HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
Anti-Climactus you have an extraordinary way of mischaracterizing the tangle of support/action/activities in the Syrian clusterfuck by all involved actors, most notably by collapsing the various rebel factions as clearly al-Qaeda and ISIS when that is not the case at all, and especially not when the initial violence began.
Furthermore you are aligning highly complex nation states with a variety of internal and external forces, incentives, and interests on a simplistic axis of "good" or "bad" that does an immense disservice to the arguments all of us are delivering. On net, Russia's contributions to its people domestically and to the stability of the international order are destructive on orders of magnitude over its acceptable attendance to its sovereign interests, as all nations do. Apply a similar calculus to the USA and you may conclude that on net, the USA is a great negative for the world above and beyond the scope of its national interest; however, as an anchor of stability (again, comparatively; how quickly we forget WWI and WWII!) it does not, for the moment, project an upper bound of destruction on the level of Russia's actions--IF INTERNATIONAL NORMS CONTAINING ITS ACTIONS WITHIN GENERALLY PREDICTABLE BOUNDARIES ARE MAINTAINED.
This is mission critical and it is the primary reason why Russia, and Putin in particular, presents such a danger to the world, both in DEGREE of instability, and in KIND of instability. Russia's actions ARE to serve its narrow interests. But to achieve a marginal gain in wealth, stature and respect, it has taken up the method of DESTABILIZING THE ENTIRE WEST in order to establish evidence for an ideological commitment to authoritarian rule, to justify the plundering of its people, and to return the world to a 19th century state of ignorance and imperialism where nations' actions are legitimized only by their might and will and power to execute, and not by higher intangible ideals like commitment to human rights, consent of the governed, promotion of the welfare of citizens, respect for sovereignty, and reliance on stable and written guidelines, consistently interpreted and enforced, but adaptable to circumstance, that help remove the arbitrary violence of daily life and greedy, powerful abusers. The USA is not a perfect avatar of these ideals, but by the constraints of international norms it, for now, committed to them. Russia is not, and that in itself is profoundly dangerous.
By that standard Texas being part of the US is a bureaucratic mistake
so if Mexico decided to annex it we should just accept it right?
If Mexico wanted to annex Mexican-majority areas of Texas that were stolen from them in the 1800s and the people there wanted to leave US because they felt oppressed by Trump, I would say they had a very strong moral case, yes.
Should we continue to engage with the obvious Russian-paid plant? The one who joined immediately after the previous one paid plant account was banned and continued with the same talking points and only goes into Russian-themed threads to talk well of them? Sure, we might be wasting the stooge's time here instead of crapping all over comments sections elsewhere on the 'net, but the stooge is still wasting our time.
I can find articles quoting respected American college professors that agree with my statements.
I am not even pro-Russia, I am just not anti-Russia.
I am not Russian. I am in France. People here just generally feel the Cold War angle to be tired, which happened even to an extent in the first Cold War when leftists had power in France.
Nothing I am saying is mildly controversial in France, and by no means is anyone opposed to US hegemony a paid Russian agent. There is is a whole world outside America that thinks differently than you.
Take off the tinfoil hat.
Should we continue to engage with the obvious Russian-paid plant? The one who joined immediately after the previous one paid plant account was banned and continued with the same talking points and only goes into Russian-themed threads to talk well of them? Sure, we might be wasting the stooge's time here instead of crapping all over comments sections elsewhere on the 'net, but the stooge is still wasting our time.
I can find articles quoting respected American college professors that agree with my statements.
I am not even pro-Russia, I am just not anti-Russia.
I am not Russian. I am in France. People here just generally feel the Cold War angle to be tired, which happened even to an extent in the first Cold War when leftists had power in France.
Nothing I am saying is mildly controversial in France, and by no means is anyone opposed to US hegemony a paid Russian agent. There is is a whole world outside America that thinks differently than you.
Take off the tinfoil hat.
Well, then you should be well aware of Russian-influenced political parties. Marine Le Pen is an example of leaders they are promoting and funding.
edit: And not everyone pro-Russian has to be a paid agent. During my college years I was much more sympathetic towards Putin than Bush, but things have changed in the meantime. A lot of my left leaning friends are still coming to terms with the fact that Russia of today is not a socialist state and that the US under Obama made some real progress in that direction.
Should we continue to engage with the obvious Russian-paid plant? The one who joined immediately after the previous one paid plant account was banned and continued with the same talking points and only goes into Russian-themed threads to talk well of them? Sure, we might be wasting the stooge's time here instead of crapping all over comments sections elsewhere on the 'net, but the stooge is still wasting our time.
I can find articles quoting respected American college professors that agree with my statements.
I am not even pro-Russia, I am just not anti-Russia.
I am not Russian. I am in France. People here just generally feel the Cold War angle to be tired, which happened even to an extent in the first Cold War when leftists had power in France.
Nothing I am saying is mildly controversial in France, and by no means is anyone opposed to US hegemony a paid Russian agent. There is is a whole world outside America that thinks differently than you.
Take off the tinfoil hat.
Anti-Climactus you have an extraordinary way of mischaracterizing the tangle of support/action/activities in the Syrian clusterfuck by all involved actors, most notably by collapsing the various rebel factions as clearly al-Qaeda and ISIS when that is not the case at all, and especially not when the initial violence began.
I did not mention ISIS even once. However, the most powerful insurgent groups in Syria seeking to overthrow Assad are mainly consistent of Salafist foreign fighters.
Furthermore you are aligning highly complex nation states with a variety of internal and external forces, incentives, and interests on a simplistic axis of "good" or "bad" that does an immense disservice to the arguments all of us are delivering.
I can only assume you are deliberately arguing in bad faith by willfully twisting what I said. Everyone else is viewing this as "good vs evil" and I am saying it is not so simple, this is not balck and white, these are shades of grey.
On net, Russia's contributions to its people domestically and to the stability of the international order are destructive on orders of magnitude over its acceptable attendance to its sovereign interests, as all nations do. Apply a similar calculus to the USA and you may conclude that on net, the USA is a great negative for the world above and beyond the scope of its national interest; however, as an anchor of stability (again, comparatively; how quickly we forget WWI and WWII!) it does not, for the moment, project an upper bound of destruction on the level of Russia's actions--IF INTERNATIONAL NORMS CONTAINING ITS ACTIONS WITHIN GENERALLY PREDICTABLE BOUNDARIES ARE MAINTAINED.
I think you accidentally hit your caps lock there unless you mean to depict yourself screaming.
This is not as clear-cut as you imply. Look at the fallout from the Iraq war and Libya war. There are women and children from across the Middle East sleeping on the streets of Paris in the cold because of actions by the last two US administrations. This is visible and visceral.
I have never heard anyone who was not American describe the US as an "anchor of stability" and most people in France would find that phrasing absurdist. I could introduce you to many people who have lost their families and homes who would spit in your face for saying something so callous.
