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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Opening the comments section of stories like this is always a real eye opener for the type of people lemmy has attracted kinda sad.
No kidding. Who is honestly against moves like this? I mean very few issues are black and white and defending Ukraine is as close to being on the right side of history as one can get. They were invaded by a much larger country that suppressed them for so long. They are a democracy that is trying really hard to further the will of their people. Russians are committing genocide against the local population. Supporting Ukraine and watching the Ukrainians fight back for their freedom is one of the few great parts of history that inspires.
The only real country that comes close to Russia lately as far as a polarizing bad guy is WWII Germany, and THAT is saying something.
Says every single chickenhawk in this country every time there's a war. There is always an excuse.
Vietnam: They attacked us in the Gulf of Tonkin (which was false) and we have to fight communism!
Iraq 1983: We have to help Saddam Hussein defeat Iran. It's the right thing to do!
Iraq 2003: They did 9/11 and they have WMD's! (They didn't.) We killed a few hundred thousand Iraqis anyway just to make Halliburton a shit-ton of money.
Afghanistan: The Taliban is evil! (True, but that doesn't mean we should go bankrupt policing them permanently.)
And it's only a matter of time before any justifications for Ukraine blow up in your faces too. There's already been a ton of reporting on the corruption in the Ukrainian government this year. We'll learn more about that as we get even further entrenched into this war.
You should ask yourself then, why all these wars had insanely large protests, both in the US but especially in Europe. Also why most political parties and many countries in Europe opposed those wars. And why this war in Ukraine is different.
These previous wars were american imperialism, while this Ukraine war is about stopping russian imperialism. Stopping russian imperialism isnt only the moral thing(like it was opposing those previous american wars) but also aligns with our geopolitical interests. Thats why literally everyone but tankies/far right support helping Ukraine.
So let me ask you, what do you think we should do? Should we let Russia invade and take over Ukraine? Should we let Russia invade and take over the Baltic Countries? What about Russia taking over Poland? Are countries sovereign and do they have the right to decide their foreign policy?
In 5 years, Turkey might decide to grab a few greek islands, in order to get some "breathing space" in the Aegean. Should we let Turkey do that? Is it ok for countries to invade other countries and grab whatever they want? I am just trying to understand your logic.
Should we never oppose invaders in order to minimize cost and human casualties?
Except that in this case the situation really is black and white, no grey area. A peaceful sovereign country was invaded by some genocidal fucks and it is our duty to help them. Corruption is not an excuse to stop the support, because Ukraine is actively trying to sort it out too. They know what life is like in the EU and they want more of that.
For the record, I live in EU, some 60 miles from the nearest russian military base. I have personal interest in Ukraine's victory because if it falls, then my country might be next.
Yup, no gray area at all, just like every other time. This is exactly what the warhawks said about the war on terror.
Why do you have to bring whataboutism into this? I'm not talking about the past, I'm talking about this current war right now. It's extremely clear who are the good guys here.
Yeah yeah, just like you all claimed it was "extremely clear who are the good guys here" when you genocided Iraq.
Maybe you should talk about the past, so you stop repeating it.
Except if you actually lived in Russia in the 80-90's moved to the west, saw the life here and look where putler is going towards with his so called "rule of law", you would actually understand why it matters to stop that idiot. Out of the two clearly both evil, self serving entities of Nato or Russia, I know under which I would much rather live, even if neither is perfect.
Corruption happens everywhere, look at a UK, scandal after scandal, after scandal, do those involved in scandals resign? You wish they did, no those cocks cling on to power like a bad std. Only recently we had a string of relatively high profile resignation which had to be forced.
Sorry ranted on, but really the problem is that putlers regime is actually evil, Ukranians are dying to protect the rest of Europe from them. So paying for sending weapons to them is the least that I think I can personally do. For America it is better to stop putler before he attacks a Nato country and you would have to send your soldiers on the ground here.
(By the way, I agree with your Iraq statement, it was always about resources, and so is this war for putler, just look where "conveniently" gas deposits were found in 2012....)
You're right, what excuses do the Russian invaders have for Ukraine? It sure blew up in their faces. And I hope it continues to until the invaders return to their miserable little circle of hell thry built for themselves.
What has corruption got to do with Russia invading them?
It has to do with our leaders funneling our tax dollars through their war, obv.
If you'd been paying attention you'd notice that since 2014 the Ukrainians have been modernising there political and military. The previous governments were infamously corrupt and were dislodged by a popular uprising. This government has made great strides to uproot systemic corruption. It's not perfect but they are certainly improving and need to be encouraged in this and their efforts to dislodge the Russian invaders. Simply parroting Russian talking points (eg: corruption) will not do.
