I told my (sorta) friend that Obama oversaw a bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital and his only response was a smug 'well it wasn't on purpose'.
Yeah it was totally an accident firing on a hospital in a country you invaded.
On 7 October 2015, President Barack Obama issued an apology and announced the United States would be making condolence payments of $6,000 to the families of those killed in the airstrike
I said you'll need to go deeper. Where in the command chain did the error happen? Or was it commanded from the top? Using munitions on hospitals usually isn't as efficient as command centers, so it might actually be a mistake.
Wait, are you actually anti Russian aggression? Yay! Could you help me out explaining in this thread that it actually isn't okay for Russia to invade?
Again, fucking ghoul. Lives are a toy to you to be thrown around to smear your enemies is that it? Arabic lives are worthless, honorary aryans are exceptions?
I don't want the war to happen, and that means both sides need to come together for a peace agreement. Invading another country, although with sense considering the geopolitical implications, was still a terrible thing. This is the position of Hexbear. You guys just stick on the parts where we say ukraine needs to pay reparations as well.
The bombing of donbass was insanely inhumane. There was no reason to do that! Russia does not have the subversive ability to prop up such complex movements. They cannot claim that they are just russian soldiers. the separatists have been asking for referendum since the fall of the Soviets. There should have been a renegotiation of the borders of the post soviet republics at the very least, they were made with the other republics.
The mess didn't start with putin, it started with the fall of the soviet union. An entity with which, all the republics would be without war, and would be working together for the advancement of peace and mutual prosperity.
Arabic lives matter. The US has been too intervention happy over there to the locals deterrent. Should have let isis win years ago.
But sad to hear your following Russian taking points about their justification. I had hoped since you had insulted me by calling me a Kremlin apologist you would be critical of them.
I'm sure there are some legit separatists in the dombas. But I'm also sure Russia is helping them as much as they can with little green men or weapons or propaganda. Besides, when they invaded, they were trying to conquer the whole of Ukraine, not just the dombas.
that may be literally the understatement of the century.
And I am not apologizing for their actions, just acknowledging that their aggression is not the main factor in this conflict. NATO is trying to box in a bear, and they got clawed in the face for it. Its also hard to see NATO as less of an enemy than russia, NATO was created on the basis of being an anti-communist military organization, they were made to kill us. I'm plenty critical of the neoliberal shithole the Russian Federation is, do you really think I like the literal corpse of the socialist motherland ripping itself apart?! These armies used to be one army, these lands one nation! They used to conquer the stars and now those rockets are aimed at the home of their sister countries. Its gone forever now, the nazis won in the end, the USSR died. The armies kill each other over the same land where their grandfathers fought side by side against the fascist menace. They fought together to liberate the land that their grandsons bomb over petty nationalism. Their memory is disgraced by every action in this war.
ukraine and russia are nothing without the Soviet Union.
The movements in donbass have been huge since the fall of the Union, you ignore reality to dismiss this. Russia knows its weakness, it invaded hoping the shock would prompt an immediate peace treaty, but have found themselves embroiled in the most modern war yet. It knows it cannot hope to occupy Ukraine, maybe to demilitarize it or at least have the donbass ceded back to them. Ukraine could have easily made peace by giving internal autonomy to donbass and crimea, but chose to try to ethnically cleanse it for nationbuilding. This gave Russia an opportunity to do some nation building of their own.
This war was caused by nationalism and capitalism. Not any noble desires.
Although I do find myself pleased when I see NATO equipment and troops burn in the conflict, a final revenge of Soviet Steel.
That hospital wasn't just "set up" anywhere and enemy combatants weren't hiding in there and even if they were, you dont bomb hospitals, that's a warcrime
That's actually a good question. It's worse if it's malicious, but it's still terrible if it's accidental. The situation never should have been able to arise, preferably because the war never started.
Thanks for the context. I agree that if the war is unjust, the individual events should have been avoided and are culpable to the one who is perpetrating the injustice.
I'll need to look into it more carefully, but that looks pretty convincing that the US was unjust to get involved.
The US was the one facilitating the violence, so it being "accidental" doesn't matter. If I shoot a gun randomly into a crowd, it doesn't matter if I didn't actually mean to hit anyone.
I’ve seen this rhetorical tactic taken up by neoliberals and left libs when arguing on behalf of imperialism.
“This is American exceptionalism to say the CIA and the US military are all powerful and the sole cause for 50+ coups and invasions. You are denying the agency of foreign nations to be fascist on their own by saying America installed all the fascists”
It’s like they are trying to use anti-Americanism to argue pro-Americanism. It’s really a great tactic for muddying the waters and confusing everything by using a left rhetorical tactic to defend the fascist American empire
All countries portray themselves well. European countries less than other Western ones, but Russia and China also cultivate a specific image of protectors of a lifestyle.
They've been less military active in force projection, so probably not many yet. But I'm sure they'll get their chance as they become a super power with global power projection.
Actually, they've at least flooded their own hospitals, I wonder if they've accidentally bombed any with failing rocket stages?
It’s not logical for you to defend the US as global superpower by asserting, without evidence, that China might also do the same bad things if they could. They haven’t done those things and you’d need to provide compelling evidence that they have plans to do so. If not, you’re inventing a completely false equivalence out of whole cloth.
Okay. The U.S. is the largest power with the largest global power projection. China might also become a large power with global power projection. This is bad because they might bomb hospitals. This means the U.S. is bad because they do bomb hospitals. This means that China might as well be just as bad as America. This means that Ukraine might as well be just as bad as Russia because they also bomb hospitals.
So where is this going exactly? We're still left with "America does bad shit at a larger scale way more often" even when you imagine China doing the same thing in an alternate reality. Is this a useful line of reason? I can justify literally anything doing this.
Yeah, I suppose at this point it's harder to find countries that haven't. Though the US and NATO-aligned nations do have a certain knack when it comes to atrocities.