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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:They can be wrong and dumb without being bad faith pro-russian propoganda I mean, it's a legitimate position in the same way as someone could have the opinion that the Iraq war could have been avoided if Iraq had scrapped it's WMD programs and stopped supporting Al-Qaida. It's an opinion that's based on Russian propaganda, and only makes sense if you fully believe Russian propaganda. Parroting Russian propaganda without even being paid for it just means you need to have a talk with your agent, you're getting a raw deal.
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May 23, 2023 10:37
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Just one point about Ukrainian draft and mobilisation: you can get medical waiver and are free to leave. It's not 1945 Volkssturm "everyone serves or hangs". Also a bunch of people do auxiliary duties like admin and logistics. I think they are part of Territorial Defense.
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May 23, 2023 10:37
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:They can be wrong and dumb without being bad faith pro-russian propoganda That opinion could be taken in good faith IF you have just woken from 10 year coma. And the only information you have is that Russia has invaded Ukraine. But from day one Russia's public goal has been the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution to the Ukrainian question.
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May 23, 2023 10:38
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:They can be wrong and dumb without being bad faith pro-russian propoganda This is what we call an "useful idiot" and they are as dangerous as actual propaganda spewers and should be identified and labeled as such.
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May 23, 2023 10:38
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fizzy posted:I'm not saying that Ukraine is a fascist country for drafting its citizens into the military. Refugee status is a legal issue first and foremost, not a moral one. Moral dimension in it casts a pretty wide net and covers anyone escaping war, which is good. I think it is up to society (Ukraine society in this question) to set the moral expectations about active participation from its members and that depends on the level of individualism that is encouraged (and running opposite to the will of state), whether "i was just born here" is widespread or an exception.
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May 23, 2023 10:41
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Kikas posted:This is what we call an "useful idiot" and they are as dangerous as actual propaganda spewers and should be identified and labeled as such. I gotta correct you here, useful idiots are propaganda spewers; they just serve to mediate and better spread the propaganda, sometimes for their own ends.
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May 23, 2023 11:01
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So how long will this Belgorod operation likely last for?
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May 23, 2023 11:21
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Willo567 posted:So how long will this Belgorod operation likely last for? Until Russia pushes them out. It is weird how long Russia is taking to deal with it, but I'm sure they will eventually. I wonder what the Ukrainian expectations were for this operation. It seems like as soon as Russia moves reserves from Ukraine to deal with this, they'd want to capitalize asap. Russia taking a long time to do this doesn't really help.
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May 23, 2023 11:57
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fizzy posted:Incidentally, and completely unrelated to the present discussion: I suppose it isn't against the rules of Dungeons and Debate to do incredibly bad faith reads on dead people who never posted here, but this is an absurd "argument". Eco wrote about fascism informed by Italian fascism and German National Socialism. Your (his) point 9, and in particular the part in quotations, refers quite explicitly to the Nazi state's ideological commitment to gearing the nation and the 'volk' for war, first to conquer 'living space' and after that Hitler at least envisioned a future where the Soviets had been "pushed beyond the Urals" and would form an eternal battle front slash training ground for young men. Because life, for men, is about struggle, you see. Not sure why you bolded part 10, it's not like Ukraine is (to my knowledge) executing the infirm or the disabled, etc. Also not sure how you feel point 11 is in any way related to the war in Ukraine. As far as I know, Ukrainian children were taught reading, arithmetic etc. in school, rather than gymnastics, war games, physical labour and so forth, which the Nazi state at least felt was a better education for children than what the ivory tower intellectuals had cooked up before. And point 12 is an absurdist cherry on top of your little cup-cake of bad faith deliberate misunderstanding. Do you think Ukrainian soldiers use guns because they are phallic? Should they bear-hug invading Russians to submission instead? What are you even trying to hint at here? The essay on ur-Fascism has absolutely nothing to do with a defensive war, fought to preserve national independence and prevent a freaking genocide, you doofus. I refuse to believe that anyone could be so dim as to suggest this seriously. And of course, as you say, you just wanted to post some  without it having anything to do with the thread topic, right 
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May 23, 2023 12:06
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Chalks posted:Until Russia pushes them out. It is weird how long Russia is taking to deal with it, but I'm sure they will eventually. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that apart from the obvious propaganda purpose, it's also a good way to continue to ensure that Lukashenko doesn't get more involved in the conflict. There are plenty of Belarusian volunteers fighting for Ukraine, who would love to do something similar in Belarus, and knowing that Ukraine can at any point 'give them permission' to liberate Stolin can be a good deterrent.
