182
‘I am not made for war’: the men fleeing Ukraine to evade conscription
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
182 points (92.1% liked)
World News
38972 readers
2599 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Such a tough and heartbreaking situation. Of course I'm pretty sure most of us would like to think we'd step up if our country was brutally attacked but I honestly have no idea what I'd do. Facing seemingly endless meat waves would be hell by itself let alone thermobaric bombs and drones.
No fucking way. I ain't gonna' die fighting for the inflated egos, of the morons in charge of the world powers and their ass-lickers. I'd gather up my loved ones and leave in a heartbeat, if my country started forced conscription. I'm not enough of a nationalist to die "for king and fatherland", no matter how much i like this little country.
You don't have to be patriotic to end up stepping up. When you see the shit Russia did to the Ukrainians in the areas they annex in 2014, it's easy to see why people wouldn't want that to happen to their family, and why they'd be willing to step up.
There have been times in my life when I would have fled, and times in my life when I would have fought. Never for the idea of country, but certainly for the people in the country. I’m a middle aged American woman and having no family anymore, I have considered fighting for the families of Ukraine. Though not too seriously and I don’t even know if they’d take me
I'm not fighting for this shithole country unless I am fighting against MAGAs instead of for MAGAs.
I personally think that's the only likely scenario where there'd be war on American soil.
Fuck my country. My loyalty is to my family.
(Completely different country here, no present risk.) The unfortunate reality for me is that I have three kids who might be called up if the shit hits the fan, and I've had 30 odd years longer on this planet.
If its not me, it's my kids.
I'm too old and too sick to ever be called up to fight unless it's hopeless. But I have a 14-year-old daughter and I see no reason for the modern U.S. military to keep its "women can't be drafted" policy in such a situation. I can't lose her. My biggest fear, one I have nightmares about, is outliving her. Even if I was super patriotic, I don't think I'd risk her being forced to fight. I would flee.
That only causes the sons and daughters of others to die
Maybe so, and this may be callous of me, but I would not sacrifice my daughter over them. I don't know whether or not you are a parent, but I don't think many parents would be willing to sacrifice their children because others wanted them sacrificed.
How many other sons and daughters are worth your's? Ten? A hundred? A thousand? Does it matter if they're children, or legal adults? Does it matter if they die quickly, or held, raped for a month, and then tortured to death?
Are you a parent? Because otherwise, I don't think you really understand why I feel this way.
Do you lack empathy for other parents and other children? Do you expect them to die to save you and your's, or will you just expect enough of them to die to stall for the duration of your lifetimes? How direct does your contribution to the deaths of others have to be? If your daughter was held hostage, would you go to the camps every day and pull the lever on the gas chambers, or would that be 'too much'?
My mother loves me, and I know she'd die to save my dumb ass. She'd kill a few people at the least too. But I also know she would be deeply ashamed of me if I was bound by common morality to assist in the prevention of a great evil, and chose instead to flee - not just spur of the moment, but continually, every day of my life, until either the evil was successful in its genocide or until other people paid the price on my behalf.
Could you look your daughter in the eyes, and tell her a hundred children raped to death were the price to not risk her life? Not even a guaranteed trade, just not to risk her life? What other risks to her life are unacceptable?
I'll take that as a no.
The need to protect your offspring doesn't just transcend species, it transcends kingdoms.
There are trees that will protect their offspring.
I'm sorry, but trying to reason or shame me into abandoning my parental need to protect my offspring that goes back literally billions of years is not something you're going to be able to do. There is a long, long history of parents begging their children not to go to war.
Cool, the need to reproduce also transcends kingdoms, but I wouldn't be making moral arguments for reproducing at any cost either.
There's also a long, long history of parents shaming or even killing their own children for not going to war for a just cause. This idea of a child being worth committing any evil to save is very modern. You can claim that it's something that you could never fight, that it's some biological imperative that takes precedence over everything else, but history, and fuck, recent examples for that matter, very clearly points to that being nothing but an excuse.
I don't remember making a moral argument. When did I do that? Can you please quote it?
