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I guess you are an American. How would you feel if Mexico was allied to China and China develops military bases in Mexico, even in the border regions? Or if Canada was allied to China or Russia?
BTW Bush made an announcement of his support for Ukraine for NATO, wheren he was president https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epyHOz-Pbs Since then US Presidents have supported Ukraine entry into NATO.
How would you feel if the Russian or Chinese Government president said that with Mexico or Canada part of their military alliance? That is how Russia feels about NATO prospects in Ukraine.
Or if you in Europe, how would you feel if Eire or Italy became allied to Russia and Russian military bases will be installed there?
BTW Austria has been neutral and it doing very well. SAme what was Finland was up till recently.
Of course nothing can justify Putin invasion of UKraine, but the seeds of tension were largely created by the US and NATO.
You talk about democracy, then what about Saudi Arabia then and the oil rich gulf states? After all they supposed to be friends with the West and the USA. Saudi Arabia has a very poor appauling human rights record too. BTW the US is selling high tech weapons to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia is using it in it war in Yemen. BTW Saudi ARabia and UAE are using high tech weapons from the USA and WEst to mass kill civilians in Yemen.
The U.S., over successive administrations, sell billions of dollars worth of weapons to governments that have carried out, over years, airstrikes on hospitals, markets, food production facilities and prisons: [Those] attacks have killed thousands of civilians,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict and Human Rights Project at Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute. “It does not serve them well in the court of public opinion, or in the annals of history.”https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...-crimes-yemen/
Yet the USA and Western governments are silent on it. Sure they talk about democracy in Europe, and with-it human rights, but who cares what happens in the MIddle EAst, despite the West military aid to regimes so they commit massacres there.
No, the seeds of the Ukraine crisis were caused by Russia.
Cuba is very close to Florida, and Russia is very close to Alaska. The US hasn’t engaged in war as Russia has with Ukraine.
And let’s remember why NATO was founded: to defend against Soviet expansion in Europe. And let’s remember why Eastern European countries (and now Finland and Sweden) joined Nato: fear of Russian expansionism.
It’s Russia that has engaged in war after war after war against its neighbors for centuries, expanding Russian borders for years. Wars by neighbors against Russia have been rare.
Russian expansionism and aggression are and have been the problem for centuries.
And yes, the US is hypocritical in that it supports bad regimes that aren’t democratic. But its democratic and human rights records are far better than Russia. Other countries voluntarily align with the US; countries voluntarily aligning with Russia are rarer.
No, the seeds of the Ukraine crisis were caused by Russia.
Cuba is very close to Florida, and Russia is very close to Alaska. The US hasn’t engaged in war as Russia has with Ukraine.
And let’s remember why NATO was founded: to defend against Soviet expansion in Europe. And let’s remember why Eastern European countries (and now Finland and Sweden) joined Nato: fear of Russian expansionism.
It’s Russia that has engaged in war after war after war against its neighbors for centuries, expanding Russian borders for years. Wars by neighbors against Russia have been rare.
Russian expansionism and aggression are and have been the problem for centuries.
And yes, the US is hypocritical in that it supports bad regimes that aren’t democratic. But its democratic and human rights records are far better than Russia. Other countries voluntarily align with the US; countries voluntarily aligning with Russia are rarer.
Well the worlds biggest democracy which is India is in friendly terms with Russia. They have not condemned Russia invasion of Ukraine. Another huge democracy has not condemned Russia directly which is Indonesia. But Indonesia and India are part of the non allied movement which was founded in the 1950s and it comprised of African, Asian and some Latin American countries. Even Pakistan who is a huge recipient of aid from the US and West has refused to condemn Russia. It seems many western countries, despite pressuring Asian and African countries to side with Ukraine, they have not. BTW Saudi Arabia has truly refused to condemn Putin either. Yet not so long ago Biden met with the Saudi KIng, and as far as I know Biden will continue to sell high tech weapons to Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen. BTW Saudi Arabian government was responsible for the execution of Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia's government. Yet the US government would not condemn the Saudi Arabian government involvement in the murder.
