this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
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If you find that funny I seriously question your sense of humour
Does it appear that I find the loss of life in war humorous? Have you carefully considered my comments on this issue? Your response seems to reflect a bad faith interpretation of my position. It seems that your focus is more on justifying the conflict than on the individuals who are directly affected by it in Ukraine. For many, the reality is that we would struggle to endure even two weeks without basic necessities like running water. How long do you think it would take for your perspective on this war to change? Would it take a certain number of casualties, or perhaps another 1,000 days of conflict?
I obviously wasn't making a joke. I was comparing the situation from 1940 with today. Would you also have said the Allies should just make peace at any cost or did they do the right thing to prevent even more suffering?
Get a grip on reality, you can't give dictators and aggressors an inch. It would be just an invitation for them.
Had the Allies pursued peace earlier, countless lives could have been spared, and many cities would not have needed to be rebuilt. Additionally, Japan would not have experienced the devastation of atomic bombings. If you believe that prolonging a conflict is preferable to achieving peace, I believe a sobering reflection on the consequences of war is necessary.
Yeah, you're just stupid. Goodbye
That is how I feel in response to our conversation. Goodbye.
Yes, letting the regime that was throwing all the "undesirables" into an industrial death factories, in the land they already had, to take even more land, to control all of those "undesirables" would have been better. Sure, the loss of life would have been less, if you feel like the nazis did about the people being slaughtered in the holocaust.
Just allowing Japan to take China, and everything around them, sure would have stopped them from massacring all the people they were killing there too.
Appeasing dictators is fundamentally different from pursuing de-escalation and cooperation. In the 1940s, after the war had begun, there was no realistic path for the Allies to achieve diplomatic success with Germany or Japan. The nature of their aggressive expansionism and ideology made meaningful negotiation impossible, leaving military conflict as the only viable response.
Are you really trying to draw a comparison to today's situation? The context is entirely different—we are more informed and connected than ever before. Avoiding paths to peace and solely pursuing escalation under the premise that "Putin is bad" is a fundamentally flawed approach. First, we do not choose Russia's leadership. Second, if Putin is the leader the Russian people have chosen, who are we to dictate otherwise?
Lets say in a perfect world in 1940's US and Japan had open diplomacy, it’s possible a deal could have been reached to prevent such atrocities. The beauty of diplomacy lies in its ability to minimize human loss while fostering cooperation and peace.
There is a very fine line between cooperation and appeasement, especially in the eyes of someone who has the mindset of a dictator. It could be argued that most dictators do not understand the difference. It is a lot like working with a narcissist. Any concession, is simply seen as proof they can go take more.
Yes, it was impossible to deter the axis forces from expansion. They had been discussing the desire to control their respective spheres of influence for years, they made diplomacy a no go. Even questions about walking back some of the Treatise of Versailles fell on deaf ears. Most experts also agree that even had they scrapped it, the fascists would have turned to another grievance, to justify their ideology, as a core aspect of fascism is a grievance, towards an outsider, they can claim victim hood to. Ultimately, they promised way too much, and without the war machine, and the looting of their neighbors, they couldn't stop the populace from, fairly rapidly, turning against them, because all the money being spent to bolster their huge employment boom, would just reignite the inflation, something that would be a death blow to any regime replacing the Wiemar. Are these the same things as today? No, but there are echoes of the fascist rise of last century, today. Also, I was commenting directly to your statements about working with the Nazis, to a comment about conceding France.
The idea this is because "Putin is bad" misses the point that "Putin is invading other countries, and annexing their land". This war didn't start because Putin was at home, doing awful things to his own country, and being a terrible dictator there. It started because he decided to start annexing other country's land, and forcing himself on people who didn't elect him. He did a little here, a little there, saw no real response from the west, and decided that the annexation of those countries was a concession the west was willing to make, to avoid war with them. He full tilt invaded Ukraine, found out otherwise. The west was willing to make concessions on the basis of going "Ok sure, Crimea has a large Russian population, and a separatist movement, it isn't worth a war with Russia over that piece of land". The west was not fine with conceding all of a large country that borders the Schengen. Why didn't Putin just take his diplomatically achieved concession, where he got the ethnically Russian part of Ukraine, and with it, open access to the Black Sea? Why did he not consider that annexing part of Ukraine would, of course, heat up public desire to join treaties like the EU, and NATO? He could have just been fine with the ethnically Russian part, Black Sea access, and Ukraine still not in NATO, because of that annexation, but he didn't. He wanted all of Ukraine from the start.
