So I guess we should send the Palestinians back to Saudi Arabia or whichever surrounding Arabic nation they came from. — BitconnectCarlos

Really? :brow:

a glorious Victory to Vladimir Putin!!! — ssu

And the West served it to him on a silver platter. This is a worse strategic failure than Vietnam.

anti-left, anti covid — unenlightened

Oh, the horror!

How is Ukraine completely lost?

Seems that you are living in your own bubble or something.... — ssu

The balance of power being heavily in favor of the Russians is completely obvious, and nothing short of a miracle will change it because neither the US nor Europe is willing to stick their neck out.

The only question now is how much more punishment Ukraine will receive before it finds an off-ramp, and the sooner people understand the reality of this situation, the more lives can be spared.

If it appears I am "living a bubble" it is only by one's lack of insight.

Not sure how many warnings Merkwurdichliebe received in order to be banned, but I feel like some leniency is in order with regards to heated topics like Israel-Palestine.

Russia is not conducting classic highly mobile offensives that rely on airpower, but uses grinding attrition warfare making use of drones and artillery.

A no-fly zone would be costly and bring with it a high risk of escalation, while not significantly altering the balance of power.

Besides, the US is not looking to get further embroiled in Ukraine and is actually looking for an exit strategy. Ukraine is a senseless project that needlessly created tensions between Russia and the West, while in the rest of the world flashpoints are threatening to boil over which have actual strategic importance for the US.

The neocons shot themselves in the foot in Ukraine in a big way.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. If your insurgency is about setting up something like an Isis or death squads or any pretty much dysfunctional or evil or totalitarian or fundamentalist society, the moral justification for that insurgency becomes suspect or negated. — schopenhauer1

It's up to people themselves how they want to govern their state. The United States has proven how futile the attempt is to decide for other people how they should govern themselves. The US wanted to turn the Middle-East into a sea of democracy, and instead turned it into a sea of Muslim fundamentalism.

But moreover, occupation and oppression breed extremism, and certainly in the case of Hamas it is a direct result of how the Palestinians were treated by Israel over the course of decades.

If Israel wants to get rid of Hamas, it should end the occupation. Hamas' reason for existence disappears, and moderates will take their place.

Of course, this is fundamentally incompatible with the goals of the Israeli right-wing political establishment, and that is the problem.

Perhaps. And it is this is why I bring it up. The arguments should be made for how hard one should use military force, not other issues that are not the case, like "this is a genocide", which again given the history of actual genocides, seems like a cynical ploy. I think the inaccuracy of that framing, means it should be dropped for a more apt argument about how war is to be conducted. — schopenhauer1

Why is calling Israel's conduct in Gaza a genocide a cynical ploy or inaccurate framing?

It fits the IHL definition of a genocide.

Israeli officials themselves are busying overtly genocidal language.

I think Netanyahu would be found guilty of genocide if he were put infront of an impartial international court.

As I've noted before, several Bosnian Serbs were convicted for the crime of genocide by an international tribunal for their roles in the Srebrenica massacre. What Israel is doing today in Gaza and has done over the course of several decades is of a scale far greater.

As such, jurisprudence supports my argument that what Israel is doing today falls within the realm of a genocide.

This isn't an exaggeration on my part at all.

I would say that there is a middle ground where "War is never justified", and "Maximum force is necessary to achieve objective". — schopenhauer1

My view of what constitutes acceptable use of force and civilian casualties correspond roughly with the guidelines IHL provides. Israel is blatantly ignoring IHL and committing war crimes.

Sorry, but I cannot accept your position as a middleground. If you believe what Israel is doing today is justified I think your views are at the extreme end of the spectrum.

On what basis can you condemn Hamas for its attacks if you see no problem with what Israel is doing today? They're simply using "maximum force necessary to achieve objectives" as well.

But this again assumes EVERY insurgency is morally justified. That is a ridiculous notion. "You represent the underdog, and are willing to fight for a cause, and do so using terrorism, therefore your cause is right". That doesn't make sense. Just because, for example, Isis, or the Lord's Resistance Party, or Islamist insurgency in the Sahel, or the Sandinistas, or Contras, or the Shining Path, or the represents an "insurgency" or some "underdog" doesn't mean they are morally justified to carry on with their operations. — schopenhauer1

I think every insurgency fought against a foreign occupation can be justified. That doesn't mean the insurgents are the 'good guys', but a foreign occupier has no right to be there in the first place and are by definition in the wrong.