YOu say Russia is the agressor, what about the USA and west in its invasion of IRaq and intervention of Syria and Afganistan? Since 9/11, U.S.-led forces have killed—directly, not indirectly--more than a thousand children in Syria and other war zones around the world. To my mind, each one of these victims should provoke universal horror, pity and condemnation.
Various nonprofit watchdog groups try to keep count of children killed by U.S. and allied forces by tracking media, government and non-governmental-organization (NGO) reports. According to Iraq Body Count, between 2003 and 2011, U.S. coalition forces killed at least 1,201 children in Iraq alone.
Airwars.org estimates that more recent attacks by U.S.-allied forces against Islamic forces in Iraq and Syria have killed at least 1,239 civilians, including an unknown number of children. According to a recent United Nations report, U.S. and allied forces killed 24 children in Afghanistan in 2014. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan over the past decade have killed between 172 and 207 children.https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...-s-led-forces/
The US is using the opportunity created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to promote itself as a champion of national sovereignty, democracy and human rights. In his State of the Union address on 2 March, US President Joe Biden was cheered by both sides of Congress as he set out the US’s claims to higher purpose: “We fought for freedom, expanded liberty, defeated totalitarianism and terror. We built the strongest, freest and most prosperous nation the world has ever known”.
It’s nice that large countries invading small countries is now self-evidently morally outrageous. Pity that wasn’t the case before the US launched the two largest invasions so far this century, first in Afghanistan in 2001 and then in Iraq in 2003. Just like Russia, the US is up to its elbows in the blood of its innocent victims, their lives destroyed by brutal invasions and occupations justified by lies.https://redflag.org.au/article/when-...nd-afghanistan
Given neither the US nor NATO has built any bases in Ukraine, I don't see the parallel. The US hasn't invaded and occupied Mexico, and I fail to see why any Ireland or Italy would want to be associated with Russia, much less aligned.
YOu are wrong. Google Monroe doctrine regarding US policy in the Western hemisphere, and it goes back from the early 19th century to, to this very day.
Well the worlds largest democracy which is India has refused to condemn Russia invasion of Ukraine. Indonesia which is a massive democracy has refused to directly condemn Russia either.
YOu are wrong. Google Monroe doctrine regarding US policy in the Western hemisphere, and it goes back from the early 19th century to, to this very day.
I'm wrong that I said the US hasn't built a military base in Ukraine? Or that the US hasn't invaded Mexico. I'm rather confused as neither has happened....
BTW, kudos to bringing up an obsolete 1823 message given to the US Congress. It has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation but is a nice deflection.
Quote:
Originally Posted by herenow1
Well the worlds largest democracy which is India has refused to condemn Russia invasion of Ukraine. Indonesia which is a massive democracy has refused to directly condemn Russia either.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted, and has nothing to do with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and illegal attempt to annex parts of the country.
I'm wrong that I said the US hasn't built a military base in Ukraine? Or that the US hasn't invaded Mexico. I'm rather confused as neither has happened....
BTW, kudos to bringing up an obsolete 1823 message given to the US Congress. It has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation but is a nice deflection.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted, and has nothing to do with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and illegal attempt to annex parts of the country.
YEs the US invaded Mexico in the 19th century and took a large part of Mexican territory such as California and a lot of the south West from Mexico.
Russia harshly slammed the US for its notorious Monroe Doctrine and the attempt to turn the entire world into its own backyard, after Washington and some Western countries mounted severe attacks against Russia at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
The US has been trying to turn the entire globe into its "backyard," while using illegitimate unilateral sanctions against those who disagree, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
Here is what Trump said when he was president: “It has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere,” said Trump.
For much of the 20th century, the United States used Latin America as a laboratory to develop its tools of colonial rule: annexation, military intervention, clandestine and paramilitary warfare, kidnapping and so-called “extraordinary rendition.” Most Latin Americans are intimately familiar with this history, even as the full extent of U.S. intervention in the region is still coming to light.
The overthrow of socialist governments in Guatemala (1954) and Chile (1973), has been well-documented, for example, but newly declassified State Department memos reveal that U.S. diplomats in Buenos Aires, Argentina, were aware a coup d’etat was imminent in 1976, and that the severity of the military’s repression would be “unprecedented.” (The Argentinian junta would rule for seven years, killing or disappearing as many as 30,000 people.)https://inthesetimes.com/article/bid...m-greg-grandin
The actions of the West, which supplies Kiev with weapons and intelligence data, is "participation in the war," Lavrov told a press conference after taking part in the UNGA session on Saturday.
