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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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I hate Putin and any Russian war sympathizer as much as the next guy, but...
My grandfather got a white phosphorus burn during WW2. He told me it was the most terrible pain he ever felt in his entire life, you can't extinguish it, and he wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy. I heard the same kind of stories from people who got napalm burns in Vietnam.
I'm pretty sure thermite munitions are in the same category of basically inhumane weapons regardless of the circumstances, right up there with NBCs, mines, napalm and white phosphorus, and I can't say I fully side with the Ukrainians on this one. I mean I understand why they do it, but I also remember my grandfather's leg and the horror of what he told me.
No device made to kill a human is humane. Russia started this. They can stop this whenever they want and go back to their shitty ice-hell.
Yes but some are more inhumane than others. That's why the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons exists, which lists the following protocols:
Thermite is a protocol 3 weapon. So again, while I understand that Ukraine is desperate to defend itself, using that stuff is not great.
It does sound borderline war crime, but then again the US buried thousands of Iraqi soldiers alive in the first gulf war, but our lawyers also did the mental gymnastics to justify it not being one beforehand so presumably they have some justification so its just barely legal. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-09-12-mn-2959-story.html
That being said, its not like Russia is being super careful about its rules of engagement.
Don't want to get war crimed, don't do war crimes first.
After seeing countless attacks on Ukrainian civilians, I really don't care what happens to the invading forces anymore. Remove them from Ukrainian territory however you want, I really don't care.
Russia is welcome to withdraw from its genocidal, imperialist, unilateral invasion at any time.
That's what Putin said about Ukraine.
Breaking news: fascist oligarch produces paper-thin lies to justify a war of aggression. Local Lemmy user learns what a firehose of falsehoods is. This and more news coming up at 11.
As an American, I gotta say, this is probably a sentiment we ourselves shouldn't be getting behind. War crimes are committed in our name with our weapons every single day.
No, I definitely think we should be getting behind this sentiment. The US' invasion of Vietnam was the same brand of bullshit that Russia is doing to Ukraine, and the Vietnamese had every right to do what it took to US troops to defend their homeland. The illegal invasion of Iraq caused the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands and was perpetrated knowing that its premise was objectively false. The US right now is militarily supporting genocide in Gaza.
What's your thought process going to be when the war comes to the US?
LoL wut? Nobody is going to bring war to American soil.
I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of your fever dream geopolitical fanfiction to understand how the war comes to the US, so I don't feel comfortable answering yet.
History is littered with fallen empires.
Assume Russia, China, and others decide to make war on the US and attack our country directly.
What is your thought process going to be on war crimes and chemical weapons?
Did a writer's position come open at Bethesda and you're canvassing people for material to use in the interview?
"They started it!" is not a valid reason to commit a war crime.
Not alone, it isn’t, but there’s much more to take into account. Russia’s invasion was illegal to begin with, and they have committed numerous war crimes along the way. Most importantly (to me), Ukraine isn’t using this to attack, but as defense on their own soil.
These factors, along with others, make it a morally complex issue. Honestly, I don’t know where I stand.
"it's not a war crime if we're defending ourselves"
It's not even a war crime. It's only a war crime specifically if it's used where civilians are.
It's also a war crime if it's a weapon inflicting excessively injurious or having indiscriminate effects. Like flamethrowers, landmines and blinding lased weapons.
All of these weapons are banned under Geneva Convention, and by using them in a war you would be committing a war crime
Are you being stupid because you're just that stupid or Russia is paying you to be stupid?, at least the money is a good excuse
Why are you so pressed? What part of what I said is somehow in support of Russia?
Do you then not think that U.S. using Agent Orange wouldnt count as a war crime? or any flamethrower use in WW1? or White Phosphorus?
What would using a banned weapon during war be called if not a war crime?
Clearly these weapons are banned because they are overly cruel, meaning it gets the job too well done.
Last time I checked if someone used banned substances that counts as a crime. And if someone were to break the same rules for war, it would qualify as a crime during wartime (war crime for short).
But no you just think that every hint of criticism against anyone good means that you're against that fully? Have you heard of the word 'nuance' before?
Honestly the Ukrainian brutality has been pretty constrained over time compared to the civil war. Russia started full 1865.
Do you put "sitting in the comfort of the first world trying to be the moral arbiter of a people desperately defending themselves from a fascist war of extermination" as one of your hobbies on your dating profile?
Edit: This reply was so ridiculous that I actually completely forgot to mention that this isn't a war crime under international law.
I mean, our money is funding this war instead of our own health care, so yeah, I think our people have every right to criticize if they want to.
And besides, it wasn't that long ago that people were saying these same things about Iraq and Afghanistan, and we later learned our money was grossly misused and corruption rampant.
Stories have already circulated about corruption in the Zelensky government.
USian, I presume. You already spend as many federal tax payer dollars, per capita, on healthcare as the UK pays for the NHS, per capita. You're just not getting the results because you rather bail out hospitals providing ER treatment for people who can't pay than letting those same people visit the doctor once a year for free so that their condition doesn't become an emergency. Granted, the NHS is underfunded, but if you'd take say 5% of what Americans pay for health insurance and add it to the sum you have quite a bit to work with.
Don't try to justify your lack of moral fibre when it comes to standing up to fascists with your dysfunctional politics, that's not the flex you think it is.
The "right" to criticize was never infringed on, the criticism is just being ridiculed by the public.
I get that, and that's fine.
We're a warmongering country and it stands to reason that anyone criticizing the war of the week will not be looked upon favorably. I get it.
It's also an armchair ethicist with absolutely no skin in the game wagging their finger at an underdog, outmanned, and outgunned country defending itself from a blatant foreign invasion.
Wow, stories have circulated you say? /s
Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, which were immoral American misadventures, this is a Russian misadventure, and supporting the Ukrainians is pushing back against aggression.
I don't know why you added the sarcasm tag, because it's true.
There has been extensive reporting of corruption in Zelensky's government, which always seems to be the case when the US is involved. The only difference is this time we've swapped out Saddam Hussein and Hamid Karzai for a white gentleman who's easier to market to the masses.
Yeah, Russia says a lot, and also pays right wing news a hefty sum in order to report their bullshit.
Want to provide sources for those claims boss? I need to see this "extensive reporting".
If you had anything real to say you'd be linking to it or even talking about specific examples. Instead it's "there's stories", "there's been reporting".
Yes.
Do you consider castration, rape, and other systematic tortures horrific and to be fought back against with every tooth and claw available?
You're acting like this is some sort of situation that brushes up against being a war crime but falls just short because of some small, pedantic technicality, but no. As you can plainly read, this isn't even close to a war crime under international law, which is the entire way a war crime is defined, because it's, you know, a crime. You can't just hallucinate up international conventions on war and then act all offended when someone points out they don't exist.
This isn't just "not technically a war crime"; this is unambiguously not a war crime and was never in any danger of even approximating one.
if there is ever an exception there is always an exception
"if their government is bad"
Russia has long since moved to sending contract soldiers into Ukraine. They either support Putin's war on principle or because of greed from Russia's ballooning sign-up bonuses. I don't honestly care what happens to people who voluntarily signed up to commit a genocide when it's them or the innocent people protecting themselves and everything they love from being genocided.
When someone is being genocided they get a lot of leeway in how they defend themselves.
Sticking your head in the sand, a time-tested tactic.