:up:

But I also think there is a sort of naivete of how warfare manifests. — schopenhauer1

For example, destroying Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan probably needed massive amounts of force. — schopenhauer1

It did, but despite not a single German city being left standing, the Germans fought on until the bitter end. The mass killing of civilians did not cause a surrender or a breaking of the will of the population. It was military action, taking place overwhelmingly on the eastern front, that decided that war.

Similarly for Japan, Japanese resistance was not broken by bombing but by their political leadership understanding the futility in carrying on the fight. They were ready to sue for peace before the Allies nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Strategic bombing as a means to a decisive victory is understood to be wrong in military academic circles. Given that fact, I think the intentional mass murder of civilians can't be justified even in these wars in which much was at stake, thus I view them all as war crimes and morally abject.

What Western countries have always had a hard time figuring out is how to conduct asymmetrical warfare whereby the enemy hides amidst the population, uses tunnels, and in the case of groups like Isis and Hamas, use a variety of barbaric terrorist methods, no matter the cost to their own people. — schopenhauer1

Certainly. However, there is a crucial element that shouldn't be overlooked.

An insurgency can only be undertaken against an occupier.

So when Western countries are facing stubborn insurgencies that don't allow themselves to be rooted out, the first question should be: why are we there as the occupier in the first place?

Once people finally acknowledge Ukraine is militarily completely lost, perhaps their next steps can be chosen more rationally. There's nothing 'pro-Russian' about that. In fact, it will benefit Ukraine to make decisions based on reality.

Additionally, framing the other side as partisan is intellectual poverty. Lets keep things civil.

Just curious when is there a distinction between genocide and simply the consequences of war itself? Was the carpet bombing of North Vietnam genocide or bad war policy? Was the bombing of Berlin genocide or how the strategic goals of the war were carried out in order to gain unconditional surrender. — schopenhauer1

The distinction is the element of intent, as per the relevant article of legislature that has already been quoted. In the case of Israel, several Israeli politicians including Netanyahu himself have busied overtly genocidal language and thus established intent.

In the case of the bombing of Germany during WWII, I think it is fair to say the Allies had no genocidal intentions. Still, the intentional massacring of huge numbers of civilians is a war crime and morally abhorrent.

In the case of the various different kinds of bombings of Vietnam and Cambodia (including chemical ones), I think this may qualify as genocide given the sheer scale of mass killings and the decades-long impact of the atrocities. That impact is still felt today. Was the mass killing of civilians intentional? In the case of the Vietnam war, I think so. It's a typical phenomenon seen during counterinsurgencies, where the conventional force grows frustrated with its inability to break the resistance, and turns on the civilian population out of frustration.

Rather, the framing of the question should be whether this is the right military strategy, and overall approach to resolving this issue — schopenhauer1

In all situations I've named; the Allied bombing of Germany and Japan, Vietnam, and the Israel-Gaza war, the bombings did not have a decisive impact on the war.

Many of these "strategies" were based on pre-WWII conceptions of airpower, that hypothesized that mass killings among the civilian population could "break" the receiving nation's will to fight.

This is completely unproven. There's not a single instance in history where this was the case, in fact bombing civilians often times strengthens the resolve of the target nation, especially in the case of insurgencies - that's something witnessed during almost every insurgency where mass killings of the civilian population took place.

However, the reason nations still choose this approach is because, especially during insurgencies, airpower brings the promise of low casualties to the own side. It's wishful thinking. All the airpower in the world couldn't bring the US victory in the Middle-East for example, and instead turned it into a nation of war criminals.

I think rather Hanover is suggesting that rather than dealing in the substance this is using cynical ploys at terminology by so framing this “hypocritical and ironic narrative of moral equivalence”, as he put it. — schopenhauer1

There's nothing cynical about pointing out that Israel's actions in Gaza fit the criteria for genocide. As I've noted before, individuals have been convicted of genocide for actions that did not reach the scale of what is taking place in Gaza today. (for examples, look at the ICTY)

I think if Netanyahu were put before an impartial international court, there's enough evidence to convict him of genocide.

That's not a semantical game I'm playing. That's my (in this case educated) opinion.