BTW if Ukraine is part of NATO, then US troops will be stationed there, just as they do in Poland and Latvia, Estonia.
The political scientist John Mearsheimer said; I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the nato Summit in Bucharest, where afterward nato issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of nato. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.
If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of nato, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable.
When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States.
Well the worlds biggest democracy which is India is in friendly terms with Russia. They have not condemned Russia invasion of Ukraine. Another huge democracy has not condemned Russia directly which is Indonesia. But Indonesia and India are part of the non allied movement which was founded in the 1950s and it comprised of African, Asian and some Latin American countries. Even Pakistan who is a huge recipient of aid from the US and West has refused to condemn Russia. It seems many western countries, despite pressuring Asian and African countries to side with Ukraine, they have not. BTW Saudi Arabia has truly refused to condemn Putin either. Yet not so long ago Biden met with the Saudi KIng, and as far as I know Biden will continue to sell high tech weapons to Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen. BTW Saudi Arabian government was responsible for the execution of Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia's government. Yet the US government would not condemn the Saudi Arabian government involvement in the murder.
YOu say Russia is the agressor, what about the USA and west in its invasion of IRaq and intervention of Syria and Afganistan? Since 9/11, U.S.-led forces have killed—directly, not indirectly--more than a thousand children in Syria and other war zones around the world. To my mind, each one of these victims should provoke universal horror, pity and condemnation.
Various nonprofit watchdog groups try to keep count of children killed by U.S. and allied forces by tracking media, government and non-governmental-organization (NGO) reports. According to Iraq Body Count, between 2003 and 2011, U.S. coalition forces killed at least 1,201 children in Iraq alone.
Airwars.org estimates that more recent attacks by U.S.-allied forces against Islamic forces in Iraq and Syria have killed at least 1,239 civilians, including an unknown number of children. According to a recent United Nations report, U.S. and allied forces killed 24 children in Afghanistan in 2014. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan over the past decade have killed between 172 and 207 children.https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...-s-led-forces/
The US is using the opportunity created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to promote itself as a champion of national sovereignty, democracy and human rights. In his State of the Union address on 2 March, US President Joe Biden was cheered by both sides of Congress as he set out the US’s claims to higher purpose: “We fought for freedom, expanded liberty, defeated totalitarianism and terror. We built the strongest, freest and most prosperous nation the world has ever known”.
It’s nice that large countries invading small countries is now self-evidently morally outrageous. Pity that wasn’t the case before the US launched the two largest invasions so far this century, first in Afghanistan in 2001 and then in Iraq in 2003. Just like Russia, the US is up to its elbows in the blood of its innocent victims, their lives destroyed by brutal invasions and occupations justified by lies.https://redflag.org.au/article/when-...nd-afghanistan
Speaking as an American, the United States makes mistakes. Plenty of them. But let's get a few things straight about your tortured and twisted attempts at equivalency.
Afghanistan? Yeah. A country harboring the mastermind of a terrorist attack that killed ~3000 people. Beyond that, a country ruled by a hideous fundamentalist regime that brutalized... well, pretty much everyone who wasn't completely on-board. Casus belli, and no loss.
Iraq? Yes, that was a disaster, and based on bogus intelligence. You'll find plenty of Americans who say so. And the United States doesn't throw people in jail for calling it a 'war'. Hell, even the Bush administration ultimately admitted that the claimed WMDs didn't exist. Are you delusional enough to think that Russia will ever admit that Ukraine isn't a Nazi state?
Syria? Yes, the United States intervened, because the anarchy in the country had create a vacuum into which ISIL was moving. The same reason Russia intervened. If a state cannot control its own territory, it has no cause to complain if others move in to police that territory. And Russia, true to form, took the side of the brutally oppressive Assad regime.
