Russia Attacks Ukraine

[Diogenes]

For the first time since 1939 a major European power, Russia, has attacked another country in Europe, Ukraine. We have not seen an analogous situation since Germany attacked Poland setting off World War 2. Surprisingly we have Neville Chamberlain like appeasement/isolationist responses from Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson. Besides the 180 turn from traditional Republican politics, to what extent are these events relevant to Christianity?

[Jose Fly]

Alex and SH, your last posts are exactly what I described. By bashing NATO, bashing the EU, bashing the US, bashing Ukraine, and bashing the west, you are effectively making a case that Russia's invasion is entirely justified. IOW, you are serving as apologists for slaughter and are in league with the likes of N. Korea and Syria.

Congratulations.

[Diogenes]

It's actually sickening, millions and millions of people are now going to suffer all because a bunch of nutjobs insisted on expanding NATO.

Why would you take Russia's side and not want Ukraine and other INDEPENDENT nations to be able to maintain their independence by a voluntary alliance with others fearing Russia?

Is it that black-and-white? While some may be quick to label Sherlock pro-Russian, but I'd rather ask him if that's what he is. Furthermore, just because someone supports individual policies of Russia doesn't mean that they'll accept everything Russia has to offer or has done. Just because someone is critical of American/Western policy doesn't necessarily make them anti-American. When we are quick to label someone, then we overlook that distinction (also refer to my signature).

While you may not see a problem with NATO expansion because it calls itself as "defensive alliance", but its weapons are still a threat. And let's face it, they are certainly not on Russia's side. SO I think Russia has good reason to be concerned that there's a strong military alliance that has the potential to expand right up to their borders. My difference with Sherlock is that I believe Russia should've handled this without force since Ukraine did not pose such a threat (perhaps, not yet).

Did I label him 'pro-Russian?' I asked why he would take Russia's side. I saw Hitler's invasion of Europe and the allies' belated defense as about as close to 'black & white' as we are likely to get. Putin is following the same pattern. The West is again slow to act decisively. What will it take to stand up to the bully who, like Hitler, clothes himself in Christianity?

'Kyiv must be taken, in his [Putin's] mind, to preserve the Christian battle. And there may be many Christians in the west who agree with some of his sentiments.

A miracle defender of Christianity or the most evil man? Well, it is Ukrainian Christians among others whom he is now slaughtering indiscriminately and he has little understanding of Jesus, who said "blessed are the peacemakers".

No, this is a power vision threaded through with nationalistic Christian theology. And evil is the right word when a leader uses religion to justify in Gods name invasion, violence and annihilation.'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... jHE5QDDC3g

[Sherlock Holmes]

More name calling, more insults, more outraged ranting

None of that was in my post.

not a word about Saudi Arabia, not a word about victims in Yemen, not a word about sanctions on Saudi Arabia

Whataboutism

"Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument."

I wonder who the real apologist is here Jose?

I'm done here. We have entered "too stupid to argue about" territory.

What position of yours do you think I attempted to discredit by saying "but what about"? You joined the thread some time after it started and you very first posts and several that followed was basically making a bizarre case that Republicans and Christians universally support Putin's invasion.

You then began to argue with me by implying Russia had no basis for existential concerns, and how Ukraine "has the right to decide for itself" whether to join NATO (which by the way it does not have any right, NATO alone decide on membership, there is no universal right of membership).

You later expressed outrage at Russia and anyone who did not act as you think "patriotic citizens" should act.

You are clearly of the opinion that Russia are "bad guys" and the West, NATO are "good guys" and everything that happens in the world with wars, bombings, invasions, sanctions and so on is looked at always, through that fairy tale, simplistic little filter.

[AgnosticBoy]

Alex and SH, your last posts are exactly what I described. By bashing NATO, bashing the EU, bashing the US, bashing Ukraine, and bashing the west, you are effectively making a case that Russia's invasion is entirely justified. IOW, you are serving as apologists for slaughter and are in league with the likes of N. Korea and Syria.

Congratulations.

Your point seems to be more about taking sides than about validity. You've also bashed Republicans, Christians, and Conservatives (which includes Americans) in one of your posts but now you have a problem when others "bash the US". Sides don't determine truth. At best, taking sides helps you win a popularity contest or help you win a debate on Twitter. What matters towards the truth is logic and evidence, and sometimes that is not always popular or a matter of sides.

