sudneo

"Some" obligations may perfectly work this way . Not sure I would take a military handbook as a reference for international right (especially from one of the countries that doesn't even recognize the ICC), but either way, I strongly doubt the meaning is "if they start torturing their prisoners, we should torture ours" or mirroring other war crimes. I am no expert, but I think that the motivation "the enemy did it before us" wouldn't hold much in the ICC.

I don't generally agree with the idea because I believe it doesn't incentivize (actually, it goes in the very opposite direction) the cultural shift which is needed. That is, you are the platform, you are not buying anything, you are simply supporting the platform(s) you care about unconditionally.

Turns out you don't even have the decency to admit your own misunderstanding, despite it was unequivocally clear from the previous comment. Instead, looking at your history it seems you just have the habit to shout at people (often insulting, with a very bully attitude) and to tell what other people's opinions are (surprising to see at least a few instances of this in less than 20 comments).

I am blocking you in the meanwhile because I can do without lunatics shouting their hatred online, especially when there is not a gram of rationality in the debate.

Shame on you.

I did definitely hear about this, but I don't think I can say I understand it in all situations. Specifically about this, I quote:

They [conventions] are coming to be regarded less and less as contracts concluded on a basis of reciprocity in the national interests of the parties and more and more as a solemn affirmation of principles respected for their own sake, a series of unconditional engagements on the part of each of the Contracting Parties ' vis-à-vis ' the others.

As a commentary to the Article 2 of the 4th Geneva convention.

It brings the fight closer to Putin and requires them to divert forces.

Realistically, Russia seems to be perfectly content in having its own population die. These advantages might be true, but they depend a lot on how Russia reacts to this. As far as Putin is concerned, I am quite sure he has a permanent residence in some bunker somewhere anyway.

It also makes the Russian people more likely to revolt against the war.

I think this is a legitimate opinion, but I think that history showed us over and over that attacked populations tend to unite. I don't know if you have any particular example in mind.

Karma farming even on Lemmy? Or what is the point of such comments? I am interested about what part I don't understand, in particular of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention

Quite frankly also a lot of broken people that just saw one too many of their relatives dying under russian rocket barrage…

And I would definitely not expect them to make balanced judgement calls with morale and humanity in mind, of course.

I really hope it does not happen for Ukraine’s sake, but at the same time I would understand if it did.

Yeah, I think those are two very distinct concepts in fact. I have this kind of conversations on a weekly basis, where I end up usually disagreeing at some point with my fiancee (who is Ukrainian) about certain topics. I do understand of course that the hatred is real and justified. These analysis are of course a privilege for people who can do them with a certain level of detachment.

Yeah, I got lost in one of the many threads :|

Any reference to this principle? This doesn't sound like a way international right works. I can imagine this can be part of military doctrine, though.

All that said, any airport is a military target in time of war.

Yeah, an airport for sure, I consider it "infrastructure".

have nothing to do with anything to do just that, so fucking get with it, spanky

So, I - the person who started the conversation - discussed of the opinions I have, about the topic I chose to discuss. You came here telling me what I think, and I am the one who talked about nothing.

You want to force dumb, dangerous, evil shit down our throats and then backtrack like a coward when you’re called on it?

I literally explained my point of view. Unfortunately in doing so I had to dismiss a lot of your made-up arguments. Apparently you are incapable of discussing what I actually say, so you apparently like to discuss what you think I said, or what people you generally disagree with say. Something that might be a nice exercise, but it's futile, since I don't think a good 90% of the things you suggest are my position. Unfortunately, for the bullshit asymmetry principle I am here wasting time dismissing claims, despite the fact that you will ignore all of these and in the next comment you will come up with more, which is a much cheaper activity.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt with you, is it?

Claims without arguments can be denied without arguments. You were using an argument that "not talking about Russian crimes" in a totally specific conversation constitute some kind of 'proof' that I am siding with Russia. I literally said that I don't feel like making a disclaimer every comment and saying "despite this does not even begin to compare with the atrocities in Izyum, Mariupol, [...]". Denial?

Yes, that is your position

Excuse me if I, the person with that position, know better what my goddamn fucking position is. The fucking arrogance.

You are actively arguing that Ukraine using a drone on a fucking airport building is a war crime because attacking civilians is always a war crime regardless of circumstances

And there you go. The clear example you completely misunderstood. I literally said IN MY FIRST COMMENT that attacks on infrastructure are justified? I am talking about attacks on civilians, not that an attack on airport is a war crime because is an attack on civilians. In this specific case, the attack ended up on a building. Ok, it seems that this was not the intended target, so we can discard this particular example because we don't know, but I still wanted to discuss the attitude of people towards these kind of events, assuming that the building not the airport was the target. Note that all this conversation happened before your first comment even arrived. This means you didn't even bother reading the same conversation you jumped in, and now you have the arrogance to claim what my argument is when you completely misrepresented it.

