6 ms·

Well, when the US invaded Iraq, the only thing disapproving Western nations had courage to do is to produce a bunch of unsubstantiated weasel words and empty ge

Well, when the US invaded Iraq, the only thing disapproving Western nations had courage to do is to produce a bunch of unsubstantiated weasel words and empty gestures.

seszett 3y ago
Well it's obviously more difficult to sanction the most powerful country in the world than a much poorer country like Russia. And there is much less reason to do so when you aren't being threatened yourself. It seems to me completely normal that the US was less sanctioned by "the West" when they invaded Iraq than how Russia was sanctioned when they invaded Europe.
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  Yep, so it’s all about geopolitics. And no one cares about “violent customer this” or “violent customer that”.
  - piaste 3y ago
    Although the size of the attacker is obviously critical, I wouldn't ignore the choice of targets either. I'm not American and I opposed the invasion at the time, but it was harder to argue because Saddam's Iraq had very few redeeming qualities, had been waging aggressive wars of its own, and its main role in international trade was as a member of the OPEC cartel. Whereas Ukraine, for all its problems, is a far more democratic county with far more friends, no history of aggression, and a critical source of food for many nations. If Russia had invaded Belarus or Tajikistan instead of Ukraine, I doubt there would have been any real consequences.
    - prox 3y ago
      People like to compare the US (Iraq) with Russia, but the difference is that in the US, you can still vote and change governments. People could demonstrate and did. Newspapers could poke holes in narratives. In Russia there is no choice. It’s Putin all the way with no options for protest.
      - ekianjo 3y ago
        Laughable point. The US government is so controlled by the war machine that every new president systematically finds new countries to bomb. War making is the universal party in the US.
        prox 3y ago
        But not my point. Even if true what you are saying (and not saying either way) , I could still do a hundred things I could do in protest or as agent for change as an individual or as a group that I cannot do in Russia.
        konart 3y ago
        Does this really matter though? I mean - you can cry and shout as much as you want but this will only satisfy your own ego. This is like shouting at a wall.
        prox 3y ago
        Yes it does, and it has nothing to do with ego, and I am not at least emotional about it. Let’s turn it around, so there is absolutely no distinction between Russia and the US? So let’s demonstrate near the White House and the Kremlin. I assure you both outcomes are different. Let’s set up a fund that allows me to criticize the government, pretty sure I can do that in the US, and good luck doing that for Russia. You get the idea. There is definitely a difference.
        konart 3y ago
        > Let’s turn it around, so there is absolutely no distinction between Russia and the US? This depends on what one finds importand and what not. My wife says, for example, that there is no difference except for nature, climate and a few minor thigs. I say - there is more than a few differences, but still two countries have more in common than people think. >let’s demonstrate >I assure you both outcomes are different. If the result if the same (the government changing or not changing its policy or decisions) than there is no difference. Yes in one scenario you may end up dead (and not necessarily in Russia) but this is not what's important here.
    - throwaway473825 3y ago
      > If Russia had invaded Belarus or Tajikistan instead of Ukraine, I doubt there would have been any real consequences. You don't need to speculate. There were no real consequences when Russia invaded Georgia, and that's even a democracy, although unfortunately too small to be relevant.
actionfromafar 3y ago
It was a special time. The US still had a lot of sympathy from 9/11 and yet it also burned a lot of credibility that day. Invading Iraq or its equivalent would be a hard sell today, with not only the "the West" but with its own population.
- kranke155 3y ago
  Even at the time it caused some of the largest anti war protests in history. Lots of people understood what was happening.
  - megadopechos 3y ago
    Lots of people, perhaps. But not enough. Or not enough media coverage to reach enough people. I was there marching in DC and even my close friends and family (in suburban DC) seemed to be unaware of the protests. I thought, surely, with 100,000 people protesting in the city, Black Bloc hanging from streetlights, speeches from celebrities, Jesse Jackson, a former Defense Secretary, etc., that it would pop up on the local news. I never heard about it.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      I think that was the last time a media "ignore" could be really effective. Today videos would be shared online. I read in the papers that people demonstrated, but the numbers were downplayed in the reporting IMHO. Someone should dig up some photos and compare with news articles from that time.
    - foverzar 3y ago
      > marching How is this substantial? I don't get it. If all you do is give speeches and march, what is even the incentive?
      - klibertp 3y ago
        The idea is that the representatives of yours only do things against your wishes when they don't know what you wish for or you are in too tiny a minority for them to care. So, you make it clear what you want (or don't want) and get lots of people on board, especially ones that can influence even more people, and that causes you to be heard by the representatives, and then they (well, at least some of them) change their agendas to align with whatever it is you want (or don't want). At least that's how I understand the idea. It obviously doesn't always work, and in some cases simply cannot work. It does work sometimes, to an acceptable degree, but often it doesn't. It's like gambling. You win a bit and you start overestimating your chances to win more. Here, too - you petition local authorities to put a speed limit on a road near an elementary school, you "win", the speed limit is introduced, and now you think you can do the same to influence the massive, incredibly complex system of hundreds of millions of people, the machine that's steamrolling through geopolitics and history full-speed ahead. Of course you can't - that's work for decades, generations, thousands of leaders, millions of supporters. But, nobody wants to put their whole life behind what they want (or don't want), sacrificing their well-being for uncertain result 40 years down the line. Nobody wants to be a Stallman - he reads web pages by sending an email to home server which cURL-downloads the page and sends it back to him to read... in lynx. How many people are willing to go through so much inconvenience just to state a point? And do so for decades? So, instead, people go protest a bit, virtue-signal their discontent (or support) on social media, get into heated discussions at family events - and then go on with their lives. The basic premise is good: people don't change their views easily, so to make a change, you need to exchange people. It's good on a local scale, but it totally breaks above that level, in multiple well-researched scenarios, most of which happen to currently, and concurrently, play out almost everywhere. Normally, we'd have a war - a serious war with tens of millions of casualties - that would cut off the bloat and really reset (though leveling it would take some work, given all the bomb craters) the playing field. We don't, and won't, because of nukes. I honestly have no idea what's next - I just hope that I'll die before the more dystopian future arrives.

