So, before I get started, I just want to firmly lay out my own personal support for Ukraine. I've been banned from lemmy.ml communities before just for saying Slava Ukraini. I do my utmost to assist the Ukrainian cause, from cheering their victories to talking to other Americans about the importance of the war there. I've picked my side, on purpose, and I'm at peace with it.
That said, I can't help but notice a slow shift in the tone of Russo-Ukrainian War information spaces that severely disturbs me.
The liberal west is based around a set of values. Freedom, mainly, that's the "liberty" at the heart of "liberal". Unless it's hurting someone else, everyone should, as much as we can manage, be free to do as they wish. This leads us to do things in a certain way, and it's "that way" that we use to look for and identify our friends.
Many people over the decades have tried to drag us down, paint us out to be just as bad as everyone else. While we certainly make mistakes, I think you have to look no further than our domestic strife and what each side is fighting for, to see that this love of freedom and life is still strong. Free speech, very important. Freedom to be gay, also very important. Liberty, freedom. Do as you wish, and leave other people that same freedom.
So, what I've been seeing that disturbs me so, is a slow shift in the tone of pro-Ukrainian voices towards a greater hopelessness and despair. A larger amount of censorship and banning here on Lemmy, but also in other places. A greater emphasis on the fear and violence of war, which is replacing and supplanting the admirable courage and hope that was so powerful in the initial days of the war.
I hate to say this, but it's starting to look from an outside perspective that ... maybe we were wrong, maybe the Ukrainians are not actually all that different from the Russians.
I personally refuse to believe this. I think the trials and horrors of war are simply wearing them down, and that's why I'm making this post.
I hope everyone remembers, we live in a hard reality, combating not just Russian influence, but our own domestic problems trying to turn us into another Russia. We cannot allow this to happen, and the first line of defense against it is found in our own courage, our own heart.
I would remind everyone that the most effective weapon the Russians have is their information warfare, that splits us from our countrymen and allies in good old fashioned divide-and-conquer. They can pretend to be us, they are smart enough to do this, and they can cleverly wreck our morale from within. We must fight this. What fights it is courage and freedom, two things that build morale in others, instead of tearing it down.
To quote a famous American: "Give me Liberty, or give me Death." Those are the options Patrick Henry considered. "Just do what it takes to survive." is not listed. This is the American heart, so strong it even gets turned against us in the form of domestic, American terrorism--Americans killing Americans. It's not perfect and it's not pretty. And, if anyone wants to join us from authoritarian control, they'll find that blood and suffering is involved to get to it, and does not disappear once you arrive. The rewards, though, of having a non-totalitarian ruler, are worth it.
Keep the faith my friends, long, gruelling wars with setbacks can still be won. We can someday see peace and freedom, it is possible. Just not for all Ukrainians. This is actual hard reality, accepting the unfairness of the world, and dying for it anyway.
Personally, I was losing hope myself, about 2 years ago. One single man actually turned that around for me. Zelensky, and his courage, and the powerful Ukrainian heart he seemed to awaken. Don't let the Russians drag his name through the mud, he doesn't deserve it. Don't let other Ukrainians act like orcs, they can do better. We must not be like the Russians, otherwise we deserve no better than the lives they get.
Slava Ukraini.
Okay, well, I think that telling Russians not to be scared, that they're going to be okay in the occupied territories and producing weapons to genocide Ukrainians is probably not the most effective tool, so they're probably going to keep using fear.
Legitimately, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about here. I'm a NAFO troublemaker so I see some... troubled expressions, but threats towards NATO is one I haven't seen in the wild.
Okay, but it sure as shit means that Ukraine's attitude at wartime is in no way at odds with the 'liberal West', since it's the attitude we use as well. Almost like that's the general attitude in wars where the polity is threatened.
Also, attacking Afghanistan wasn't dumb, and I'm not sure why you think it was.
Attacking Afghanistan was absolutely dumb. We did not need a full scale military operation just to get Bin Laden, in time. Look at where we are, Taliban is back in control, terrorists are still being groomed. We just had a knee-jerk reaction, not too different from the Israelis right now.
Fine, I'll go find some evidence, that's a legit request.
Yeah, they might. That doesn't make it effective though, and it comes with a cost that I am trying to explain. If you think the benefits are worth that cost, fine, but it doesn't mean it isn't there. We in the west are not in this war, that's just harsh reality, and I'm sorry. But it makes our standards different.
Uh, one, I'm curious as to how you think we should have been searching Afghanistan while it was controlled by a deeply hostile regime, and two, I'm curious as to how you think the initial invasion of Afghanistan went.
Yeah, that has a lot more to do with the Iraq War than "Afghanistan was a bad move". In early '03 the Taliban was almost completely destroyed, and the situation was stabilizing.
Yeah, no, we weren't indiscriminately bombing Afghans in the initial invasion of Afghanistan.
... does it make our standards different? I feel like you're applying your standards for warfare to the West as a whole.
I am applying my standards to the west as a whole. We can do this, as free citizens of the west. The standards themselves change to whatever we, as a whole, want them to be. We have this power by design. I was, however, careful to express how the views I was putting forward are not uniquely mine, and couched in our country's history.
