They lied about Afghanistan. They lied about Iraq. Now they’re lying about Ukraine Russia’s invasion was a war crime. That’s no excuse for the disastrous, destructive path of endless war
-Chris Hedges

The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules-based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.

The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, although one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by U.S. backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup, which ousted democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the EU, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.

But this proxy war in Ukraine is designed to serve U.S. interests. It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant.

“First, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way — in both dollars and American lives — to degrade Russia’s ability to threaten the United States,” admitted Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

“Second, Ukraine’s effective defense of its territory is teaching us lessons about how to improve the defenses of partners who are threatened by China. It is no surprise that senior officials from Taiwan are so supportive of efforts to help Ukraine defeat Russia. Third, most of the money that’s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine. Let me be clear: This assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American service members.”

Once the truth about these endless wars seeps into public consciousness, the media, which slavishly promotes these conflicts, drastically reduces coverage. The military debacles, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue largely out of view. By the time the U.S. concedes defeat, most barely remember that these wars are being fought.

The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos migrate from administration to administration. Between posts they are ensconced in think tanks — Project for the New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, the Atlantic Council and the Brookings Institution — funded by corporations and the war industry. Once the Ukraine war comes to its inevitable conclusion, these Dr. Strangeloves will seek to ignite a war with China. The U.S. Navy and military are already menacing and encircling China. God help us if we don’t stop them.

These pimps of war con us into one conflict after another with flattering narratives that paint us as the world’s saviors. They don’t even have to be innovative. The rhetoric is lifted from the old playbook. We naively swallow the bait and embrace the flag — this time blue and yellow — to become unwitting agents in our self-immolation.

Since the end of the Second World War, the government has spent between 45 to 90 percent of the federal budget on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest sustained activity of the U.S. government. It has stopped mattering — at least to the pimps of war — whether these wars are rational or prudent. The war industry metastasizes within the bowels of the American empire to hollow it out from the inside. The U.S. is reviled abroad, drowning in debt, has an impoverished working class and is burdened with a decayed infrastructure as well as shoddy social services.

Wasn’t the Russian military — because of poor morale, poor generalship, outdated weapons, desertions, a lack of ammunition that supposedly forced soldiers to fight with shovels, and severe supply shortages — supposed to collapse months ago? Wasn’t Putin supposed to be driven from power? Weren’t the sanctions supposed to plunge the ruble into a death spiral? Wasn’t the severing of the Russian banking system from SWIFT, the international money transfer system, supposed to cripple the Russian economy? How is it that inflation rates in Europe and the U.S. are higher than in Russia despite these attacks on the Russian economy?

Wasn’t the nearly $150 billion in sophisticated military hardware, financial and humanitarian assistance pledged by the U.S., EU and 11 other countries supposed to have turned the tide of the war? How is it that perhaps a third of the tanks Germany and the U.S. provided were swiftly turned by Russian mines, artillery, anti-tank weapons, air strikes and missiles into charred hunks of metal at the start of the vaunted counteroffensive? Wasn’t this latest Ukrainian counteroffensive, which was originally known as the “spring offensive,” supposed to punch through Russia’s heavily fortified front lines and regain huge swathes of territory? How can we explain the tens of thousands of Ukrainian military casualties and the forced conscription by Ukraine’s military? Even our retired generals and former CIA, FBI, NSA and Homeland Security officials, who serve as analysts on networks such as CNN and MSNBC, can’t say the offensive has succeeded.

And what of the Ukrainian democracy we are fighting to protect? Why did the Ukrainian parliament revoke the official use of minority languages, including Russian, three days after the 2014 coup? How do we rationalize the eight years of warfare against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region before the Russian invasion in February 2022? How do we explain the killing of more than 14,200 people and the 1.5 million who were displaced, before Russia’s invasion took place last year?