Lol. Someone hasn't read the Pandora papers.
The money goes to the American military industrial complex. We aren't writing Ukraine a check for them to make/buy the weapons themselves. Ukraine will receive the weapons, while the weapon manufacturers, here in the USA, laugh their way to the bank.
You have a right to be upset at our military budget and how it's spent, but when you are so grossly negligent on how our government functions nobody is going to take you seriously.
So what is the alternative? Let bigger countries invade other countries, just because no country is perfect enough to receive outside help?
Ahhh, it's the extremely rare false equivalence fallacy in the wild.
America will always fight wars because their interests in resources, political alliances, and ideological stability. It's for the money. It's always the money at the end.
America is the cultural and military hegemon due to the proliferation of free trade enforced through an unmatched navy. America becomes more powerful by maintaining this status quo. It's why dangers to the oil supply have driven 3 out of the 4 examples you rightfully point out. Sadly the Middle East is the oilbasket of the world with the worst borders ever designed. If you want energy, you spread influence there.
However, there is one instance where the interests of the USA align with the general interest of the average Westerner.
People don't like democracies getting invaded. And potential democratic trade partners getting invaded is bad for business. You can have both at the same time. I will not defend the Gulf War under this banner, but the faster that we can prove that land grabs are nonnegotiable in this Pax Americana, the better.
And also, you don't have to convince me that war is inefficient. I've read Catch-22. But you do have to convince me that the destabilization of the breadbasket of Europe (and the world) is less important than the opportunity cost of a couple million lost to a few hundred corrupt officials.
Yeah. I get being cynical about all of the wars the U.S. has been part of in my lifetime.
But if you can't see how helping the Ukrainians is unequivocally the right thing to do, I don't know what to say. To me it's nice to be the good guys for once and point our defense industry at something worthwhile.
I gotta say, the tankie infestation of the fediverse is giving me serious second thoughts about this place. I get that it will get better over time as more people join and dilute the crazies, but I currently have a very hard time suggesting lemmy to people because of this.
It's fediverse. You don't like an instance, you create your own and defederate from the ones you don't like. That's the nice thing about it.
So what, am I going to defederate from lemmy.world which is like the most generic possible instance but posts there still attract these loonies? At that point I can just ditch the fediverse because it's useless as a reddit replacement.
Good, go back to reddit if you want a neoliberal echo chamber.
maybe you shouldn't leave your brain in a box
I guess you've no problem with the open Nazis on here? Says a lot about you.
No, that doesn't "say a lot about me" at all. I keep having to block tankies and similar shit bubbling up from lemmygrad. I've not seen an open nazi post here yet but if I see one be assured it gets the banhammer as well and "nazis" gets added to my growing list of "insane fringe groups prominent on lemmy which I never had to interact with on reddit".
Okay I'll bite. Some people support Ukraine but don't support more weapons spending. In the early days of reddit, a lot of the power users were libertarian leaning programmers, and Lemmy has naturally attracted that cohort. You can see subs like Privacy and Piracy moving here, and there is a staunch anti government position that comes with anti centralization. I don't think these people should be called sad, as some are very well reasoned and thoughtful about their anti government position. What's more, if you don't live in the United States, it's very easy to call out the hypocrisy of US government warmongering e.g. in the middle east.
There's already a huge handful of conservative communities and almost every conservative I've ever met is suddenly very upset with our military budget and without any proof think Zelensky is just pocketing the money.
But it has felt like they're still the minority for the time being.
Have you seen the community list? The top conservative communities have like 150 subs.
Part of the reason why I wanted a fresh start on kbin but alas, this is what the fediverse is built on.
I'm considering making my own instance and shitcanning the Lemmy instance.
You're on lemmy.world right now, dummy. "Starting over" on kbin doesn't mean anything if you keep coming to lemmy and commenting on lemmy threads.
They were always there. Lemmy literally is developed by tankies and genocide deniers.
What's sad is how little our country knows of war outside of the US propaganda machine. We spend more on war in one year than the next ten countries combined, and those countries mostly have health care systems that don't bankrupt their people. Canada, for instance, spends a mere 23 billion a year on war.
We on the other hand don't have health care so our country can involve itself in eight or nine wars at once, and our people think it's a good thing because they can't form a coherent thought outside of what they're being told on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.
