Geopolitics
- Thread starter Mciahel Goodman
- Start date
The West has armed rebels, levelled cities, bombed hospitals, created unprecedented humanitarian crisis, created monsters that they cannot handle for over 7 decades.
One must seriously believe in the restoring democracy propaganda to believe the West hasn't done worse.
Please elaborate further. What exactly has the West committed that is as despiteful as what Putin is doing in Ukraine?
. My bad The same genocidal despot that the UK and the US previously helped commit war crimes... Now -12 years later- when his regime was already crippled and he had become a toothless dictator (like many other dictators we work with daily) it was the right time to invade and not only topple the regime, but destroy the country and all the state's structures throwing it into total anarchy. Killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people ("collateral damage") along the way.
When you defend the US war crimes in Iraq, you're by extension defending Putin...
Wow. I bet there are Russians saying the exact same thing about their imperialistic, aggressive, invasion of a sovereign country.
Except the Ukrainians aren't cheering and showering the invading soldiers with gifts. And Zelensky wasn't murdering his own people and threatening to murder his neighbours.
They are according to Russian propaganda and the evacuated refugees from the Dombas region to Rostov… Maybe even more than what Bush propaganda made you believe in 2003.
I got this thread from another poster:
I do think these sanctions could eventually lead to the ouster of Putin (sudden, harsh conditions always lead to civil unrest), but I agree with the thread that these sanctions also mean that his successor is extremely unlikely to like 'the West' any better, and will have wide support for that among the general population.
Also, from this same thread, for everyone talking about the US's lies about WMDs in Iraq to create a pretext for that invasion - Russia has been doing the same for Ukraine:
So from a Russian perspective, they're invading Ukraine to deplace a regime suppressing a minority and harbouring dangerous, offensive weapons. It's nonsense, of course, but it's clearly not unique nonsense.
So from a Russian perspective, they're invading Ukraine to deplace a regime suppressing a minority and harbouring dangerous, offensive weapons. It's nonsense, of course, but it's clearly not unique nonsense.
Putin likely did the same with Chechnya, too.
All good until you remember the dozens of official and unofficial videos showing that welcome, and many of us in the UK or US actually know people who were in that invasion and told the stories.
Yeah, it happens everywhere & always of course. If the leadership of a powerful country has its mind set on something, they are always likely to find/invent a good reason for it.
Eh? There’s countless of videos official and unofficial that show the opposite as well. And there’s a countless number of people who have told the stories about their lives were irrevocably changed for the worse by the fabricated invasion.
Last edited:
I remember talking about this with my wife’s uncle in Amman, after the family had fled Baghdad. He basically said only the village idiots went out to cheer while anyone with any sense locked themselves in their homes and prepared for the worst (which began with the looting that followed a matter of days later).
Thank you for proving my point. Propaganda is very powerful. 20 years later and you’re still defending those war crimes.
Aren't you just reinforcing the fact that propaganda works brilliantly? I saw it in the news and online, so it must be true., and all that.
No offense, but going through that person's Twitter timeline every post is "what about the US", barely any word about what's actually going on in Ukraine.
This is my personal highlight:
What's the value of giving someone like that a voice on here, he's so consumed by his dislike for Nato, he might as well be a Russian propaganda bot.
Minor little difference being that the US didn't put you in jail for claiming that the WMDs were just a fabricated excuse to invade Iraq. Nor did they pass a law that effectively cancelled free media, restricted the access of social networks, shut down all media outlets that reported stuff they didn't like and so forth.
Aren't you just reinforcing the fact that propaganda works brilliantly? I saw it in the news and online, so it must be true., and all that.
It's not propaganda if its true. It's well known the Iraqi population was overwhelmingly in favour of removing Saddam from power and having the chance at a free and safe country. It's the perfect whataboutism that this thread was created for to suggest otherwise and equate it to Russia/Ukraine.
Aren't you just reinforcing the fact that propaganda works brilliantly? I saw it in the news and online, so it must be true., and all that.
I was there at the time and can attest that there wasn't much cheering on the streets other than the initial wave of Iraqis who were elated that Saddam had been toppled. Beyond that, there's little comparison in many of these conflicts given that the political dynamics in each country is very different. I don't think you will see hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians supporting Putin's efforts in Ukraine and taking jobs on the Russian side, as was the case in Iraq, where large amounts of Iraqis took well paying jobs in support of the coalition. Also, Zelinskky and a democratic Ukraine, are obviously very different than Saddam's totalitarian Iraq.
It’s not true though. That’s the point you’re missing yet you keep on parroting this line.
Not quite true. The people who suffered the most under Saddam was the Kurds. They weren't even allowed to own property or businesses under him.
Yet when you speak to most who fled to this country they will say that Saddam was bad but they preferred him to what the west did.