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May 23, 2023 12:13
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Storkrasch posted:I mean, it's a legitimate position in the same way as someone could have the opinion that the Iraq war could have been avoided if Iraq had scrapped it's WMD programs and stopped supporting Al-Qaida. exactly
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May 23, 2023 12:20
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Boris Galerkin posted:If my country the US was invaded I literally wouldn’t fight. I would just keep my head down and try to make it better for me and my close ones as best as possible in a way that didn’t involve me making myself noticeable and being sent to the front lines. Like idk about you all but I don’t “love my country” it’s just the place I was happen to be born in.
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May 23, 2023 12:21
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Irony Be My Shield posted:What would you do when they ask you to produce a list of undesirable neighbours? I hate most of my neighbors tbh and would push for them to take the one whose dog keeps making GBS threads on my lawn as a warning to the others
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May 23, 2023 12:29
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Irony Be My Shield posted:What would you do when they ask you to produce a list of undesirable neighbours? Hand over a mirror and laugh for the split second I have before they beat the poo poo out of me and drag me to traitor jail.
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May 23, 2023 12:29
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Tesseraction posted:Hand over a mirror and laugh for the split second I have before they beat the poo poo out of me and drag me to traitor jail. They won't drag you to normalish jail, but rather a torture chamber in the basement of a police station.
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May 23, 2023 12:34
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Well yeah the torture chamber is what differentiates traitor jail from normal jail.
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May 23, 2023 12:43
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Tesseraction posted:Well yeah the torture chamber is what differentiates traitor jail from normal jail. This is a war where Russia disseminated a new set of army instructions on how to properly dig mass graves in the leadup. A war they also thought would end with the rapid and total surrender of the military and government, involving only minor amounts of combat for about two weeks. Where two weeks after the conflict started they still (accidentally?) ran articles in state run media detailing why Putin was forever solving the Ukrainian question. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 13:31 on May 23, 2023 |
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May 23, 2023 13:28
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As others have said, it all depends on the nature of the invading force. In some scenarios with a relatively 'benign' invader, yeah you may have the luxury of being able to go "nationalism sucks so who cares if fleg overhead is different, just keep your head down". But I think its illustrative to look at the ACTUAL experiences of people in Ukraine living under occupation, in Kherson, Mariupol and other occupied territories. Lots of people may well want to and try to 'just keep their heads down', but Russia is not letting them. It is explicitly forcing people to not just cooperate with them, but directly 'collaborate' and support the new regime - including cutting them off from essential services unless they take up Russian passports and work to directly support the occupation. People are being disappeared left, right and centre, for fake, trumped up 'crimes'. Children are being abducted from their parents and taken into Russia to be indoctrinated. There have been multiple massacres, Bucha being the most prominent. And the ultimate reward for the people who do this? You only need look to the DNR/LNR, where Russia has already hollowed out the male population via mass forced conscription to use them as disposable cannon fodder, to save 'real' Russian lives. You might want to keep your head down, but there's a good chance you can't. And even if you bend the knee and actively collaborate, eventually they draft you and send you out to die on their behalf - better you than a real Russian. I refuse to judge anyone for what they do - whether they fight, flee or, stay put and have to cooperate with the invaders. All of them are victims and should be supported. Active collaboration is more nuanced and difficult - it can be really hard to practically separate those who do so out of necessity as per the above, versus actual Quislings who eagerly volunteer to round up others for the camps. I have no idea how I'd respond in a situation where my life was threatened like this. I hope I never do.
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May 23, 2023 13:32
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Meow Tse-tung posted:I hate most of my neighbors tbh and would push for them to take the one whose dog keeps making GBS threads on my lawn as a warning to the others Not even a little bit joking, precisely this happens a lot every time someone is rounding up undesirables. It's the reason there were so many innocents in US torture prisons in GWOT. It's the reason the purges in USSR spiraled so far out of control. The worst part is that the point someone starts collecting lists, people understand that it's a race to get the people you hate on the list before they do it to you.
