So do I, but you know what? The damage the Russians are doing every day is worse; in case you haven’t heard, they’ve been busy these last few months turning eastern Ukraine into one giant minefield. So the lesser of two evils it is.
Hey, I know this is probably a topic you are very passionate about. However the mod team is starting to see a pattern of behavior from you n terms of failing to assume good faith and turning arguments toward personal attacks. This is not okay going forward. While Beehaw is much larger than it was a few weeks ago, it is still very small; you will have to interact with everyone you speak with again, and there are no points for the biggest slam dunk on someone else in a comment thread. Consider if you would say the things you are writing to your next door neighbor, knowing that you’ll have to see them again every day for potentially years to come.
Actually yes. If my neighbor openly, to my face, celebrated the state murdering hundreds of thousands of people in war, I would absolutely challenge them on it just like above. And I have, in fact. I see you’re more interested in civility politics than any kind of justice, so yeah: maybe it is time to fuck off and find some instance with people who have empathy and principles. Thanks for the “warning”.
The Ukrainians seemed pretty grateful for the help. One would have to be pretty thoroughly brainwashed by propaganda to sincerely believe that we’re somehow doing more harm than good by providing aid to a nation fighting against an invader intending to commit genocide.
Again, and for the last time, not kicking the Russians out of Ukraine as quickly as possible will hurt the civilians more. There are no good options, the US and Ukraine are choosing the lesser evil. If you disagree with that and think that there is a good way of kicking the Russians out quickly without hurting civilians, please, share.
There is a very real possibility that Ukraine is going to lose this war, and I’ve not heard realistically say this war will be over soon. In which case a plausible argument could be made on humanitarian grounds that a negotiated settlement as quickly as possible is the best of the bad options. But seems not to be what the United States or Ukraine wants, so. It’s really quite fucked up.
Like I don’t know how I would feel if I were Ukrainian. I absolutely think they are on the right side of this. What the Russian soldiers have been doing to Ukraine is despicable. But with cities being destroyed, nuclear power plants at risk, massive oil pipelines being bombed in the ocean, millions of people displaced…
Negotiated settlement? GTFO of Ukraine now - that’s the negotiated settlement. Russia doesn’t want it. Instead, they are murdeering Ukrainian civilians every day.
Forgive me if I am misinterpreting what you are saying here, but it sounds like you’re saying for the sake of human life Ukraine should just negotiate being taken over and give up?
In my opinion, you’re better off losing, all the way down to the last man, rather than living as a slave. If Russia wins those people are not getting their lives back in any way that leads to happiness.
That’s exactly what these tankies/far tight types think but they dress it up in faux humanitarian and class consciousness rhetoric.
The don’t seem to notice that it’s Russia that’s feeding the working classes into the grinder where as all Ukrainian men and some of the women regardless of class are fighting for their country
I don’t necessarily think you’re wrong in asserting that this is a behavior of the groups you mentioned, but it’s important as far as we can to remember the person. In this specific case I don’t see conclusively that @whelmer@beehaw.org is expressing any of that.
I understand your emotion, but another time, please try to remember to respond to each person like a person. We’re trying to talk to each other here and not take turns stating positions to a crowd. You know? This isn’t a warning or anything like that, but I am asking you to try to avoid generalizing when you’re responding in conversations with specific people. Before we can assume bad faith we do have to actually establish that the specific individual is acting in bad faith. It’s one thing that can help make this community different to reddit.
a plausible argument could be made on humanitarian grounds that a negotiated settlement as quickly as possible is the best of the bad options
Absolutely not, that idea is based on a total lack of historical memory and amounts to nothing more than kicking the can down the road. Russia will not accept anything less than keeping the territories it currently occupies, and that’s not an option. This invasion happened because Russia had been getting away with this kind of stuff for two decades. It’s not Putin’s first land grab. It was Chechnya in 2000, Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, the rest of Ukraine in 2022. They took a small bite at first, and when they got away with it, they took a bigger bite next. And again, and again. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Allowing Russia to get away with this and keep the territories it took guarantees another repetition of the same pattern less than a decade later with yet more devastating results. If we had nipped this in the bud, the war could’ve been avoided entirely. The second best time is now.