Now, in those instances, did the United States lie repeatedly about its intentions? No. Wrong though you (and I, in one case) may think the U.S. was, it was upfront and made its case. Putin's government spent months swearing up and down that it wasn't going to invade Ukraine. It insisted that its forces in Belarus were only there for joint exercises, and would be shortly returning to Russia. Putin unequivocally stated that Russia would not be seeking territorial acquisitions. Lies. All lies.
Tell me about the parts of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria where the United States has held sham elections and cynically committed land grabs? That never happened. For all of America's faults, there is a clear distinction between the United States and Russia.
You see, the world and Afghans were unequivocally better off for twenty years without the Taliban. The world and Iraq are better off without the Ba'athists and Saddam Hussein in particular. Do I really need to explain to you about ISIL? Compare that to Ukraine. Are you drinking that Nazi Kool-Aid? Here's a clue - the United States supported the incumbent Poroshenko in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. Yes, a free election in which the incumbent ceded power when losing. Unlike in Russia, where every viable opponent to Putin gets arrested and thus becomes ineligible to challenge him. Is Ukraine a flawed democracy? Sure. But it is one that has spend recent years working diligently to become more democratic. So don't even compare Russia's attempted destruction of Ukraine's nascent democracy with the U.S. actions against malignant and murderous regimes.
Finally, why all the focus on the United States? Because you can't defend Russia. You desperately need a distraction. India? Indonesia? What about the Western world? You know, the cradle of liberal democracy. Where gays can actually live openly and unoppressed? Oh, that's right - you carry a torch for Russia, where LGBT feature prominently in the state propaganda. Canada. Sweden.
Germany. Finland. Australia. Japan. Norway. France. Italy. New Zealand. Oh... but you've got India and Indonesia...
Remind us again of all the American and British and Finish (etc.) critics of their heads of state of mysterious fall out of windows, or are poisoned with exotic isotopes possessed only by states.
Tell us again how appalled you are by Russia's indiscriminate lobbing of armaments into schools, hospitals, malls.
Yeah. I didn't think so.
Rarely in recent decades has the moral clarity involved in a war been as stark as it is now. And you've run full speed into the arms of the aggressive would-be conqueror for no reason other than your own pathologies.
Speaking as an American, the United States makes mistakes. Plenty of them. But let's get a few things straight about your tortured and twisted attempts at equivalency.
Afghanistan? Yeah. A country harboring the mastermind of a terrorist attack that killed ~3000 people. Beyond that, a country ruled by a hideous fundamentalist regime that brutalized... well, pretty much everyone who wasn't completely on-board. Casus belli, and no loss.
Iraq? Yes, that was a disaster, and based on bogus intelligence. You'll find plenty of Americans who say so. And the United States doesn't throw people in jail for calling it a 'war'. Hell, even the Bush administration ultimately admitted that the claimed WMDs didn't exist. Are you delusional enough to think that Russia will ever admit that Ukraine isn't a Nazi state?
Syria? Yes, the United States intervened, because the anarchy in the country had create a vacuum into which ISIL was moving. The same reason Russia intervened. If a state cannot control its own territory, it has no cause to complain if others move in to police that territory. And Russia, true to form, took the side of the brutally oppressive Assad regime.
Now, in those instances, did the United States lie repeatedly about its intentions? No. Wrong though you (and I, in one case) may think the U.S. was, it was upfront and made its case. Putin's government spent months swearing up and down that it wasn't going to invade Ukraine. It insisted that its forces in Belarus were only there for joint exercises, and would be shortly returning to Russia. Putin unequivocally stated that Russia would not be seeking territorial acquisitions. Lies. All lies.
Tell me about the parts of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria where the United States has held sham elections and cynically committed land grabs? That never happened. For all of America's faults, there is a clear distinction between the United States and Russia.
You see, the world and Afghans were unequivocally better off for twenty years without the Taliban. The world and Iraq are better off without the Ba'athists and Saddam Hussein in particular. Do I really need to explain to you about ISIL? Compare that to Ukraine. Are you drinking that Nazi Kool-Aid? Here's a clue - the United States supported the incumbent Poroshenko in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. Yes, a free election in which the incumbent ceded power when losing. Unlike in Russia, where every viable opponent to Putin gets arrested and thus becomes ineligible to challenge him. Is Ukraine a flawed democracy? Sure. But it is one that has spend recent years working diligently to become more democratic. So don't even compare Russia's attempted destruction of Ukraine's nascent democracy with the U.S. actions against malignant and murderous regimes.