This is nonsense.

Israel can't draw the Holocaust card to excuse its own genocidal behavior.

is exactly right. Israel's behavior fits the IHL definition of genocide, and as I have pointed out before, there are examples of people who were convicted for the crime of genocide (for example, during the ICTY) that are much smaller in scale in comparison to what Israel is doing today in Gaza (and what it has subjected the Palestinian people to over the course of decades).

In short, an unsuccessful genocide is still a genocide, and just because the Jewish people were subjected to genocide in the past, does not give them a right to commit the same crime onto others.

Weren't you the guy predicting Ukraine's offensive was going to push the Russians out of Crimea? :lol:

The West wasn't willing to stick its neck out for Ukraine when Ukraine was still in decent shape. It sure as hell won't risk a war with Russia now that Ukraine is lost.

The West will do everything it can to avoid a humiliating defeat for themselves, by throwing Ukraine under the bus militarily and politically and ultimately putting the blame for this disaster on Ukraine. Just like it has used Ukraine as a patsy for the NordStream bombings which were obviously planned (and probably carried out) by the US.

Zelensky is already under heavy pressure to start talks with the Russians, even though it was the West that told him to block the negotiations that took place in March/April 2022. (Which is why Zelensky isn't budging now)

If I were in Ukraine's shoes, I'd try to find a way to dangle said humiliating defeat over the West's head (before the 2024 US election) and thereby force them to come with solutions. The best way to do this is to start talks with the Russians behind the West's back. Even if nothing comes from the talks, this is sure to ring alarm bells in the West.

But this assumes Ukraine has any political agency left to speak of, which is something I'm skeptical about.

Yet you repeat their propaganda verbatim. — Mikie

Oh yea? Give an example.

What the oil companies believe or say has nothing to do with my views. But a cute attempt.

But it’s funny to have such doubts about science, yet repeat wholesale the demonstrable propaganda of oil companies. Apparently they’re trustworthy. Keen judgment. — Mikie

Some low-brow attempt to shove me into the camp of the oil companies? :brow:

Sea level rise may show up much more in low-lying areas for obvious reasons, but also it has to be taken into account that it is understood not to be uniform over the planet, so what you observe locally may indeed not exhibit the more radical changes being experienced elsewhere. — Janus

I'm just making the point that ultimately I'm having to trust other people's word for it, and I'm increasingly seeing problems within academia that make me unwilling to extend that trust.

Aren't the Netherlands already under water? — frank

Yes, the Dutch have had to deal with water for centuries. I live by the coast myself, so when the deluge comes I'll be the first to know about it. :lol:

I'm sure the insurance companies must be worried sick about those supposed two milimeters of sea level rise per year. With such numbers we may as well assume the foetal position and wait for the water to take us.

That bastion of integrity and wisdom.

So you don't believe you have any ability as an educated layperson to critically assess the plausibility of scientific claims? — Janus

I have some ability of course. I live by the sea, and empirically I observe none of the supposedly world-shattering trends that people talk about. So I'm having to take someone else's word for it that there is in fact something going on.

So, for you it's all a matter of trust or lack of it, not a matter of exercising your critical intelligence? — Janus

Ultimately I'm just taking scientists at their word, so yes trust is important. And over the last decade or so my trust in academia has eroded a great deal, with Covid being the nail on that coffin.

I just take note of typical grifty tactics, like narrative shifting, and as the list grows my trust shrinks.

Stupid? For noticing the narrative shift and wondering where it came from? Maybe you should cramp a little harder. :lol:

Lol. — Mikie

Lol.

Did anyone ever wonder why they changed their brand from "global warming" to "climate change"?

those evil damn Westerners — Mar 3, 2023

For sure the people in Washington are evil, and the people in Brussels are ignorant. But my intention was never to exonerate Russia, rather to make clear that the West is just as bad as they, and that all this narrative spin is just window dressing for a cynical game that is about power and nothing else.

That's how the US sells all the coup d'etats it organises, and there have been many, and pretty much none of them have turned out well. There's not much else left for me to say about it. I simply don't buy that argument.

You're blaming Biden for Russia invading Ukraine and Ukraine not willing to give away some of their territory in exchange for "peace"? — Michael

I view US as being principally responsible, and Biden has been on that portfolio since the start of the conflict. Nuland, Blinken and Sullivan have all been involved in various capacities and advisory roles to Biden, Nuland of course being especially notorious.