If that’s what it takes to kick the Russians out of the country, then it has to be done; failing to kick them out would result in far more harm. The fault is still with the Russians, since if they weren’t there, there would be no fighting and no casualties at all.
the options are not in fact committing borderline war crimes or accepting russian rule
and no, dropping cluster bombs are actually the fault of the person dropping cluster bombs
if turning several kids into chunky red paste per russian is just the price youre willing to pay thats one thing, but at least grow a spine and say it with your whole chest instead of shoving off the responsibility on said russians
the options are not in fact committing borderline war crimes or accepting russian rule
I can’t help noticing that your claim of other options existing was not followed by even a single example.
at least grow a spine and say it with your whole chest instead of shoving off the responsibility on said russians
It is their responsibility. The fighting happens because Russia invaded, and it would cease immediately if it withdrew its troops back within its own borders. Every single casualty is 100% the fault of Russia. Calling me spineless is not very nice and more importantly not a very good way of arguing against my logic.
If this were on Reddit, I’d have no doubt that those comments are from Russian trolls. I doubt there are many of those here yet, so I guess they’re just useful idiots who have had their brains washed.
Yep, and from my understanding Ukraine has been too - the main difference is that these modern American ones have a lower chance of killing civilians than the ancient Soviet ones that have been in use for the past year and a half (and the American arms industry will make a profit but still seems like the lesser of two evils etc.)
Yeah, but you have to weigh that against the harm that kicking the Russian out quickly will prevent. It’s like chemotherapy. It fucks you up too, but less than it fucks up the thing that’s killing you.
Generations of having a chance to blow up children. vs maybe a short term push of the front, maybe.
Idk if I’d take the trade. With conventional weapons UA is already kicking ass.
I live in a city where 500-1000kg WWII bomb finds are a common occurrence. Every few weeks at least a whole block gets evacuated for a day. And those are easier to find, less randomly spread, more reliable.
Generations of having a chance to blow up children. vs maybe a short term push of the front, maybe.
The thing you’re forgetting is that the Russians are busy laying as many landmines as they can get their hands on all over eastern Ukraine. Using cluster munitions to drive the Russians out will result in less UXO than letting them continue doing that.
With conventional weapons UA is already kicking ass.
I guess we must be following different news outlets, then. All I’m hearing is that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is going a lot slower than planned. And if you can be sure of one thing in a war, it’s that things are always worse than the belligerents are willing to admit.
I meant to add: it’s tragic enough that mines are deployed so much in this conflict.
I personally think saying cluster munitions will end it quicker ergo result in less uxos is a bit simplified a->b thinking that rarely works out in reality.
I think UA should absolutely aim to limit uxos from their side as much as realisticly possible, and i dont know if CMs are as big of a power swing as you make em out to be.
Fortunately (in my eyes), they pledged not to use these measures already
Eh… I figure if CMs weren’t effective, they wouldn’t be using them. There’s a good reason the military heavyweights refuse to join the international treaty that bans them.
Also, the whole discussion is basically moot, since apparently Ukraine has been using old Soviet CMs all along anyway. Getting more modern American ones with a much lower percentage of duds will be nothing but an improvement.
Issue isn’t Russia reaping them. It never is with cluster munitions. In fact given the battle field is Ukraine, it will be Ukrainian civilians repair the harvest on this. Problem isn’t “ohhhh cluster munitions are nasty to enemy soldiers”. No those are free target, we rip them, tear them. Huge 155 mm shrapnel HE shell will tear flesh just as nastily as a cluster sub munitions, if not worse even.
The issue is submunitions in effect ending up being anti-personnel mines, since not all of the submunitions detonate properly and then end up teetering on their fuse and then some civilian stumbles upon them later, knocks it and boom, there goes civilians hand/leg/life.
All munitions have a fault percent of not detonating (fuses fail, the safety self-destructs fail). Issue is cluster sub munitions are small and there is lot of them.
It is pretty obvious should there be 155 mm dud HE shell sticking from the field soil. sub munitions, not so much. It’s a small hand grenade sized thing.