This is mission critical and it is the primary reason why Russia, and Putin in particular, presents such a danger to the world, both in DEGREE of instability, and in KIND of instability. Russia's actions ARE to serve its narrow interests. But to achieve a marginal gain in wealth, stature and respect, it has taken up the method of DESTABILIZING THE ENTIRE WEST in order to establish evidence for an ideological commitment to authoritarian rule, to justify the plundering of its people, and to return the world to a 19th century state of ignorance and imperialism where nations' actions are legitimized only by their might and will and power to execute, and not by higher intangible ideals like commitment to human rights, consent of the governed, promotion of the welfare of citizens, respect for sovereignty, and reliance on stable and written guidelines, consistently interpreted and enforced, but adaptable to circumstance, that help remove the arbitrary violence of daily life and greedy, powerful abusers. The USA is not a perfect avatar of these ideals, but by the constraints of international norms it, for now, committed to them. Russia is not, and that in itself is profoundly dangerous.
This feels hyperbolic. Russia is deliberately destabilising the entire West? What is the US doing to the entire middle east, or Latin America? And what consequences have been greater? I feel I am the only one not jumping into an arch-jingoist good-vs-evil framing.
I think Putin is a brutal leader with blood on his hands. But if we are calculating a full body count, and taking all consequences into account, I see Bush and Obama as worse.
By that standard Texas being part of the US is a bureaucratic mistake
so if Mexico decided to annex it we should just accept it right?
If Mexico wanted to annex Mexican-majority areas of Texas that were stolen from them in the 1800s and the people there wanted to leave US because they felt oppressed by Trump, I would say they had a very strong moral case, yes.
what
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Putin's an ex-KGB agent. He's probably killed people with his bare hands and he's certainly personally given the order to kill a person or persons more often than Bush or Obama did.
Also uh
the US isn't doing anything in latin america. Where the hell did you get -that- from?
"I get to invade and annex territory where a majority of the members identify as part of a certain ethnic group" usually leads to very bad places.
Edit: and during the middle of a crisis in Ukraine, with no real long debate period, and where the whole thing reeks of opportunistic pretext rather than any principled "they have been clamoring for secession for decades and we have been arguing for it for decades" sort of thing. Russia doesn't care for secessionist groups that have had vastly better claims over the years in their country.
Couscous on
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Should we continue to engage with the obvious Russian-paid plant? The one who joined immediately after the previous one paid plant account was banned and continued with the same talking points and only goes into Russian-themed threads to talk well of them? Sure, we might be wasting the stooge's time here instead of crapping all over comments sections elsewhere on the 'net, but the stooge is still wasting our time.
It has been educational to see a broad set of explanations laid out for why Putin is a terrible monster
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
Anti-Climactus you have an extraordinary way of mischaracterizing the tangle of support/action/activities in the Syrian clusterfuck by all involved actors, most notably by collapsing the various rebel factions as clearly al-Qaeda and ISIS when that is not the case at all, and especially not when the initial violence began.
I did not mention ISIS even once. However, the most powerful insurgent groups in Syria seeking to overthrow Assad are mainly consistent of Salafist foreign fighters.
Firstly: You are using that term as misdirection, stop it.
Secondly: You are still trying to deny that the Syrian rebel situation is enormously complex, while saying that obviously Russia is opposing just the 1 bad side of that, then feigning confusion over the US and international response. Stop it.
This feels hyperbolic. Russia is deliberately destabilising the entire West? What is the US doing to the entire middle east, or Latin America? And what consequences have been greater? I feel I am the only one not jumping into an arch-jingoist good-vs-evil framing.
I think Putin is a brutal leader with blood on his hands. But if we are calculating a full body count, and taking all consequences into account, I see Bush and Obama as worse.
Ah, see the US did something bad so we should let Russia fill up it's quota right? Because obviously multiple wrongs will somehow add up to a right, and not a whole lot of preventable dead people.
If Putin is leading Russia to terrible acts, he should be opposed, end of story. If the US does the same, so should it - and it will be.
Or can no one criticize anyone unless they have an unblemished record, and we simply have to always tally up the bodies before figuring out who should speak first? Where's France standing on Algiers and Vietnam these days?
Should we continue to engage with the obvious Russian-paid plant? The one who joined immediately after the previous one paid plant account was banned and continued with the same talking points and only goes into Russian-themed threads to talk well of them? Sure, we might be wasting the stooge's time here instead of crapping all over comments sections elsewhere on the 'net, but the stooge is still wasting our time.
It has been educational to see a broad set of explanations laid out for why Putin is a terrible monster
True. And it has been practice for argumentation, and Slacker has a point as well. Thank you folks, I am convinced - let's keep fighting.
Anti-Climactus you have an extraordinary way of mischaracterizing the tangle of support/action/activities in the Syrian clusterfuck by all involved actors, most notably by collapsing the various rebel factions as clearly al-Qaeda and ISIS when that is not the case at all, and especially not when the initial violence began.
I did not mention ISIS even once. However, the most powerful insurgent groups in Syria seeking to overthrow Assad are mainly consistent of Salafist foreign fighters.
ISIS are salafist rebels. Go read the Middle East thread if you want to learn about what is happening in Syria. You're clearly misinformed on a number of points regarding US policy and the factions in play there, and this is not the thread to hash that out.
By that standard Texas being part of the US is a bureaucratic mistake
so if Mexico decided to annex it we should just accept it right?
If Mexico wanted to annex Mexican-majority areas of Texas that were stolen from them in the 1800s and the people there wanted to leave US because they felt oppressed by Trump, I would say they had a very strong moral case, yes.
what
The sovereignty of nations is not to be respected, unless it's Russia.
EDIT: To be less snarky... the line of reasoning that Anti-Climacus is putting forward is the very logic that America used to take Texas in the first place.
Read it for yourself, Anti-Climacus. If you don't like the sort of imperialist arguments put forth in the document, well, that's the same sort of logic that Russia used to justify the Crimean annexation. And before you say "well America did it so it's okay if Russia does it too," first of all two wrongs don't make a right, and secondly the annexation of Texas occurred centuries ago, and the world political stage has evolved since then.
Should we continue to engage with the obvious Russian-paid plant? The one who joined immediately after the previous one paid plant account was banned and continued with the same talking points and only goes into Russian-themed threads to talk well of them? Sure, we might be wasting the stooge's time here instead of crapping all over comments sections elsewhere on the 'net, but the stooge is still wasting our time.
I can find articles quoting respected American college professors that agree with my statements.
I am not even pro-Russia, I am just not anti-Russia.
I am not Russian. I am in France. People here just generally feel the Cold War angle to be tired, which happened even to an extent in the first Cold War when leftists had power in France.
Nothing I am saying is mildly controversial in France, and by no means is anyone opposed to US hegemony a paid Russian agent. There is is a whole world outside America that thinks differently than you.
Take off the tinfoil hat.
The problem is that by taking the view, as the American media and political establishment do, that this crisis is entirely the fault of “Putin’s aggression,” there’s no rethinking of American policy over the last 20 years. I have yet to see a single influential person say, “Hey, maybe we did something wrong, maybe we ought to rethink something.” That’s a recipe for more of the same, of course, and more of the same could mean war with Russia….
Let me give you one example. It’s the hardest thing for the American foreign policy elite and the media elite to cope with.
