*Why the fuck do you think that we don't agree?
Sorry but piss off with the moral high ground.
What you seem to be saying is the immorality of previous Western led wars is somehow a moral justification of Putin's war?
I don't happen to think that.
I happen to think that Vietnam was America's collective nervous breakdown over Communism.
I happen to think that the way the British State has handled NI pre-1992 was just shocking.
I happen to think that the bombing of Nagaski was in no way justifable.
I protested against Iraq and Afghanistan.
But I also am mindful, that there are also situations like WWII - which also had a very long run up to it, couldn't have been avoided. And even then I'm very aware that we did some appalling stuff as part of that. Dresden springs to mind.
And situations like Bosnia.
I have struggled with this idea of terrorist/freedom fighter since a teenager. I have been to places to try and get a sense of the difference.
Past wrongs, don't make this less wrong.
I have family who are Quakers. I also find this difficult to deal with, because although I fundamentally disagree with war because its ordinary people who hurt, not leaders, I also am aware of human nature and its ability to be all consumed by power too.
I don't think war is something that we can just purely opt out of either, because sometimes you do just get individuals hell bent on it. Just like I don't think you can stop all individual murders.
I personally think that the West has completely lost sight of many of its values that underpin liberal democracy. I've been saying that on MN for years that our hypocrisy is definitely part of the problem.
I still don't think that we've had any agenda for regime change in Russia though. Nor any desire or appetite for war with Russia either. Even in terms of sphere of influence, Russian citizens aren't exactly embracing Putinist ideals of Russia in the numbers he'd like - they aren't embracing western style ideas either - its a global technological revolution present in every corner of the world. China gave up on the idea of opting out of the world and avoiding technology a long time ago and instead invented its own social media etc. I don't believe that President XI is resistant to mobile phone technology (given it also allows him to monitor his citizens closer. Instead of embracing this new age, Putin locked himself in his own timewarp and resisted change, rather than making change work for him.
This is all about his ego on a personal level. Its Putin's war. Its his personal paranoia and inability to escape an era thats the issue here. Other voices might have found different solutions to ongoing tensions.
This one begins and ends with Putin. Just like the issue with the nutbar in North Korea, which will probably also eventually end in tears.
Even when Putin goes, I'm not convinced there will be a happy ending either, because it will leave a power vacuum. And the way Putin has ruled for the last few years there isn't a natural successor around either. When the Berlin Wall fell the fear was of civil war.
So seriously stop it with the lecture over how you are more right than anyone else and open your own goddam mind too, cos it seems pretty closed to the idea that we don't necessarily agree with our own government and quite frankly are more interested in the humanitarian cost of this on all sides (yes including the Russian - I actually feel sorry for the kids thrown into this with threats behind them and guns before them and no way to know if the person next to them will run away, treat them like a traitor or simply be dead in the next minute. And I feel for all those about to lose homes and jobs because of Putin's folly and vanity. Etc etc the list goes on).
My interest in this subject is, and always has been this sense of social coping and multiple view points.
Whats striking about this conflict is given the deep mistrust of the state within Russia. Putin is not Russia. Russia is not Putin.
But by the same token, I am not NATO, I am not Britain.*
You just seem to think wars are in a vaccuum. I'm not NATO, I'm not Spain or Australia. What exactly does this mean?
Like you I believe in the concept of liberal democracies, unlike you I don't think they are possible . We live in a world controlled by powers beyond what we chose in a ballot box. Day in and day out we see scandal after scandal of what our very "democratic" leaders get up to, they don't give a shit to ordinary people, bills, housing, health, standard of living....they keep investing billions in arms while they can't protect citizens because those billions invested in arms have to be deducted from local social policies.
I detest what Russia is doing to people in the Ukraine but unlike you I can't forget what the West has done to millions in the ME, Asia and Africa. We cant just simply forget the awful images of todlers killed in Palestinian occupied terroritories by Israeli rockets just because it's not what the press in our countries wants to talk about for the fear of being antisemitic.
War is awful, it kills people ...it displaces them. But unless we accept we live in awful discriminatory and predatory societies with governments that are as bad as Putin because they've always targetted those with less while supporting money and business including invading countries. Countries that never attacked us or possed a thread to us but our own multinationals had plenty to gain to get free access into those countries' resources.
If you really think what Putin is doing is different to what the US with the West support has been doing in the Middle East and lately Yemen is different from this war, you've lost your social conciousness.
Posting about this war should not be about how awful Putin is, he's a sociopath...ect etc. If you, like me, cares about people and geopolitical truth, this war has nothing to do with Putin or Biden, it's about the 2 biggest nations with nuclear armament fighting about about resources control.
It's got nothing to do with "democracy".