Ukraine and the U.S. know exactly what they’re getting into here. In fact, both Russia and Ukraine not only use cluster munitions, but the same cluster munitions (mostly Soviet PFM-1 petal mines — particularly nasty). So arguing that we ought to save Ukraine from itself, as a country which is intimately familiar with mass civilian casualties (and the risks of UXO for the better part of a decade), as a country locked in an existential struggle against a democidal (at best) regime, and as if the resulting cost-benefit analysis by the Ukrainian government hasn’t already been considered, smacks of condescending paternalism to me.
Nonetheless, “cost-benefit analysis” is a flimsy euphemism for “how many civilians are we willing to accidentally kill so that we can save our country.” In any other context, alarm bells should be ringing at the thought. But this is a real shooting war, where cluster munitions used against static, dense fortifications in overwhelmingly rural settings (like the Russian defensive lines in the south) is perfectly reasonable. If the West was actually concerned about civilian casualties caused by Ukraine’s hamfisted arsenal, it’d be sending fighter jets and CAS!
The above also doesn’t consider that neither the U.S. nor Ukraine are party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and that Russia’s been using cluster munitions the whole time!
I would rather give them a higher amount of higher-cost and more accurate weapons. I know why the US wouldn’t, and why Ukraine accepts this. It’s their choice in the end.
I don’t think we particularly need to celebrate this though.
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Hasn’t Russia been using these munitions and worse all along? Screw them, let them reap what they sow.
deleted by creator
So do I, but you know what? The damage the Russians are doing every day is worse; in case you haven’t heard, they’ve been busy these last few months turning eastern Ukraine into one giant minefield. So the lesser of two evils it is.
So…which of those evils does your government fund and arm, by chance?
I don’t find many reasons to be proud of my country, but the fact that we were the first to give tanks to Ukraine absolutely is one.
Uh huh. Your country, too, fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, I see.
Hey, I know this is probably a topic you are very passionate about. However the mod team is starting to see a pattern of behavior from you n terms of failing to assume good faith and turning arguments toward personal attacks. This is not okay going forward. While Beehaw is much larger than it was a few weeks ago, it is still very small; you will have to interact with everyone you speak with again, and there are no points for the biggest slam dunk on someone else in a comment thread. Consider if you would say the things you are writing to your next door neighbor, knowing that you’ll have to see them again every day for potentially years to come.
Just wanted to say that this kind of moderation is one of the main reasons I wanted to join beehaw. I appreciate the approach you all are taking.
Actually yes. If my neighbor openly, to my face, celebrated the state murdering hundreds of thousands of people in war, I would absolutely challenge them on it just like above. And I have, in fact. I see you’re more interested in civility politics than any kind of justice, so yeah: maybe it is time to fuck off and find some instance with people who have empathy and principles. Thanks for the “warning”.
The Ukrainians seemed pretty grateful for the help. One would have to be pretty thoroughly brainwashed by propaganda to sincerely believe that we’re somehow doing more harm than good by providing aid to a nation fighting against an invader intending to commit genocide.
deleted by creator
Again, and for the last time, not kicking the Russians out of Ukraine as quickly as possible will hurt the civilians more. There are no good options, the US and Ukraine are choosing the lesser evil. If you disagree with that and think that there is a good way of kicking the Russians out quickly without hurting civilians, please, share.
There is a very real possibility that Ukraine is going to lose this war, and I’ve not heard realistically say this war will be over soon. In which case a plausible argument could be made on humanitarian grounds that a negotiated settlement as quickly as possible is the best of the bad options. But seems not to be what the United States or Ukraine wants, so. It’s really quite fucked up.
Like I don’t know how I would feel if I were Ukrainian. I absolutely think they are on the right side of this. What the Russian soldiers have been doing to Ukraine is despicable. But with cities being destroyed, nuclear power plants at risk, massive oil pipelines being bombed in the ocean, millions of people displaced…
Negotiated settlement? GTFO of Ukraine now - that’s the negotiated settlement. Russia doesn’t want it. Instead, they are murdeering Ukrainian civilians every day.
I’ve heard the war would end by May. May of 2022, that is, where Russian sources said they almost surrounded Azov
Don’t believe everything you read. This war is going into 2024, unless the US brings more weapons for Ukraine to finish it earlier
Forgive me if I am misinterpreting what you are saying here, but it sounds like you’re saying for the sake of human life Ukraine should just negotiate being taken over and give up?