Well, when the US invaded Iraq, the only thing disapproving Western nations had courage to do is to produce a bunch of unsubstantiated weasel words and empty gestures.

seszett 3y ago

Well it's obviously more difficult to sanction the most powerful country in the world than a much poorer country like Russia. And there is much less reason to do so when you aren't being threatened yourself. It seems to me completely normal that the US was less sanctioned by "the West" when they invaded Iraq than how Russia was sanctioned when they invaded Europe.

LudwigNagasena 3y ago
Yep, so it’s all about geopolitics. And no one cares about “violent customer this” or “violent customer that”.
- piaste 3y ago
  Although the size of the attacker is obviously critical, I wouldn't ignore the choice of targets either. I'm not American and I opposed the invasion at the time, but it was harder to argue because Saddam's Iraq had very few redeeming qualities, had been waging aggressive wars of its own, and its main role in international trade was as a member of the OPEC cartel. Whereas Ukraine, for all its problems, is a far more democratic county with far more friends, no history of aggression, and a critical source of food for many nations. If Russia had invaded Belarus or Tajikistan instead of Ukraine, I doubt there would have been any real consequences.
  - prox 3y ago
    People like to compare the US (Iraq) with Russia, but the difference is that in the US, you can still vote and change governments. People could demonstrate and did. Newspapers could poke holes in narratives. In Russia there is no choice. It’s Putin all the way with no options for protest.
    - ekianjo 3y ago
      Laughable point. The US government is so controlled by the war machine that every new president systematically finds new countries to bomb. War making is the universal party in the US.
      - prox 3y ago
        But not my point. Even if true what you are saying (and not saying either way) , I could still do a hundred things I could do in protest or as agent for change as an individual or as a group that I cannot do in Russia.
        konart 3y ago
        Does this really matter though? I mean - you can cry and shout as much as you want but this will only satisfy your own ego. This is like shouting at a wall.
        prox 3y ago
        Yes it does, and it has nothing to do with ego, and I am not at least emotional about it. Let’s turn it around, so there is absolutely no distinction between Russia and the US? So let’s demonstrate near the White House and the Kremlin. I assure you both outcomes are different. Let’s set up a fund that allows me to criticize the government, pretty sure I can do that in the US, and good luck doing that for Russia. You get the idea. There is definitely a difference.
        konart 3y ago
        > Let’s turn it around, so there is absolutely no distinction between Russia and the US? This depends on what one finds importand and what not. My wife says, for example, that there is no difference except for nature, climate and a few minor thigs. I say - there is more than a few differences, but still two countries have more in common than people think. >let’s demonstrate >I assure you both outcomes are different. If the result if the same (the government changing or not changing its policy or decisions) than there is no difference. Yes in one scenario you may end up dead (and not necessarily in Russia) but this is not what's important here.
  - throwaway473825 3y ago
    > If Russia had invaded Belarus or Tajikistan instead of Ukraine, I doubt there would have been any real consequences. You don't need to speculate. There were no real consequences when Russia invaded Georgia, and that's even a democracy, although unfortunately too small to be relevant.