If your argument isn't that saving your child under these circumstances is moral, what you're saying then, is that you recognize full well that what you're proposing, since it is seemingly entirely without limits, is unforgivably evil, but you're 100% okay with it anyway and have no interest in examining or questioning it.
You are getting dangerously close to violating civility rules.
You do not get to tell me it is my duty to send my child to die in a war any more than you get to tell me that it's my duty to sacrifice my child to appease the volcano god no matter what moral argument you are making.
And you also do not get to call anyone here evil. You have been here long enough to know that.
I'm sorry that you think I'm evil, but that does not give you the right to call me or anyone else evil.
Edit: Also, I seriously doubt you never do anything out of self-interest and only spend your life altruistically, which is what you are essentially berating me for not doing.
Also, I would suggest that I do not have the moral right to sacrifice anyone's life but my own, related to me or not.
Because... I say that... there should be SOME kind of moral limit to what you would do to prevent risk from someone close to you?
Because I say that, I'm demanding you live your life 100% altruistically?
And where does inaction fit into that paradigm?
Sorry... I have no idea what you mean by 'inaction.' I told you the action I would take- I would flee before my daughter was an adult.
But you also seem to have some idea in your head that if my daughter were an adult, I would tie her down and put her in the basement if she wanted to go back and fight rather than let her make her own decisions.
But no, I will not allow my underage daughter to fight in a war and I will do anything I can to stop my greatest fear from happening. If you have the ability to overcome your greatest fear, good for you. I do not claim to have anywhere near that level of bravery. And if lacking bravery is evil, I guess I'm evil. But it's an inherent evil I have no control over. Wouldn't that make it a mental illness rather than an ethical violation?
And you don't see how fleeing necessarily implies inaction on matters of the preservation or sacrifice of the lives of others?
Perhaps you can point out where I said that.
Here's what you said originally:
In order for both claims to grok, your original statement would need to have implied that the US military abolishing its "women can't be drafted" policy to ALSO add a "And we're drafting underage kids now" despite nothing else suggesting that, AND that risking her being forced to fight and the fear of outliving her is only valid so long as she's underage AND unwilling, despite nothing else suggesting that, AND that argument being put forth being entirely irrelevant to the subject of the article, which is of people of conscription age fleeing, AND that argument being irrelevant to the comment you were originally responding to, being about someone's conscription-eligible kids being called up and them fleeing because of that.
Oh, please. That argument can easily posit that, since we live in a deterministic universe, nothing is an ethical violation, because we have no control over our own actions.
Also, since you wanted it all in one comment chain with regards to your incivility and 'calling people evil' claim:
I couldn't force my adult daughter to flee with me, so I think it would be obvious that I was talking about her as a child.
Look, I get that you currently think that I support genocide because, as a parent whose biggest fear in life is his child dying would do anything to stop that from happening, but I think you need to take a step back and a deep breath and think about what I'm saying here and what you expect of me.
Let's say your biggest fear in the world was being in the room with a dog and someone started telling you that if you didn't get in a room with a dog, you held an evil genocide-supporting position? How does that make any sense? It's not a political opinion, it's not a choice to be terrified of dogs, and expecting everyone to overcome the thing that terrifies them the most is somehow something achievable by most people.
I can't not be terrified of something that terrifies me. I can't not do whatever is in my power to stop the thing that terrifies me from happening. Good for you if you can, I don't have that sort of bravery and I would suggest that most people do not have that sort of bravery or there wouldn't be things like therapy for irrational phobias.
You quoted my original comment. You must have read that it was my biggest fear and the one that I have nightmares about. And yet you're berating me for not being able to overcome something that most people are not able to overcome as if I'm some sort of unusual case here. If I'm like most flawed humans, guilty.
Re your quote- I said you were coming close to violating civility rules, not that you were violating them. Can you really claim you're responding to me in a civil manner even if you aren't using insults?
You couldn't 'force' your daughter to flee with you now, at 14, if the state was trying to keep her for conscription purposes, as the only way you can 'force' her now is either by physical force (which would not be viable over fleeing an entire country unless you live a very short trunk ride to the border) or by the coercive apparatus of the state (ie filing a missing persons' report if she runs off).