How do we defend the decision by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban 11 opposition parties, including the Opposition Platform for Life, which had 10 percent of the seats in the Supreme Council, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, along with the Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc? How can we accept the banning of these opposition parties — many of which are on the left — while Zelenskyy allows fascists from the Svoboda and Right Sector parties, as well as the Banderite Azov Battalion and other extremist militias, to flourish?

How do we deal with the anti-Russian purges and arrests of supposed “fifth columnists” sweeping through Ukraine, given that 30 percent of Ukraine’s inhabitants are Russian speakers? How do we respond to the neo-Nazi groups supported by Zelenskyy’s government that harass and attack the LGBTQ community, the Roma population and anti-fascist protesters, and threaten city council members, media outlets, artists and foreign students? How can we countenance the decision by the U.S and its Western allies to block negotiations with Russia to end the war, despite Kyiv and Moscow apparently being on the verge of negotiating a peace treaty?

I reported from Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 during the breakup of the Soviet Union. NATO, we assumed at the time, had become obsolete. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed security and economic agreements with Washington and Europe. Secretary of State James Baker, along with West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured Gorbachev that NATO would not be extended beyond the borders of a unified Germany. We naively thought the end of the Cold War meant that Russia, Europe and the U.S. would no longer have to divert massive resources to their militaries.

The so-called “peace dividend,” however, was a chimera.

If Russia did not want to be the enemy, Russia would be forced to become the enemy. The pimps of war recruited former Soviet republics into NATO by painting Russia as a threat. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, reconfigured their militaries, often through tens of millions in Western loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware. This made the weapons manufacturers billions in profits.

It was universally understood in Eastern and Central Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO expansion was unnecessary and a dangerous provocation. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War is a business.

In a classified diplomatic cable — obtained and released by WikiLeaks — dated Feb. 1, 2008, written from Moscow and addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the NATO-European Union Cooperative, the National Security Council, the Russia Moscow Political Collective, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, there was an unequivocal understanding that expanding NATO risked conflict with Russia, especially over Ukraine:

Not only does Russia perceive encirclement [by NATO], and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. …

Dmitri Trenin, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, expressed concern that Ukraine was, in the long-term, the most potentially destabilizing factor in U.S.-Russian relations, given the level of emotion and neuralgia triggered by its quest for NATO membership. … Because membership remained divisive in Ukrainian domestic politics, it created an opening for Russian intervention. Trenin expressed concern that elements within the Russian establishment would be encouraged to meddle, stimulating U.S. overt encouragement of opposing political forces, and leaving the U.S. and Russia in a classic confrontational posture.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if the Western alliance had honored its promises not to expand NATO beyond Germany’s borders and Ukraine had remained neutral. The pimps of war knew the potential consequences of NATO expansion. War, however, is their single-minded vocation, even if it leads to a nuclear holocaust with Russia or China.

The war industry, not Putin, is our most dangerous enemy.

  • Striker@lemmy.world
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    Oh, I see. Everyone one is to blame for the Ukraine invasion except for the man who ordered it and the people who carried it out. Makes total sense.

    • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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      This article explicitly calls the invasion a war crime. Did you read it? Pretending that history began when the Russian army stepped foot in Donbas doesn’t erase the actions the provoked the war on the part of the NATO-aligned countries. If you think that Putin is the singular reason this war occurred, then you should admit your understanding of the conflict is shallow and uninformed.

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        Ok. I’ll keep this short and simple. This a yes or no question btw in case you are wondering. If Putin never gave the order to invade Ukraine would 50,000 people still be alive? Oh, and while we are at if Putin never made the decision to invade what would of happened? The only thing I can think of is that it would make him look weak. Is that worth 50,000 life? Not looking weak?

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    I stopped taking this seriously when he wrote:

    democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

    As if that was a fair and free election.

    • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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      Could you explain how his election was not free or fair?

      Would you say that the events during the Euromaidan in 2014 were a free and fair election?