Finally, why all the focus on the United States? Because you can't defend Russia. You desperately need a distraction. India? Indonesia? What about the Western world? You know, the cradle of liberal democracy. Where gays can actually live openly and unoppressed? Oh, that's right - you carry a torch for Russia, where LGBT feature prominently in the state propaganda. Canada. Sweden.
Germany. Finland. Australia. Japan. Norway. France. Italy. New Zealand. Oh... but you've got India and Indonesia...
Remind us again of all the American and British and Finish (etc.) critics of their heads of state of mysterious fall out of windows, or are poisoned with exotic isotopes possessed only by states.
Tell us again how appalled you are by Russia's indiscriminate lobbing of armaments into schools, hospitals, malls.
Yeah. I didn't think so.
Rarely in recent decades has the moral clarity involved in a war been as stark as it is now. And you've run full speed into the arms of the aggressive would-be conqueror for no reason other than your own pathologies.
This is an excellent response. I’d also like to add that Russia has also used organisations like the Wagner Group to wage proxy wars in various countries. If one is going to slam the US for that, then they should also recognise situations where other countries engage in illicit activities.
YEs the US invaded Mexico in the 19th century and took a large part of Mexican territory such as California and a lot of the south West from Mexico.
Wow - bringing up nearly 200+ year old history to support current events. Very non-current
Quote:
Originally Posted by herenow1
Russia harshly slammed the US for its notorious Monroe Doctrine and the attempt to turn the entire world into its own backyard, after Washington and some Western countries mounted severe attacks against Russia at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
I don't fully understand the term "slammed". Is that attacked? That never happened. Is that "please don't do that"? I have no idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by herenow1
The US has been trying to turn the entire globe into its "backyard," while using illegitimate unilateral sanctions against those who disagree, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
Here is what Trump said when he was president: “It has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere,” said Trump.
Trump isn't the president anymore, and hasn't been for close to two years, so I don't see the relevance to the current situation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by herenow1
It is a reference was taken as a warning to Russia and China not to meddle in what the US once called its back yard, specifically in oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, which Trump described as “the troika of tyranny
The US cares much less about the so-called "oil-rich" nations than you think. The US is a net exporter of gas, not a net importer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by herenow1
When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States.[/i]
Russia hasn't been a "great power" for decades. Russia may still think they are, but no one else really does. The current war on Ukraine, where Russia is losing, only solidifies those opinions.
Speaking as an American, the United States makes mistakes. Plenty of them. But let's get a few things straight about your tortured and twisted attempts at equivalency.
Afghanistan? Yeah. A country harboring the mastermind of a terrorist attack that killed ~3000 people. Beyond that, a country ruled by a hideous fundamentalist regime that brutalized... well, pretty much everyone who wasn't completely on-board. Casus belli, and no loss.
Iraq? Yes, that was a disaster, and based on bogus intelligence. You'll find plenty of Americans who say so. And the United States doesn't throw people in jail for calling it a 'war'. Hell, even the Bush administration ultimately admitted that the claimed WMDs didn't exist. Are you delusional enough to think that Russia will ever admit that Ukraine isn't a Nazi state?
Syria? Yes, the United States intervened, because the anarchy in the country had create a vacuum into which ISIL was moving. The same reason Russia intervened. If a state cannot control its own territory, it has no cause to complain if others move in to police that territory. And Russia, true to form, took the side of the brutally oppressive Assad regime.
Now, in those instances, did the United States lie repeatedly about its intentions? No. Wrong though you (and I, in one case) may think the U.S. was, it was upfront and made its case. Putin's government spent months swearing up and down that it wasn't going to invade Ukraine. It insisted that its forces in Belarus were only there for joint exercises, and would be shortly returning to Russia. Putin unequivocally stated that Russia would not be seeking territorial acquisitions. Lies. All lies.
Tell me about the parts of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria where the United States has held sham elections and cynically committed land grabs? That never happened. For all of America's faults, there is a clear distinction between the United States and Russia.