I expect that "Literally anything and everything" be off the table as an acceptable sacrifice.
It's good that you bring up fear of dogs - I have very severe arachnophobia. I can't stay in the same room as a spider, no matter how harmless. I can't even look at a spider, real, photographed, or drawn, without panicking. If I said that ANY cost was worth me not having to go into a room full of spiders from floor to ceiling, and someone pointed out "What about an actual and serious risk of genocide being committed because you didn't", for me to hold that any cost was worth me not going into that room would be evil and in support of genocide, without a doubt.
This is true.
So by your argument, if someone feared being poor, more than anything in the world, they would be helpless to stop themselves from stepping on anyone and causing any amount of mass deaths in pursuit of remaining rich, and it would not be alright for anyone to call them evil for that?
After all, preservation of one's own wellbeing transcends not only species but kingdoms.
I would say most people don't make apologia for their phobias.
I'm sorry, I can't take you seriously after this analogy.
Feel free to believe I'm an evil person who supports genocide because I won't allow my underage daughter to die in a war. That's fine. Just bear that in mind when you agree with me on any other position I hold on any other issue that you are agreeing with someone who also is an evil genocide supporter, so you might want to think about whether or not it's a good idea after all.
Anyway, you implying you're not being uncivil is just silly and I think we should just end this before you end up taking a break from this community.
Because it casts doubt on whether a fear-based justification for immoral behavior is valid?
In the discussion you literally posited that any cost, including genocide, was worth not letting your daughter (implicitly, as I clearly outlined, not when she was underaged) die in a war. I don't know what you call that except conditional support for genocide. Most people, I think, would have some sort of moral issue with the cost being 'literal genocide'.
The fuck? That's some "Hitler liked dogs too - are you SURE you like dogs?"
Even if your positions were 99% evil and 1% good, that doesn't make the 1% good no longer worth agreeing with. And in all likelihood, it's probably closer to the reverse. I don't know why you feel that people can't defend evil positions unless their entire worldview is evil.
Uh-huh. It's just silly, because you made the accusation that I called you and not the position you were defending evil, and after it was pointed out that I quite clearly stated that the position you were defending was evil, you lost the ground you were making threats on. But ban me if you like. It would be terrible if someone thought that allowing genocide was evil.
Okay, I'd say you had enough warnings that you were not being civil. You have been here far more than long enough to know why your behavior is not acceptable. I'll give you some time to cool off.
For correctly pointing out that your argument is entirely without limits? Civility is when someone doesn't say something that makes you think about your deeply held positions, and the less you have to think, the more civil it is.
Cute, that you equate stopping genocide with superstition. Funny enough, the very example you use, the historical 'sacrifice your child to the gods' ALSO goes against your claim of doing quite literally anything for your child being the irrepressible urge of billions of years of evolution that you can't help instead of a very modern phenomenon.
Oh, I don't get to have opinions on morality, now? I'm sorry. Please forgive me for judging anyone as evil. I'll remember to say nice things about the Nazis next time too. After all, they were just preserving a future for their children. I mean, what if their children had the risk of going hungry and dying in the future? Isn't cleansing the land of foreigners to preserve plentiful estates for them worth removing that risk?
So now I can't call anyone evil. Wow. I'll remember that the next time I'm discussing genocide.
You can get as angry at me as you like, but no, you do not get to call people names. This is stated in the sidebar.
But you are welcome to think I am an evil person. However, since we seem to be in agreement on virtually every other issue, that should probably be cause for you to reflect on your own positions.
An evil person can't only be evil on one position after all, and you wouldn't want to fall for a confirmation bias.
Here's what I said
Is saying that an argument or position is evil now unacceptable, so long as someone holds that position or argument?
Fucking what
I am not going to argue with you over two different comment chains. Please pick one.
Fight someone else's war...? And risk my life??. Fuck fighting for 'my country' - or some prick who might be in charge of it today. Its a fucking parasite that squeezed me for everything it could get, and relentlessly continues.