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                  Would you be more or less likely to vote for someone if it was felt he poisoned his opponent? I feel like there are two separate things being discussed here. Was it bad that he got poisoned? jfk, of course. Did it change how the election played out? Sure? Did it make the results of the election moot, change the way in which the administration of the election occurred, or assure one side victory? Not really, no? idk if anyone knows that, but i don’t think that is even why the Euromaidan occurred according to the people who participated…

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                He didn’t die, therefore the poisoning was no big deal?

                My god, I can’t believe anyone ever took you guys seriously.

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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    While the Military-Industrial Complex, as President Eisenhower warned us during his famous farewell address where he actually coined the term itself, is very much a cause for concern, this is just a bunch of bullshit Russian propaganda.

    Whataboutisms concerning Ukraine are irrelevant, had Russia not attacked them, there would be no issues. Similarly, if China respects the sovereignty of its neighbors, there will be no issues.

    Disappointed in Salon for this. They’re usually better than that.

    • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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      This is an article written by an American journalist, how is it “bullshit Russian propaganda?” Could you provide some evidence that what this journalist wrote is factually incorrect?

      Have you ever entertained that there is a possibility that people disagree with you on this, who might not be Russian propagandists? Maybe people exist who don’t think Russia is good, but also see that there is a lot more to this conflict than as presented by corporate media in the anglosphere? If you so easily dismiss everything as untrustworthy and propaganda simply because. you disagree with it, then it sounds like you aren’t thinking critically… you are just completely indoctrinated with another sort of propaganda.

      I am also confused by your statement. Did NATO respect the sovereignty of Yugoslavia? How about Afghanistan or Iraq? Libya or Syria? The United States and the militia’s it is backing illegally occupies about 30% of Syria right now, the part with 90% of Syria’s oil… How is that not exactly the same as what Russia is doing to Ukraine? Before you claim this is whataboutism you should consider that history also matters, and when people from NATO countries claim that what Russia or China does X, while ignoring the current (and long history) of their own country doing X, it just sounds very disingenuous. Most likely because it is.

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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    Boy, those are a lot of issues to deal with! Fortunately, the first step in addressing all of them is easy:

    1. Russia gets the fuck out of Ukraine

    There! That’s it. That’s step 1. Everything else can be addressed after, but not until that first step is taken.

    • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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      If Ukraine had honored the Minsk agreements, or followed through with the peace agreement they signed at the beginning of the invasion (that Boris Johnson and the UK/US intervened to quash), then maybe Russia would have already gotten the fuck out of Ukraine?

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        Lol fuck that. Russia invaded a peaceful nation and has no excuse for it. And no real “peace agreement” was signed at the beginning of the invasion - certainly not one Russia intended to follow through on.

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          Ukraine had been fighting a civil war for almost a decade… how was it a peaceful nation?

          Israel and Turkey both said a peace deal had been reached (or nearly had been reached) before the UK/US intervened.

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            Even if true - and the idea that it was a full-blown “civil war” is bullshit - that doesn’t accomplish what you clearly are trying to accomplish: Excusing Russia for its unprovoked invasion.

            You can’t get around that, no matter how bad you insist on pretending Ukraine is. Russia invaded. They had no legitimate reason to invade. Full stop.

            So, again, no matter how you deflect, the solution to all the problems laid out in the article start with step 1: Russia gets the fuck out of Ukraine. Nothing else can be solved until that happens. And clearly, it’s not going to happen willingly on Russia’s part, so they have to get their teeth kicked in and get beaten out of the country they’ve invaded.

            Fortunately, that’s happening. :) Maybe after the current regime in Moscow falls, a better one will rise.

            • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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              It absolutely was a civil war, it began with a US-instigated coup, with US state department officials calling the shots for who will lead Ukraine afterwards and passing out bread and cookies to the protestors (very different to how they treat protestors at home only six years later) … You should listen to the leaked phone call with victoria nuland if you think the US wasn’t involved… Anyway, the civil war had led to thousands dying and Ukraine had effectively lost control of a large part of the country for nearly a decade… sounds like a civil war to me.

