Seriously though, the USA is virtually always bad.

  • SpiderFarmer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    My new thing is just telling people I don’t like countries that regularly bomb hospitals. It’s 50/50 on people then defending the US even harder.

    • MCU_H8ER2 [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      1 year ago

      I told my (sorta) friend that Obama oversaw a bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital and his only response was a smug ‘well it wasn’t on purpose’.

      • JohnDClay
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        1 year ago

        Do you think it was on purpose? (I haven’t looked into the one yet)

          • JohnDClay
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            1 year ago

            I mean hospitals can be set up anywhere and enemy combatants can hide in hospital buildings. You’ll need to go a little deeper.

              • JohnDClay
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                1 year ago

                I said you’ll need to go deeper. Where in the command chain did the error happen? Or was it commanded from the top? Using munitions on hospitals usually isn’t as efficient as command centers, so it might actually be a mistake.

                Wait, are you actually anti Russian aggression? Yay! Could you help me out explaining in this thread that it actually isn’t okay for Russia to invade?

                • Again, fucking ghoul. Lives are a toy to you to be thrown around to smear your enemies is that it? Arabic lives are worthless, honorary aryans are exceptions?

                  I don’t want the war to happen, and that means both sides need to come together for a peace agreement. Invading another country, although with sense considering the geopolitical implications, was still a terrible thing. This is the position of Hexbear. You guys just stick on the parts where we say ukraine needs to pay reparations as well.

                  The bombing of donbass was insanely inhumane. There was no reason to do that! Russia does not have the subversive ability to prop up such complex movements. They cannot claim that they are just russian soldiers. the separatists have been asking for referendum since the fall of the Soviets. There should have been a renegotiation of the borders of the post soviet republics at the very least, they were made with the other republics.

                  The mess didn’t start with putin, it started with the fall of the soviet union. An entity with which, all the republics would be without war, and would be working together for the advancement of peace and mutual prosperity.

                  • JohnDClay
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                    1 year ago

                    Arabic lives matter. The US has been too intervention happy over there to the locals deterrent. Should have let isis win years ago.

                    But sad to hear your following Russian taking points about their justification. I had hoped since you had insulted me by calling me a Kremlin apologist you would be critical of them.

                    I’m sure there are some legit separatists in the dombas. But I’m also sure Russia is helping them as much as they can with little green men or weapons or propaganda. Besides, when they invaded, they were trying to conquer the whole of Ukraine, not just the dombas.

            • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              That hospital wasn’t just “set up” anywhere and enemy combatants weren’t hiding in there and even if they were, you dont bomb hospitals, that’s a warcrime

              Seriously wtf is wrong with you?

          • JohnDClay
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            1 year ago

            That’s actually a good question. It’s worse if it’s malicious, but it’s still terrible if it’s accidental. The situation never should have been able to arise, preferably because the war never started.

        • robinn2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          It was a result of the U.S. purposely undoing progressive reform in Afghanistan[*] and backing extremists to draw the USSR in and provoke a slaughter (then lying about it and saying they only funded extremists afterwards, only to admit this later); the U.S. then returned to assert control of the middle east due to oil pipeline plans/natural gas reserves. Oh and also the U.S. used the economic system that they had set up during occupation to starve Afghanis after they left. This wasn’t some silly accident, it was part of a plan that no matter what meant the destruction of Afghanistan and the murder of hundreds of thousands. It doesn’t matter if it was directly “on purpose.”

          [*] US State Department Memorandum six months before the Soviet invasion: “The United States’ larger interest…would be served by the demise of the Taraki regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reform in Afghanistan… The overthrow of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviet’s view of the socialist course of history as being inevitable is not accurate” (reproduced in Cockburn and St. Clair’s Whiteout, pp. 262-63).

          • JohnDClay
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            1 year ago

            Thanks for the context. I agree that if the war is unjust, the individual events should have been avoided and are culpable to the one who is perpetrating the injustice.

            I’ll need to look into it more carefully, but that looks pretty convincing that the US was unjust to get involved.

        • somename [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          The US was the one facilitating the violence, so it being “accidental” doesn’t matter. If I shoot a gun randomly into a crowd, it doesn’t matter if I didn’t actually mean to hit anyone.

      • ped_xing [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Is this some sort of misguided american unexceptionalism where you think every other country is also doing wars in a billion places?

        • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I’ve seen this rhetorical tactic taken up by neoliberals and left libs when arguing on behalf of imperialism.

          “This is American exceptionalism to say the CIA and the US military are all powerful and the sole cause for 50+ coups and invasions. You are denying the agency of foreign nations to be fascist on their own by saying America installed all the fascists”

          It’s like they are trying to use anti-Americanism to argue pro-Americanism. It’s really a great tactic for muddying the waters and confusing everything by using a left rhetorical tactic to defend the fascist American empire

        • JohnDClay
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          1 year ago

          All countries portray themselves well. European countries less than other Western ones, but Russia and China also cultivate a specific image of protectors of a lifestyle.

            • JohnDClay
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              1 year ago

              What does that have to do with image cultivation?

              They’ve been less military active in force projection, so probably not many yet. But I’m sure they’ll get their chance as they become a super power with global power projection.

              Actually, they’ve at least flooded their own hospitals, I wonder if they’ve accidentally bombed any with failing rocket stages?

              • RedDawn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                It’s not logical for you to defend the US as global superpower by asserting, without evidence, that China might also do the same bad things if they could. They haven’t done those things and you’d need to provide compelling evidence that they have plans to do so. If not, you’re inventing a completely false equivalence out of whole cloth.

              • Sephitard9001 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Okay. The U.S. is the largest power with the largest global power projection. China might also become a large power with global power projection. This is bad because they might bomb hospitals. This means the U.S. is bad because they do bomb hospitals. This means that China might as well be just as bad as America. This means that Ukraine might as well be just as bad as Russia because they also bomb hospitals.

                So where is this going exactly? We’re still left with “America does bad shit at a larger scale way more often” even when you imagine China doing the same thing in an alternate reality. Is this a useful line of reason? I can justify literally anything doing this.

      • SpiderFarmer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I suppose at this point it’s harder to find countries that haven’t. Though the US and NATO-aligned nations do have a certain knack when it comes to atrocities.