[hackerlight]

Also people in the 60s lived through a nuke (1945) and lived through WW2. That living memory is now gone.

The problem with the "anti-war" crowd right now, is many appear to be closet Putin supporters. Or at least they're so anti-American that they support Putin by default. It would help the anti-war people not in that camp to carefully disambiguate between wanting to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict -- a laudable goal -- and support for Putin's imperial aggression.

[stareatgoats]

> many appear to be closet Putin supporter

This is the eternal paradox of being anti-war: if you are advocating peace in a polarized situation you are essentially aiding and abetting the enemy. The anti-war movement really only has one window of opportunity: in a non- or low-polarized situation create strong trade ties, international agreements and intercultural understanding and hope that it can fetter the always active belligerents on all sides to a sufficient degree. When the polarization reaches a certain level (sufficient number of people killed or maimed on both sides and the killing frenzy rhetoric has taken hold) all we can do is go silent and watch as the world goes down in flames.

The most realistic hope is likely that there is a new window of opportunity to build on thereafter when the horrific memories of war are still live in memory.

But there is of course always a desperate, albeit likely unrealistic hope that people in charge will come to their senses before it is too late.

[notthatmccarthy]

> This is the eternal paradox of being anti-war: if you are advocating peace in a polarized situation you are essentially aiding and abetting the enemy.

There is no such paradox. True patriots simply do not want their beloved countries to bloody their hands with the murder of foreign people. Not to mention with the total annihilation of the entire human race.

Of course those who are opposed to the war should protest. "People in charge" don't just come to their senses. Democratic societies especially have mechanisms in place to ensure that there's no need to wait for anyone to come to their senses. If elected leaders are abusing their power to murder and destroy, those elected leaders can be replaced, legally and democratically and without much fuss. That there is fuss is only the result of those people clinging to power and not wanting to let go. But the rest of us should fight to take power away from their hands. We should not let mad, bloodthirsty assholes keep power.

If you don't want your country to go to war, if you don't want your country to bomb foreign people, if you don't want your country to use its "nuclear deterrent" to start, or compound, a nuclear holocaust, then protest. Protest as if it was a very important thing, because it is a very damned important thing.

And btw, this applies to Russians also. You're forgetting, in your "paradox", that a Russian anti-war movement exists and that its people protest and don't give a dime about "paradoxes". And they're not even citizens of a democratic country that makes special space for such protests in its legislation. They're persecuted and beaten up and put into jail. But they protest because there is no other way.

[stareatgoats]

Good thing you added that thing about snark to your previous comment because the irony was not altogether evident.

I totally agree, people should protest. But they don't, exactly because of the age-old paradox mentioned, that you so emphatically deny. You underestimate the societal, psychological mechanisms in place, you underestimate the power of propaganda given to the military, even in democratic countries when "national security" is at stake, you underestimate the belief among large swathes of the population that "we can win this thing" and get rich doing it.

Of course I hope you are right, I'd love to be proven wrong. You are likely young and want to live a long and healthy life. I am old and with one foot in the grave anyway. But I do believe it gives me some clarity of vision, unobscured by wishful thinking.

But again, I hope you are right.

[notthatmccarthy]

I think I am. If you see what's happening in Iran right now, it's clear that people don't always coldly calculate their chances to win and there is a threshold beyond which common decency and ambient morality will boil over to rage that overwhelms the instinct of self-preservation.

In the case of nuclear weapons on the other hand, it is about self-preservation because the blood-thirstiness and the willingness to take risks of the people who control nuclear weapons can doom us all to non-existence. Or, even worse, to a nightmare existence were we are worse than beasts in a world destroyed and incapable of sustaining life.

[kalrqa]

A large part of the peace movement in e.g. West Germany in the 1980s was "anti-American" but not "pro-Soviet-Union".

Not everything is a binary choice, and it gets tiresome to prefix every Internet comment with a whole paragraph of disclaimers.

The "anti-war" crowd questions the Western provocations and meddling since the orange revolutions by Nuland etc. It questions the erasure of history since at least 1995.

Mearsheimer, a West Point graduate, is certainly not a Putin supporter. Yet he is depicted as one by large parts of the Internet mob, who always have the correct flag selections in their Twitter "biographies".

[hackerlight]

> The "anti-war" crowd questions the Western provocations and meddling since the orange revolutions by Nuland etc. It questions the erasure of history since at least 1995.

People who repeat false Kremlin war justification propaganda are being tacitly pro-war. It's double speak to call this behavior anti-war. These are the people I was talking about.

Nuland discussing in a leaked call who should replace Yanukovych and mentioning the one person who was overwhelmingly favored by polls of Ukrainians just prior to Yanukovych's ousting, and would have won an election in a landslide, is not meddling. Her meeting with him, in view of public cameras, isn't meddling. Ukrainian politicans are allowed to meet officials from other countries.

[DiogenesKynikos]

That is not an accurate description of the Nuland-Pyatt call. They are not merely "discussing who should replace Yanukovych." They are talking about actively putting together a new government, and discussing the fact that they have to move quickly, before the Russians can get involved or the EU can object.

[avgcorrection]

If you were against the Iraq War then you could demonstrate in D.C. If you are against a Russian invasion as an American you can’t protest next to the Kremlin. You have to protest against aiding arms (not necessarily humanitarian aid), which might look like “aiding Putin”.

[XorNot]

“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.”

- George Orwell

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/20274-pacifism-is-objective... this-is-elementary-common-sense-if

[avgcorrection]

I’m not a pacifist but I disagree.

[hackerlight]

Given that the context of the statement is WW2, he's right. The pacifist Bertrand Russell eventually had the same observation.

Stripped of that context and speaking generally, then I also disagree.

[notthatmccarthy]

Yes, this is a very well known problem. Even in the '60s most of the people who were, for example, against the Vietnam war, were closet Stalin supporters, commies and reds under the beds. They were dirty hippies with long hair that smoked weed and were good for nothing but protesting against the war.

Even in Russia, all the people who protest the war are US supporters. It's incredible how much hate of one's own nation is the real cause underlying all those protests that are ostensibly for peace. It's as if people can't see the benefits of war for their own nation.

(yes, this comment is breaking the guideline against snark).