              You are delusional if you think that Russia will “get their teeth kicked in and get beaten out of the country”… Ukraine is literally losing, or at best, in a stalemate. They are in the process of losing the third army they have raised and Russia has not fully mobilized… I don’t think Russia was right to invade, but they had a much better reason to do so than the US when it invaded Iraq, or Syria, or Afghanistan, or Vietnam, or really any other conflict short of ww2

              • kescusay@lemmy.world
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                Not one word of that has anything to do with Russia invading Ukraine. Nor does it excuse the act, or negate the fact that in order to make progress on any issue, the first step is still, and will remain, Russia getting the fuck out of Ukraine.

                Nothing else matters, and nothing else can be fixed, until that’s done. All apologetics for Russia invading Ukraine should be immediately placed within the nearest appropriate orifice.

                And… Lol. Ukraine is kicking Russia’s ass. Must suck for their paid apologists.

                • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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                  I am sure you will forget about all of this and lose interest in Ukraine in a year or two when Russia is still in the Donbas and liberals have moved onto calling for blood against China, or Iran, or Mexico, or whatever other country the United States sets it sights on.

      • Jonna@lemmy.world
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        Both sides broke the Minsk agreements. Neither side was willing to let the people in the Donbas and Crimea actually decide their fate.

  • dlove67@feddit.nl
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    The Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if the Western alliance had honored its promises not to expand NATO

    Buddy, the west doesn’t decide to “expand” NATO, the countries ask to be allowed in.

    And I don’t think Ukraine felt very “protected” by Russia after 2014.

      • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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        Define Tankie. You could replace Tankie with communist in nearly any sentence it is uttered, and it just sounds like a republican right-winger (talking about nearly anything they don’t like)

        • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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          you can be a communist or socialist without being an apologist for every action ever taken by any state even vaguely connected to the ussr

          • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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            lol, Russia has as much to do with the USSR as Ukraine does. They were both part of the soviet union and were both replaced with corrupt reactionary states with economies that are objectively worse off than when the USSR existed.

              • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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                No, you are misrepresenting what my ideology is. You don’t even know what it is, and you don’t seem to have the intellectual curiosity to try and even try to understand it

                • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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                  why would i want to understand it? for the record, i also don’t “try to understand” the unhinged ramblings of people who stand on street corners shouting about how “the gays” are going to be the cause of society’s downfall

                  if you’re on the left and pro-russia, you’re either

                  • a tankie
                  • a “pacifist” who doesn’t understand that true pacifism doesn’t mean rolling over and accepting your fate when an imperialist power literally invades your country and tries to assassinate your president
        • Noughmad@programming.dev
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          And if you replace “murderer” with “jew”, then the code of laws sounds like Nazi propaganda. What a gotcha. But guess what, words actually do have meanings.

          • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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            Words have meaning but you are still unable to define tankie, and your argument is a non-sequitur unless you think whatever a tankie is has nothing to do with describing communists. If that is the case it truly is meaningless

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              The definition of a tankie is both simple and clear: someone who supported the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw pact. I thought you would either know that, be able to look it up, or stop talking about things even you admit you don’t know anything about. But that is too much for some people I guess.

    • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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      Any NATO member can veto a new country from being admitted to NATO. If the USA wanted to avoid the carnage unleashed by this devastating war, why not make assurances that Ukraine will not join NATO? That would have saved so many lives and so much human misery. Instead, they armed Ukraine to the teeth and are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.

      • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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        If the USA wanted to avoid the carnage unleashed by this devastating war

        “it’s the USA’s fault that Russia invaded Ukraine” is such a big brain chess move i just don’t know how to respond

        • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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          What do you think Victoria Nuland and John McCain was doing over there in 2014? Everything Nuland touches results in war, she’s fucking Kissinger’s replacement.

        • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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          Hmm, it isn’t big brained if you followed what was happening. Why would the US dump $150 billion into arming Ukraine if it wasn’t in their interests? that kind of money could solve so many problems the US has at home but they are wasting it on weapons and ammunition for a right-wing, failed state that was trying to ethnically cleanse 30% of its country

          • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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            Why would the US dump $150 billion into arming Ukraine if it wasn’t in their interests?

            why would russia dump $8.9T into invading ukraine if it wasn’t in their interests?

            for a right-wing, failed state

            russia can’t win a war against a failed state?

            that was trying to ethnically cleanse 30% of its country

            lmao

            • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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              Russia and Ukraine are both right-wing failed states, but Ukraine is explicitly fascist. They have made every party left of Zelenky’s party illegal, they have citizens committing pogroms against roma people without any consequence(I have seen it), even empowering neonazi groups to attack minority groups in Ukraine, and burning down buildings full of communists (who have nothing to do with Russia, this is long before the invasion), they have folded nazi paramilitaries into their armed forces and appointed ultra-nationalists (who openly speak of exterminating races of people) in key positions of the military (who openly refused to obey Zelensky’s order to follow the Minsk Accords).

              That $8.9T article is a joke, it even puts a literal price on human life. Your argument also doesn’t even support what you think it does. The liberals in this thread keep accusing me of being a Putin apologist and blaming the war on his whims. They never admit Russia has legitimate security interests in the region. But the argument that the war was within Russia’s interest because they felt that Ukraine joining NATO was an existential threat to their security is exactly what anyone with two brain cells is trying to tell them. The US government knows this, they have known it since 2008 if not long before, but they continue to tell the people of the US that it isn’t the case at all. Liberals eat it all up. The Democratic party is run by neoconservatives with a bigger death wish than the ones who go us into Iraq, and nobody who votes for the Democratic party seems to even notice.

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                essentially everything you just listed is ukraine combating russian state-sponsored actors attempting to overthrow their democracy, reframed by the most utterly deranged russian propagandists

                they have folded nazi paramilitaries into their armed forces and appointed ultra-nationalists

                Some founding members of Wagner belong to the far-right ultranationalist Russian Imperial Movement.[108] Wagner’s first commander, Dmitry Utkin,[110] is reportedly a neo-Nazi and has several Nazi tattoos,[111][112][107][109] to have greeted subordinates by saying “Heil!”, to have worn a Wehrmacht field cap around the unit’s training grounds, and to have occasionally signed his name with the two lightning bolt insignia of the Nazi S.S.

                That $8.9T article is a joke, it even puts a literal price on human life.

                because a human that’s dead in a ditch in ukraine isn’t a productive member of society back in russia

                i literally don’t care what figure you use; war is essentially the most expensive thing a country can engage in

                they’ve obviously spent more than 150bn

                They never admit Russia has legitimate security interests in the region

                your argument was literally “they’ve invested money so they must have started this war”

                so which is it? did the us start the war or did russia start the war? please pick a side thank you

        • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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          I am pretty sure it was explicitly cited by Russia when the invasion started, and in the run up to the war they said over and over it would be avoided if the US could assure them that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO. Blinken publicly said forbidding Ukraine from NATO or assuring any security guarantees was a “non-starter” … so I guess if they just ignored everything Russia was saying, then maybe they didn’t believe NATO had anything to do with the invasion… but that still wouldn’t make it true.

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            • take hardline position you know your opponent will never agree with
            • say you’ll do X if they don’t agree
            • opponent obviously doesn’t agree
            • you do X

            you’re right we should take everything the kremlin says at face value

          • Montagge@kbin.social
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            Why should any country bow to Russian demands to stifle another country’s desires?
            What right does Russia have to determine what Ukraine does or doesn’t do?

            • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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              If it stopped a war, why not say that they won’t let Ukraine join NATO? Ukraine doesn’t have the right to join NATO just as much as Russia. And just as much as Russia doesn’t have the right to “call the shots.” It is an offensive military alliance, there are consequences for how its membership grows and it affects the security concerns of other countries. It is so fun to just hear US government talking points repeated back endlessly.