One of the best pieces of journalism from the early days of the Iraq war was this by Tom Ricks and Anthony Shadid, following American troops patrolling Baghdad. Ricks reported on the perception of the American troops while Shadid reported the feeling on the Iraqi street - A Tale of Two Baghdads
I don't know any Kurds (as in Kurds who actually live in Iraq) who feel this way. A vast majority of them hated Saddam and are benefiting from being free and in a semi-autonomous situation where they can create the lives they want without worrying having to worry about a nearby dictator attacking them.
You can detach the value of a statement from the person who makes the statement. You should be able to, at least. It's not like he's a Holocaust denier and the disbanding of NATO is not as controversial as you might think, many have been calling for it for the past thirty years.
Well, I'm glad I live in a NATO-country.
Aren't you just reinforcing the fact that propaganda works brilliantly? I saw it in the news and online, so it must be true., and all that.
Still waiting to be enlightened by you what the West did that is equally as despicable as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by the way.
In order to do so, you have to have absolute knowledge of the facts and context which few of us have. So yes, when somebody spouts bullshit on a topic and is clearly not objective, I recognize that and take everything else he says with a grain of salt since he quite obviously is no reliable source.
People arguing that we and the USA are a democracy and putting forward opinions such as there needs to be an internal opposition, even revolution within Russia to teach Putin a lesson.
I don't get this as during the Iraq war the opposition against it was huge, especially in the USA. From the people to high ranking military personnel, international law lawyers, Congress, certain press and even the soldiers. But it happened anyway because Bush wanted it to happen.
Nobody believed the WMD argument even before the war. In fact one of the American ambassadors to Baghdad had resigned and written a book about there being no uranium bought from the Niger etc.
Whether a dictatorship or a democracy it matters not one bit when you have those in charge hell bent on going to war.
I don't get this as during the Iraq war the opposition against it was huge, especially in the USA. From the people to high ranking military personnel, international law lawyers, Congress, certain press and even the soldiers. But it happened anyway because Bush wanted it to happen.
Nobody believed the WMD argument even before the war. In fact one of the American ambassadors to Baghdad had resigned and written a book about there being no uranium bought from the Niger etc.
Whether a dictatorship or a democracy it matters not one bit when you have those in charge hell bent on going to war.
It is propaganda and actually a very good example of it. There where few hundreds in the street who are not representative of the general public. You know very little about iraq and that is what the mass media wants you to know, not the reality. The problem in your case is only few deluded people still think the Iraq war the right thing to do and you are still one of them.
Supporting the Shah in Iran and then arming Iraq to go to war with Iran after the popular overthrow of the Shah (and secretly selling weapons to Iran on the side) in a conflict that killed half a million people. The West, historically, has done things that are worse than what is happening now. The invasion of Vietnam and the subsequent use of chemical warfare on civillian populations and the cross-border (illegal) bombing of Cambodia and Laos. Millions dead. In recent history, Iraq is the only thing comparable but the history of that conflict begins in the late 70s and includes a death-toll of millions (the sanctions alone account for 250k-500k dead during the 90s, and iirc the low figure only takes children into account).
Which part is incorrect or can be objectively dismissed in the class quotation I cited?
Like, ever?
Sidenote, as someone who is massively rooting for Ukraine to kick ass and send Putin's troops home (hopefully to depose him of power somehow), I can't be the only one a tad bit nauseated with how the West sans Ukraine (specifically the US, UK, France) has been elevated to this position of moral superiority...
Bingo.
Edit: both the Russia ‘special military operation’ and the Iraq war were based upon fabrication after fabrication. But as we (‘the west’) control the narrative, we can paint ourselves as the good guys how ever many times we want.
Well Iraq is not only Kurdistan. They form 15% of the population, the rest of the country suffered both under Saddam and after him.
I know a few Kurds (and a few Afghanis) as many moved into my locality during and after the war.
My neighbour is Afghani and my barber is Kurdish, for example. But I know a few more who have settled and work in my area.
Everyone I've spoken to, bar none, have said it was better under Saddam
I think it's relevant what kind of (strong) biases the author of a statement displays. And what does he really say anyway?
"The working class should never align itself with its bourgeoisie under the illusion it is carrying out some moral campaign."
Sounds a bit like "all that stuff about Ukrainian civilians - it's just an illusion. Stay out of this folks!"
The Vietnam war happened 60 years ago. Not even my parents were born when the whole conflict started. But from what I get, yes, it was terrible and the US faced some of the biggest protests in its history if I'm not mistaken so you can hardly argue hyprocrisy in that case. So let's focus on Iraq since you already seem to acknowledge that you can't compare weapon sales to actual war. Do you think the invasion of the US is as bad as the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
What he says is that those fighting for the Russian state are being used by Putin and those who, in response, fight for the Ukrainian homeland will be cannon fodder in a protracted war.
I don't think an author's biases are that relevant when the quotation is 140 characters long and highly general. If he had institutional backing, I would question his motives more but other than that you should engage with the content rather than look to the person.