So in short, yes. I view Biden and gang as bearing principal responsibility for the outbreak of the conflict. Russia bears responsibility for its own decisions.

Since the outbreak the administration has consistently doubled down on stupid, mostly predicated on the erroneous idea that developed during 2022 that Ukraine was winning the war.

What about domestic? I suspect that's what Americans care most about. — Michael

I'm a European. I don't know enough about American domestic politics to judge how well he's doing there.

In terms of foreign policy the Biden administration has been a disaster.

Ukraine was their project, and it has been a hopeless mess. From cynically pushing Russia (probably in the belief that Putin was bluffing), to a strategy of wishful thinking that not only failed to hurt Russia but in fact spectatularly backfired, and continuing by burning all bridges by boycotting diplomacy, only to then make a 180 and subsequently failing to push Zelensky into negotiations.

The fact that many states refused to side with the West basically lost the United States the Persian Gulf, where, to add insult to injury, China brokered a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi-Arabia, and now there's Israel where again the Biden administration doesn't seem to realize it is playing a losing hand and goes with the true and tried "When in doubt, express unconditional support for Israel" strategy.

In terms of foreign relations, the US lost on all fronts under Biden. It's been one tragic clownshow.


The proof is in the pudding, as they say. :lol: But I gave you the means to educate yourself, and don't pretend I didn't produce arguments.

Of course it is. You don't like the fact that I criticize Biden without trying to defend Trump, so you're trying to find a way to lump me into the Trump camp anyway by calling me "Trumpian". It's childish and transparent.

A covert conspiracy for Ukraine to become a modern democracy, eh? — jorndoe

You use the term 'covert conspiracy' presumably to ridicule the idea, however the US has been on a constant tour to do exactly that: toppling regimes, and even legitimate governments, in pursuit of its own interest, leaving utter chaos in its wake.

If the idea sounds ridiculous to you, it must be because you don't know your own country's history very well.

Are you aware that this is a standard Trumpian rhetorical tactic, claiming that everyone knows or everyone says or everyone thinks? — Fooloso4

I'm not claming such things. I just don't think it's a serious argument.

Also, I think your attempt at likening me to Trump is really immature. :brow:

Putin couldn't countenance a pro-West Ukraine. — Relativist

Of course. And that's why they brought it up repeatedly in search for a solution. They were ignored.

Putin's invasion wasn't inevitable at all. All it would have taken was for the West to take Russia's security concerns seriously. At least enter into serious dialogue. None of that ever happened. They pushed the Russians, probably because they thought Russia was weak and Putin was bluffing. It turns out they weren't.

Ukraine is primarily the West's fault. Had Ukraine remained committed to neutrality, and had the US not sought to change Ukraine's neutral status, the entire conflict could have been avoided.

Are you blaming the entire current administration? — Fooloso4

Yea, that's beyond obvious. I don't know how anyone can seriously deny US involvement in the Maidan coup and the dumpster fire that it turned into today. I attribute primary (though not all) responsibility to the US, and the people in the US that orchestrated it are sitting in the White House right now.

Are you not familiar with the Nuland-Pyatt phonecall?

For extra reference, from 2015, by the way:

You can look it up; Biden, Nuland, Sullivan, Blinken, they all were.

The Maidan conflict predates Trump and cannot be blamed on Biden. — Fooloso4

Biden was VP during the Maidan, and Ukraine was his portfolio. Of course he was involved. The entire current administration was involved in the Maidan. Ukraine is their project, and it crashed and burned in a most spectacular fashion, sadly taking Ukraine itself along with it.

What I'm trying to make clear is that Biden has been a disaster in his own right. — Tzeentch

Except you haven't. — Fooloso4

You don't think the Biden administration has been an unmitigated disaster? Ok.

I suppose it will forever remain a mystery to you then why people vote Trump.

What makes you think Putin would have hesitated to attack Ukraine if Trump were still in office? Trump's isolationism, and criticism of NATO, would have been the best possible situation for Putin. — Relativist

I don't think the Russians wanted to invade Ukraine at all. They did so because they felt they had no other option. If the US hadn't pressed its wishes to incorporate Ukraine, this war could have been avoided entirely.