Look here, this is my first comment:

I **understand bridges and other infrastructure with military value, military targets in general **etc., but this is a basically random building.

At 07:10 UTC someone already mentioned that we don't know what the target was, to which I responded:

Good point. I suppose my point still stands in terms of how people welcome such events, rather than the events themselves. A similar statement could be done for the missile in Taganrog few days ago. Assuming they were not the intended targets, it still seems that a good chunk of the people participating in the discourse justifies this type of attacks anyway.

Your first comment came hours after this conversation happened, and yet you are now saying

You are actively arguing that Ukraine using a drone on a fucking airport building is a war crime because attacking civilians is always a war crime regardless of circumstances

Which means you understood nothing of the whole argument, you didn't read the conversation nor the sibling comments.

Implying Ukraine is committing a war crime by attacking an airport

Implying nothing, this is your conclusion. My intention is exactly what's written, I wouldn't support Ukraine committing war crimes, I'd rather have Russia be the only one. This is because with some people the conversation moved to the abstract question of the "limits" or "restrictions" in defending oneself. This sentence is in my first comment, and you can see that this has a generic value simply reading it in context:

I feel like we should not cross the line where we justify attacks on civilians, and let Russia be the only one committing war crimes by doing that (and hopefully paying the price).

I am the first that supports attacking airports and other infrastructure within Russian territory, because they are -by definition- military targets. This concept is expressed in the paragraph above this citation, and therefore your conclusion is wrong.

Russia’s citizens are suffering the very real consequences of their own actions in supporting said genocide.

Your interpretation lies on the collective responsibility (i.e., the whole Russian population is responsible for Russian actions), principle that I don't agree with.

Ukraine does not have to care about Russia because Russia is threatening Ukraine’s ability to live and Ukraine has the unilateral, natural right to use every means available to protect its life, including drone attacks on airports. EVERY country has that right.

See where we reach, when you made up arguments? I agree with what you think is a statement opposed to my claim.

If they didn’t want to be attacked then they wouldn’t have been dumb enough to support a regime trying to invoke genocide and nuclear war.

Here you fall back into the collective responsibility, everyone is supporting the war, everyone is guilty. Sorry, I don't agree. From a practical standpoint, because there are minorities that we should nurture and consider allies in Russia that want a better country, and this stance doesn't do anything than isolate them and expose them even more to government repression.

We in the U.S. deserved [...]

I don't think terrorist attacks on people are justified, not even against US citizens, not even against the republicans and filo-Bush.

By insinuating those people have no agency or [...] of Russia’s stances and actions

"those people" are millions of people made by all kind of populations, from Putin's fans to dissidents, to illiterate in remote villages.

categorically demanding Ukraine surrender and submit to genocide

This you completely made it up. You really can't resist.

You falsely frame that drone attack as unnecessary and cruel and you haven’t considered that that drone attack and several others that went down over the past year are either attempts to assassinate Putin or setting the groundwork to invade Moscow

First of all, I did not mention unnecessary nor cruel. Second of all, no, I did not consider that one attack with a drone in a Moscow district which is half a city away from the Cremlin (which is anyway not where Putin probably is) a way to assassinate Putin (something which I welcome very much). I didn't because it doesn't make any sense, and it seems a post-factum made up justification. I make my opinion clearer, just not to be misunderstood. If tomorrow Ukraine would start bombing Moscow residential areas with the "objective" to prepare for assassinating Putin, I would still consider these actions wrong, despite agreeing with the general goal.

Now Zaphorzhiza’s plant is rigged with bombs.

You continue to repeat this. Thankfully, we don't know that yet. As you know, IEAE still did not have access to the roof and the reactor 3 and 4 (if I remember correctly), but so far no traces of explosives aimed to blow up the central were found. This does not mean that it's not possible, it just means it's not a fact just yet.

Now one of Ukraine’s biggest dams was blown up

And what do you think my stance is about that? Cheering up?

This is a fucking war and Ukraine’s survival is far more important than anyone in Russia’s, period, full stop.

If you demonstrate to me that potentially killing civilians in Russia will help the survival of Ukraine, I might agree with you.

We’re certainly not perverse enough to equivocate a drone attack on an airport in a war with a nuclear power that has literally raped Ukraine’s people en masse with a bullying victim raping his bully’s mom.

So, you make a simile to explain the point, I change the simile to be more aligned with what I think, and now you think I made a comparison to the fact, not just used it as a model to explain a concept. OK. But I got your opinion about this, and I fundamentally disagree with it. You think:

Ukraine’s survival is far more important than anyone in Russia’s, period, full stop.

Which in your simile means you don't make any distinction between the actual bully, his sister, or the neighbor. I make a distinction, and therefore I disagree with the bullied kid dropping a bomb on the whole neighborhood.