Our position is that nobody is entitled to a sphere of influence in the 21st century. Russia wants a sphere of influence in the sense that it doesn’t want American military bases in Ukraine or in the Baltics or in Georgia. But what is the expansion of NATO other than the expansion of the American zone or sphere of influence? It’s not just military. It’s financial, it’s economic, it’s cultural, it’s intermarriage—soldiers, infrastructure. It’s probably the most dramatic expansion of a great sphere of influence in such a short time and in peacetime in the history of the world.
So you have Vice President Biden constantly saying, “Russia wants a sphere of influence and we won’t allow it.” Well, we are shoving our sphere of influence down Russia’s throat, on the assumption that it won’t push back. Obviously, the discussion might well begin: “Is Russia entitled to a zone or sphere in its neighborhood free of foreign military bases?” Just that, nothing more. If the answer is yes, NATO expansion should’ve ended in Eastern Germany, as the Russians were promised. But we’ve crept closer and closer. Ukraine is about NATO-expansion-no-matter-what. Washington can go on about democracy and sovereignty and all the rest, but it’s about that. And we can’t re-open this question…. The hypocrisy, or the inability to connect the dots in America, is astonishing.
The nature of the Kiev regime. Again, there’s a lot of fog. So there’re two parts to this question. The coup matter and the relationship of the Yatsenyuk government to the State Department—we now have a finance minister in Kiev who’s an American citizen, addressing the Council on Foreign Relations here as we speak—and then the relationship of the Kiev regime with the ultra-right.
It’s a central question. I addressed it in a Nation piece last year called “Distorting Russia.” One point was that the apologists in the media for the Kiev government as it came to power after Feb. 21, and for the Maidan demonstrations as they turned violent, ignored the role of a small but significant contingent of ultra-nationalists who looked, smelled and sounded like neo-fascists. And for this I was seriously attacked, including by Timothy Snyder at Yale, who is a great fan of Kiev, in the New Republic. I have no idea where he is coming from, or how any professor could make the allegations he did. But the argument was that this neo-fascist theme was Putin’s, that what I was saying was an apology for Putin and that the real fascists were in Russia, not in Ukraine.
Maybe there are fascists in Russia, but we’re not backing the Russian government or Russian fascists. The question is, and it’s extremely important, “Is there a neo-fascist movement in Ukraine that, regardless of its electoral success, which has not been great, is influencing affairs politically or militarily, and is this something we should be worried about?”
The answer is 100 percent yes. But admitting this in the United States has gotten a 100 percent no until recently, when, finally, a few newspapers began to cite Kiev’s battalions with swastikas on their helmets and tanks. So you’ve gotten a little more coverage. Foreign journalists, leaving aside Russians, have covered this neo-fascist phenomenon, which is not surprising. It grows out of Ukraine’s history. It should be a really important political question for Western policy makers, and I think it is now for the Germans. German intelligence is probably better than American intelligence when it comes to Ukraine—more candid in what it tells the top leadership. Merkel’s clearly worried about this.
It’s another example of something you can’t discuss in the mainstream media or elsewhere in the American establishment. When you read the testimony of [Assistant Secretary of State] Nuland, this is never mentioned. But what could be more important than the resurgence of a fascist movement on the European continent? I’m not talking about these sappy fascists who run around the streets in Western Europe. I’m talking about guys with a lot of weapons, guys who have done dastardly things and who have killed people. Does that warrant discussion? Well, people said, if they exist they’re a tiny minority. My clichéd answer is, “Of course, so was Hitler and so was Lenin at one time.” You pay attention and you think about it if you learn anything from history….
We say we’re doing everything we’re doing in Ukraine and against Russia, including running the risk of war, for a democratic Ukraine, by which we mean Ukraine under the rule of Kiev. Reasonably, we would ask to what extent Kiev is actually democratic. But correspondents of the Times and the Washington Post regularly file from Kiev and basically re-write whatever the Kiev authorities say while rarely, if ever, asking about democracy in Kiev-governed Ukraine.
The mainstream American media has taken a nearsighted view of the Ukrainian crisis by following a script laid out by the State Department. Most reports have either ignored the truth or spun it in a way that paints only a partial picture. Here are seven things you should know about Ukraine.
The people are the sovereign, and if the majority of voters in the east no longer wants to be part of Ukraine, then so be it. Why preserve a state that's not wanted by its citizens? I can't understand what's wrong with that. Violent conflicts and war are a tragedy, that's what we all don't want. So we have to find a solution to prevent just that. And if that's the solution, I can't see what's to be said against it.
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HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
edited January 2017
Yes, please criticize the form of my post, rather than its function or context. Additionally please respond to my argument as a whole. Trying to poke holes in my premises only works if you can demonstrate they fail my conclusions. Whether or not you specifically mentioned ISIS does not fail my conclusion that you are misrepresenting the relationships between the many actors in Syria, their tactics, or their interests.
The human cost of war (refugees, torn apart families, death, destruction, pestilence and ruin) does not fail my conclusion that the upper bound of potential Russian activity outstrips the upper bound of potential US activity. My "all caps screaming" was to emphasize the critical caveat to this state of affairs, elaborated in the third paragraph. By "anchor of stability" I clearly mean in terms of established international order, such as UN-based diplomatic norms and the balance of precarious peace anchored by the threat of the US backing any attacks on the NATO alliance; the US' deliverance of war and military action to serve its regional interest clearly undermine it but it is ludicrous to suggest that US hegemony is not critical to the maintenance of modern peace that has, for now, kept Europe conflict-free in the post-WWII era, which is an extraordinary anomaly in the course of human history.
Russia is destabilizing the West by attacking the foundational premises of democracy and the legitimacy of Western governmental structure as a whole. By doing so he is undermining the singular enduring cause of extended peace between true democracies, that the accrual of wealth and dependencies of economics related to democratic governments keeps these nations from going to war with one another. It is 'hyperbolic' perhaps to describe the logical end result of delegitimizing democracy as a viable form of government when it is in all likelihood a long way off, but when actors in bad faith deliberately poison the norms and procedures that maintain that order, it is essential to consider, once again, the upper bound of destruction that would result.
Man, this feels like college all over again. Every time Russia's atrocities and misdeeds are a subject this and that American policy are brought up. I should to defend the US, I suppose, before I can criticize Russia? Well, fuck the US. But since the talk about Russia, a very special fuck you to Russia. I don't see why I need to play within the implied premise that to criticize Russia I need to carry American water. There are plenty eager to do the job, and they don't need one more.
Russia and Putin's war crimes in Chechnya and Syria and elsewhere are their own. The dead civilians are no less dead because Americans happened to kill and starve some others elsewhere, and the crime is no less criminal.
Taking Cohen seriously on sphere's of influence is...well I don't. I call bullshit on the whole argument, since they're fundamentally anti-democratic when implemented by anyone who's not the US at the moment (not that the US has a good track record with this historically, but the public support is in the right place). A sphere of influence by either Russia or China is simply a zone where they can effect unlimited military intervention on their neighbors to get whatever they want at the price they feel is fair to them (a number which is plausibly above zero, but effectively zero).