In my opinion, you’re better off losing, all the way down to the last man, rather than living as a slave. If Russia wins those people are not getting their lives back in any way that leads to happiness.
That’s exactly what these tankies/far tight types think but they dress it up in faux humanitarian and class consciousness rhetoric.
The don’t seem to notice that it’s Russia that’s feeding the working classes into the grinder where as all Ukrainian men and some of the women regardless of class are fighting for their country
I don’t necessarily think you’re wrong in asserting that this is a behavior of the groups you mentioned, but it’s important as far as we can to remember the person. In this specific case I don’t see conclusively that @whelmer@beehaw.org is expressing any of that.
I understand your emotion, but another time, please try to remember to respond to each person like a person. We’re trying to talk to each other here and not take turns stating positions to a crowd. You know? This isn’t a warning or anything like that, but I am asking you to try to avoid generalizing when you’re responding in conversations with specific people. Before we can assume bad faith we do have to actually establish that the specific individual is acting in bad faith. It’s one thing that can help make this community different to reddit.
I’m sorry, did you just accuse me of being a far-right tanky for suggesting that a negotiated peace might be the best of bad options?
What exactly do you think the word “tanky” means?
It’s interesting how everyone is anti-war until there’s a war, then everyone is suddenly a nationalist. This isn’t a video game, this isn’t a movie.
Absolutely not, that idea is based on a total lack of historical memory and amounts to nothing more than kicking the can down the road. Russia will not accept anything less than keeping the territories it currently occupies, and that’s not an option. This invasion happened because Russia had been getting away with this kind of stuff for two decades. It’s not Putin’s first land grab. It was Chechnya in 2000, Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, the rest of Ukraine in 2022. They took a small bite at first, and when they got away with it, they took a bigger bite next. And again, and again. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Allowing Russia to get away with this and keep the territories it took guarantees another repetition of the same pattern less than a decade later with yet more devastating results. If we had nipped this in the bud, the war could’ve been avoided entirely. The second best time is now.
bombing your own population and its kids to own the russians
If that’s what it takes to kick the Russians out of the country, then it has to be done; failing to kick them out would result in far more harm. The fault is still with the Russians, since if they weren’t there, there would be no fighting and no casualties at all.
the options are not in fact committing borderline war crimes or accepting russian rule
and no, dropping cluster bombs are actually the fault of the person dropping cluster bombs
if turning several kids into chunky red paste per russian is just the price youre willing to pay thats one thing, but at least grow a spine and say it with your whole chest instead of shoving off the responsibility on said russians
The option is clear. Russia must get out of Ukraine and stop killing civilians.
I can’t help noticing that your claim of other options existing was not followed by even a single example.
It is their responsibility. The fighting happens because Russia invaded, and it would cease immediately if it withdrew its troops back within its own borders. Every single casualty is 100% the fault of Russia. Calling me spineless is not very nice and more importantly not a very good way of arguing against my logic.
Completely agree with you. Every argument I have seen to pin this on Ukraine is grasping for straws.
If this were on Reddit, I’d have no doubt that those comments are from Russian trolls. I doubt there are many of those here yet, so I guess they’re just useful idiots who have had their brains washed.
Yep, and from my understanding Ukraine has been too - the main difference is that these modern American ones have a lower chance of killing civilians than the ancient Soviet ones that have been in use for the past year and a half (and the American arms industry will make a profit but still seems like the lesser of two evils etc.)
Thats not the issue here. I mean fuck russia, yes.
But cluster ammunitions indiscriminately cover an area, military and otherwise. Impossible to track what ends up where, when it comes to UXOs.
Decades from now, innocent civilians, often kids, may dig up random ordnance and die due to the nature of the weapon.
Yeah, but you have to weigh that against the harm that kicking the Russian out quickly will prevent. It’s like chemotherapy. It fucks you up too, but less than it fucks up the thing that’s killing you.
Generations of having a chance to blow up children. vs maybe a short term push of the front, maybe.
Idk if I’d take the trade. With conventional weapons UA is already kicking ass.
