[faeriechangling]

Not to put a fine point on it, but if you want to know what it was like back then, just say something like "I don't think we should finance the war in Ukraine. What is happening in Eastern Europe isn't our problem. Neutrality is the best policy" and see the rhetoric you'll hear. Usually blind allegations of shilling, being a Russian stooge, being a sock puppet, and so on.

It was several times worse in the early days of the GWOT. Sikh's were getting killed for looking too Muslim. The stuff you see now where people want to include mandatory "Fact checks" in internet searches sort of paled to the crap we saw in the GWOT of Extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation, the Bush doctrine, destroying privacy laws in the name of patriotism, and so on.

We've already started forgetting what happened.

[petersellers]

> Not to put a fine point on it, but if you want to know what it was like back then, just say something like "I don't think we should finance the war in Ukraine. What is happening in Eastern Europe isn't our problem. Neutrality is the best policy" and see the rhetoric you'll hear

What's happening now is not remotely comparable to what the US did in response to 9/11 - if anything, it's the opposite (we are defending a country from being invaded for BS reasons vs invading another country for BS reasons)

[somenameforme]

At the beginning of the Iraq War, and for sometime thereafter, we were led to believe that Iraq was actively developing WMD. We weren't invading a country, but saving the world from imminent catastrophe at the hands of an unhinged and crazy dictator.

The proof included claims by dozens of different intelligence agencies, testimony from high level insiders in the Iraq government, surveillance photos of mobile biological weapons laboratories, definitive proof of purchase of Uranium for nuclear weapons purposes, under oath testimony, and of course endless propaganda:

---

Washington Post - "Irrefutable" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...

NYTimes - "Irrefutable and Undeniable" : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...

---

To imagine all of this was fabricated or based on lies would make even the most enthusiastic conspiracy theorist look at you a bit funny. These events played a major role in shaping my worldview. And what we're going through today is even more extreme.

The one bright side of this is that if we can manage to avoid nuclear annihilation, I expect an even larger chunk of the population will join the jaded and cynical asshole family. It's not a pleasant worldview, but probably necessary for the survival of humanity in the age of mass media and mass weapons.

[esailija]

It was all based on lies and fabrication without any conspiracy. You are assuming it requires a conspiracy to pull it off, but why would it? These agencies, media and companies are all interested in the same thing which is US hegemony and profits not the truth, that automatically makes them do this without need for any conspiracy.

And why wouldn't they? What exactly has been the punishment for so called reliable media for spreading lies over and over again? If anything they are considered more reliable than ever. Which means people consuming it are not interested in truth either.

[michaelt]

> You are assuming it requires a conspiracy to pull it off, but why would it?

Some might find it implausible the media and legislators were so credulous.

I mean, Saddam did allow UN weapons inspectors in before the war, and nobody could direct them to any WMD. Even at the time, it took some serious mental gymnastics to believe spy agencies had all this evidence of a huge programme, and yet couldn't direct weapons inspectors to anything.

[faeriechangling]

Looking into the history of it, I don't think there was any sort of systemic conspiracy, but a loose collection of incentives.

If you wanted to sell papers, you needed to sell stories about AMERICA STOPPING TERRORISM! How did you get access to stories of marines busting down doors and shoving the foreign looking faces of murderous terrorists into the dirt? Well you had to be known as a news source who said the right things, had the right attitude.

At these news organisations there were some editors who were mostly there before 9/11 happened who decided that supporting America was the crap and were pushing stories from any reporter who had "sources" that gave evidence of what was going down. Readers LOVED reading stories about heroes who kicked the ass of murderous terrorists. It was a feedback loop, the more hawkish you were the more you succeeded, the more dovish you were the more irrelevant you were.

[elefanten]

You can't seriously compare the assertions pushed through the media after 9/11 to the multitudes of sensory and social evidence that Ukraine was attacked.

I opposed GWOT / going into Iraq after 9/11, I have not forgotten the collective national mania.

