ukrainian people want, their agency, and their competence.”
 
notaclue said:
Available here (via a legit Czech university site) https://www.natur.cuni.cz/geografie.../ukrajina-a-rusko-mearsheimer-souleimanov.pdf
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Thank you. Written in 2014, and could almost have been written today. It certainly chimes with my perception of the conflict, but I am neither erudite nor articulate enough to express it so well. But I have read quite a lot about Russian history and emotions, from the beginning of the nation up to modern times, to appreciate some of the Russian views of the world around them. And also about US and European history and motives enough to be deeply cynical of them.
What exactly is the ideal US end result? US hegemony is a given, but how do they expect achieve it? Regime change and commercial subservience to neo-liberal "ideals"? Ever eastward expansion to deny China (their true target) opportunities to compete? Acceptance of democratic principles that they don't even believe in themselves?
It is a shame that the US is so vehemently defended here, even when it is obviously acting in a duplicitous manner, as that devalues any worthwhile contribution and is rightly seen as an attempt to block actually learning anything new. Despite which, I am learning quite a bit here, but no thanks to entrenched opinions that brook no questions.
 
Not an auspicious start for world peace just now:

"A military brass band greeted Xi at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, where he was welcomed by Russia’s deputy prime minister for tourism, sport, culture and communications, Dmitri Chernyshenko."

I wonder if that will be taken as a deliberate snub? We can only hope that Xi is a big fan of brass bands...

 
DimitryZ said:
YOU, and I have to address you directly, are once again hijacking the thread about war in Ukraine, to flog your horse of Ultimate Culpability for Anything Always Rests with the West and Particularly the US.

All of the "historical examples" you flood the thread with are always the same - bad thing X happened, and look, the West did Y before, which some say contributed to X, so we can firmly conclude that West is at fault - and here is a Substack missive that proves my point.

Your calls for countries to put morality at the center of their policies are myopic on multiple levels. First, morality is a flexible and changing concept that isn't the same in time and place. Only a few hundred years ago, most people thought it was just and moral to own slaves, but today it's an international crime. In some countries in the world today men take several wives - blessed by morality, while in others, it's immoral and illegal. Second, morality has been used for multiple important decisions in history, however the outcomes were often not demonstatively better for it. The US Civil War, for example, was fought for the noble reason to end slavery, but after a million dead, only succeeded in improving the life of the African-American slaves for a decade before the Reconstruction ended and the South instituted Jim Crow. Finally, I am sure that almost all the world leaders that historically committed horrible crimes - Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc. have not for a moment thought they were doing bad things - but rather were paragons of virtue and morality - certainly in how those terms were understood in time and place - and in their own heads. And they used very similar "examples" why their actions aren't different from those by self-declared "moral nations" that you use here today.

I will leave it to sophisticated philosophy to argue why morality, such a nice concept, has been so misunderstood and misused by humans throughout history. However, ever since I read Napoleon's proclamation after he invaded Egypt (or was it Spain?), I stopped paying attention to declaration of morality by world leaders.
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I sympathize with what you are trying to do with regard to slippery and sophistic arguments that cite 'morality,' but we can't just discount it. If we do, we are left with no rules except will and power. One can't claim there's anything wrong with genocide per se, one can only assert 'your genocide is not convenient for me, so if I can I will stop it.' Left unspoken is the further claim that follows: 'If I choose to do genocide in the future, I can unless someone has the power and will to stop me!'
 
notaclue said:
Not an auspicious start for world peace just now:

"A military brass band greeted Xi at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, where he was welcomed by Russia’s deputy prime minister for tourism, sport, culture and communications, Dmitri Chernyshenko."

I wonder if that will be taken as a deliberate snub? We can only hope that Xi is a big fan of brass bands...

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The Chinese, the masters of subtle insult, will not fail to recognize a blatant one.
 
TheDecameron said:
It’s one thing Russian propagandists like Simonyen and Solovyev openly masturbating in public but to have leader of the party of government, former President and Prime Minister of Russia suggesting a hypersonic missile strike on the International Criminal Court is an indication of how self- intoxicated the latter day Politburo has become:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dmitr...with-missile-strike-over-putin-arrest-warrant
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Medvedev ought to get himself an education before inciting Putin to launch hypersonic missiles. Last time I looked, the Hague was located in the Netherlands, one of the founding members of NATO.

John
 
Here’s an interesting Mearsheimer quote.

“We should be pivoting out of Europe to deal with China in a laser-like fashion, number one. And, number two, we should be working overtime to create friendly relations with the Russians.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine

This is word for word what Steve Bannon said when he described the white, Christian alliance that would be needed to defeat Chinese communism and global Islam.
 
DonQuixote99 said:
The Chinese, the masters of subtle insult, will not fail to recognize a blatant one.
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I wonder what message Putin was trying to convey? Mind you, Xi Jinping is only the president; "The presidency is a ceremonial office and not the role with the real power in China's political system.":D
 
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