Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rainworld 1067 days ago
It was also the only moral and ethical position.

If you think it through, the only reasons this “I’m a pacifist but” dime store morality can be entertained at all is because of the idea that Ukraine is winning, and because Western audiences (and to an extent even Ukrainian) have largely been isolated from the true costs of this war (to both sides; and also to Western economies and arsenals).

Ukraine is winning

I do not intend to litigate this again right now; we’re going to find out, most likely within a year, probably less.

Should Ukraine in fact lose, I hope you will remember then that a generous deal was on the table (no loss of territory except obviously Crimea), and so hundreds of thousands will have died (and in fact have already) for much less than nothing.

I'll leave you with this: https://twitter.com/mdfzeh/status/1679909338276671488

2 comments

> If you think it through, the only reasons this “I’m a pacifist but” dime store morality can be entertained at all is because of the idea that Ukraine is winning, and because Western audiences (and to an extent even Ukrainian) have largely been isolated from the true costs of this war (to both sides; and also to Western economies and arsenals).

So your telling me if your family was in the occupied parts of Ukraine, being tortured by the Russians, raped, etc you’d be happy to hand over that territory to the Russians and just let it all go?.

> Should Ukraine in fact lose, I hope you will remember then that a generous deal was on the table (no loss of territory except obviously Crimea), and so hundreds of thousands will have died (and in fact have already) for much less than nothing.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians haven’t died yet so you’ll have to wait a bit longer for that to come true im afraid.

> I'll leave you with this: https://twitter.com/mdfzeh/status/1679909338276671488

Plenty of bad things have happened in the war in Ukraine for Ukraine that was covered by real media.

Yet you pick a tweet from a Russian propaganda account.

Atrocity propaganda is great for eliminating opposition at home. It doesn’t win you a war, though. And it bears repeating: the thing about wars is you actually have to win them.

The curious thing is that historically it’s always the good guys that have won, so I’m certain the Russians will not only prevail militarily but also in the moral dimension.

> Atrocity propaganda is great for eliminating opposition at home. It doesn’t win you a war, though. And it bears repeating: the thing about wars is you actually have to win them.

That’s not an answer to the question, then again I don’t think you’ll ever answer it.

> The curious thing is that historically it’s always the good guys that have won, so I’m certain the Russians will not only prevail militarily but also in the moral dimension.

Considering that Russia is doing similar things in Ukraine that they did in the first Chechen war, which they lost both on the battlefield and morally with their filtration torture camps.

This bodes well for Ukraine.

If you think the country that is raping and torturing children, committing genocide, committing crimes against humanity and razing entire cities to the ground is moral then you have a very different definition of moral than most people.

That’s not an answer to the question, then again I don’t think you’ll ever answer it.

https://twitter.com/tinkzorg/status/1680452684988424193 Tag yourself. Bravely volunteering other people to die and feeling really, really good about it.

Once again no answer, as I said you would never answer.

Because you’re asking the Ukrainians to put their own family into a wood chipper for your own comfort.

Because this is clearly not your fight and you clearly have nothing in this conflict.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that they are on their 12th wave of mobilization, and that most of these men are not at all volunteering. The regime is literally abducting men from the streets and their homes. Men are in hiding from press gangs. Because it is the Ukrainian regime’s and the West’s fight not theirs.

More for you to ignore: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/15/ukraine-war-conscriptio...

Also, I’ve never called for Ukrainians to lay down their arms—those that actually want to fight.

wood-chipper

Foaming at the mouth. Back in the real world, this war is notable for its uniquely low ratio of civilian victims.

And if you think Russia had or has the goal of eliminating the Ukrainian people, reason and debate cannot reach you anymore. Many millions of Ukrainians have fled to Russia over the last nine years, and prosper—guess they’re next?

If it was your fight you would not be fighting me on HN.

The How does it affect you? meme. I’m part of the West and the West is at war with Russia and that does in fact affect me. And who knows where this could end.

The fact that the West is gleefully pouring oil into a fire that has already consumed hundreds of thousands; yes, that affects me.

Without Western “help” this would have been over within weeks, a few months at most. Suffering would have ended a long time ago. The regime might or might not have been replaced. For the vast majority of Ukrainians life would have resumed its normal course.

It is just not true that historically good guys always won. And looking at Russian history, they quite rarely won in the moral dimension. Even their past victories are rarely in the "morally good ones won" category.

Past Russian victories involve massacres, genocides, engineered famines and even staggering amount of own victims to the meat grinders of various kind.

The true cost of Russian occupation is torture, massacres, rapes, stealing of property including whole factories and what not. It is oppression, language suppression and literal genocide. It is children taken away from parents to be Russified and abused.

> I hope you will remember then that a generous deal was on the table (no loss of territory except obviously Crimea

This is a lie. There was no nice believable deal.

In the first place, Russia did not had to start yet another war after lying about them not wanting it, but here we are.

If that’s what you’ve let yourself be convinced is the present then, boy, are you not going to enjoy the future.
> If that’s what you’ve let yourself be convinced is the present then, boy, are you not going to enjoy the future.

The only one who's convinced themselves is you, you've convinced yourself that the Russians are saints who only do good and not the imperialistic, genocidal invaders that they are in reality.

saints who only do good

imperialistic, genocidal invaders

Rhetorical cluster munitions. One day you’ll run out of superlatives and then you’ll be forced to negotiate.

You know, if you were Ukrainian I’d understand the hard feelings. But I’m not getting the impression that you are.