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May 23, 2023 13:42
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Irony Be My Shield posted:What would you do when they ask you to produce a list of undesirable neighbours? I would have probably escaped and hosed off to another city or state or country long before they got close enough to ask me to give them names of undesirables. I’m also operating on the mindset that at least half of my neighbors are racist as gently caress (given the whole Dem/GOP split) and would 100% give me away as an undesirable because i am a visible ethnic looking minority. I’m not white. I would definitely be one of the first to get rounded up so I would escape that situation asap.
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May 23, 2023 13:53
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Do you think it might be a better policy for the country to put up organized resistance in order to prevent the invader from rounding anyone up?
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May 23, 2023 13:59
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EDIT ... nevermind staying out of this
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May 23, 2023 14:03
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Do you think it might be a better policy for the country to put up organized resistance in order to prevent the invader from rounding anyone up? Absolutely.
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May 23, 2023 14:04
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:jfc this conversation is insanely stupid Do you think would of been moral to stop the old mod at the border and forced him into service in order to maintain the peace here?
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May 23, 2023 14:05
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Not even Kang and Kodos are rushing to invade american suburbs so please don't go further on this WYD prompt.
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May 23, 2023 14:08
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Irony Be My Shield posted:What would you do when they ask you to produce a list of undesirable neighbours? As a practical matter, occupations generally have collaborators. Debating individuals over their hypothetical moral convictions isn't that meaningful: you're going to end up with some people in collaboration, some people in resistance, and some people just trying to weather the storm with their heads down regardless.
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May 23, 2023 14:08
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Look, there’s no point discussing hypotheticals here of somebody occupying the USA and forcing Boris Galerkin here to choose whether to flee, be drafted or give up his MAGA neighbours. There are a lot of people who think “I would never fight for my country” and who are drafted and believe they have a moral duty to come through when push comes to shove. I think a lot of men would quite literally prefer to die than live with the conscience they abandoned their country, their neighbours, in their hour of greatest need. Ignoring that reality is a luxury reserved to postwar Americans and Western Europeans. For the vast majority of human existence, it was expected of men to sacrifice themselves on the altar when necessary. You can disagree with that but it doesn’t change the reality that somebody needs to do it, and many people think it is unpalatable to send women and children into the front line, so the burden falls to men. At the same time I also understand that for a lot of men, they may feel morally obliged to stay with friends and family and bring them to safety, rather than fight for a hypothetical victory. And things get muddier if you are a person of colour who is already being treated as a second class citizen by the country drafting you. I genuinely do not know what I’d do if my country were invaded. If it were being placed “under new management” as it were, like American occupation of Japan in the postwar era, I’d probably deal with it. If it were a country rounding up transgenders and throwing entire villages into mass graves while calling my language a historic mistake, I might even volunteer in an attempt to put an end to it or die trying, knowing I did the right thing. And yes I would be upset if an acquaintance told me “I actually do not give a poo poo about all that, I don’t want to die, fare thee well, moron” and skipped town. But until it actually happens to you, you don’t know how you will react. Edit: phoneposting, just saw the mod asking us to stop so I won’t continue this
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May 23, 2023 14:13
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Warbadger posted:A war they also thought would end with the rapid and total surrender of the military and government, involving only minor amounts of combat for about two weeks. Every now and again I do have to appreciate how Ukraine started this conflict off being invaded from three sides and not only held out but have pushed the battlefront east of the Dnieper. Finland's Winter War comes to mind, although I'm hoping this ends in happier circumstances.
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May 23, 2023 14:28
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Chalks posted:Until Russia pushes them out. It is weird how long Russia is taking to deal with it, but I'm sure they will eventually. It's the opposite side of Ukraine from where they've been preparing for an offensive. It must be an absolute nightmare to get forces all the way around the perimeter of a warzone with zero warning or preparation. Probably that is the point.