In a debate, the focus should be on proving rather than on trying to demonize others.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Speaking of the Irish news TV show, this is the kind of fanatical racism that the kind of one sided reporting can lead to:



There are many reports too of Russians being fired from their jobs if they do not publicly express a view condemning Russia, for example the conductor at the Bolshoi theater in Paris Tugan Sokhiev.

This could descend into Trumpian madness, much as we saw with Chinese (or indeed anyone of Asian appearance) people being violently attacked after the euphemisms "Kung Flu" and "The China virus" were espoused.

[Sherlock Holmes]

I'd rather you simply answered my reasonable question Jose, by all means call me perverse names if you must but it won't help your case.

Where is your outrage for Yemeni victims or Palestinian victims? or is slaughter carried out by the West and its allies always justified, morally right, in your view?

Tell you what....if you ever see me engaging in apologetics for what's going on in Yemen or with Palestinians, I'll be more than happy to discuss those things. Until that occurs however, there's no reason to bring them into this thread except as part of a broader "Yeah but..." exercise, which again begs the question.....why are you running cover for Putin's invasion and the deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians?

Jose, I think there is every reason to bring Yemen and Palestine into this thread, the thread is about "Russia Attacks Ukraine" and this subject cannot be decoupled from the media and press reporting and Western political hypocrisy, there is no way to discuss this without encountering press and media bias and censorship and to show how real that bias and censorship is, Yemen, Palestine serve to show the bias and hypocrisy of the West and these factors are absolutely integral to this terrible war.

There are strong arguments that NATO is the greatest threat to world security today, and particularly Russian security and conceivably China too, that it is a huge problem and only going to get worse, if this is to be censored out of this discussion then it is not a real discussion.

Lets be real frank here, we are now dangerously close to seeing actual nuclear weapons used for the first time since 1945, so it is important that all parties act responsibly and constructively, it's really not gonna help anyone to see Paris get nuked and all sit around saying "See, it was Russia's fault" or "Putin, that evil monster"! It'll be too late, just too late.

This is why NATO need to be called out and Zelensky too, the cavalier way they have acted knowing that Russia is likely to act as it has, is just plain irresponsible. Our "free" press should start acting in a more principled manner, being unafraid of controversy, hold all leaders equally accountable not jist those of our "enemies".,

I may have mentioned a thought I had recently, we all know NATO is "attack one you attack all" well the revers is sort of true as well, if NATO is even perceived to attack Russian military targets or assets then which NATO member might Russia attack? each member states needs to think about that, it could be them.

[alexxcJRO]

Alex and SH, your last posts are exactly what I described. By bashing NATO, bashing the EU, bashing the US, bashing Ukraine, and bashing the west, you are effectively making a case that Russia's invasion is entirely justified. IOW, you are serving as apologists for slaughter and are in league with the likes of N. Korea and Syria.

Congratulations.

Careful now.
I did not engage in whataboutism for I did not engage in a rhetorical device that involves accusing others of offenses as a way of deflecting attention from someone else deed for I accused and criticized Putin.
I just provided a complet picture from my perspective.
Although criticism is warranted some of it is it done by hypocrites. Virtute signaling is existent.

I said: "Putin is doing the same thing with his preposterous and ridiculous allegations to have his war. When I heard his speech I simply burst in laughter.
Joseph Goebbels would be proud.

...

Putin, Clinton, Bush, Blair, Kim Jong-un and so on are all from the same cloth: hypocrites, sociopaths/psychopaths/narcissists, powerful/influential rich humans with delusions of grandeur so disconnected from the real world, who think they can do whatever they want and that the world is theirs to playing with it.

...

Putin and his regime its evil and malevolent conform the concepts, definitions.
Putin said: "First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,"
He most likely wants to make URSS great again. Belarus is kind of checked.
Now he wants to check Ukraine.
Killing innocents, destroying a country that did not attack you it is not a tragedy but URSS not existing anymore it is. The disconnect is real. The delusion is real and/or imperialistic mindset is real and/or the narcissism/ psychopathy /sociopathy is real.
Putins regime is malevolent and evil also because it does not allow free speech.
Arresting protesters for simply manifesting. Propaganda is in full swing.
The censorship is in full effect, hiding certain things. Desperately trying to paint a certain painting.
I had my comments being deleted in RTs Youtube channel comments section.
Did an experiment. I keep posting the same critical comment against Putin which got deleted more then 10 times. Every deletion occurred in less then 10 seconds."

