> I can see that you hold a passionately held position on this. I do not.
I live within range of Russia's Iskander missiles and see reports from the war each day. Russia is the local bully that everyone's afraid of. Our military basically exists for one reason, to stop a Russian invasion.
> We went hard as hell after them and used all manner of financial sanctions and threats of sanctions on other countries to decimate their trade. So, we helped a little in its breakdown, right? And that was the real point of NATO.
Speaking of being all over the place, is this in any way relevant to the current war? Russia has been given lots of chances of integrating their economy with the rest of the world since the fall of Soviet, they're not acting out of economic necessity.
> From Ukraine's perspective, yes! From Russia's perspective, no!
Then what were their column on their way to Kiev doing? They can call it whatever they want, nobody makes it illegal to call it a war if they don't actually think it's a war.
> Were those not already in place?
No, only a small part of the current sanctions were in place before the full scale invasion, and plenty of western companies has since withdrawn from the Russian market. As for the security guarantees, I'm not aware of any except the Budapest memorandum, which didn't really work out that well.
> The US blew up entire fucking cities of people and we celebrate it! In your mind has the Ukraine only ever used precision strikes to take out military targets and people?
I've never seen anyone celebrate the destruction of entire cities in a modern war where precision weapons where available. I'm sure Ukraine has made all kinds of strikes, but I don't consider them the same since they're the ones defending themselves. They've made a few excursions into Russia with helicopters and drones, I don't think I've seen any reports of a single civilian casualty from those. Meanwhile there were bodies of executed civilians lying on the streets and buried in shallow mass graves after Russian troops left certain places.
> But I am curious if you can identify a war where this did not happen
That's just proving my point IMO. Wars are horrible, and Russia are the ones that started this one. Russia can end it whenever they want, but they don't want to, so they're responsible for all the misery happening in both their neighboring country and their own right now. And the rest of us don't want war to succeed. Russia understands one thing, and that is power. They look down on what they consider to be weakness, and consider themselves to be better than others. Russian propaganda calls this a culture war against western ideas, Putin actually mentioned trans people in one of his speeches about this war that supposedly is about NATO.
“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw” - Vladimir Ilich Lenin
I live within range of Russia's Iskander missiles and see reports from the war each day. Russia is the local bully that everyone's afraid of. Our military basically exists for one reason, to stop a Russian invasion.
> We went hard as hell after them and used all manner of financial sanctions and threats of sanctions on other countries to decimate their trade. So, we helped a little in its breakdown, right? And that was the real point of NATO.
Speaking of being all over the place, is this in any way relevant to the current war? Russia has been given lots of chances of integrating their economy with the rest of the world since the fall of Soviet, they're not acting out of economic necessity.
> From Ukraine's perspective, yes! From Russia's perspective, no!
Then what were their column on their way to Kiev doing? They can call it whatever they want, nobody makes it illegal to call it a war if they don't actually think it's a war.
> Were those not already in place?
No, only a small part of the current sanctions were in place before the full scale invasion, and plenty of western companies has since withdrawn from the Russian market. As for the security guarantees, I'm not aware of any except the Budapest memorandum, which didn't really work out that well.
> The US blew up entire fucking cities of people and we celebrate it! In your mind has the Ukraine only ever used precision strikes to take out military targets and people?
I've never seen anyone celebrate the destruction of entire cities in a modern war where precision weapons where available. I'm sure Ukraine has made all kinds of strikes, but I don't consider them the same since they're the ones defending themselves. They've made a few excursions into Russia with helicopters and drones, I don't think I've seen any reports of a single civilian casualty from those. Meanwhile there were bodies of executed civilians lying on the streets and buried in shallow mass graves after Russian troops left certain places.
> But I am curious if you can identify a war where this did not happen
That's just proving my point IMO. Wars are horrible, and Russia are the ones that started this one. Russia can end it whenever they want, but they don't want to, so they're responsible for all the misery happening in both their neighboring country and their own right now. And the rest of us don't want war to succeed. Russia understands one thing, and that is power. They look down on what they consider to be weakness, and consider themselves to be better than others. Russian propaganda calls this a culture war against western ideas, Putin actually mentioned trans people in one of his speeches about this war that supposedly is about NATO.
“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw” - Vladimir Ilich Lenin
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