Yes, please criticize the form of my post, rather than its function or context. Additionally please respond to my argument as a whole. Trying to poke holes in my premises only works if you can demonstrate they fail my conclusions. Whether or not you specifically mentioned ISIS does not fail my conclusion that you are misrepresenting the relationships between the many actors in Syria, their tactics, or their interests.
This might be better for the Middle East thread, but from basically-neutral (not "Russian spy") comments there, it seems clear that Salafist forces are most powerful in the insurgency, Al-Qaeda is one of the most powerful forces of all and often enjoys good ties with other Salafists, and that if Assad were to be toppled the most likely outcomes would be either a Salafist/Qaeda state, and that has been the case for several years, even while the right-wing in the US (McCain, Graham, Clinton) has pressed forward toward "regime change" anyway and Obama has gone along with their demands half the time.
One Dutch life is valued as how many Russian lives?
This would be an interesting question if there was any reason whatsoever that the people on that airplane needed to die.
As it was, exactly zero Russian lives were saved by killing them.
That wasn't the point. The point was that Yeltsin killed millions of Russians, including thousands through direct violence, and there was a statement to the effect that Putin is still "worse" because because a plane carrying western Europeans flying over a warzone was shot down on his watch.
Man, this feels like college all over again. Every time Russia's atrocities and misdeeds are a subject this and that American policy are brought up. I should to defend the US, I suppose, before I can criticize Russia? Well, fuck the US. But since the talk about Russia, a very special fuck you to Russia. I don't see why I need to play within the implied premise that to criticize Russia I need to carry American water. There are plenty eager to do the job, and they don't need one more.
Russia and Putin's war crimes in Chechnya and Syria and elsewhere are their own. The dead civilians are no less dead because Americans happened to kill and starve some others elsewhere, and the crime is no less criminal.
That's fine, but different than what others are arguing, and actions do not happen in a vacuum. Russia is not just killing people in Syria "for fun", they are trying to the prevent a regime change attempt sponsored by US and its allies which includes some very nasty types of people with identical ideologies and abuses the US will cite to justify longterm warfare against when they operate elsewhere, such as Afghanistan. The US is constantly trying to expand its own sphere of influence by pushing against others in a way that destabilises areas in the world, and many of the actions by Putin we can criticise for their tactical brutality occurred in response to US aggression.
Fundamentally there are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in geopolitics because every power tends to seek maximisation of its own influence against others. The concept of a stable balance of power is crucial but for starters relies on a type of humility and empathy that jingoism or national-exceptionalism is antithetical toward.
Wait wait wait Crimea getting annexed by Russia was a bureaucratic mistake??
Some big bureaucratic mistake that flooded the region with un-uniformed Russian troops, sowing civil unrest and armed dangerous separatists with weapos used to shoot down commercial aircraft
riiiiggghhhhhhtt
I am sensing some difficulty in reading comprehension from this user in this thread and the last, or else willful misreading of my comments.
Crimea was a part of Russia until after World War II. Krushchev transferred it to Ukraine despite that there was never a majority Ukrainian population there, That is the only reason it was ever part of Ukraine: a dictator's bureaucratic decision made arbitrarily and without historical logic.
Who, the fuck, cares? He did it. He, as the leader of the country, gave part of it away. Doesn't matter if you don't like it. You don't get to violently invade it decades later to to and take it back.
The land changed hands.
That would be like if someone decided the Louisiana purchase was bullshit and invaded the US to take it back.
That would be like if I showed up to my childhood home, killed the current occupants, and took it back because I'm pissed my mom ever sold it.
Decisions were made during a regime you disliked the results of... Fucking deal with it, and don't fucking invade your neighboring states. I don't give a fuck what you're reasoning is.
One Dutch life is valued as how many Russian lives?
This would be an interesting question if there was any reason whatsoever that the people on that airplane needed to die.
As it was, exactly zero Russian lives were saved by killing them.
That wasn't the point. The point was that Yeltsin killed millions of Russians, including thousands through direct violence, and there was a statement to the effect that Putin is still "worse" because because a plane carrying western Europeans flying over a warzone was shot down on his watch.
Doesn't change a goddamn thing.
I feel for the average Russian, I really do. Life's been shit there for a long time. I actually worked with families that had fled the Soviet Union as a domestic aid worker in college.
That none of that makes it ok to shoot down civilian aircraft. This isn't a moral relativism boardgame, where you get points for good things and lose points for bad things. Those people didn't need to die full stop. They did. That's on Putin, not Yeltsin.
Wait wait wait Crimea getting annexed by Russia was a bureaucratic mistake??
Some big bureaucratic mistake that flooded the region with un-uniformed Russian troops, sowing civil unrest and armed dangerous separatists with weapos used to shoot down commercial aircraft
riiiiggghhhhhhtt
I am sensing some difficulty in reading comprehension from this user in this thread and the last, or else willful misreading of my comments.
Crimea was a part of Russia until after World War II. Krushchev transferred it to Ukraine despite that there was never a majority Ukrainian population there, That is the only reason it was ever part of Ukraine: a dictator's bureaucratic decision made arbitrarily and without historical logic.
Who, the fuck, cares? He did it. He, as the leader of the country, gave part of it away. Doesn't matter if you don't like it. You don't get to violently invade it decades later to to and take it back.
The land changed hands.
That would be like if someone decided the Louisiana purchase was bullshit and invaded the US to take it back.
Decisions were made during a regime you disliked the results of... Fucking deal with it, and don't fucking image your neighboring states. I don't give a fuck what you're reasoning is.
Well no the correct analogy here would be if states started independent but state lines were redrawn internally after they joined and then those states broke off and the rest of the us wanted to enforce the old pre-union borders
It comes down to how much internal borders matter. Multiple distinct entities -> single entity -> "border" change to make nicer lines -> multiple distinct entities
If you show up to a forum called Debate & Discourse you should be prepared for the eventuality that someone will eventually try and debate you on something. We know about this guy. We're watching him. Stop screaming in threads that he's a propoganda account or troll. It's an ad hominem and against our rules. Meanwhile, what he's doing (arguing an unpopular opinion without insulting anyone) is not.
I will also remind all of you that none of you have any access to evidence as to whether someone is an astroturfer or not and are basing your assertions entirely on "I reckons"
Is anyone else as amused as me that Anti-climacus continues to insist that he's some sort of neutral party while simultaneously casting shade on everything the US has done and conceding nothing with regards to russia?
Russia is destabilizing the West by attacking the foundational premises of democracy and the legitimacy of Western governmental structure as a whole. By doing so he is undermining the singular enduring cause of extended peace between true democracies, that the accrual of wealth and dependencies of economics related to democratic governments keeps these nations from going to war with one another. It is 'hyperbolic' perhaps to describe the logical end result of delegitimizing democracy as a viable form of government when it is in all likelihood a long way off, but when actors in bad faith deliberately poison the norms and procedures that maintain that order, it is essential to consider, once again, the upper bound of destruction that would result.
I disagree to the extent that even if the DNC hack was committed by Russia (I do not believe appropriate technical proof has been given and have reasons to doubt; not bringing it up for re-debate), exposing undemocratic aspects of the US system seems different than what you are describing. Exposing the US as undemocratic in real terms is not really the same as "attacking the foundational premises of democracy". If the Democratic Party hierarchy structured their process to the detriment of Bernie Sanders, making that known seems in the interest of improving democracy.
