| > I see no care from you for the Russian cluster weapons they are being pointed at populated civilian areas intentionally. I thought Whataboutism was bad? Anyway, I point out that USA RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT sends cluster munitions to Ukraine, responsible for killing so many civilians as Human Rights Watch has documented since 2014, and banned throughout much of the world -- and your argument is "what about Russia?" Here is what you should conclude: * USA doesn't care about Ukrainian lives as much as making sure Russia loses (same in other proxy wars, e.g. Yemen with Iran, Afghanistan with USSR, Kurds with Iraq etc.) * I care that armed forces of Russia, Ukraine or any country don't drop cluster munitions. I understand they will explode IN UKRAINE. So even if Russia does it, my conclusion is the same: bring an end to this war, as quickly as possible. Finally happened last year in Yemen. That's a GOOD thing! > This is Russias doing more than anything, The blame game isn't much use in ending a war. Even if one party was 100% responsible for starting it (which is rarely, if ever the case), the goal of diplomacy and compromise is to end the war. It doesn't do much good to blame one actor if the result is the entire country is destroyed, or maybe human civilization on the planet. Our statemen need to grow up. "BUT HE STARTED IT!" is how kids argue in kindergarten, these people are supposed to put their egos aside and hear each other out to avert disaster for millions of innocent civilians. > but can you blame the Ukrainians, would you want to "speak" with the person who raped your child, killed your wife and executed your bother before they annex some of your house?. Nope. I don't blame the civilian population. Just like I don't blame Iraqis for what Saddam Hussein did. USA is of course largely to blame for invading Iraq, BUT at the same time I can blame Saddam for ousting the UN inspectors (Hans Blix and co). Had he not done that, USA wouldn't have been able to claim he had WMDs as a justification to invade. In short, I can blame USA for invading AND I can still blame the government of Iraq for failing to avert the invasion by doing basic things. Same here, I can blame the liars in Kyiv government for pretending to be interested in implementing Minsk II but really never doing it, because they used it to "buy time" for this war. Had they done it, all of Ukraine would have been MUCH better off. The elites predicted this war, and concluded (in their infinite wisdom) that it far preferable to no war, and has to happen (of course, these elites somehow magically never get a summons to go to fight that war): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwcwGSFPqIo > These articles get attacked because they are ridiculous and come from a very privileged position. Really, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documenting suffering from cluster bombs "comes from a privileged position"? I think the privileged position is the war hawks in the USA, and the Ukrainian politicians, who never have to go to the front lines, but send peons (abducted on the street) to the meat grinder instead. Whenever a couch warrior volunteers others to die for their geopolitical ambitions, that's the personification of privilege. > Yep and this crossfire will go to 0 when Russia leaves Ukraine, so until then we need to arm them with all the weapons they need to make Russia leave. Sure, the same fantasy logic could have been used in every other war. It's very rare that an imperialist country "just leaves", especially after fighting for so long. It would have been far better to have prevented the war. Imagine Saddam Hussein using this logic, "The war will be over when US leaves, so I might as well continue to escalate". It would be ridiculous. Or here is another example... Palestinians in Gaza have been blockaded by Egypt and Israel for almost two decades, after Hamas got elected. Using your iron-clad logic, the gulf states and Iran sending them weapons made them SAFER. Any day now they're going to defeat Israel and Egypt with those weapons, right? On the contrary, had they never got the weapons, and THEIR GOVERNMENT simply abided by previous agreements, they would have never had this situation. But they got stuck with a government that acted like maniacs: 2006: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/world/middleeast/22cnd-mi... 2014: https://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/hamas-will-not-recog... They also disarmed all the hamullas, making it impossible to remove them. Zelensky also canceled 2024 elections recently. > You do want Russia out of Ukraine right?. I do! I also want China out of Hong Kong and Tibet, Spain out of Catalonia, and so on. I want Russia out of Chechnya. I am for decentralization. But what I really want more is for people to live in peace. I don't really care if Crimea is under Russia or Ukraine. And most people living in these regions do not care enough to fight and kill for this. In 1954, when Crimea went from Russian SSR to Ukrainian SSR, no one wanted to fight and kill. It was regarded as an administrative decision. No one asked the population. But every time the population was asked, they were very clear they wanted to be independent of Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Crimean_sovereignty_refer... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum So, the formulation "I want Russia out of Ukraine" assumes I am a statist who believes the rights of states trump the welfare of millions of people. After watching this video, you will see why I am not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-2zaOhYlAM |
You can "blame" them all you want if it makes you feel better. But there's no evidence that this was their intention. The whole "they did it to buy time" meme rests on single quote from Merkel, well after the fact, taken judiciously out of context.
Overall this is highly misleading representation of the events that led to failure of the Minsk protocols. But even if this is what they did - so what? To suggest that this is somehow an important thing in itself, to be weighed against the broader insanity and evil of the full scale invasion -- let alone, as you are implying, that it effectively caused the invasion (even partially) -- is just asinine.
Like a lawyer who offers in defense: "I blame that lying hussy that some are calling a 'rape victim' for feigning cooperation with the my client's perfectly natural and understandable impulses, while she looked for a sufficient heavy object to club him with."