I live in a city where 500-1000kg WWII bomb finds are a common occurrence. Every few weeks at least a whole block gets evacuated for a day. And those are easier to find, less randomly spread, more reliable.
The thing you’re forgetting is that the Russians are busy laying as many landmines as they can get their hands on all over eastern Ukraine. Using cluster munitions to drive the Russians out will result in less UXO than letting them continue doing that.
I guess we must be following different news outlets, then. All I’m hearing is that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is going a lot slower than planned. And if you can be sure of one thing in a war, it’s that things are always worse than the belligerents are willing to admit.
How does that relate to it?
“there are already mines so spreading more is good”?
More like “tons of mines are being placed every day, so stopping that from happening is good”.
Yeah sry i jumped the gun on hitting post.
I meant to add: it’s tragic enough that mines are deployed so much in this conflict.
I personally think saying cluster munitions will end it quicker ergo result in less uxos is a bit simplified a->b thinking that rarely works out in reality.
I think UA should absolutely aim to limit uxos from their side as much as realisticly possible, and i dont know if CMs are as big of a power swing as you make em out to be.
Fortunately (in my eyes), they pledged not to use these measures already
Eh… I figure if CMs weren’t effective, they wouldn’t be using them. There’s a good reason the military heavyweights refuse to join the international treaty that bans them.
Also, the whole discussion is basically moot, since apparently Ukraine has been using old Soviet CMs all along anyway. Getting more modern American ones with a much lower percentage of duds will be nothing but an improvement.
People will always use this logic to justify whatever horrendous crime their “side” is committing.
Dan Carlin did an episode of his fantastic Hardcore History podcast on this, it’s called Logical Insanity. I highly recommend it.
Ukraine will record where they used them to help the demining effort later
Issue isn’t Russia reaping them. It never is with cluster munitions. In fact given the battle field is Ukraine, it will be Ukrainian civilians repair the harvest on this. Problem isn’t “ohhhh cluster munitions are nasty to enemy soldiers”. No those are free target, we rip them, tear them. Huge 155 mm shrapnel HE shell will tear flesh just as nastily as a cluster sub munitions, if not worse even.
The issue is submunitions in effect ending up being anti-personnel mines, since not all of the submunitions detonate properly and then end up teetering on their fuse and then some civilian stumbles upon them later, knocks it and boom, there goes civilians hand/leg/life.
All munitions have a fault percent of not detonating (fuses fail, the safety self-destructs fail). Issue is cluster sub munitions are small and there is lot of them.
It is pretty obvious should there be 155 mm dud HE shell sticking from the field soil. sub munitions, not so much. It’s a small hand grenade sized thing.
Ukraine and the U.S. know exactly what they’re getting into here. In fact, both Russia and Ukraine not only use cluster munitions, but the same cluster munitions (mostly Soviet PFM-1 petal mines — particularly nasty). So arguing that we ought to save Ukraine from itself, as a country which is intimately familiar with mass civilian casualties (and the risks of UXO for the better part of a decade), as a country locked in an existential struggle against a democidal (at best) regime, and as if the resulting cost-benefit analysis by the Ukrainian government hasn’t already been considered, smacks of condescending paternalism to me.
Nonetheless, “cost-benefit analysis” is a flimsy euphemism for “how many civilians are we willing to accidentally kill so that we can save our country.” In any other context, alarm bells should be ringing at the thought. But this is a real shooting war, where cluster munitions used against static, dense fortifications in overwhelmingly rural settings (like the Russian defensive lines in the south) is perfectly reasonable. If the West was actually concerned about civilian casualties caused by Ukraine’s hamfisted arsenal, it’d be sending fighter jets and CAS!
The above also doesn’t consider that neither the U.S. nor Ukraine are party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and that Russia’s been using cluster munitions the whole time!
I would rather give them a higher amount of higher-cost and more accurate weapons. I know why the US wouldn’t, and why Ukraine accepts this. It’s their choice in the end.
I don’t think we particularly need to celebrate this though.
Because they don’t exist, the 155mm artillery is being made, the stockpiles are too low
I’m not falling over myself to clap, but it is still Ukraine’s choice whether to use this or not.