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Ukraine V

Hook said:
IMHO, too many posts on this thread are being made simply to provoke a reaction.
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Yes, it is the posts that address the poster, posts littered with “you….” And “you are….” that are being made to provoke.
Can anyone show me where someone here has argued that the US invasion of Iraq was a good thing? Closest to that I’ve heard was that Saddam was evil, and that most Iraqis should be better off without him. But it is obvious to all by now that destroying Saddam’s military led to chaos, the rise of ISIS, and so on. Have not heard anyone here argue retrospectively that it was a success. It was clearly a failure on many levels. Hundreds of thousands died because of it, and US soldiers/contractors committed war crimes. These are indisputable facts.

That said, does anyone here think, given the horrible track record, that the US should not have provided military aid to Ukraine? Is anyone arguing that it should all stop now? Is anyone here arguing that a GOP-led, isolationist US would be somehow better for the world? Funny, but I haven’t heard anyone here arguing for any of that. Possible that’s what some here believe, but I haven’t seen any posts actually saying it out loud.

If someone would like to criticize what the US is doing for Ukraine today, I’m all ears. But what has constantly returning to Afghanistan, Iraq and/or Vietnam actually contributed to the conversation? I am not saying shut up, don’t do it. Feel free to try and continue provoking reactions. Most will ignore, but some will probably take the bait. But it would be really nice if every once in a while, those making references to the past would explain how, specifically, they inform the discussion of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
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This has been done many times

and what different path they suggest we should take. Otherwise, it all comes across as knee-jerk whataboutism. So again, I ask, what exactly would you like see the US change in terms of today’s support of Ukraine?
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Again, answered many times.
To my mind, the really big issue is whether or not the military aid continues after the 2024 election. If the GOP wins back the Presidency, what will happen in Ukraine? What will happen to NATO? Will Western Europe ramp up their military support, or will they abandon Ukraine? I don’t know, but I can think of at least one little Russian despot who is betting on the latter.
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This is indeed an important question. As is, what will happen when this war ends? Will it be given charity to rebuild, or will it be abandoned or socially decimated by international loan ‘conditionality’.
 
DimitryZ said:
Sure, but that never stopped him from mass atrocities against his own population before. His sons, by all reports raised to be fine torturers and rapists, would have been a fitting and natural follow up.
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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
Morality of nation's actions and historical outcomes are very loosely related, if at all.
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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.
Consider the historical arc where Putin took Ukraine in a week like he planned and successfully forced NATO back to 1997 lines. I guarantee there would have been no ICC indictment of Putin, Taiwan would be negotiating a surrender to China and you would be out front demanding a peace deal now.
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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.
The future would have belonged to Xi, Putin, Jong-un and Khamenei, with our frayed democracies in a historic retreat and our own populations voting for Trumps, Johnsons and further curtailment of our freedoms. That future would certainly reflect on the great victory against the West very positively - it would be celebrated worldwide as the "final death of Western imperialism and the rise of true people's democracy."
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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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ks.234 said:
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.
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However Brexit was an example of democracy in action. It has been used against the best interests of the UK population (including, but not limited to, immigrants) but the vote to leave was democratic, just unexpected, bitterly resented by some and abused by the ruling party. It didn't have to be the idealogical sh!t show it has become.
 
awkwardbydesign said:
However Brexit was an example of democracy in action. It has been used against the best interests of the UK population (including, but not limited to, immigrants) but the vote to leave was democratic, just unexpected, bitterly resented by some and abused by the ruling party. It didn't have to be the idealogical sh!t show it has become.
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Yes, agree with that. Trump and Brexit were both democracy in action, but even so, both have engendered movements and enabled politicians that are profoundly undemocratic (in the UK at least, from both sides of the ideological divide)
 
Bart said:
Not many people following this thread would need to resort to Google for that!
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Yep, no one genuinely interested in the thread would need to consult Google but the reply was made-up, as was this one - "Because the criticism of Moscow as the sole user of euphemisms is not true."
 
It was Lord Palmerston who, in the mid-19th century, said something along the lines that countries have no permanent allies and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Given the nature of these interests (and the fact that they are always changing), it guarantees that every "power" will behave badly every so often. There is no doubt that the USA behaved badly in Iraq and produced a winner - Iran. Most of the Arab leaders detested Saddam, but they wanted him there as a counterweight to non-Arab, nearly 100% Shi'ite Iran. The US did the job for Iran. And it could be argued that this wanton display of military power was an encouragement for Putin and his ilk to do likewise in the local neighbourhood.

However, I don't think "whataboutism" really helps here. The US did the wrong thing, and, sadly, the perpetrators (Bush Jr. Cheney and the neocons) will never stand in the dock in the Hague, as, barring miracles, Putin never will. But Putin has done the wrong thing, and the fact that the USA has behaved badly in the past (as did the UK and every other colonial power you care to name) is no reason not to condemn this assault on a neighbouring country and to assist it in its defence. Because you know that Putin will not stop until he is stopped.
 
