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Critiquing does very little against someone who has committed to invade a country. Rarely has it stopped a bullet, much less a tank. Russia has already accepted

Critiquing does very little against someone who has committed to invade a country. Rarely has it stopped a bullet, much less a tank. Russia has already accepted the cost of being criticized. But for the record, Putin has shown himself to have little regard for anything besides ending up in the history books next to Stalin & Hitler.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
And yet there's nothing you could think of to say that didn't equate Germany and Putin as Ukraine's enemies? This is all very reminiscent of "Hillary is just as bad as Trump". Seems to be a common logical fallacy that you can't have something that is better than the alternative but still not good enough. Instead people have to exaggerate to make the better one just as bad, which then has the implicit claim that the worse one is just the same as the better one in this metric. Whatever Germany is doing or not doing, it seems unlikely to approach the same level as invading Ukraine and killing a whole bunch of people.
- insickness 5y ago
  Europe and the US's energy dependence on Russia emboldened Putin to attack because now sanctions will harm us as much as they harm him. No, we're not the ones attacking Ukraine, but we are complicit.
- robert_foss 5y ago
  I have not equated Germany with Russia. Don't strawman me. I am however pointing out that Germany is delaying and holding back the response to a European country being invaded.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    > With friends like Germany, who needs enemies. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/with_friends_like_these_who_needs_enemies https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/with_friends_like_these_who_n... "An expression indicating that one's close associates prove more adversarial than one's opponents." Probably just an unconscious idiom, but the use of the word "enemy" in context of an invasion seemed to be a bit too loaded a term.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

And yet there's nothing you could think of to say that didn't equate Germany and Putin as Ukraine's enemies? This is all very reminiscent of "Hillary is just as bad as Trump". Seems to be a common logical fallacy that you can't have something that is better than the alternative but still not good enough. Instead people have to exaggerate to make the better one just as bad, which then has the implicit claim that the worse one is just the same as the better one in this metric. Whatever Germany is doing or not doing, it seems unlikely to approach the same level as invading Ukraine and killing a whole bunch of people.

insickness 5y ago
Europe and the US's energy dependence on Russia emboldened Putin to attack because now sanctions will harm us as much as they harm him. No, we're not the ones attacking Ukraine, but we are complicit.
robert_foss 5y ago
I have not equated Germany with Russia. Don't strawman me. I am however pointing out that Germany is delaying and holding back the response to a European country being invaded.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  > With friends like Germany, who needs enemies. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/with_friends_like_these_who_needs_enemies https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/with_friends_like_these_who_n... "An expression indicating that one's close associates prove more adversarial than one's opponents." Probably just an unconscious idiom, but the use of the word "enemy" in context of an invasion seemed to be a bit too loaded a term.