actionfromafar 3y ago

It was a special time. The US still had a lot of sympathy from 9/11 and yet it also burned a lot of credibility that day. Invading Iraq or its equivalent would be a hard sell today, with not only the "the West" but with its own population.

kranke155 3y ago
Even at the time it caused some of the largest anti war protests in history. Lots of people understood what was happening.
- megadopechos 3y ago
  Lots of people, perhaps. But not enough. Or not enough media coverage to reach enough people. I was there marching in DC and even my close friends and family (in suburban DC) seemed to be unaware of the protests. I thought, surely, with 100,000 people protesting in the city, Black Bloc hanging from streetlights, speeches from celebrities, Jesse Jackson, a former Defense Secretary, etc., that it would pop up on the local news. I never heard about it.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    I think that was the last time a media "ignore" could be really effective. Today videos would be shared online. I read in the papers that people demonstrated, but the numbers were downplayed in the reporting IMHO. Someone should dig up some photos and compare with news articles from that time.
  - foverzar 3y ago
    > marching How is this substantial? I don't get it. If all you do is give speeches and march, what is even the incentive?
    - klibertp 3y ago
      The idea is that the representatives of yours only do things against your wishes when they don't know what you wish for or you are in too tiny a minority for them to care. So, you make it clear what you want (or don't want) and get lots of people on board, especially ones that can influence even more people, and that causes you to be heard by the representatives, and then they (well, at least some of them) change their agendas to align with whatever it is you want (or don't want). At least that's how I understand the idea. It obviously doesn't always work, and in some cases simply cannot work. It does work sometimes, to an acceptable degree, but often it doesn't. It's like gambling. You win a bit and you start overestimating your chances to win more. Here, too - you petition local authorities to put a speed limit on a road near an elementary school, you "win", the speed limit is introduced, and now you think you can do the same to influence the massive, incredibly complex system of hundreds of millions of people, the machine that's steamrolling through geopolitics and history full-speed ahead. Of course you can't - that's work for decades, generations, thousands of leaders, millions of supporters. But, nobody wants to put their whole life behind what they want (or don't want), sacrificing their well-being for uncertain result 40 years down the line. Nobody wants to be a Stallman - he reads web pages by sending an email to home server which cURL-downloads the page and sends it back to him to read... in lynx. How many people are willing to go through so much inconvenience just to state a point? And do so for decades? So, instead, people go protest a bit, virtue-signal their discontent (or support) on social media, get into heated discussions at family events - and then go on with their lives. The basic premise is good: people don't change their views easily, so to make a change, you need to exchange people. It's good on a local scale, but it totally breaks above that level, in multiple well-researched scenarios, most of which happen to currently, and concurrently, play out almost everywhere. Normally, we'd have a war - a serious war with tens of millions of casualties - that would cut off the bloat and really reset (though leveling it would take some work, given all the bomb craters) the playing field. We don't, and won't, because of nukes. I honestly have no idea what's next - I just hope that I'll die before the more dystopian future arrives.