420blazeit69 [he/him] @ 420blazeit69 @hexbear.net

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505

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4 yr. ago

Lol are you suggesting the U.S. had no choice but to build an empire? That in the wake of WWII, the only industrialized country untouched by the war, and the only country with nukes, was somehow forced to maintain a permanent military presence all over the world? No one was forcing the U.S. to do shit; we chose our path.

If I were Truman on V-J Day, I would have at minimum dismantled the incipient military-industrial complex and the associated national security state. This would not have been a novel idea; countries regularly demobilize after wars. I would have tried to work with the USSR rather than oppose it at every turn (a policy U.S. leaders decided on before the war had even finished). I would have honored the wartime agreements among Allies (e.g., the Atlantic Charter) regarding peoples' right to self-determination instead of backing imperialists' efforts to re-establish control of their colonies. I would have taken de-Nazification and its corresponding programs in other occupied countries seriously. I would have set the precedent of the U.S. obeying international law even when it ran against national interests, and would have at least tried to make international law enforceable.

And lastly, WWII wasn't a war of conquest for the US... Calling the US' actions in Japan "Imperialism" destroys any credibility you may have otherwise had.

The U.S. declaring war on Japan after Pearl Harbor was not imperialism. But after the war, when the U.S. turned Japan into a vassal state and kept a ton of military bases throughout the Pacific (to supplement those from its initial phase of empire building), that is imperialism.

You know this is happening

Lmao you can't even imagine how someone could possibly disagree with the liberal narrative -- even after someone goes line by line through a salacious article and highlights bias and inconsistencies.

Genocide is a crime. If you claim a crime occurred you have to provide evidence. What you are doing is equivalent to accusing someone of murder, then standing up in front of the judge and shouting "we all know he did it, just go out and find the evidence yourself, what, are you some kind of Russian plant for saying I need a witness???" Just a laughable response.

International law is a joke. If you knew anything about it you wouldn't be screeching "whataboutism!" at even the most obvious of comparisons, because you'd know that a cornerstone of what passes as International law is looking at practices of other countries.

But let's see what your article says:

Kherson was liberated in November after eight months of occupation, but is pounded every day and night by Russian artillery... A report last October by Yale University Human Rights Lab, citing a vast range of open sources in Russia and Ukraine, traces many reasons for their abduction: including so-called “evacuation” from state institutions such as that at Kherson

This article documents that (when it was written) Kherson was still an active war zone, but nevertheless adds scare quotes to "evacuation," as if there is no need to evacuate children from a war zone and this is all a Russian pretense. So early on we can see that no Russian explanation will be deemed credible, even when the explanation Russia gives (e.g., evacuation) is documented by the author himself.

“Staff hoped for three months that our army would somehow evacuate them,” Sagaydak continues, “but when it became apparent this would not happen, we made arrangements for those with living relatives

Even Ukranians recognize the need for evacuating children, but nope, it's an evil plot when Russia does it! Note also that the immediate evidence we have here -- an in-person interview with a Ukranian working with kids, not a second- or third-hand story -- mentions exactly what I said: kids orphaned by the war who need to go somewhere, not Russians snatching kids from their parents.

“Another woman here, aged only 30, took five, which could not possibly have been hers, so we made up a legend that she was helping her pregnant sister while she gave birth. We had to invent all the medical records, and worried when a driver turned up who was not the one we had planned. But when they were stopped, and the untrustworthy driver even told the true story, the kids managed to outwit the occupying soldiers.”

What is more believable: Russians are trying to snatch any kid they can lay their hands on, for some reason the Ukrainians subjected to this believe fake medical records will prevent this, a driver tells them "hey here's five kids with fake documents," and the kids outwit a bunch of soldiers with some unexplained cunning? Or is it more likely that Russians consider kids in a war zone basically a nuisance, and aren't particularly invested if someone is trying to evacuate them?

But then, on 15 July, the Russians returned, with 15 more children to be cared for

So the Russians are stealing children by... taking them to a Ukranian orphanage?

They're kidnapping Ukrainian children and trying to "re-educate" them

Let's start with a source for this one. I've seen nothing akin to the indigenous boarding schools ran by the U.S. and Canada in actual campaigns to destroy a people's collective identity. What I have seen are reports of children whose parents are not available/alive to take care of them (a fact of any war) and Russia putting them in school and/or up for adoption (something any state would do).

They've been raping and killing civilians since the start

You know this is not genocide, right?

You are describing war crimes. War crimes are horrible. Two rapes are two rapes too many. Every side in every war does them, which is a major reason war is so horrific. Genocide is much more than a series of war crimes, though. To believe otherwise is to declare all sides in all wars genocidal, rendering the word meaningless.

Civility is a two-way street. It is not "I get to insult whoever I want and they have to meekly argue on my terms."

You're embarrassing yourself

Your second paragraph is a great point. Even taking whatever the U.S. State Department says about China at face value, comparing a nuclear standoff to 1930s Europe is ridiculous.

Fuck the United States. They’re easily the worst, most imperialist nation on the planet.

"But somehow I keep finding all these familiar geopolitical flashpoints where I support them."

Taiwan isn't a country. They don't consider themselves independent, China doesn't consider them independent, the U.S. doesn't consider them independent.

How can you consider yourself anti-imperialiat when you don't know the basic facts of the situation?

just let China do whatever they want

No one is saying this, but go off.

The CIA routinely funds groups covertly. As is the case with RFE, we are often able to confirm this covert funding decades later.

A main purpose of the CIA is to obscure what groups the U.S. supports. Did they just stop doing their job one day?

You don't always get jail time for criticizing the government.

one is a whistleblower leaking highly confidential information and the other is a simple person speaking out against their government's actions

This level of detail is not included in the linked article. The article says "she placed materials about Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine on the Internet that contradicted official Defense Ministry statements." From the article, we have no idea what those materials were. Maybe they included classified information, maybe they included actually false information, maybe they included incitements to violence, we don't know.

Note also that the article is from Radio Free Europe, a U.S. propaganda outlet:

Radio Free Europe was created and grew in its early years through the efforts of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), an anti-communist CIA front organization that was formed by Allen Dulles in New York City in 1949. RFE/RL received funds covertly from the CIA until 1972. During RFE's earliest years of existence, the CIA and U.S. Department of State issued broad policy directives, and a system evolved where broadcast policy was determined through negotiation between them and RFE staff.

a fledgling democracy

Sees notably corrupt country the U.S. couped in 2014, where even the anti-corruption president has personal funds stashed in offshore bank accounts

If course you would, like a good little authoritarian.

In my ideal society I’d give people like you the freedom you deserve.

This you?

Civility is when I get to deride anyone who disagrees with me as a child and they are forbidden from saying anything mean in return

"oh yeah, yellow was a racist way of referring to Asian people, from like 50 years ago".

Yeah and you obviously haven't read anything about race for 50 years