          • dlove67@feddit.nl
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            Have you not learned that the Russian government lies? Like…a lot?

            NATO wasn’t the reason Russia started this war, Putin and his cronies were.

            Edit: also, NATO is a defensive alliance. The easiest way to not trigger article 5? Don’t fucking attack a NATO country unprovoked.

            • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              The USA lies much more than Russia. The US press dutifully reports every word the US wants it to, in order to maintain access and credentials and be taken “seriously”.

              NATO is not a defensive alliance, and it never has been. It was set up as an anti-communist alliance, but it is not essentially just a tool for US dominance. Its first action was an offensive action against Yugoslavia, who never attacked NATO. Its next action was to invade Afghanistan, who had offered up Bin Laden in exchange for avoiding the invasion (but the US refused, and stated they don’t negotiate with terrorists). Also, Afghanistan never attacked the USA or any NATO member state

  • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist. His books Death of the Liberal Class and Empire of Illusion are strongly critical of American liberalism.

    I wouldn’t trust his point of view of Ukraine. He sounds like a Russian apologist.

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’m a socialist and an anarchist and it’s pretty fucking obvious to me that Putin started this war and should be the target of the peaceniks, not the west.

      Putin definitely lied about Ukraine. He claimed to be “denazifying” a country with a Jewish president, for fuck’s sake.

      • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        Should “peaceniks” support sending weapons to Ukraine too? Pretending that Putin is the singular reason this war happened is ridiculous.

        Did the US electing Obama end racism? Did it mean that suddenly the US state was no longer racist or white-supremacist?

        It doesn’t matter much if their president is Jewish, when there are literal Nazi’s in control of large parts of the military and other parts of the government. Zelensky was elected to enforce the Minsk accords, and the Nazi’s in the military laughed in his face and humiliated him, so he did the self-serving thing… like any other politician. As an anarchist and a socialist, you should be more concerned that Zelensky outlawed basically all leftist parties and orgs, while sparing all the right-wing ones… this was even before the invasion.

    • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Why does he sound like a Russian apologist? Russia is neither socialist or anarchist, so what would make him a Russian apologist?

  • JoYo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    that’s some mighty fine schizo posting right there.

    just ping pong from point to point without any supporting arguments.

  • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    What is this shit? Yeah, the military-industrial complex is a big, big problem that needs to be addressed. But the quote from Sherman (really not the best person to quote, but he has some good ones on war) seems to fit:

    War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want. - William Tecumseh Sherman

    Maybe Russia should, you know, get the fuck out of the country it promised not to invade if Ukraine gave up it’s nuclear missiles. Then we can start talking about the rest of the fucked up things in the world.

    • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I am confused by that quote. It could just as easily be read from a pro-Russian-invasion stance as not. I am not pro-Russian invasion btw) The US abandoned the intermediate nuclear missile treaty with Russia unilaterally, which changed the security architecture of eastern Europe. Then they began to pour arms into Ukraine, while encouraging Ukraine to make a bid to join NATO… which was something that Russia had told the US was a red line for their security interests in 2008. “War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want. - William Tecumseh Sherman”

      There was a discontinuity in Ukraine’s government in 2014, which was been acknowledged by many international organizations, like the EU, and which Ukraine used as a pretext to ignore other old treaties and agreements… so idk how it really applies. It would be cool if countries that militarily occupy other countries or bomb other countries would stop. Like it would be cool if the US got out of Syria too, but i bet a majority of US citizens would agree, but US “democracy” doesn’t really allow them much of a say in those sorts of decisions

      • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I’m going to ignore the whataboutism in the reply and focus on the quote. Ukraine didn’t choose war in Ukraine. The US didn’t choose war in Ukraine. Russia doesn’t like NATO. Too bad. Russia chose to invade. Russia chose war. So, once you choose war, you have to deal with the outcome.