You see, the world and Afghans were unequivocally better off for twenty years without the Taliban. The world and Iraq are better off without the Ba'athists and Saddam Hussein in particular. Do I really need to explain to you about ISIL? Compare that to Ukraine. Are you drinking that Nazi Kool-Aid? Here's a clue - the United States supported the incumbent Poroshenko in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. Yes, a free election in which the incumbent ceded power when losing. Unlike in Russia, where every viable opponent to Putin gets arrested and thus becomes ineligible to challenge him. Is Ukraine a flawed democracy? Sure. But it is one that has spend recent years working diligently to become more democratic. So don't even compare Russia's attempted destruction of Ukraine's nascent democracy with the U.S. actions against malignant and murderous regimes.
Finally, why all the focus on the United States? Because you can't defend Russia. You desperately need a distraction. India? Indonesia? What about the Western world? You know, the cradle of liberal democracy. Where gays can actually live openly and unoppressed? Oh, that's right - you carry a torch for Russia, where LGBT feature prominently in the state propaganda. Canada. Sweden.
Germany. Finland. Australia. Japan. Norway. France. Italy. New Zealand. Oh... but you've got India and Indonesia...
Remind us again of all the American and British and Finish (etc.) critics of their heads of state of mysterious fall out of windows, or are poisoned with exotic isotopes possessed only by states.
Tell us again how appalled you are by Russia's indiscriminate lobbing of armaments into schools, hospitals, malls.
Yeah. I didn't think so.
Rarely in recent decades has the moral clarity involved in a war been as stark as it is now. And you've run full speed into the arms of the aggressive would-be conqueror for no reason other than your own pathologies.
You claim that Iraq is better off after Saddam was overthrown by the US lead invasion. Well religious minorities were protected under Saddam, and even within his senior government were Christians. Since the US lead invasion what never happened was churches being bombed, chiristians executed enmass, and other religous minorities, and the result was there was a huge exodus of Christians and other religous minorities within Iraq. There would less likely be ISIS if Iraq was invaded in the first place. BTW Saddam hated the religious extremists in his country and did crack down on them.
With Afganistan, the US too much outlived their welcome. They did commit massacares such as a US strike on an Afgan wedding
A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead.
You said: Tell us again how appalled you are by Russia's indiscriminate lobbing of armaments into schools, hospitals, malls. I will say that but after you tell me on how appalled you are on US bombings of places like weddings in the Middle EAst and Afganistan. IN addition the US raid at an Iraqi air raid shelter which killed over a thousand civilian lives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing There are relatives relatives tried to sue the US government and military officials that made that decision to bomb that shelter but so far unable to. I strongly doubt they will.
BTW the US and allies also played a key role in overthrowing the Libyan regime, and it was the richest country in Africa. Its leader saw Islamist as a major threat to his regime. Since the over throw of the Libyan regime it been a hot bed of Islamist activity and the lastest discovery is:
Sirte, a central coastal city, was held by ISIS between 2015 and 2016, as it exploited the chaos engulfing much of Libya in the wake of the 2011 overthrow and killing of President Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising.
The extremist group was dislodged by forces loyal to the then UN backed Government of National Accord in December 2016 after months of intense house-to-house fighting.
In October 2017, a grave containing the bodies of 21 Coptic Christians, executed by extremists two years earlier, was uncovered near the Mediterranean city.
Another mass grave with the remains of 34 Ethiopian Christians was discovered near Sirte in December 2018, more than three years after ISIS published a video showing its personnel executing at least 28 men described as Ethiopian Christians.https://english.alarabiya.net/News/n...ve-Authorities
Gaddafi regime would have survived if it was not for NATO intervention and the result is, it would not be as messy since with religious minorities mass killed.
BTW I am sure the USA is outraged with the Russian lead invasion of Ukraine, but there was a lack of moral outrage within when the US invaded IRaq and intervened in Libya.