But the comparison you're drawing to Ukraine is nonsense. If you're at the point where you believe all the reports, images and interviews detailing the millions of refugees crossing out of Ukraine have been faked... I'm not sure how to help you.

[tchalla]

> If you're at the point where you believe all the reports, images and interviews detailing the millions of refugees crossing out of Ukraine have been faked...

Clearly, that's not what the OP is saying.

[faeriechangling]

I'm not comparing the worthiness of the two wars, I'm comparing the public excitement around the wars. I definitely am far more supportive of a defensive war than a pre-emptive war on general principle.

[jlawson]

>Sikh's were getting killed for looking too Muslim.

I'm sorry but this sounds like an activist fever dream/urban legend. Are there actually two (or even one) known incidents like this from that time period?

I'm not defending the GWOT or opposing it here but that's an extreme characterization you're making; I was there and it doesn't match anything like my memory.

[hiddencost]

Here's a few murders: Balbir Singh Sodhi, Waqar Hasan, Adel Karas, Saed Mujtahid, Jayantilal Patel, Surjit Singh Samra, Abdo Ali Ahmed, Abdullah Mohammed Nimer, and Vasudev Patel.

[closewith]

Presumably he's referring to Balbir Singh Sodhi.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi

[Godel_unicode]

Or one of the 16 others in Muneer Ahmad’s 2004 paper. Although they were not all Sikh.

[qubex]

I often find myself wondering what latter-day “common sense” will be viewed uncharitably as jingoism in a few years hence.

[throwaway6734]

Supporting Ukraine is much closer to supporting the UK during WW2.

[eastbound]

Yes, but remember that the UN Security Council has a habit of fabricating evidence. Colin Powell was never trialled for showing “proof of WMD in Irak” and he died in 2021, with no penalty for his lies.

That happened with every recent war. It’s a habit of fabricating evidence, not mere clerical errors.

[sofixa]

> Yes, but remember that the UN Security Council has a habit of fabricating evidence

The UN Security Council is not a singular entity, it's composed of permanent and rotating members, so it can hardly have "habits". A member can come with fabricated evidence, which can be accepted by other members for whatever reason, but that's not the UN Security Council fabricating evidence.

[throwaway6734]

What's the relevance?

Has Russia not been illegally Ukraine, trying to steal it's territory, and trying to destroy its culture since 2014?

[somenameforme]

Crimea is almost exclusively ethnic Russian. This [1] is from the 2013 Wiki page on Ukrainian demographics. The annexation polls in Crimea from 2014 were not fabricated or coerced, and their results were subsequently validated by numerous Western polling agencies, including Gallup [2].

That's the entire question of this war (and the one entirely absent from Western media). After the Russian leaning government in Ukraine was overthrown in 2014, those heavily Russian territories declared their independence, starting a civil war. Numerous efforts were made to resolve this were made (the Minsk accords), but went nowhere. Russia blamed Ukraine, Ukraine blamed Russia.

So who gets to decide the fate of a people within an area? The people within that area, or the government with historic claims to the land of the area? That's not a rhetorical question because the traditional answer has always been the latter - generally changed only by war or collapse.

But I think it's an important and fundamental one that must eventually be answered on a global scale if we ever want a peaceful world. At what scale does the right to self determination and rule begin? Obviously a household shouldn't be able to declare itself independent, but a city? County? State? Region?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Demographics_of_U...

[2] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-a...

[adrian_b]

Crimea has become almost exclusively Russian less than one hundred years ago.

Like in many other regions of the Soviet Union, that was done by force, i.e. by deporting or murdering the native inhabitants.

After bringing Russian colonists in all those regions, the Soviet Union frequently did not need to spend any money for them, because the Russian colonists have been installed directly in the houses vacated by their former owners, who were forced to leave almost all their belongings behind.

So when now the Russians from such territories recently colonized by the Soviet Union complain that the natives do not love them, or that they are discriminated, or that some country wants to maintain control over the colonized territory, while they want to unite with the Empire which gave them the land and houses stolen from others, there is no wonder that such Russian desires are hard to accept for the neighbors of Russia.