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May 23, 2023 14:50
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Tesseraction posted:Every now and again I do have to appreciate how Ukraine started this conflict off being invaded from three sides and not only held out but have pushed the battlefront east of the Dnieper. Finland's Winter War comes to mind, although I'm hoping this ends in happier circumstances. The population disparity between Finland and the USSR was absurdly more imbalanced compared to this war. Finland had just shy of 4 million people, USSR had about 170 million. While still imbalanced, Ukraine-Russia is closer to 44-140 million. Finland was MUCH harder to supply with foreign aid in 1939-1940 than Ukraine is now, and there was an added wrinkle of geopolitics in 1939 where you risked sparking additional conflict between yourself, Germany, USSR, and the Allies if you overstepped. That said, 1939 USSR didn't have nukes. I'm actually amazed at "the West" found its balls in this war.
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May 23, 2023 14:51
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: Ukraine is going to pocket all Russian forces in Ukraine by sweeping from Bahkmut down to Sochi. This is just the first step. 
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May 23, 2023 15:14
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Pook Good Mook posted:The population disparity between Finland and the USSR was absurdly more imbalanced compared to this war. Finland had just shy of 4 million people, USSR had about 170 million. While still imbalanced, Ukraine-Russia is closer to 44-140 million. Finland was MUCH harder to supply with foreign aid in 1939-1940 than Ukraine is now, and there was an added wrinkle of geopolitics in 1939 where you risked sparking additional conflict between yourself, Germany, USSR, and the Allies if you overstepped. Yeah, in terms of scope they are very different wars - just the plan of using overwhelming force only to eat poo poo due to weather conditions was the main thing that came to mind for me. Obviously Finland had way more of a deck stacked against them, but both them then and Ukraine now have managed to hold ground despite the odds.
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May 23, 2023 15:49
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saratoga posted:It's the opposite side of Ukraine from where they've been preparing for an offensive. It must be an absolute nightmare to get forces all the way around the perimeter of a warzone with zero warning or preparation. Probably that is the point. Yeah but Russia won't have all their reserves in one place. This isn't all that far from the kharkiv front, there must be reserves there they can use. This isn't the front line, but it's not on the other side of the country either. I imagine we'll see them being pushed out within 24 hours but this is probably Russia being slow because they don't know what to do rather than being incapable of responding. If it takes them 48 hours to move reserves to a breakthrough in kharkiv during the counteroffensive proper it will be a bloodbath.
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May 23, 2023 15:50
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Chalks posted:Yeah but Russia won't have all their reserves in one place. This isn't all that far from the kharkiv front, there must be reserves there they can use. This isn't the front line, but it's not on the other side of the country either. I'm sure in the event of an attack on the lines local reserves already have plans for what they're supposed to do, enough fuel to get to the expected breakthrough, etc. Probably the issue here is that there aren't plans for turning around and going back through Russia nor sufficient stocks of fuel and supplies with those units, so someone has to figure out what can move, how to get supplies to them and then how to route them to where they need to go. That would be hard for a well organized army full of trained professional soldiers, and that isn't what Russia is working with. Probably units are trickling in, some are delayed waiting for supplies, etc so it is going to take a while to form up into something that can attack coherently.
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May 23, 2023 16:45
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saratoga posted:It's the opposite side of Ukraine from where they've been preparing for an offensive. It must be an absolute nightmare to get forces all the way around the perimeter of a warzone with zero warning or preparation. Probably that is the point. This is one of the essences of good operational planning. Just as there are no wunderwaffen, so too are there (rarely) single plans which cause an enemy force to collapse all at once. Instead, what you want to do is create a serious of dillemas for your opponent. It's not that Russia can't handle a raid into Belgorod. They totally can! But what do they give up to do so? Russia walked into their own dilemma with Bakhmut. After Gerasimov's offensive failed, only Wagner could claim any sort of success, and Prigozhin--as powerless as he is--managed to double-down on that operational area. In hindsight, Wagner was probably put there in part because Bakhmut wasn't that critical. But, oops! They managed to make some headway, so keep going I guess. So Ukraine didn't interrupt them, and instead decided to expend lesser trained units mixed with depleted, more experienced units. Now Russia no longer has a mass of non-mobilized personnel to use as non-specialized, non-line infantry. Could Russia use mobiks for the same purpose? Of course. They've been doing so outside of Bakhmut. But that comes with a different set of costs.
