By that logic isn’t it far more critical to punish the truly bad actors? George bush killed way more people than have been killed in Russia’s invasion. What message does it send that he’s allowed to roam free?
I’m not saying it as an excuse, I’m trying to point out that aggression has been rewarded before this. You’re arguing that it is critical to punish Russia to send a message to other states that aggression won’t succeed but I’m saying that ship has already sailed
Lmao, how can you justify this shit? Do you really think American was actually trying to win hearts and minds when even you admit high command was protecting child rapists?
Lol, winning hearts and minds by protecting child rapists
I’m not asking for anything, I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy in calling for punishing Russia for war crimes when in every respect the US and her vassals have committed and are committing orders of magnitude more violence in the last couple decades
Because leftists understand that actual progress doesn’t come from voting?
I’m not saying any of this is good. It is reality however
Yes, the brutal hard truth is if your country is neighbor to a much more powerful country than you will be forced to make concessions to that country. Else you will get couped, invaded, have your leaders assisted or be put under crippling economic blockades. Russia sucks but any state in the world would do the same to prevent giving their enemies an easy point of invasion
Oh my god, nobody gives a fuck about international law. It’s a meaningless term used to sling attacks at your geopolitical enemies. Just look at Guantanamo bay, where Americans are torturing people that have never even faced a military tribunal for over two decades! In an illegal occupation of Cuban land!
I’m not sure where in the world you live, but for myself, I’m in a western country. It would be far more easy for my country to hold the architects of the Afghanistan invasion to account than Putin. The fact that my government doesn’t indicates that all the talk of punishing Russia has nothing to do with punishing aggression, it’s just about punishing a rival
Why is it so critical to punish Russian aggression? It’s not like it’s the only aggressive state around, and definitely not the worst? Hasn’t the fact that not a single official responsible for the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen been punished a bigger factor in rewarding aggression?
This doesn’t even go into how our countries prop up anti-LGBT+ regimes like Saudi Arabia or the other gulf states. In the Israel example, they will entrap gay men and force them to act as spies, placing their lives in greater jeopardy. The recent burst of anti-LGBT+ laws in African countries are being funded and even written by American churches, churches which are untaxed and thus funded by the US government.
Hey, so I wanted to talk about this point a bit more. I’m LGBT+ myself, and I used to have issues with countries that are definitely not queer friendly. What changed my thinking about this was seeing how so-called progressive countries are far more harmful to us than most countries that have actual anti-LGBT+ laws.
The main example I would point to is Israel. I used to be somewhat supportive because I bought into the fact that they do give us some rights, whereas the main groups fighting for Palestinian people are not friendly to us. However, because of how many civilians are killed by Israel they objectively kill more LGBT+ people than Hamas or the PLA. A few years back there was a major bombing campaign against Gaza in which over 60 Palestinian children were killed. Statistically some of those kids would have grown up to be LGBT+ if they had been allowed to live. Now, being LGBT+ in Palestine is NOT a great situation, but it’s still better to be alive and have a chance to fight for better rights.
This applies even further for NATO and the US military. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan alone. Many of those people were LGBT+. Statistically the US war machine is the single biggest killer of people like us in the world.
Why are we letting the people responsible for Iraq and Afghanistans current state get away with it? Like if the US wants to arrest a war criminal Bush and Cheney are right there. Same for Blair, or Harper, or any of the other architects of the invasions.
Why is it more critical to punish Russia than to punish bad actors in the US?