And here you are, telling the nerdy Black kid down the street that he can’t launch a drone to blow them [...]

Who is "them"?

rather Ukraine do it to ensure their own survival

Again you need to argument this cause-effect relationship. I honestly don't see it, I don't see how few civilians dead in Moscow, Taganrog or wherever else will help ensure Ukraine survival. To me is detrimental from multiple point of views, but since you seem to base a lot of your reasoning on this, maybe you can explain it to me.

You’re HURTING Ukraine and victims everywhere by arguing this.

This is your interpretation, which honestly, judging from your understanding skills, doesn't worry me too much.

I think this is an interesting arguments. I would probably debate whether economic (marginal) damages constitute a strategic advantage, but in general I agree that it's true. Injured people, manpower loss etc. is an overall damage. Maybe I would rephrase in that they don't translate into immediate military gains, and there are of course negative sides as well (like the loss of image which I think is crucial for Ukraine in particular). I still feel that the benefits mentioned are not that valuable to violate the overall principles, especially because any violation is a step further towards abandoning those principles at all, which I don't think is anyone interests (not that Russia is respecting any of those anyway, but this can have effects on other wars as well, potentially).

You don’t treat apples and bananas the same despite the fact that they are both fruit.

And yet you can say that each one of them can be rotten, or spoiled, or ripen (or not), etc. Not sure what your point is. Also it seems you are trying to make an argument that two different agents cannot do comparable actions, which for me is completely absurd.

This is why we do not hold Ukraine to the same standards we hold Russia toward

We are talking the lowest possible standard: the war crime standard. We are not talking about wearing white gloves.

Because Russia is the invader and Ukraine is the victim.

This is not a valid argument, from my point of view. Being invaded does not automatically guarantee you the (moral) right to do absolutely anything, without restrictions to the population of the invading country.

That’s why people don’t bat an eye when a Russian airport is attacked by a drone but do when a Ukrainian city is leveled into dust

Again dishonesty. The reason for that is that one is an offensive action, the other is a defensive action. This has nothing to do with attacking people who are outside the conflict.

I don’t even think you read the article. I’m not sure most people here did… the whole incident was an accident and those drones were intended for the airport, but crashed into another building, rendering the basis of your complaint moot.

So, the drone was meant for the airport (according to Russian sources, which apparently now we trust), and reached a building. What's the big problem here. Also, who cares about this particular episode, it's a fucking empty office. I am talking about the whole principle of people cheering that a random building got attacked as a success on itself. Not "a failed attack on an airport". I am talking about the whole point that some people -like you- see it acceptable to do attacks on civilians, because Ukraine is defending itself, in general, not this episode (which is unclear, was the office a target, was it not, etc.) in particular.

What propaganda? Do you categorically deny what Russia has done over the past two years?

To make an example of propaganda, the one that pushes for collective responsibility. You can see many examples in this very same thread. It's a common war propaganda strategy where people are made guilty by association, to completely dehumanize the enemy, and by enemy I mean everyone, innocent people included. I totally understand it from Ukrainian side, because this is often needed to unite the population, but this doesn't make it reasonable, in my opinion.

Do you categorically deny what Russia has done over the past two years?

You need to be really in bad faith even suggesting that.

I don’t think we even need to continue. You are very sus and I don’t think you’re a legitimate user. I think you’re here astroturfing to defend Russia.

Ta-da. Russian bot.

I mean, you build your own imaginary arguments, then you use it to build a base for your own conclusions. What can I say, if this is not the result of the propaganda I don't know what is, where in less than 10 comments we go from "war crimes are bad" to "you are a russian bot that is used to condemn Ukraine".

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I asked 2 questions, which are the core of the discussion here, and you dodged them, because having a fucking conversation on topic is too hard, better to talk about made-up arguments and ad hominem. I repeat them for your benefit:

1. I think that any military target, outside or inside Russia, that can help win the war is a fair and justifiable target to attack. I think that civilian targets, that by definition are not involved in the war, are not. Do you disagree?
2. Do you think the principles stated in the Geneva convention are wrong and outdated? Do you think that people not involved, or not anymore involved, in a conflict should not be treated humanly and constitute targets for attacks?
3. [bonus] You are accepting by default that any action is justified a-priori, I think instead that defending yourself is absolutely your right, but this does not automatically removes any restriction to what you can (morally) do. Specifically, I think that upholding the Geneva convention is still a reasonable constraint, even when Russia is constantly violating it. Do you disagree?

That's it, this is all what this conversation should be about.

If you want to simply make up arguments, go on. If you want to actually attempt to have an actual conversation without resorting to cheap rethoric, these are the questions that you should answer so we can actually confront other point of view. You are surgically dodging these very same points for a while now.

Literally the comment I responded to was making a generic (abstract) statement, so I'd say that you are well within your rights to have the conversations you want, but so are others.