Not too long ago the U.S. knowingly deceived the global community before entering a war of choice and a neocolonial nation-building project in Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. President Joe Biden and much of our commentariat claim standing up to “bullies” is “who we are.”Yet the U.S. has actively aided Saudi Arabia in its brutal, ongoing war and blockade against Yemen, which human rights watchdogs say has involved Saudi Arabia taking actions that are similar to or worse than Russia's in Ukraine and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. (Notably this has not deterred Biden from trying to cozy up to the country for help in dealing with the Russia crisis.)https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-...atter-n1293171
With Saudi Arabia it an example of a bigger and much more powerful country attacking a smaller and weaker and more impovished country. Yet US and western high tech military are still exported to Saudi Arabia. Yet the mainstream media is silent in the Yemen war, and who cares about all the muslim brown skinned people being massacared there. Or the type of weapons used to kill them were from places such as the USA.
BTW you mentioned about LGBT rights, then why is the US and west so silent with countries such as Saudi Arabia on its treatment of LGBT, and contrast that with being outspoken and condemn Russia of it treatment of the LGBT there? JUst recently dozens of men were killed in Saudi Araiba. Of those convicted, one was crucified, and another was age 16 upon arrest. Amongst records of the proceedings published by CNN, reports show that five of those executed were linked to homosexual acts. https://www.out.com/news/2019/4/29/s...cts-confession It seems gays are treated worse in Saudi Arabia than Russia, but it seems Russia is the big Satan now to the West. Saudi Arabia does all it wants despite their barbaric laws, and they are friends with Western countries.
Of course the Russian invasion of UKraine is unjustified, and yes the UKrainians should defend their homes from the Russians, but the West, especially the USA does not have a real good moral compass regarding war, due to the actions they did not so long ago.
Wow - bringing up nearly 200+ year old history to support current events. Very non-current
I don't fully understand the term "slammed". Is that attacked? That never happened. Is that "please don't do that"? I have no idea.
Trump isn't the president anymore, and hasn't been for close to two years, so I don't see the relevance to the current situation.
The US cares much less about the so-called "oil-rich" nations than you think. The US is a net exporter of gas, not a net importer.
Russia hasn't been a "great power" for decades. Russia may still think they are, but no one else really does. The current war on Ukraine, where Russia is losing, only solidifies those opinions.
It is much easier to express outrage at the actions and crimes of a foreign autocrat than it is to come to terms with the conduct of your own government.
There is a lot of hyprocrisy with the West especially with the USA:
An example is: In recent days, U.S. and NATO officials have highlighted Russia’s use of banned weapons, including cluster munitions, and have said their use constitutes violations of international law. This is indisputably true. What goes virtually unmentioned in much of the reporting on this topic is that the U.S., like both Russia and Ukraine, refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
The U.S. has repeatedly used cluster bombs, going back to the war in Vietnam and the “secret” bombings of Cambodia. In the modern era, both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush used them. President Barack Obama used cluster bombs in a 2009 attack in Yemen that killed some 55 people, the majority of them women and children. Despite the ban, which was finalized in 2008 and went into effect in 2010, the U.S. continued to sell cluster bombs to nations like Saudi Arabia, which regularly used them in its attacks in Yemen.
Of course there is moral outrage on Russian masacares, and I will say again there is no justifaction of what Putin did and he should be taken in account on the crimes he committed. However is also relevant that to this day there has been no accountability for the crimes committed by the U.S. in its invasion and occupation of Iraq, its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the post-9/11 CIA torture and kidnapping program, or the killing of civilians in drone and other airstrikes in numerous countries. The U.S. has systematized a self-exoneration machine. And Russia and every nation on Earth knows it.https://theintercept.com/2022/03/07/...vo-war-crimes/
I see links and videos of Russian crimes in Ukraine and with it the moral outrage, and I guess many are American, yet the Americans do commit real nasty things too and actually in regards to war, the US is not so much better than Russia. An example is here is a clip of a US military strike last year in Afganistan where civilians were killled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc4aBuYiz4M There is no moral outrage in the USA with this attack, and I guess some Americans will defend the bombing, and the US government did claim the target they hit was right because they claim terrorists were there so the attack was justified, however it was later discovered no terrorists were there, only civilians who were killed. Anyway if Russia does the same thing in Ukraine, there is moral outrage against Russia by the USA.
Last edited by herenow1; 10-10-2022 at 12:22 AM..
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