Comment by StefanBatory
4 days ago
How does this differ from Russia invading Ukraine?
We have to wake up to the world where USA no longer cares about ideals like liberal democracy or allies, but is a warmongering corporatist autocracy.
4 days ago
How does this differ from Russia invading Ukraine?
We have to wake up to the world where USA no longer cares about ideals like liberal democracy or allies, but is a warmongering corporatist autocracy.
We won't know for a while but I don't imagine there will be mass civilian graves, abducted children, or the intent to annex the country. This is probably more about oil and deposing Maduro.
"This is more about oil and deposing Maduro." Scary how overt these 'operations' are these days. 50 years ago governments would try hide stuff like this. Someone said 'lack of shame' is very concerning with governments of today. Wonder if this is a reflection of where we as a humanity are heading.
> 50 years ago governments would try hide stuff like this
The Cold War was openly about changing governments.
> This is probably more about oil and deposing Maduro.
Correct.
"This isn't about conquering Ukraine, it's about coal and removing Nazi Żeleński from power"
I wasn't paraphrasing Trump but rather speculating about his actual intentions.
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Putin has always been very clear about conquering Ukraine and eliminating anything Ukrainian, including its statehood. Tons of public writing, won't shut up about his fake history of the region, etc. Putin is as clear about his intentions as Hitler was about his intentions.
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> We have ethnic cleansing at home
We really do not. And if we want to keep it that way, blurring the lines with this term is something we absolutely should not do like this.
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Ukraine didn’t hold an election in which the results were simply ignored by the leader in power
Yep. They just ousted the elected president without the votes their constitution mandates.
That was 2014, there have been multiple elections since then, with multiple winners and international observers.
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> "ousted"
The guy literally ran away to Russia.
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Seems like a thin reason to invade a country
> a thin reason to invade a country
No invasion (yet). Just bombing.
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That's just one of the fake reasons Russia likes to point at, with useful idiots like yourself aiding the effort.
I don't think you fully understand their comment.
It’s not any different. I have totally lost my faith in America as an American.
Now you did ?
You should've been keeping scores on US' wars and regime changes, you'd had lost faith long time ago.
It's so much easier to keep score these days. Up until the 90s, you were tube-fed the news from your TV (pun intended). You would have to go out of your way to read anything contrary to the sanctioned narrative or to see the effects of your country's policies and actions.
These days everything is live-streamed. So, anyone with an inquiring mind can lookup different sources and make their own conclusions.
But I fear this won't be for long. It is slowly becoming clear that the AI rally is less about productivity and more about mass surveillance and controlling online dissent globally [1].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dz0g2ykpeo
Well considering Taiwan's independence and Putin's absolute obsession over NATO, it seems like the score ought to reflect the whole story. I'm not saying it's great, but it's gotta be better than historical comparables.
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> How does this differ from Russia invading Ukraine?
As a Ukrainian I would assume US forces don't intend to conduct a campaign of mass murder, rape and looting, and US government overall doesn't plan genocide and erasure of national identity of Venezuela together with annexation of its territories?
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> Sala Ukraini!
You won't get far in your troll farm hierarchy this way.
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See: Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
OP's question was about how the current Russian invasion of Ukraine is different, not about some grand total score of infractions by major powers in 20th century. Overall I find this opinion of many western liberals that it is only fair for Russia to murder some Ukrainians, loot their homes and rape their women because US did some bad things before quite perplexing.
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Russia's goal is to destroy Ukraine as nation and a country, because there's no "Ukrainians", there's no "Ukrainian language", and every country that speaks Russian should be controlled by Russian tsar. That's why they don't care and demolish ("liberate") Ukraine, town after town.
Do US do/want the same for Venezuela?
For one the whole country of Ukraine is fighting like hell for almost 4 years following the orders of their elected government to defend their country.
If Russia was on the right, the people of Ukraine would have just hanged Zelenskyy and his gov, instead of sending their children to the meat grinder.
Let’s see if Venezuelans will put their lives on the line to protect the regime.
Military police are forcefully abducting people on the streets by now. Fighting the power of the state is not something that just happens.
Military (or part of) can (and historically does) initiate a coup. If civilians are also on board the gov is over in hours. Coups typically fail when people are not on the same page.
Turkey is a great example. Heck Putin also had Wagner knocking his door in Moscow.
> How does this differ from Russia invading Ukraine?
Cynically: maybe Venezuela will get a bit less sympathy because it's a somewhat shittier (see emigration numbers) and less democratic government than Ukraine's. And I suspect we have a more positive view of US troops than Russian troops, despite everything (Abu Ghraib is seen as an aberration and not as the normal way of working).
> How does this differ from Russia invading Ukraine?
Cynically it's different in that Trump hopefully will not going to kill 220,000+ and leave 500,000+ war invalids of US military personnel in process. Though you never know...
It does differ, in ways that many others listed below. That doesn't make it any legitimate, though.
A surgical strike that was over before the news broke out vs. a 4-year campaign of plundering with literal criminals, press-ganged foreigners, and chechen blocking detachments, featuring mass rape, executed civilians, abduction and forced reeducation of thousands of children, gross mistreatment of PoW, etc.
Hmmmm... indeed, hard to tell the difference!
Emphasizing that I’m not defending this war at all, but one key difference I’m extremely confident in is that the US will not attempt to annex its favorite regions of Venezuela.
It doesn't care about regions. There's a lot of precedent for annexing resources though.
Let's see if some american company is granted all kinds of rights to Venezuelan oil in the end.
Which, if it happens, should really be treated as blood oil like blood diamonds are and then sanctioned by the world
FWIW Russia was initially quite happy with "independent" Ukraine provided that their guy Yanukovich was in charge. It was only when he was ousted that they switched to open invasion tactics.
So from that perspective, I don't think US is really much different, just better at keeping its own puppets in power.
Russia didn’t react to his ouster by demanding a restoration of proper governance, they reacted by sending clandestine troops to seize Crimea in preparation for annexation the next month. Annexing other countries’ sovereign territory is a red line for good reason.
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Absolutely no reason to believe that
do you think that a pro US replacement regime in Venezuela will get US backing and support for it’s claims to eastern Guyana?
No. I suppose I’m less confident in that, but I still don’t think it’s very likely. The American oil companies with contracts in Guyana would certainly be unhappy about it and it’s not clear what political benefit anyone in the US could hope to gain.
"We have to wake up to the world where USA no longer cares about <thing USA has never cared about>, but is a <things USA has always been>"
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Idiot.
Countries that "defend itself" don't annex territories of other countries.
Offensive aggression has certain leeway; it can be covert so that the aggressor can deny the very fact of aggression. West likes that position very much; it suits its lying nature. Defensive aggression has no such freedom: here the aggression has to be visible.
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Ex-superpower, still regional power, defends itself from Ukraine, right.
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Another difference that has not been mentioned in other comments is that: The US is not completely delusional about its military capabilities and could actually complete this invasion in three days. In fact, it may already be over, as Maduro have been captured.