[pooper]

Thank you for saying this. Not to derail the conversation bThisut for people who deny something like this happens, is still ongoing in Tibet where the Chinese have or soon will outnumber Tibeteans.

[somenameforme]

Your comment is certainly true, but I think quite misleading to anybody who might not know the history here. The group you're referencing at the Crimean Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group, that were exiled under Stalin - with no relation to Ukraine or Ukrainians.

Today more Tatars live in Crimea than before the exile. Well, at least in modern history, if we go back to times of the Ottoman Empire, things get much more complex. And Russia remains the home of the majority of Tatars today, where they remain a large ethnic minority.

It's an important issue and certainly ironic, but not a direct factor in the current conflict.

[elefanten]

This is a thoughtful comment that shouldn't be grayed (as it is at the time of my reading).

But it doesn't answer gp. Whatever an enlightened political philosophy debate might yield, Russia annexed Crimea by force at a time when it was not theirs. Full stop.

However good Russia's case was or however much a majority of the inhabitants wanted control to change, control was ultimately changed via unjustified means that should be rejected by the international community.

The proof of Russia's lack of genuine interest in the will of those people is how quickly it came in to start shooting. You don't resolve national break-ups in weeks or months (see, for example, the dissolution of Czechoslovakia).

[varjag]

> government with historic claims to the land of the area

I take it you are not from Europe, because over here everyone has historical claims on everything.

[throwaway6734]

Do you think Russia should have respected the will of the Chechens and let Chechnya become its own state?

[gadders]

As a Brit - no.

[jorvi]

Yours is an absolutely terrible analogy.

How did “not my war” turn out in the 1930s?

> We've already started forgetting what happened.

The cherry on the ironic top.

[somenameforme]

I would go back to the root cause there. World War 1 ended up with Brits and Germans killing each other because a Bosnian Serb assassinated an Austro-Hungarian Royal.

The Treaty of Versailles was nothing short of sadistic in the penalties it imposed on Germany which, shockingly, didn't result in Germany rejoining the modern world order (of the time) but growing to despise it even more. It is this which set the stage for the rise of a vegetarian artist who had a knack for oratory and riling up crowds.

WW2 was likely necessary, but WW1 was not. And WW1 created WW2. The worst part is also always the propaganda. When WW1 was being carried out it was being framed, at the time, as 'The War to End All War.' What cause could possibly be more noble? Of course it not only didn't end all war, but even directly led to even more war. And the fundamental cause of the conflict which initially triggered the war persists to this day!

[sofixa]

> World War 1 ended up with Brits and Germans killing each other because a Bosnian Serb assassinated an Austro-Hungarian Royal

Russians and French died in much higher numbers on the Entente side than the Brits (who only joined due to Belgium's neutrality being violated anyways).

However, you probably know that the assassination of the morganatically married heir presumptive of the Austro-Hungarian throne was not the real reason for the war, only the spark that ignited the powder keg. There were many reasons and a lot of tension building for decades, starting with, funnily, Germany beating Austria which forced them to expand south, towards Bosnia, and also Germany beating France making the latter want revenge. The former pitted Austria-Hungary against Russia in the Balkans, on top of the many problems between the different Balkan countries. The latter made France eager for revenge and desperate to not be alone next time, hence it's cozying to Russia and the UK. Sprinkle an agressive German naval build-up that pushed the UK towards the Entente, German fears of Russian rearmament, Austrian fears of irrelevance, etc. and you have a powder keg with clearly defined lines just waiting for a spark.

[faeriechangling]

>How did “not my war” turn out in the 1930s?

For the Americans? I'd say their policy of being a "neutral" arms dealer mostly made the Americans a ton of money and rocketed them to global superpower status. Now Japan did attack them in a hostile action but America kind of pounded them after so I'm still not sure "neutrality" worked out so badly for them. If anything the Americans started doing worse and worse the more and more they got involved in wars halfway across the world.

For the Brits? Yeah appeasement was kind of a policy failure, Hitler turned out to not be the most trustworthy chap. I dare say Hitler was an unscrupulous chap.