        We could go on all day about the bad shit that the US has done, is doing. We could go on all day about the bad shit that China has done, is doing. Same with most countries and gov’t’s. But try to focus on one topic at a time. Russia invaded a sovereign country. In 2014 Russia illegally annexed Crimea. Russia is the root of the problem in Ukraine right now. Russia is the one who needs to get the fuck out if it wants peace. You can choose to do things diplomatically, or you can choose the idiot’s way and go to war. Russia chose to go to war. The world will be a better place if they come out of this without the ability to wage any more acts of aggression against its neighbor’s for a long, long time.

        Bending yourself into a pretzel trying to weirdly justify Russia’s aggression is fucking strange.

        • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Yes, every country must bow down the the United States and its junior partners. I see now. Wars can only have one bad actor, and one reason for occurring, and Ukraine is a shining beacon of democracy, and not a nearly identical country with a nearly identical political system (except until maybe the Nazi & US led coup in 2014).

          The world will absolutely not be a better place if the US/NATO wins. The US government serves finance capital and the defense industry before any regular person. Russia sucks, but they don’t have control over the rest of the world the way that the US does. The US is not a bastion of freedom or human rights, it the the world #1 jailer and is responsible for millions, if not tens of millions, of deaths around the world in the past few decades alone. While the planet boils from the economic system they defend to the death, they will be rewarding their class with money hand over fist, selling weapons and gas to their client states in europe, and all while telling us that they are fighting for human rights the whole time. The US has even written position papers that the war is good for them (check out the original RAND paper written prior to the war) They think using this proxy war will weaken a potential geopolitical threat, and they have had a huge windfall increasing their sales of LNG and weapons. The US wants to fight russia to the last ukranian and instead of calling for some kind of peaceful settlement liberals are frothing at the mouth for russian blood and calling them orcs, pretending it isn’t racist at all

          • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Mexico wants to join the BRICS trade alliance. Then China starts arming Mexico and offering them intelligence on the US. Do you think the US would allow that? Or would they start a war with Mexico to keep a buffer against the BRICS alliance? Russia has 2 military naval ports in the Baltic and Black seas facing NATO countries. One in Syria and one in Crimea. The war in Syria threatened to cut off one port. And Ukraine joining the EU or NATO threatened to cut off the other. That explains so much of what is going on. It’s also why Russia is accelerating climate change. It opens up ports in the arctic and allows for Siberia to become the breadbasket of the world. I respect your indefatigable tenacity.

          • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            LOL, you’re still doing the whataboutism and defending fucking Russia for invading another country. It’s kind of sad really. Russia could, you know, like not invade and try to solve things diplomatically. But no, Russia invaded another country.

            If you want to talk about the bad shit the US (or China or wherever) has gotten up to, and is getting up to, feel free. I have a lot to say on those fronts too. But that doesn’t change the fact that Russia decided to go invade another sovereign country, and the fact that you are defending Russia. Not a good look.

  • Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com
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    1 year ago

    What a load of bullcrap.

    Russia invading us not just “bad” it’s war crime after war crime after war crime.

    They are responsible for this whole horror show (and yeah, not NATO or the will to live in a free country) and they can stop it any time they want by stopping the invasion of a free country.

    Fuck Putin and his apologists.

  • CMLVI@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    New, hour old account trolling the comments arguing with everyone who is positing the wholly impossible solution of “Russia just not invading Ukraine”. Who could have seen that coming…

    At any rate, seems like this article does a great job of laying blame at the feet of anyone except the man who ordered the invasion in the first place. Clearly the Ukrainian populace is in favor of defending their country; they have been solid in defense and have started an offensive. Clearly the Russians are not united in their action, as they just recently had an extremely public attempted coup by their wonderful Wagner troops. Which side has more strife and indecision behind it? Ukraine or the Russians?

    As for who benefits from this action, it’s wild that the author ignores the benefits that Russia would have from this. The large warm water ports in the South, increased access to oil reserves, cobalt, and other mineral reserves. We can just gloss over that, though…