Two of the last three US presidents came to office with fewer votes than their opponent. A party hated by most of the US public, the Republicans, is dominant at state and federal levels unparalleled in its history.
Wenn man die USA mit der gleichen analytischen Kühle wie Russland betrachten würde, sagt James Galbraith, Sohn des legendären Kennedy-Beraters John Kenneth Galbraith, würde man nicht umhinkommen, von der Herrschaft eines Oligopols aus Politikern und Bankern zu sprechen. Die Mächtigen an der Wall Street und in Washington seien nicht weniger eng verflochten als Premier Wladimir Putin und die Magnaten des russischen Rohstoffimperiums.
"If one were to look at the US with the same analytical coolness as Russia," said James Galbraith, the son of legendary Kennedy adviser John Kenneth Galbraith, "one would not be able to avoid speaking of the rule of an oligopoly of politicians and bankers. The powerful on Wall Street and Washington are no less closely interlinked than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the magnates of the Russian commodity council."
Yes, please criticize the form of my post, rather than its function or context. Additionally please respond to my argument as a whole. Trying to poke holes in my premises only works if you can demonstrate they fail my conclusions. Whether or not you specifically mentioned ISIS does not fail my conclusion that you are misrepresenting the relationships between the many actors in Syria, their tactics, or their interests.
This might be better for the Middle East thread, but from basically-neutral (not "Russian spy") comments there, it seems clear that Salafist forces are most powerful in the insurgency, Al-Qaeda is one of the most powerful forces of all and often enjoys good ties with other Salafists, and that if Assad were to be toppled the most likely outcomes would be either a Salafist/Qaeda state, and that has been the case for several years, even while the right-wing in the US (McCain, Graham, Clinton) has pressed forward toward "regime change" anyway and Obama has gone along with their demands half the time.
Dude. Al Qaeda is not even in Syria; not for a long while. The factions there split off, rebranded, and are their own thing now. The fact you keep bringing them up means you're not at all current on the situation there. That you also seem thoroughly unaware of the secular and/or Kurdish factions that Russia bombs is another; and they're the ones closing in on ISIS.
The SDF is encircling Raqqa. Not Russia, not the SAA, and not the myriad non-ISIS salafists.
How can you attempt to decide what is "clear" about the power dynamics there when you don't even appear to know what factions are in play?
Wait wait wait Crimea getting annexed by Russia was a bureaucratic mistake??
Some big bureaucratic mistake that flooded the region with un-uniformed Russian troops, sowing civil unrest and armed dangerous separatists with weapos used to shoot down commercial aircraft
riiiiggghhhhhhtt
I am sensing some difficulty in reading comprehension from this user in this thread and the last, or else willful misreading of my comments.
Crimea was a part of Russia until after World War II. Krushchev transferred it to Ukraine despite that there was never a majority Ukrainian population there, That is the only reason it was ever part of Ukraine: a dictator's bureaucratic decision made arbitrarily and without historical logic.
Who, the fuck, cares? He did it. He, as the leader of the country, gave part of it away. Doesn't matter if you don't like it. You don't get to violently invade it decades later to to and take it back.
The land changed hands.
That would be like if someone decided the Louisiana purchase was bullshit and invaded the US to take it back.
That would be like if I showed up to my childhood home, killed the current occupants, and took it back because I'm pissed my mom ever sold it.
Decisions were made during a regime you disliked the results of... Fucking deal with it, and don't fucking invade your neighboring states. I don't give a fuck what you're reasoning is.
The other thing is that the status of Crimea could have been settled when Ukraine declared independence, or negotiated therafter, or Russia could even have done what China does with Taiwan and refused to recognize Ukraine until territory they counsidered was theirs was returned. They did not, independance was recognized with as is borders, and allowed to stand for over 20 years with no contestation before calling take backsies and invading.
I don't think you'll get much argument that the relationship between businessmen and politicans in the US is much cozier than it should be.
The difference is that (until Trump) the relationship was between various businessmen and various politicians, whereas in Russia it was everyone being cozy with Putin (or else).
Russia is destabilizing the West by attacking the foundational premises of democracy and the legitimacy of Western governmental structure as a whole. By doing so he is undermining the singular enduring cause of extended peace between true democracies, that the accrual of wealth and dependencies of economics related to democratic governments keeps these nations from going to war with one another. It is 'hyperbolic' perhaps to describe the logical end result of delegitimizing democracy as a viable form of government when it is in all likelihood a long way off, but when actors in bad faith deliberately poison the norms and procedures that maintain that order, it is essential to consider, once again, the upper bound of destruction that would result.
I disagree to the extent that even if the DNC hack was committed by Russia (I do not believe appropriate technical proof has been given and have reasons to doubt; not bringing it up for re-debate), exposing undemocratic aspects of the US system seems different than what you are describing. Exposing the US as undemocratic in real terms is not really the same as "attacking the foundational premises of democracy".
Two of the last three US presidents came to office with fewer votes than their opponent. A party hated by most of the US public, the Republicans, is dominant at state and federal levels unparalleled in its history.
Wenn man die USA mit der gleichen analytischen Kühle wie Russland betrachten würde, sagt James Galbraith, Sohn des legendären Kennedy-Beraters John Kenneth Galbraith, würde man nicht umhinkommen, von der Herrschaft eines Oligopols aus Politikern und Bankern zu sprechen. Die Mächtigen an der Wall Street und in Washington seien nicht weniger eng verflochten als Premier Wladimir Putin und die Magnaten des russischen Rohstoffimperiums.
"If one were to look at the US with the same analytical coolness as Russia," said James Galbraith, the son of legendary Kennedy adviser John Kenneth Galbraith, "one would not be able to avoid speaking of the rule of an oligopoly of politicians and bankers. The powerful on Wall Street and Washington are no less closely intertwined than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the magnates of the Russian commodity council."
Here's the thing; the people you're having this debate with are pretty unified in their opposition for both Russian and, as you've defined it here, American oligarchy.
Being American and distrusting Russian leadership isn't automatically presaged by blithe acceptance of the foibles of America. No one here is defending American bankers or oil companies. And we're all pretty pissed right now at Republicans, specifically.
Yeah, uh, I don't know if you guys haven't argued this kind of stuff alot on the internet or something but there is TONS and TONS of people who will argue silly positions like Anti-Climacus is without being paid Russian trolls.
Firstly, you've got your dumb lefties. Guys like Corbyn, who only like yesterday made another moronic statement on the issue of Russian relations. Alot of people on the left, especially the non-centrist and less foreign interventionist left, get just a bit of knowledge (omg, the US has actually done some bad things!) and fall down the rabbit hole of thinking the US must be wrong about everything so therefore the people opposing the US must always be right. You say a ton of this during the initial stuff going on in Ukraine. These are the people who think US news pushes a pro-US agenda and are full of shit (fairly accurate) and thus get all their news from RT instead (uh...).
You also see your standard right-wing Trump types who love the Putin regime completely unironically because they love macho posturing and authoritarianism. I think we need little explanation there.