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May 23, 2023 17:33
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Russia can't deal with 200 guys in a few humvees taking over border villages in a day-plus long raid. I'm pretty sure this counteroffensive is going to go well for Ukraine.
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May 23, 2023 18:06
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Russia is doing something, I guess. https://twitter.com/ThomasVLinge/status/1661040051642564608
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May 23, 2023 18:07
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Ynglaur posted:This is one of the essences of good operational planning. Just as there are no wunderwaffen, so too are there (rarely) single plans which cause an enemy force to collapse all at once. Instead, what you want to do is create a serious of dillemas for your opponent. It's not that Russia can't handle a raid into Belgorod. They totally can! But what do they give up to do so? Bakhmut I think was a purposeful campaign for Ukraine. They realized that Russia was going to expend everything they could to take it and try to proclaim some victory at any cost. It cost them dearly in both blood and treasure, while Ukraine lost some it was calculated and far, far less. Tying them up for almost a year also depleted resources that could have solidified lines elsewhere. So Russia was able to take a location that is relatively insignificant, at great cost while hurting themselves elsewhere. Now you have an oncoming offensive from Ukraine which will be outfitted with new, much more modern equipment than before and by and large newer than what Russia is fielding. You couple that with material shortages on the Russian side it is not going to be a pretty scenario for them going forward. Russia has made an excellent example of “winning the battle but lost the war” for us. I don’t see any realistic path for anything resembling victory for Russia. Their ability to take Ukraine was over three weeks into the war and I don’t see a realistic case for them to be able to hold on to much of the territory they currently have. I don’t even know what a peace agreement would even be at this point. Russia has less and less leverage as this goes on and Ukraine has little reason to give anything up to make it happen. It is hilarious is that everything Russia was afraid was going to happen in Ukraine that wasn’t likely now likely will. They are going to be defacto NATO immediately upon Russia being gone, the country is going to have massive investment from the West especially within their computer and military industries who will no doubt become a major exporter of arms to former Russian customers as things go forward. Also I am pretty certain Russia is going to lose access a large portion of the Black Sea which is going to seriously harm them as well. Just a comedy of errors really. Historians are going to be going  about this conflict for centuries to come.
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May 23, 2023 18:08
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Interesting "man on the front lines" interview retweeted by Def Mon. https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1661046642902958080?t=eNi1QOBbHRn-afSX2SEP-w&s=19 https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1661046654059921408?t=oeZstiuAgPbmwzIiLMBxpw&s=19 Moon Slayer fucked around with this message at 18:15 on May 23, 2023 |
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May 23, 2023 18:12
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fizzy posted:I'm not saying that Ukraine is a fascist country for drafting its citizens into the military. It is at times like these that I really dislike how the modern usage of the word fascist (among other terms) has grown so wide and nebulous that it ceases to have any real meaning and is instead used whenever a person seeks to preemptively take the moral high ground to shut down discussion on their position. In terms of the morality of the situation, I think most people understand there are shades of grey here. The question of whether a citizen is morally obligated to defend their country has ties to the political organization of their country. Most western democracies (as it is understood) offer a wide range of personal freedoms and access to political decision making on some level. I personally think almost without a doubt that citizens of such a country are morally obligated to fight. You can't imo enjoy the freedoms and protections of the state and then abandon the civic responsibility that comes with it. Running away when the country gets invaded definitely counts as avoiding civic responsibility. That same question is different for a person in an authoritarian state (the loose non technical term most people associate with the word fascist these days) who enjoys no civic rights and no political participation. Especially when such a state engages in an offensive war where there is no clear and imminent threat justifying preemptive action. So just because conscription is a tool commonly used by authoritarian regimes, the fact that a state may enact harsh conscription with consequences for dodging, doesn't mean that state is skirting towards fascism. I am not going to just give the Ukrainian government a free pass here because I understand that there is meaningful corruption that occurs and I am not familiar with how robust their democracy and rule of law is but conscription alone doesn't make for fascism. We should take care to use terms in a more precise manner if engaging in good faith discussions.
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May 23, 2023 18:14
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