[syrrim]

To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is to deny ukraine agency. They are caught between a lion and a bear. They could reject the aid of the lion, but that would throw them into the hands of the bear. They choose to accept US help in their defense, but that makes them vulnerable to US invasion. This is a choice they made, and they bare the consequences. The US in offering that help might have sought to anger russia, but they left it to the ukrainians to decide whether to follow through.

Fundamentally, russia had no interest in allowing ukraine to be an independent country. US aid forestalled an invasion, and made the ultimate invasion a fairer fight, but it wasn't the cause of it.

[jmyeet]

> To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is to deny ukraine agency

No, it doesn't. This war has highlighted just how simplistic people are in that someone has to be the bad guy and someone has to be the good guy (hint: the US is always the good guy). Any suggestion that more than one party can bear responsibility or blame invites histrionics about victim-blaming.

The US friend zoned Ukraine, basically. The US knew it was never going to happen. Sure, Ukraine should figure that out (which they didn't seem to) but there's enough blame to go around.

[thesuitonym]

>This war has highlighted just how simplistic people are in that someone has to be the bad guy and someone has to be the good guy

Everyone who has ever said this has gone on to say that the US is the bad guy. And you're always arguing against people who say "Yes, the US is a bully, but that's not important right now."

[jmyeet]

To be fair, the US is almost always the bad guy.

I don't say this flippantly. Look at the governments the US has overthrown, rebels supported, natural resources stolen, corrupt leaders supported and arms supplied to those committing genocide (eg Saudi Arabia in Yemen).

[AbrahamParangi]

If the US is the bad guy, who do you think is the good guy?

[BuckRogers]

There was blame to go around, until Russia invaded Ukraine today and in 2014. Now it's all on them. Otherwise you're saying the woman with the short skirt asked or deserved to be raped and murdered. Which is never true.

Mistakes were made, but none of them justify the genocide in Ukraine. Nothing even justified an invasion at all.

If you can't see true evil and who the bad guy is, you're definitely part of the problem. I hope no women in your family are raped by men with logic similar to your own, because you'll be blaming them.

[_dw1a]

This is a misleading and, frankly, rather disgusting analogy.

The sovereignty of an individual, especially over one’s own body, and the sovereignty of a nation are not even near equivalents.

And yes, I know that at this time the sovereignty of individual Ukrainians, men and women, is being horribly violated. But this did not need to happen even if the sovereignty of the nation itself was violated. It’s a separate matter for which Russians, especially individual soldiers and their commanders, bear direct blame for. They could have chosen another, less disgusting, far less inhumane means to gain control of Ukraine.

As well, despite the clear propaganda behind it, Russia can at least claim that they felt threatened by Ukraine’s chummy relationship with the narcissistic and occasionally-aggressive Uncle Sam. This entirely breaks your analogy as rape is never a defensive maneuver no matter how one might twist it.

[pavlov]

Rape can be defensive in the rapist’s mind. “My wife smiled at someone else. I need to defend my property and teach her a lesson.”

And this is the same kind of twisted logic that drives the Russian invasion.

[_dw1a]

That seems more retributive than defensive. It’s only construed as defensive when the attacker is forced to justify themselves, to themselves and others, to avoid shame and guilt. Consider the cliche of “defending one’s honor”. This phrase assumes the rightfulness of the aggressor’s actions. It begs the question.

[BuckRogers]

Sovereignty of a nation is built on the sovereign individuals. Only a free man can build a free nation. It bubbles up, rather than comes from top down.

I'm an "actions, not words" type of guy. Putin claims many things in this world, they're threatened etc. We all know it's a lie. You must watch Russia's actions, not their words. How many times have we learned this? Watch what they've done, not what they say.

You're right, rape is never defensive. Instead what happened here is that Russia has raped Ukraine, and claimed she was going to attack him. That's the reality of it, and it's the only twisted logic on display.

She was also supposedly a Nazi. I'd bet good coin there's more actual Neo-Nazis in Russia than Ukraine though, just based on sheer population alone.

Not that Nazism actually gives Putin any pause.[0]

[0]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/08/russia-sen...

[trinsic2]

Thank you for speaking what I was going to say. The idea that people are subject to government agenda's is wholly inaccurate. Governments are made up of people to protect the interests of individuals, not the other way around.

[_dw1a]

> Sovereignty of a nation is built on the sovereign individuals.

This is just wrong. Sovereignty is a term for having ultimate authority. This can be had by any kind of government as long as it is the ultimate authority over what it claims to govern. This can include a dictatorship even if it might not recognize the authority of the individual over their own body.

Whether or not other countries recognize another country’s sovereignty is another matter. As in the case at hand, Russia clearly does not recognize Ukraine’s and so it violates it. This qualifies as rape according to one of many definitions for the term. And that’s an accurate and appropriate labeling.

But, and this is my point, it doesn’t make your particular analogy accurate or fair. You are equating the rape of a nation with that of an individual. In particular, you are using the typical cliched scenario of the attacker being drawn in by the victim’s dress, which is usually used to suggest the perpetrator could not control themselves due to the supposed unspoken solicitation and temptation of the victim’s dress. This is not at all like Russia and Ukraine. This is not defensive, or even attempting to claim so. It’s just claiming powerlessness, a lack of agency. And Russia is doing nothing of that sort. It’s doing quite the opposite.

You even end your comment with:

> I hope no women in your family are raped by men with logic similar to your own, because you'll be blaming them.

You are suggesting that the two situations are so similar that the target of your comment wouldn’t be able to differentiate between them either.

Strange. A rape victim has a traumatic personal experience that the abstract entity we call a nation could never have, being that it doesn’t have a personal experience at all. The difference would undoubtably be quite apparent to loved ones.

And while the citizens of the nation would likely be wildly upset, unless their own individual sovereignty was also violated they would surely not have the same experience as that of a rape victim. This would be self evident just by asking any person whether they’d rather their own nation or their own sovereignty be violated. But we don’t need to ask, because we already know what the answer would be.

I’m going to bow out of the rest of this discussion though since I don’t even like talking about it. Fortunately I have never gone through either experience. And because of that, it doesn’t feel right for me to discuss the differences like I truly know the differences. Hopefully the same is true for you as well.

Edit, to preempt any misreading: I am not in anyway defending Russia. Their actions are despicable and Ukraine does not deserve any of it. Russia _is_ raping Ukraine, but that reality is very different from an individual’s despite the use of the same term.

[pessimizer]

> To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is to deny ukraine agency. They are caught between a lion and a bear.

But somehow you're excusing the lion.

[spaced-out]

Because, in this instance, the lion is not the one that launched an invasion. Particularly egregious, launching a pre-emptive war based on a flimsy premise of what Ukraine might do in the future.

[curuinor]

surely america's the eagle, and the brits are lions? heraldry is ancient and the US has got some, surprisingly enough

[jimmygrapes]

I think Russia has more claim to the eagle for heraldry purposes, although maybe two-headed eagles don't count as the same species.