[Sherlock Holmes]

Here's some more history for you Jose; April 2008:

George Bush this morning said he "strongly supported" Ukraine's attempt to join Nato, and warned he would not allow Russia to veto its membership bid. Speaking in Kiev after a meeting with Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, the US president said both post-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia should be allowed to join the alliance despite vehement objections from Russia. In remarks likely to infuriate the Kremlin, Bush said Ukraine should be invited during this week's Nato summit in Bucharest to join Nato's membership action programme, a prelude to full membership.He also said that there could be no deal with Moscow over the US administration's contentious plans to locate elements of its controversial missile defence system in eastern Europe.

and

Russia has made its opposition to Ukrainian and Georgian membership abundantly clear. In a briefing last night, the Kremlin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said any attempt by Nato to expand further towards Russia's borders would upset the region's 'strategic stability'.

and

It is not clear whether Ukraine and Georgia will win approval for their membership bids this week. Germany and France are leading opposition from within the EU to such a move, arguing that it would needlessly antagonise Russia and provoke a new crisis between Russia and the west.

and

In central Kiev, several hundred protesters defied a court ban and shouted anti-Nato slogans in Independence Square, the focal point of the 2004 pro-western "orange revolution" protests, which swept Yushchenko to power. A few thousand protesters were massed in the square today ahead of Bush's arrival.
For many Ukrainians, joining Nato is not a priority. Only 30% of respondents in the former Soviet state support the move.

and

But the French prime minister, Franois Fillon, interviewed on a radio programme, said: "France will not give its green light to the entry [into NATO] of Ukraine and Georgia."

See? this is just how its been, giving Russia the finger, there's no way any intelligent person with an awareness of NATO's history can be the slightest bit surprised that Russia has acted as it is acting now. There is no sane way anyone can argue that the West is an innocent participant to all this.

Here's more too, this is about a month later:

What Happened and Why. In mid-January, the Ukrainian government asked NATO to agree to a membership action plan (MAP) for Ukraine at the April Bucharest summit. In the end, a number of European members blocked consensus for three reasons: (1) the low level of public support in Ukraine for joining NATO; (2) the strained cohabitation between President Yushchenko and the presidential administration, on the one hand, and Prime Minister Tymoshenko and the cabinet, on the other; and (3) the possible Russian reaction.

and

Second, Washington had several goals for the summit. In addition to getting MAPs for Ukraine and Georgia, the United States also supported membership invitations for Albania, Croatia and Macedonia; sought NATO agreement on missile defense; and wanted additional troop contributions for Afghanistan.

expand NATO has been the name of the game and has directly led to what we see now, war, refugees, chaos and fear risk of nuclear war.

[Sherlock Holmes]

More from Brookings.

On March 12, 1999, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stood with the foreign ministers of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in the auditorium of the Truman presidential library in Independence, Missouri, and formally welcomed these three countries into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Czech-born Albright, herself a refugee from the Europe of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, said quite simply on this day: "Hallelujah."

Not everyone in the United States felt the same way.The dean of Americas Russia experts, George F. Kennan, had called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe "the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era." Kennan, the architect of Americas post-World War II strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, believed, as did most other Russia experts in the United States, that expanding NATO would damage beyond repair U.S. efforts to transform Russia from enemy to partner.

and

Passions ran just as strongly on the other side. Those who envisioned a chance to cooperate with Russia to reduce the dangers of nuclear war by dismantling and storing thousands of Russian nuclear warheads were appalled by NATO expansion; they believed that Moscow would regard NATOs inclusion of former Warsaw Pact nations as a direct affront and would drop its efforts to cooperate with the West.

[Sherlock Holmes]

This article really says it all:

Thinking through the Ukraine crisis the causes

"It would be extraordinarily difficult to expand Nato eastward without that actions being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian Federation itself."

I wrote those words in 1994, in my book Beyond Nato: Staying Out of Europes Wars, at a time when expansion proposals merely constituted occasional speculation in foreign policy seminars in New York and Washington. I added that expansion "would constitute a needless provocation of Russia".

closing with

The Ukraine tragedy

History will show that Washingtons treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that Nato expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded. We are now paying the price for the US foreign policy establishments myopia and arrogance.

Here's the full article from Feb 28 2022.

This is what should be blasted across our TV screens and made front page news, day after day after day, if the public are incessantly spoon fed the "good guy" vs "bad guy" narrative then we might all be doomed.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at 19FortyFive, is the author of 12 books on international affairs, including NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur (2019). Carpenter served as Catos director of foreign policy studies from 1986 to 1995 and as vice-president for defense and foreign policy studies from 1995 to 2011

(Jose, do you think Carpenter is an "apologist for Putin" too?)