The people wanting to just not fight Putin seem to be under the assumption that expansionism, and reclamation, of their previous empire, isn't the goal here. They seem to ignore the fact that Ukraine joining NATO wasn't really popular, and their entry to the EU had a luke warm reception, until Russia gave them reasons to want to do these things. Putin has been discussing reclaiming the lost countries of the USSR since before he was the president. He dipped his toes into it a couple times, and saw that the west was fine to concede territory to him, in order to avoid war. So, more than a year before the escalation of western intelligence operations started in Ukraine, and around 5/6 years before Putin escalated in Ukraine, Putin had started really ramping up anti-Ukraine propaganda everywhere. Their puppet leader had failed after Ukrainians revolted, expelled his puppet, and elected a Jewish man in a landslide. The west was now training Ukraine to protect themselves, and offering some access to their intelligence. Putin had hit a wall with the west just allowing them to continue annexing places. At least ones that bordered the Schengen economic zone.
Seeing this the propaganda machine shifted to leaning on racist sentiment against Slavs/Ukraine and infantilized them, saying over a million people revolting, to his puppet, was just them being too stupid to realize they were controlled by the CIA. Also, after electing a Jewish man in a landslide, Putin decided to go with the story that Ukrainians are nazis, so their invasion was justified. This is the fault of Putin's desire to expand, he is at fault here. He can stop any time. He chooses not to. He has been getting foreign weapons this whole time, just like Ukraine, but now he is getting foreign boots on the ground. He is escalating again. This is why the Ukrainians were given permission to use longer ranged arms on Russian territory. When does it become Russia's responsibility to stop escalating? Do you really think you have the right to tell other countries to concede their sovereignty? They elected a leader who fights back, if they wanted a leader who fights back, who are we to dictate otherwise?
Media tells us putin wants to expand, the reality is that he is defending his people. He attacked those countries because NATO was looking to build military bases in those countries. I blame the NATO countries for just wanting to get their way and not come to a deal. The west is always getting its way even at the cost of human life.
I have watched videos of him saying he wishes to reclaim their former empire.
source?
I can not find the video I am thinking of. It is like 20 years old at this point, and was Putin talking at a media round table sort of conference.
However, don't just need that. The follow is a transcript of him at meeting with "young, entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists " discussing what he sees Russia doing moving forward. Where he uses an anecdote about how Peter the Great took a big part of Sweden, after a prolonged war, and how it wasn't invading Sweden, but returning their sovereignty, as an example of how he views moving forward with Russia today. This is published by the Kremlin. His, nationally, internal communications are littered with these type of anecdotes, and analogies, used as examples of how Russia should move forward, and protect its sovereignty. It is very hard to not come away with the message that he desires to take their empire back, like Peter the Great.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68606
No one is saying anyone has to dictate a different leader for Russia if Putin was chosen by the people, just that Russia needs to back the off and stay out of everybody else’s business
I think there is a bad understanding of why Russia attacked Ukraine. Why do you think that happened?
Now, or 17 years ago with the Crimean peninsula when Ukraine’s parliament ousted the Putin-backed president who was sabotaging the NATO application? Because to me that’s when it started and the most recent thing is just Putin taking advantage of the US not interdicting when Biden was in office.
This conflict can trace its origins to the 2008 Bucharest Summit, where both Georgia and Ukraine were assured that they would eventually become NATO members. However, by 2014, escalating tensions and geopolitical events had rendered that assurance too late to prevent the current crisis.