Russian invasion of Ukraine

Maybe I misread this as an apology.

Yeah, they apologised for talking about a slightly different (but related) subject.
Not for being wrong about justifying what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

It's complicated, but I think there's some truth to what you say. The US probably caused up to a million civilian deaths by provoking and enabling sectarian wars in Iraq, but it was too dangerous for western journalists to observe it, and Iraqis didn't get the sympathy they deserved from us because they were killing each other. It wouldn't surprise me if that was what the Bush administration wanted. Maybe one day we'll find out, when all the documents are declassified. It's hard to rank rhese things, but it could be argued that the US was just as wicked then as Putin is now. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Blair, Bremer and others should have gone on trial, but they would probably have been acquitted because they would have claimed that they did the best they could, and that Saddam's removal was inevitably going to lead to a civil war, because he'd been stoking sectarian rivalries throughout his rule.

In Syria the West had little control. The main villains were/are Assad, Putin and ISIS. There was a huge amount of coverage of civiian deaths if you watched C4 news. I don't know about the other channels. The West did try to help a great deal, Merkel took in a million refugees, but aid was hampered by Turkey's neverending war with the Kurds. At least Kurdistan finally happened. It's ridden with clan corruption, but it's a start.

And then there's Afghanistan, Vietnam...it's colossal. Mind-boggling.

You think Putin is a dictator? Well Trudeau is the same!

I notice quite a lot of this narrative, especially from "woke" Americans - not sure if they don't know anything about the absolute evil Russia is or they just want to make everything about themselves.

When my country Lithuania was occupied by the soviets they essentially eradicated intelligentsia - or anybody who were "anti soviet element". They've put 150000 political prisoners to gulags in Siberia and deported another 130000 people to other places in Siberia.

After the occupation, oppression continued with KGB spying on people so they don't get any democratic ideas in their heads. My grandfather was in jail for participating in underground press & political activities.

I could go on on but it's nothing new to most of you, I guess - and my country is not unique, we share the same destiny with rest of Eastern Europe.

That's why we're so mad crazy, even "anti Russian / russophobic" regarding this - it's history repeating. The deportation part of occupied territories has already started.

And you will never convince me US is as evil as Russia.

It wouldn't surprise me if that was what the Bush administration wanted.

I don't. How did it/would it help to achieve their aims?

Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Blair, Bremer and others should have gone on trial

In case you didn't know, the US won't recognise the ICC precisely for this reason.

KGB spying on people

I know people with family in Russia who tell me that their relatives have been told their phones and internet use were being monitored by the FSB to ensure they're not anti-government. The name of a lot of the instruments of oppression have changed, but the methods haven't; they've just modernised.

Yep, pretty sure it's easier these days with machine learning and voice recognition. Back in the day it was loads of manual labour.

There's old and story that when my grandfather was being watched, they returned home one day, earlier than they should've and found somebody sniffing around in their apartment. The person escaped climbing to a balcony of another flat. Then they knew the KGB was on to them.

I've got a friend from Belarus who is advised not to return just in case they've got something on him. He hasn't been home for more than 3 years even though his family lives 100 km from Vilnius.

It's funny we have memes about FBI spying on us through our front cams but there's slight difference - we don't risk going to jail even if we're actively anti government.

The beauty of democracy. Which is also a double edged sword when freedom of speech is absolute but it's another issue.

It's funny we have memes about FBI spying on us through our front cams but there's slight difference - we don't risk going to jail even if we're actively anti government.

John Kiriakou, Jeffrey Sterling, Chelsea Manning, Assange, Snowdon etc. would disagree

iirc the US' official legal/policy position on the ICC is that if one of its citizens is tried there, it will invade the netherlands lmao

And you will never convince me US is as evil as Russia.

Also we’re in the wrong thread to talk about other countries, this is a thread about Ukraine.

the thought that the propagation of the horrible images we've all been seeing lately might be being used as a tool by my government to revive cold-war tensions

I think that the infinitely more likely scenario is that you are in a majority white country and imagines of white people in Europe suffering resonates more. No offence intended, but are you sure they are more present, or are you just noticing them more? Your peers are probably sharing them more too.

But overall the main reason I suspect is that social media algorithms are specifically designed to be as viral as possible. They have learnt that extremism sells, and have no doubt worked out that based on where you live these images generate content.

If your government wants to stoke Cold War tensions all it needs to do is talk about it in their press statements and interviews. They don't need to hack social media infrastructure and reduce the image censorship.

Bit of a difference, though. Whether you agree with what they did or not, they released classified information, which is obviously more serious than just being ‘actively anti-government’.

@dau is right, the comparison between (flawed) liberal democracies and Russia is invalid.

I know about the ICC problem.

The sectarian violence didn't help achieve their aims...they achieved those anyway. But the violence suited them because Iraq contained a lot of people who they would categorize as 'bad actors', and they were more than comfortable with them being killed by other Iraqis. To their mind, it was preferable to trying to police Iraq and dig out the the bad guys. Some American lives would have been lost and it would have become an intractable problem. So they disbanded the army and looked the other way.

Do you follow the Bush shoe-thrower on twitter? https://twitter.com/muntazer_zaidi His tweets give me a useful reminder of what happened. I don't want to forget.

Bush shoe-thrower

Cheers. I'll check it out.

Also I know everyone here has probably rinsed them all, but Doomsday Watch on Iraq and Afghanistan aka Why the West can't win wars any more (I think), is excellent on Afghanistan, and has some interesting points on Iraq too.

https://twitter.com/thorstenbenner/status/1513039187527806977

Read this interview with Karaganov (reliable bellwether of 🇷🇺ruling elite majority consensus). If afterwards you still harbor any illusions about sustainable negotiated settlement with Putin's Kremlin on European security order read it again. And again.

iirc the US' official legal/policy position on the ICC is that if one of its citizens is tried there, it will invade the netherlands lmao

International cricket council?

I never knew the Americans cared about cricket.

Can we drop the Tanky Left anti US BS and go back to discussing the actual Russian invasion of Ukraine?

All this bullshit about historical nonsense and past nationalistic grievances when the prime actors at that time are well dead and buried (mentioning Texus WTF that’s 160 years ago?!) is ridiculous and exactly the kind of dangerous propaganda that Putin felt gave him right to attack Ukraine. Get in the real modern world people.

scary stuff.

Can we drop the Tanky Left anti US BS and go back to discussing the actual Russian invasion of Ukraine?

I'm not a fucking Tankie to be clear.

@dau brought up some good points that expand my perspective as an American, thank you. I'm generally very fixated on how shitty my own government is and has been, and it's helpful to hear more EU perspectives on Russia.

Also, I learned recently the Russo-Ukraine war has been going for over 8-years

wth is a "tankie"

Not sure if serious?

If so, a person on the British left who supported the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968, with the use of troops and tanks.

^also a pejorative term for someone on the left during that period.

The inference being that because they started with an idealistic understanding of the Soviet Union they de facto support Soviet military suppression.

It's like being called a commie

Profile of the new General put in charge of the war by the Russians, until now they didn't have a single figure with overarching operational responsibility which has been used in part to explain their woeful underperformance
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/10/alexander-dvornikov-russian-general-who-helped-turn-tide-of-syrian-war

Like if it wasn’t grim enough already

... and routinely targeted hospitals, schools, bread queues and other pillars of civilian life.

I just can't get my head around this. Not just how evil it is, but what is their rationale? Aren't you supplying your opponent with plenty of angry new recruits each time you do this?