Kirk said:
Yep, no one genuinely interested in the thread would need to consult Google but the reply was made-up, as was this one - "Because the criticism of Moscow as the sole user of euphemisms is not true."
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It was true. To say “Look no further than Moscow” for euphemisms is just plain nonsense
 
tones said:
However, I don't think "whataboutism" really helps here. The US did the wrong thing, and, sadly, the perpetrators (Bush Jr. Cheney and the neocons) will never stand in the dock in the Hague, as, barring miracles, Putin never will. But Putin has done the wrong thing, and the fact that the USA has behaved badly in the past (as did the UK and every other colonial power you care to name) is no reason not to condemn this assault on a neighbouring country and to assist it in its defence. Because you know that Putin will not stop until he is stopped.
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Quite. If we're to go with 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' then nobody would ever get censured or punished, because all nations have sinned at some time in their history. We can't let 'well, you lot did it and got away with it' cloud our judgement. There needs to come a time, preferably soon, where the judgements are more absolute than relative, when it comes to judging nations on their foreign policy antics.

What we see at the moment is the equivalent of serious organised criminals arguing 'the Met is full of bent coppers and lawbreakers, and no better than me, so you can't prosecute me'.
 
tones said:
It was Lord Palmerston who, in the mid-19th century, said something along the lines that countries have no permanent allies and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Given the nature of these interests (and the fact that they are always changing), it guarantees that every "power" will behave badly every so often. There is no doubt that the USA behaved badly in Iraq and produced a winner - Iran. Most of the Arab leaders detested Saddam, but they wanted him there as a counterweight to non-Arab, nearly 100% Shi'ite Iran. The US did the job for Iran. And it could be argued that this wanton display of military power was an encouragement for Putin and his ilk to do likewise in the local neighbourhood.

However, I don't think "whataboutism" really helps here. The US did the wrong thing, and, sadly, the perpetrators (Bush Jr. Cheney and the neocons) will never stand in the dock in the Hague, as, barring miracles, Putin never will. But Putin has done the wrong thing, and the fact that the USA has behaved badly in the past (as did the UK and every other colonial power you care to name) is no reason not to condemn this assault on a neighbouring country and to assist it in its defence. Because you know that Putin will not stop until he is stopped.
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Whataboutism is a term used by the right wing to deflect accusations of hypocrisy. If we are to condemn Putin in moral terms, those moral terms have to have wide application and bear comparison with other war crimes. If we are to call Putin a war criminal, and he undoubtedly is, other war criminals have to be judged by those same standards. Anything else is moral relativism at best and immoral at worst.

Putin, as you say, is not a special case, yet those that wish to control and restrict this thread to one point of view treat him and as if he is.

The Putin is bad, US is good narrative is just plain wrong. Putin is bad, but that does not make the US good. The US is acting out of self interest. To say the US is doing the right thing in these particular instance does not make the US “good”.

If you want to judge the US by its actions in this particular instance alone, then fine, the US has so far done the right thing. But you cannot also attribute moral good to that judgement without looking at comparable actions.

What is happening here is not whataboutery, what is happening is people making moral judgments but then getting angry when moral comparisons are made that question their assertion of “good”.

Putin is bad, the US is right to help Ukraine, but either leave morals out of it or defend it on moral grounds, not ad hom.
 
ks.234 said:
Whataboutism is a term used by the right wing to deflect accusations of hypocrisy. If we are to condemn Putin in moral terms, those moral terms have to have wide application and bear comparison with other war crimes. If we are to call Putin a war criminal, and he undoubtedly is, other war criminals have to be judged by those same standards. Anything else is moral relativism at best and immoral at worst.

Putin, as you say, is not a special case, yet those that wish to control and restrict this thread to one point of view treat him and as if he is.

The Putin is bad, US is good narrative is just plain wrong. Putin is bad, but that does not make the US good. The US is acting out of self interest. To say the US is doing the right thing in these particular instance does not make the US “good”.

If you want to judge the US by it’s actions in this particular instance alone, then fine, but you cannot also attribute moral good to that judgement without looking at comparable actions.
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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.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Quite. If we're to go with 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' then nobody would ever get censured or punished, because all nations have sinned at some time in their history. We can't let 'well, you lot did it and got away with it' cloud our judgement. There needs to come a time, preferably soon, where the judgements are more absolute than relative, when it comes to judging nations on their foreign policy antics.

What we see at the moment is the equivalent of serious organised criminals arguing 'the Met is full of bent coppers and lawbreakers, and no better than me, so you can't prosecute me'.
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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.
 
ks.234 said:
Because the criticism of Moscow as the sole user of euphemisms is not true. The truth is that the US is famous for the same fault. The demand that moral judgements are ring fenced to exclude comparisons is not moral
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Can you point to the thread that says Moscow is the SOLE USER of euphemisms?
I don’t think it’s mine by any interpretation.

edit: sorry, I mean reasonable interpretation
 
Bart said:
Can you point to the thread that says Moscow is the SOLE USER of euphemisms?
I don’t think it’s mine by any interpretation.

edit: sorry, I mean reasonable interpretation
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It wasn’t a thread, it was you post which said “Look no further than Moscow for euphemisms” which is not true because such euphemisms have a long and wide history.
 
Bart said:
No, that doesn’t equate ‘sole user’, and anyway was a response to your
previous comment ‘Isn’t it the US that is famous for such euphemisms’.
I rest my case.
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Of course it does.

The US is famous for such euphemisms so your are even wrong in your own assessment.

Still, seems like your shout out to be liked has been heard though.
 
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