And then you've just got alot of people who for whatever reason are pretty strongly pro-Russian. Lots of these in Eastern Europe (and I guess central/southern Europe too depending on what you consider like Hungary and the Balkans and the like). Serbians in particularly are frequently very pro-Russian/anti-West in my experience. Both personally and at a state level.
Yes, please criticize the form of my post, rather than its function or context. Additionally please respond to my argument as a whole. Trying to poke holes in my premises only works if you can demonstrate they fail my conclusions. Whether or not you specifically mentioned ISIS does not fail my conclusion that you are misrepresenting the relationships between the many actors in Syria, their tactics, or their interests.
This might be better for the Middle East thread, but from basically-neutral (not "Russian spy") comments there, it seems clear that Salafist forces are most powerful in the insurgency, Al-Qaeda is one of the most powerful forces of all and often enjoys good ties with other Salafists, and that if Assad were to be toppled the most likely outcomes would be either a Salafist/Qaeda state, and that has been the case for several years, even while the right-wing in the US (McCain, Graham, Clinton) has pressed forward toward "regime change" anyway and Obama has gone along with their demands half the time.
And this is what people are talking about saying you're generalizing over a complex situation. Because you're dragging multiple years worth of events and smearing them together into the narrative you want, ignoring that the situation has been fluid the entire time.
ISIS did not exist when the Syrian civil war started up. The American debate for intervention did not materialize in an overt American military presence and stories of US involvement have centered on the difficulty of actually finding a coherent, acceptable rebel movement to back (spoiler-alert: they never did before most of the moderates fled or got wiped out).
Russia being involved is a recent occurrence. The thing started in 2011, Russia decided to get involved late 2015.
Like holy christ dude, Russia did not magically have prescience on this matter, the US has not been actively trying to flip Syria to an ISIS/al-Qaeda government. Syria didn't suddenly start in the last 2 years, and the war started in the wake of the Arab spring after demands for democratic reforms (which deteriorated coz you know, Assad has his security forces fire on protesters directly).
That's fine, but different than what others are arguing, and actions do not happen in a vacuum. Russia is not just killing people in Syria "for fun", they are trying to the prevent a regime change attempt sponsored by US and its allies which includes some very nasty types of people with identical ideologies and abuses the US will cite to justify longterm warfare against when they operate elsewhere, such as Afghanistan. The US is constantly trying to expand its own sphere of influence by pushing against others in a way that destabilises areas in the world, and many of the actions by Putin we can criticise for their tactical brutality occurred in response to US aggression.
Fundamentally there are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in geopolitics because every power tends to seek maximisation of its own influence against others. The concept of a stable balance of power is crucial but for starters relies on a type of humility and empathy that jingoism or national-exceptionalism is antithetical toward.
Seriously. This is all flat out bullshit on your part. Yes, the US wanted a regime change - they wanted a regime change into a democratic government. They sure as shit didn't start it though.
Russia is destabilizing the West by attacking the foundational premises of democracy and the legitimacy of Western governmental structure as a whole. By doing so he is undermining the singular enduring cause of extended peace between true democracies, that the accrual of wealth and dependencies of economics related to democratic governments keeps these nations from going to war with one another. It is 'hyperbolic' perhaps to describe the logical end result of delegitimizing democracy as a viable form of government when it is in all likelihood a long way off, but when actors in bad faith deliberately poison the norms and procedures that maintain that order, it is essential to consider, once again, the upper bound of destruction that would result.
I disagree to the extent that even if the DNC hack was committed by Russia (I do not believe appropriate technical proof has been given and have reasons to doubt; not bringing it up for re-debate), exposing undemocratic aspects of the US system seems different than what you are describing. Exposing the US as undemocratic in real terms is not really the same as "attacking the foundational premises of democracy".
Two of the last three US presidents came to office with fewer votes than their opponent. A party hated by most of the US public, the Republicans, is dominant at state and federal levels unparalleled in its history.
Wenn man die USA mit der gleichen analytischen Kühle wie Russland betrachten würde, sagt James Galbraith, Sohn des legendären Kennedy-Beraters John Kenneth Galbraith, würde man nicht umhinkommen, von der Herrschaft eines Oligopols aus Politikern und Bankern zu sprechen. Die Mächtigen an der Wall Street und in Washington seien nicht weniger eng verflochten als Premier Wladimir Putin und die Magnaten des russischen Rohstoffimperiums.
"If one were to look at the US with the same analytical coolness as Russia," said James Galbraith, the son of legendary Kennedy adviser John Kenneth Galbraith, "one would not be able to avoid speaking of the rule of an oligopoly of politicians and bankers. The powerful on Wall Street and Washington are no less closely intertwined than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the magnates of the Russian commodity council."
None of what was exposed by Russian hacking (it isn't up for debate, it is currently an accepted fact in this debate as far as I'm aware) indicates we are undemocratic.
The DNC leaks were complete nothingburger bullshit. It was normal run of the mill political sausage making the Russians used to run a propaganda campaign.
The thing that exposed us as not the best democracy was the electoral college, and that was exposed in the Bush years.
That propaganda campaign, however undermined our ability to have proper cogent discussions of the possible options to run our country. They ran a propaganda campaign to undermine our democratic process by convincing a ton of people that a bunch of completely inconsequential bullshit was the most important shit. They did that so they could hopefully install a leader that is, quite obviously, in their pocket.
Posts
Furthermore you are aligning highly complex nation states with a variety of internal and external forces, incentives, and interests on a simplistic axis of "good" or "bad" that does an immense disservice to the arguments all of us are delivering. On net, Russia's contributions to its people domestically and to the stability of the international order are destructive on orders of magnitude over its acceptable attendance to its sovereign interests, as all nations do. Apply a similar calculus to the USA and you may conclude that on net, the USA is a great negative for the world above and beyond the scope of its national interest; however, as an anchor of stability (again, comparatively; how quickly we forget WWI and WWII!) it does not, for the moment, project an upper bound of destruction on the level of Russia's actions--IF INTERNATIONAL NORMS CONTAINING ITS ACTIONS WITHIN GENERALLY PREDICTABLE BOUNDARIES ARE MAINTAINED.
This is mission critical and it is the primary reason why Russia, and Putin in particular, presents such a danger to the world, both in DEGREE of instability, and in KIND of instability. Russia's actions ARE to serve its narrow interests. But to achieve a marginal gain in wealth, stature and respect, it has taken up the method of DESTABILIZING THE ENTIRE WEST in order to establish evidence for an ideological commitment to authoritarian rule, to justify the plundering of its people, and to return the world to a 19th century state of ignorance and imperialism where nations' actions are legitimized only by their might and will and power to execute, and not by higher intangible ideals like commitment to human rights, consent of the governed, promotion of the welfare of citizens, respect for sovereignty, and reliance on stable and written guidelines, consistently interpreted and enforced, but adaptable to circumstance, that help remove the arbitrary violence of daily life and greedy, powerful abusers. The USA is not a perfect avatar of these ideals, but by the constraints of international norms it, for now, committed to them. Russia is not, and that in itself is profoundly dangerous.
NNID: Hakkekage
If Mexico wanted to annex Mexican-majority areas of Texas that were stolen from them in the 1800s and the people there wanted to leave US because they felt oppressed by Trump, I would say they had a very strong moral case, yes.
