Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[viper37]

The utility is in understanding the nature of the enemy, when your enemy are Imperial Japanese, Nazi Germans, or modern day Russians it is worth understanding they come from a place of evil, evil thoughts, evil ideas, evil desires, evil goals. That means the way we should treat them is different.

when you start down that line, you justifiy Gitmo bay and Abu Ghraib, and like Berkut mentionned, you increase the risk of My Lay type incidents.

We don't need to call Russians orcs to understand that we were too lenient toward Russia, and those who talked about it were called warmongers.

We don't need to dehumanize them to recognize they are a threat to peace, stability and human dignity.  We don't need that to recognize their war crimes.

In fact, labeling them as monsters would be counter-productive, since they are not monsters.  They are human beings committing terrible crimes and they should be judge as such, from the executant to the highest leadership and those who supporte such leadership.

I have no qualms about the effects of sanctions on the Russian civilian population, no more than I did of the Iraquis when we had sanctions on Saddam.  However, reacting in kind to their crimes is not an appropriate measure.  And once you start dehumanizing them, you're one step away from being just like them.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The utility is in understanding the nature of the enemy, when your enemy are Imperial Japanese, Nazi Germans, or modern day Russians it is worth understanding they come from a place of evil, evil thoughts, evil ideas, evil desires, evil goals. That means the way we should treat them is different.

when you start down that line, you justifiy Gitmo bay and Abu Ghraib, and like Berkut mentionned, you increase the risk of My Lay type incidents.

We don't need to call Russians orcs to understand that we were too lenient toward Russia, and those who talked about it were called warmongers.

We don't need to dehumanize them to recognize they are a threat to peace, stability and human dignity.  We don't need that to recognize their war crimes.

In fact, labeling them as monsters would be counter-productive, since they are not monsters.  They are human beings committing terrible crimes and they should be judge as such, from the executant to the highest leadership and those who supporte such leadership.

I have no qualms about the effects of sanctions on the Russian civilian population, no more than I did of the Iraquis when we had sanctions on Saddam.  However, reacting in kind to their crimes is not an appropriate measure.  And once you start dehumanizing them, you're one step away from being just like them.

Nope. Calling someone a name has no equivalency, you guys are literally on crack.

[viper37]

Going to need Gaijin de KGB to make a return and school us on whether we should call Russian soldiers "orcs" or not

Pretty convenient he disappeared around the time of the invasion!

There is no invasion.  He kept telling us there would be no invasion, just simple manoeuvers in a friendly country.

[viper37]

Let's be serious here, it is fashionable to non-stop bash the British Empire and America's overseas imperialism, and absolutely in many, many respects those policies frequently had terrible outcomes. But you also know it is more complicated than that. There are plenty of places that were under British dominion that literally only have things like paved roads, some semblance of literacy etc because of the British Empire.

Lots of these places still don't have literacy and paved roads, outside of the major cities.  It's not like the entirety of Africa was inhabited by naked cannibals before the Europeans arrived.  Lots of Empires existed there, Europeans and Arabs interacted with them, bought slaves from them, fought them when they became inconvenient.

[DGuller]

Going to need Gaijin de KGB to make a return and school us on whether we should call Russian soldiers "orcs" or not

Pretty convenient he disappeared around the time of the invasion!

There is no invasion.  He kept telling us there would be no invasion, just simple manoeuvers in a friendly country.

Now that we're almost three months into Gaijin's sudden disappearance after his sudden appearance, any further thoughts on WTF was that?  Dude just comes back here after a long absence, does his best Peskov impression, and fucks off again.  Doesn't even check back once after leaving again.  Did his superiors take his cell phone?

[Darth Wagtaros]

There is no invasion.  He kept telling us there would be no invasion, just simple manoeuvers in a friendly country.

Now that we're almost three months into Gaijin's sudden disappearance after his sudden appearance, any further thoughts on WTF was that?  Dude just comes back here after a long absence, does his best Peskov impression, and fucks off again.  Doesn't even check back once after leaving again.  Did his superiors take his cell phone?

Something like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx0tkoJY_mk

[viper37]

Nope. Calling someone a name has no equivalency, you guys are literally on crack.

How do you imagine normal human beings end up committing atrocities?  Execution of civilians, gaz chambers, etc.?

They wake up one morning and tell themselves, "today is a good day to kill babies!" ?

Not all of the war criminals were psycopath.  But some of these units were specially trained in considering these beings as less than humans.  Once that step is committed, you got guys like SiegeBreaker who thinks it's a great idea to poison the wells of Palestinian villages.

Right now, the Ukrainians are understandbly frustrated, and I'm sure many of them would want to exact revenge on any Russian soldier they get their hands on.  Which might not be the best thing to do at this time.

[viper37]

Now that we're almost three months into Gaijin's sudden disappearance after his sudden appearance, any further thoughts on WTF was that?  Dude just comes back here after a long absence, does his best Peskov impression, and fucks off again.  Doesn't even check back once after leaving again.  Did his superiors take his cell phone?

I don't think he's a Russian asset of any kind.

I think he genuinely believe all this stuff.  Kinda like Hansmeister here, in the past, about everything Republican.

Either he is ashamed of facing us after being so wrong (I doubt it), or he is fully behind Putin's regime in this special intervention and doesn't care to waste his time here with us.  He tried to rally support for his cause, no one would follow him, he left.  But I don't think he was paid to do that.

[DGuller]

I think we need to define what it means to be human, or at least what we figuratively mean when we talk about it.  I doubt that humans instinctively have aversion to treating whoever they classify as "others" very poorly, rape and genocide is the rule rather than the exception in animal kingdom, and I see no reason why human instincts evolved in the opposite direction.  When monkeys fight for resources, the winners don't put the losers in POW camps, and for the vast majority of history, neither did humans.

I think that what it means to be human is to set up and follow complex systems designed to counteract certain natural instincts, or to educate ourselves to the point where these instincts are blunted out of existence.  By setting up these systems and enforcing them, we make everyone better off.  One loses more by being murdered than one gains from murdering someone else, so collectively we're better off if we stick to not murdering each other.  People who wantonly rape and murder may physically be human species, but they certainly aren't adhering to the system that made human species a unique exception.

[Legbiter]

Ukrainians seem to be counterattacking the Russian Schwerpunkt in Izium from both the North and the South, potentially cutting off their logistics. 

[Grey Fox]

There is only 3 Slava class ship & the other 2 are fine.

[Razgovory]

Someone up thread posted that a Turkish ship rescued 40 odd men.  That ship had a compliment of nearly 500.

[grumbler]

Mongers's picture would seem to contradict the Ukrainian one:

[Jacob]

Come on grumbler, that's just a different angle. In monger's picture the tractor is obscured by the bow.

[DGuller]

I was expecting to see more, or rather less.  Oh, well, ultimately it went where it needed to go.