Intelligence work, is how we usually find the people we want dead. Not larger scale attacks to make the investigation quicker. It was a job for the CIA, not the DoD.
We killed our fair share of innocents. I agree we kept ourselves to a much higher standard though. But it doesn't really matter to the people who lost their loved ones.
Okay, but then it's not Ukraine being at odds with Western standards, it's Ukraine being at odds with your standards.
Uh, we can attempt to change the standards of our society, but 'attempt' =/= 'success', and certainly not instant success. If you're saying someone is at odds with Western standards, that means Western standards as they are, not as you wish them to be.
Intelligence work led us to Afghanistan. Do you know how much of the initial ground work in Afghanistan was done by special forces and intelligence agencies?
You can say that about literally any war.
You very cleverly quoted around where I said I linked my own opinions with ones rooted in our country's history.
If you want to duke this out just to fight I'm not particularly interested. I'm more about getting to the bottom of things. You don't think the CIA could have gotten him or something?
Because it's not relevant. I can hold any opinion and point to our country's history to back it. It doesn't change the fundamental problem that you're speaking of your standards, and not the standards held by the society you're discussing.
I think you really don't understand the difficulty of 'catching' and extracting someone in a hostile country, or how the CIA usually operates (hint - it's usually with considerable US military backup).
I think if it was that easy, we'd live in a much easier-to-deal-with world.
So, if the opinion was held by me, and rooted back in our history, are you sure it's just me? Seems like a lot of people share my opinion, honestly, and even consider it worth fighting for. Were we trying to make our enemies afraid during the GWOT or was it hearts and minds?
To the contrary, we have quite a lot of CIA work through our history, lot of it unclassified now. They do frequently work with groups like Green Berets, I admit, who are particularly qualified for things like training militants. But no, they don't usually require heavy military backup To the contrary, that makes it harder to hide. Once they found him, then we drop a JDAM on his head.
Our world really isn't that bad, depending on what you compare it to. We resolve quite a few problems, even if the media prefers not to focus on that.
I'm sure that the view that a country at war shouldn't be making its enemies afraid is not a mainstream opinion in the West, and certainly can't be said to be a position of the West which Ukraine is at odds with.
Both. Don't you remember 'Shock and Awe'?
And Rangers, and SEALs, and Delta, and Night Stalkers, and...
It's pretty rare for the CIA to conduct direct action without military support.
With what? With aircraft operating from what bases? With aircraft exposed to hostile anti-aircraft fire? With what kind of window?
I mean, I agree about resolving quite a few problems, but my point is that things would be much easier for US foreign policy if we could just nab or kill who-the-fuck-ever we wanted if we were willing to pay the PR and diplomatic costs.
But that's not how it works.
Am I saying employ zero fear? No, of course some is important. The problem is thinking it's going to work on Russians before it influences allies, some of whom are already on the edge of support.
Shock and Awe was against the Iraqi army, not the Taliban. They hide too well.
No, the CIA does it all the time. They are independent of the DoD. We have CIA assets in Russia right now, obviously. Do you see the DoD there too?
It's starting to seem like I'm just arguing with a military fan as opposed to a history fan. From a carrier probably. Afghanistan did not exactly have the strongest AA capabilities, did they?
At any rate, this is tiring, and I'm still looking for examples of threats to NATO. Most of the ones I was thinking of appear to have been deleted, which I am grateful for.
Regardless, I'm done with this debate, so feel free to drop your best final arguments. I will read them, but I am no longer responding. Frankly I have other stuff to do today too.
edit for grammar
I don't know what you're expecting. There have been considerable numbers of surrenders and defections as well as the fear contributing to general low morale in Russian forces on the front.
You asked about the GWOT, and the basic principle remains in our operations against the Taliban. Unless you think decapping mountains with massive bombs is just us being friendly.
Do you know the meaning of 'Direct Action'?
Worse, you're arguing against a History major.
Afghanistan is landlocked. The only two effective air routes are through Iran (unfriendly) and Pakistan (literally playing a double game). You wanna explain how that works?
How many aircraft are you willing to lose to 'weak' AA capabilities? We lost aircraft to hostile action in the Afghanistan War as it went. You want to see how much worse it would be over a country completely controlled by hostile forces? Free to set up AA wherever and however they want?
Okay, one more. How do you think we got men there in the first place? Teleportation? lol
And how many jets did we lose? Any stealth ones? Check your stats.
Through Pakistan. "Moving forces and supplies through Pakistan to station in Afghanistan where they decide their operation time and tempo" and "Every time we perform a strike Pakistan has a literal hour to warn whoever they want" are two entirely different things.
Okay, so your argument is that we could have killed Osama bin Laden with no ground forces except covert CIA observers if only we... used none of the tools we literally tried to kill him with for nearly ten years except for stealth jets launched from carriers off the shore of Pakistan and Iran, over a territory that, instead of being cleared and safe, is completely free for the Taliban to set up whatever AA they wanted and with plenty of warning time from their friends in the ISI.
... right. You have fun with that.
And time, I said time too. But yes, that actually is my argument.