I can find articles quoting respected American college professors that agree with my statements.
I am not even pro-Russia, I am just not anti-Russia.
I am not Russian. I am in France. People here just generally feel the Cold War angle to be tired, which happened even to an extent in the first Cold War when leftists had power in France.
Nothing I am saying is mildly controversial in France, and by no means is anyone opposed to US hegemony a paid Russian agent. There is is a whole world outside America that thinks differently than you.
Take off the tinfoil hat.
Well, then you should be well aware of Russian-influenced political parties. Marine Le Pen is an example of leaders they are promoting and funding.
edit: And not everyone pro-Russian has to be a paid agent. During my college years I was much more sympathetic towards Putin than Bush, but things have changed in the meantime. A lot of my left leaning friends are still coming to terms with the fact that Russia of today is not a socialist state and that the US under Obama made some real progress in that direction.
post em, baby.
I did not mention ISIS even once. However, the most powerful insurgent groups in Syria seeking to overthrow Assad are mainly consistent of Salafist foreign fighters.
I can only assume you are deliberately arguing in bad faith by willfully twisting what I said. Everyone else is viewing this as "good vs evil" and I am saying it is not so simple, this is not balck and white, these are shades of grey.
I think you accidentally hit your caps lock there unless you mean to depict yourself screaming.
This is not as clear-cut as you imply. Look at the fallout from the Iraq war and Libya war. There are women and children from across the Middle East sleeping on the streets of Paris in the cold because of actions by the last two US administrations. This is visible and visceral.
I have never heard anyone who was not American describe the US as an "anchor of stability" and most people in France would find that phrasing absurdist. I could introduce you to many people who have lost their families and homes who would spit in your face for saying something so callous.
This feels hyperbolic. Russia is deliberately destabilising the entire West? What is the US doing to the entire middle east, or Latin America? And what consequences have been greater? I feel I am the only one not jumping into an arch-jingoist good-vs-evil framing.
I think Putin is a brutal leader with blood on his hands. But if we are calculating a full body count, and taking all consequences into account, I see Bush and Obama as worse.
what
Also uh
the US isn't doing anything in latin america. Where the hell did you get -that- from?
Edit: and during the middle of a crisis in Ukraine, with no real long debate period, and where the whole thing reeks of opportunistic pretext rather than any principled "they have been clamoring for secession for decades and we have been arguing for it for decades" sort of thing. Russia doesn't care for secessionist groups that have had vastly better claims over the years in their country.
Anschluss!
It has been educational to see a broad set of explanations laid out for why Putin is a terrible monster
Firstly: You are using that term as misdirection, stop it.
Secondly: You are still trying to deny that the Syrian rebel situation is enormously complex, while saying that obviously Russia is opposing just the 1 bad side of that, then feigning confusion over the US and international response. Stop it.
Ah, see the US did something bad so we should let Russia fill up it's quota right? Because obviously multiple wrongs will somehow add up to a right, and not a whole lot of preventable dead people.
If Putin is leading Russia to terrible acts, he should be opposed, end of story. If the US does the same, so should it - and it will be.
Or can no one criticize anyone unless they have an unblemished record, and we simply have to always tally up the bodies before figuring out who should speak first? Where's France standing on Algiers and Vietnam these days?
I thought you were in Cuba?
True. And it has been practice for argumentation, and Slacker has a point as well. Thank you folks, I am convinced - let's keep fighting.
ISIS are salafist rebels. Go read the Middle East thread if you want to learn about what is happening in Syria. You're clearly misinformed on a number of points regarding US policy and the factions in play there, and this is not the thread to hash that out.
Or read wikipedia.
The sovereignty of nations is not to be respected, unless it's Russia.
EDIT: To be less snarky... the line of reasoning that Anti-Climacus is putting forward is the very logic that America used to take Texas in the first place.
Read it for yourself, Anti-Climacus. If you don't like the sort of imperialist arguments put forth in the document, well, that's the same sort of logic that Russia used to justify the Crimean annexation. And before you say "well America did it so it's okay if Russia does it too," first of all two wrongs don't make a right, and secondly the annexation of Texas occurred centuries ago, and the world political stage has evolved since then.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Princeton/NYU professor emeritus Stephen Cohen:
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/16/the_new_york_times_basically_rewrites_whatever_the_kiev_authorities_say_stephen_f_cohen_on_the_u_s_russiaukraine_history_the_media_wont_tell_you/
Brown University professor Vladimir Golstein:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2014/05/19/why-everything-youve-read-about-ukraine-is-wrong/#342a2a4527c5
Also, prominent German historian Jorg Baberowski:
http://www.dw.com/en/baberowski-let-the-eastern-ukrainians-decide/a-17572947
The human cost of war (refugees, torn apart families, death, destruction, pestilence and ruin) does not fail my conclusion that the upper bound of potential Russian activity outstrips the upper bound of potential US activity. My "all caps screaming" was to emphasize the critical caveat to this state of affairs, elaborated in the third paragraph. By "anchor of stability" I clearly mean in terms of established international order, such as UN-based diplomatic norms and the balance of precarious peace anchored by the threat of the US backing any attacks on the NATO alliance; the US' deliverance of war and military action to serve its regional interest clearly undermine it but it is ludicrous to suggest that US hegemony is not critical to the maintenance of modern peace that has, for now, kept Europe conflict-free in the post-WWII era, which is an extraordinary anomaly in the course of human history.
Russia is destabilizing the West by attacking the foundational premises of democracy and the legitimacy of Western governmental structure as a whole. By doing so he is undermining the singular enduring cause of extended peace between true democracies, that the accrual of wealth and dependencies of economics related to democratic governments keeps these nations from going to war with one another. It is 'hyperbolic' perhaps to describe the logical end result of delegitimizing democracy as a viable form of government when it is in all likelihood a long way off, but when actors in bad faith deliberately poison the norms and procedures that maintain that order, it is essential to consider, once again, the upper bound of destruction that would result.
NNID: Hakkekage
This would be an interesting question if there was any reason whatsoever that the people on that airplane needed to die.
As it was, exactly zero Russian lives were saved by killing them.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Russia and Putin's war crimes in Chechnya and Syria and elsewhere are their own. The dead civilians are no less dead because Americans happened to kill and starve some others elsewhere, and the crime is no less criminal.
Russians a bit upset about us parking a lot of Military hardware in Europe.
This might be better for the Middle East thread, but from basically-neutral (not "Russian spy") comments there, it seems clear that Salafist forces are most powerful in the insurgency, Al-Qaeda is one of the most powerful forces of all and often enjoys good ties with other Salafists, and that if Assad were to be toppled the most likely outcomes would be either a Salafist/Qaeda state, and that has been the case for several years, even while the right-wing in the US (McCain, Graham, Clinton) has pressed forward toward "regime change" anyway and Obama has gone along with their demands half the time.
That wasn't the point. The point was that Yeltsin killed millions of Russians, including thousands through direct violence, and there was a statement to the effect that Putin is still "worse" because because a plane carrying western Europeans flying over a warzone was shot down on his watch.