“Our” that’s one big assumption there brother not everyone here is American. I don’t know why you assume the U.S military budget is stopping Universal credit being a thing over there it’s a far more deeply rooted issue than just the military budget. Look how contentious even something like the Obama care was never mind a full blow universal care system.
US spends about as much per capita on healthcare as many other developed countries. The issue is that your insurance companies pocket a lot of it. Be angry at them, not at Ukraine or the weapons going to Ukraine.
The US would actually spend less on healthcare if we had a single-payer or other "socialist" system instead of the mess we currently have. So that line of reasoning doesn't make sense. We don't make war instead of spending on health care. We make war and spend on health care.
The reason that the US doesn't have universal healthcare is not it's military support for Ukraine.
What I see are some dissenting opinions and then people parroting US government talking points browbeating and downvoting them. Russia is absolutely wrong for invading Ukraine, but let's not overlook the US government using Ukraine as a pawn to advance its own geopolitical ambitions, similar to how it benefited from arming groups in Afghanistan when Russia invaded there.
I'm hoping Lemmy provides for more nuanced and diverse discussion instead of brigading and shouting down of opinions simply for going against the officially-approved narrative of the US government.
hated for being world police but also hated for not "doing something" about international injustices. US can't win.
International injustices like the US helping the Saudis genocide Yemenis? The problem is that the US is self-serving in its self-appointed role of world police. They don't care about injustices and only use (or even create) them as excuses to carry out selfish geopolitical objectives.
no like north korea threating to glass its neighbor, or russia threatening to glass europe, or china claiming that taiwan belongs to them, or ISIS saying that all non-muslims deserve death, but yeah cherry pick all ya want
North Korea is all bark and no bite. North Korea benefits China by acting as a buffer and benefits the US by strengthening ties between the US and South Korea and Japan. There is no interest in changing this arrangement.
Russia didn't get this way over night. The USSR collapsed and the US capitalized on the situation by enforcing markets in a way to grab wealth. There were many opportunities to rehabilitate and allow Russia to participate in the world as a peer but that went against the US need for an enemy and to dominate them, as evidenced by the Wolfowitz doctrine. Russia's economy was terrible and Putin did well for himself betting on oil which gave the Russian economy some stability and which is how he got popular. You'll find that the price of oil collapsed in 2014 and the protests were happening in Ukraine around that time threatening the puppet he had there.
Just watch as the plan is spelled out for you on American television: https://www.cc.com/video/8067fc/the-colbert-report-crisis-in-ukraine-gideon-rose
As for ISIS: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq
Germany was actively buying and expanding their gas imports from Russia, Russia's largest export good. Germany was quite happy with this arrangement until Russia invaded Ukraine, cut gas exports, and started actively bragging about how they would freeze Europe. Russia could have continued raking in the piles of cash from their gas exports to Europe, but, that isn't what Russia wanted. Russia didn't want to participate on the world stage as an equal, they wanted to dominate Ukraine and take what Ukraine had for themselves.
A decent chunk of Russia's gas runs through Ukraine and Russia had their puppet in Ukraine overthrown in 2014. Their gas business was already in danger from a long time ago and was constantly being attacked on all fronts, including sanctions and fearmongering campaigns against the nord stream pipelines. You can point to the current situation and say the fear was justified, but it took a lot to get to this point.
Shutting off their largest export is a move of desperation which they made while smugly pretending they were more indispensable than they actually are. Heck, invading Ukraine was a move of desperation itself. As you can see from the Gideon Rose interview I posted, the US was actively moving to isolate Russia for a long while. It doesn't justify Russia's actions, but also these actions didn't crop up out of nowhere. The US has overthrown governments over oil (even when they have plenty of other countries to get oil from) and here is Russia having its main export threatened.
Nobody in their right mind is hating on the USA for not being world police. It's just White Man's Burden in disguise. Oh dear me you're so burdened by having to civilize the rest of the world, boohoo. Nobody asked them to, people even push back against it, and yet they do it anyway and then have the gall to complain about how much doing so is inconvenient. Then, two minutes later, the USA will complain about "sovereignty" and pretend they aren't encroaching on sovereignty every time they pretend to be world police.
i think ukraine asked the west for help a couple times but idk i can't read
The fact that you were downvoted so heavily for saying "two-sided discussion is good", presumably because Americans got uncomfortable with the accusation that their government is writing their narrative for them, tells me that on this specific issue it's most likely going to be an echo chamber
People have been hearing one side of this debate for so long that it feels kind of like a lost cause, to me. I've more faith that productive discussion can be had re: China than this war