That's fine, but different than what others are arguing, and actions do not happen in a vacuum. Russia is not just killing people in Syria "for fun", they are trying to the prevent a regime change attempt sponsored by US and its allies which includes some very nasty types of people with identical ideologies and abuses the US will cite to justify longterm warfare against when they operate elsewhere, such as Afghanistan. The US is constantly trying to expand its own sphere of influence by pushing against others in a way that destabilises areas in the world, and many of the actions by Putin we can criticise for their tactical brutality occurred in response to US aggression.
Fundamentally there are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in geopolitics because every power tends to seek maximisation of its own influence against others. The concept of a stable balance of power is crucial but for starters relies on a type of humility and empathy that jingoism or national-exceptionalism is antithetical toward.
Who, the fuck, cares? He did it. He, as the leader of the country, gave part of it away. Doesn't matter if you don't like it. You don't get to violently invade it decades later to to and take it back.
The land changed hands.
That would be like if someone decided the Louisiana purchase was bullshit and invaded the US to take it back.
That would be like if I showed up to my childhood home, killed the current occupants, and took it back because I'm pissed my mom ever sold it.
Decisions were made during a regime you disliked the results of... Fucking deal with it, and don't fucking invade your neighboring states. I don't give a fuck what you're reasoning is.
Doesn't change a goddamn thing.
I feel for the average Russian, I really do. Life's been shit there for a long time. I actually worked with families that had fled the Soviet Union as a domestic aid worker in college.
That none of that makes it ok to shoot down civilian aircraft. This isn't a moral relativism boardgame, where you get points for good things and lose points for bad things. Those people didn't need to die full stop. They did. That's on Putin, not Yeltsin.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Just so they don't kill us with nuclear weapons?
Well no the correct analogy here would be if states started independent but state lines were redrawn internally after they joined and then those states broke off and the rest of the us wanted to enforce the old pre-union borders
It comes down to how much internal borders matter. Multiple distinct entities -> single entity -> "border" change to make nicer lines -> multiple distinct entities
YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME
I will also remind all of you that none of you have any access to evidence as to whether someone is an astroturfer or not and are basing your assertions entirely on "I reckons"
I disagree to the extent that even if the DNC hack was committed by Russia (I do not believe appropriate technical proof has been given and have reasons to doubt; not bringing it up for re-debate), exposing undemocratic aspects of the US system seems different than what you are describing. Exposing the US as undemocratic in real terms is not really the same as "attacking the foundational premises of democracy". If the Democratic Party hierarchy structured their process to the detriment of Bernie Sanders, making that known seems in the interest of improving democracy.
Two of the last three US presidents came to office with fewer votes than their opponent. A party hated by most of the US public, the Republicans, is dominant at state and federal levels unparalleled in its history.
Study by Princeton/Northwestern professors: US is not a democracy, but an oligarchy
Also: http://m.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-67871661.html
"If one were to look at the US with the same analytical coolness as Russia," said James Galbraith, the son of legendary Kennedy adviser John Kenneth Galbraith, "one would not be able to avoid speaking of the rule of an oligopoly of politicians and bankers. The powerful on Wall Street and Washington are no less closely interlinked than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the magnates of the Russian commodity council."
Dude. Al Qaeda is not even in Syria; not for a long while. The factions there split off, rebranded, and are their own thing now. The fact you keep bringing them up means you're not at all current on the situation there. That you also seem thoroughly unaware of the secular and/or Kurdish factions that Russia bombs is another; and they're the ones closing in on ISIS.
The SDF is encircling Raqqa. Not Russia, not the SAA, and not the myriad non-ISIS salafists.
How can you attempt to decide what is "clear" about the power dynamics there when you don't even appear to know what factions are in play?
The other thing is that the status of Crimea could have been settled when Ukraine declared independence, or negotiated therafter, or Russia could even have done what China does with Taiwan and refused to recognize Ukraine until territory they counsidered was theirs was returned. They did not, independance was recognized with as is borders, and allowed to stand for over 20 years with no contestation before calling take backsies and invading.
The difference is that (until Trump) the relationship was between various businessmen and various politicians, whereas in Russia it was everyone being cozy with Putin (or else).
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Here's the thing; the people you're having this debate with are pretty unified in their opposition for both Russian and, as you've defined it here, American oligarchy.
Being American and distrusting Russian leadership isn't automatically presaged by blithe acceptance of the foibles of America. No one here is defending American bankers or oil companies. And we're all pretty pissed right now at Republicans, specifically.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Firstly, you've got your dumb lefties. Guys like Corbyn, who only like yesterday made another moronic statement on the issue of Russian relations. Alot of people on the left, especially the non-centrist and less foreign interventionist left, get just a bit of knowledge (omg, the US has actually done some bad things!) and fall down the rabbit hole of thinking the US must be wrong about everything so therefore the people opposing the US must always be right. You say a ton of this during the initial stuff going on in Ukraine. These are the people who think US news pushes a pro-US agenda and are full of shit (fairly accurate) and thus get all their news from RT instead (uh...).
You also see your standard right-wing Trump types who love the Putin regime completely unironically because they love macho posturing and authoritarianism. I think we need little explanation there.
And then you've just got alot of people who for whatever reason are pretty strongly pro-Russian. Lots of these in Eastern Europe (and I guess central/southern Europe too depending on what you consider like Hungary and the Balkans and the like). Serbians in particularly are frequently very pro-Russian/anti-West in my experience. Both personally and at a state level.
And this is what people are talking about saying you're generalizing over a complex situation. Because you're dragging multiple years worth of events and smearing them together into the narrative you want, ignoring that the situation has been fluid the entire time.
ISIS did not exist when the Syrian civil war started up. The American debate for intervention did not materialize in an overt American military presence and stories of US involvement have centered on the difficulty of actually finding a coherent, acceptable rebel movement to back (spoiler-alert: they never did before most of the moderates fled or got wiped out).
Russia being involved is a recent occurrence. The thing started in 2011, Russia decided to get involved late 2015.
Like holy christ dude, Russia did not magically have prescience on this matter, the US has not been actively trying to flip Syria to an ISIS/al-Qaeda government. Syria didn't suddenly start in the last 2 years, and the war started in the wake of the Arab spring after demands for democratic reforms (which deteriorated coz you know, Assad has his security forces fire on protesters directly).
You are flat out inventing the narrative here: go do some reading.
Seriously. This is all flat out bullshit on your part. Yes, the US wanted a regime change - they wanted a regime change into a democratic government. They sure as shit didn't start it though.
None of what was exposed by Russian hacking (it isn't up for debate, it is currently an accepted fact in this debate as far as I'm aware) indicates we are undemocratic.
The DNC leaks were complete nothingburger bullshit. It was normal run of the mill political sausage making the Russians used to run a propaganda campaign.
The thing that exposed us as not the best democracy was the electoral college, and that was exposed in the Bush years.
That propaganda campaign, however undermined our ability to have proper cogent discussions of the possible options to run our country. They ran a propaganda campaign to undermine our democratic process by convincing a ton of people that a bunch of completely inconsequential bullshit was the most important shit. They did that so they could hopefully install a leader that is, quite obviously, in their pocket.