Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[ska invita]

entirely so. but one of the things about russia is how putin follows american precedents. at the time of the iraq war i'm sure lots of people pointed out that what the americans were doing was a war crime, and that their actions would be followed by other countries. and here we are, the trail they blazed is being followed. and just as george w bush and tony blair never faced the war crimes trial they so richly deserved neither, i suspect, will putin.

Theres a long precedent for committing war crimes before W Bush... Why do you think this was a watershed moment?

 

[Rimbaud]

Theres a long precedent for committing war crimes before W Bush... Why do you think this was a watershed moment?

I can't speak for Pickman's but I think in retrospect the war in Iraq is a turning point in what killed the post-Cold War peace. It led to the end of rapprochement with Russia and also led to the consolidation of autocratic regimes who were able to use the Iraq War as propaganda to show the "true face" of democratic ideas and accuse their domestic critics of being manipulated by the west.

 

[Chz]

I can't speak for Pickman's but I think in retrospect the war in Iraq is a turning point in what killed the post-Cold War peace. It led to the end of rapprochement with Russia and also led to the consolidation of autocratic regimes who were able to use the Iraq War as propaganda to show the "true face" of democratic ideas and accuse their domestic critics of being manipulated by the west.

Playing nice with Russia lasted all of 10 years, and it's quite surprising that it lasted even that long. It was never going to be a long term detente.
Gulf War 2 was just an opportunity to update propaganda. They had plenty to choose from before then - Panama, Grenada, Libya... Even Vietnam was still a hot topic in the 1990s.
Panama had the added bonus of being a similar case of a client state that tried to do what it wanted instead of what it was told to do.

 

[Yossarian]

entirely so. but one of the things about russia is how putin follows american precedents. at the time of the iraq war i'm sure lots of people pointed out that what the americans were doing was a war crime, and that their actions would be followed by other countries. and here we are, the trail they blazed is being followed. and just as george w bush and tony blair never faced the war crimes trial they so richly deserved neither, i suspect, will putin.

The horrors of Grozny etc. came years before Bush and Blair's inexcusable conduct in Iraq, Putin was committing war crimes from his first day in office.

 

[Pickman's model]

Theres a long precedent for committing war crimes before W Bush... Why do you think this was a watershed moment?

because destruction of civilian infrastructure, in particular electricity, water and sewage was so integral to the american assault on iraqi cities: where previously these might have been incidental to the invading war effort, america concentrated on destroying these and was so lax in concerning themselves with their effects on the iraqi population.

 

[Rimbaud]

Playing nice with Russia lasted all of 10 years, and it's quite surprising that it lasted even that long. It was never going to be a long term detente.
Gulf War 2 was just an opportunity to update propaganda. They had plenty to choose from before then - Panama, Grenada, Libya... Even Vietnam was still a hot topic in the 1990s.
Panama had the added bonus of being a similar case of a client state that tried to do what it wanted instead of what it was told to do.

This is counterfactual history so I don't think we can know conclusively how things would have turned out otherwise. Nevertheless I think it is fair to say that the war in Iraq is likely to have made relations with Russia worse than they otherwise would have been. Perhaps the Arab Spring would have turned out differently as well.

 

[DaveCinzano]

What happened to that bloke on Twitter , something like a Swedish racing driver, who was for some reason receiving confidential info from Russia? Or am I imagining things?

I always mix up racing driver Jean-Pierre Berke with international spy Brooke Bond

 

[Yossarian]

I always mix up racing driver Jean-Pierre Berke with international spy Brooke Bond

View attachment 355891

I didn't know a series of Bush cards preceded the Trump cards.

 

[Pickman's model]

The horrors of Grozny etc. came years before Bush and Blair's inexcusable conduct in Iraq, Putin was committing war crimes from his first day in office.

yes. but there was no waging aggressive war in chechenya, being as it was already part of the russian federation. as this arab weekly article argues, the invasion of iraq set a handy precedent for putin How Russia war on Ukraine echoes precedent set by US in Iraq | Fadi Farhat | AW

 

[Pickman's model]

I didn't know a series of Bush cards preceded the Trump cards.

 

[Chz]

This is counterfactual history so I don't think we can know conclusively how things would have turned out otherwise. Nevertheless I think it is fair to say that the war in Iraq is likely to have made relations with Russia worse than they otherwise would have been. Perhaps the Arab Spring would have turned out differently as well.

I don't think there's a shred of evidence to suggest that Russia, as a sovereign state (as opposed to the Soviet Union) has ever given a flying fuck what anyone else in the world thinks and will go ahead and do whatever they think is in their interests. The old SU sort-of cared about the world's opinion and spreading Marxism-Leninism and all that. But Russia? Zero fucks given. That article above is pure conjecture.

Edit: I agree we can't really prove it either way, but many people take it as a given that the West needed to "enable" Russia to be a massive prick in some way. I don't see why it's a given.

 

[clusterfarce]

I think in retrospect the war in Iraq is a turning point in what killed the post-Cold War peace. It led to the end of rapprochement with Russia and also led

The intervention against Serbia and specifically the creation of Kosovo tend the western interventions to be raised by actual Russian experts as being a part of Russias thinking but even then they would emphasise this is wildly simplified. Russia under Putin and his cronies has been a constant evolution largely driven by internal Russian dynamics. The Orange, Rose and Euromaidan revolutions likely played far far larger roles in the minds of those in power in Russia as western actions (they imagine them being basically CIA coups).
If anything the real event that sparked all this was the Ukrainians pushing for membership of the EU. Putin and his entourage could not face a Ukrainian becoming as wealthy as Poland.
As for legality of attacking civilian infrastructure, its a question of interpretation.

Is attacking the electricity infrastructure used by civilians always a war crime?

Since Russia’s grotesquely illegal invasion of Ukraine last February, experts have detailed the failures, incompetence, and savagery of its military. In that context, consider this disturbing new …

sites.duke.edu

The single most effective thing the western allies did in WW2 was destroy German fuel production facilities. That seriously German agriculture and came close to sparking a massive famine(edited the famine had other sources as well like the loss of slave labour but then again the slave labour was used to make up for the lack of fuel, on these scales its all connected): but it led to the annihilation of its air power and a major contributor to the destruction of two entire army groups (Heeresgruppe Mitte in Bagration and Heeresgruppe B in Normandy). This does not mean every attack is justified, its a motivating example of the more extreme case to justify. You can easily show other cases that are not justified.
We live in a world denuded of nuance.

 

[Pickman's model]

The intervention against Serbia and specifically the creation of Kosovo tend the western interventions to be raised by actual Russian experts as being a part of Russias thinking but even then they would emphasise this is wildly simplified. Russia under Putin and his cronies has been a constant evolution largely driven by internal Russian dynamics. The Orange, Rose and Euromaidan revolutions likely played far far larger roles in the minds of those in power in Russia.
If anything the real event that sparked all this was the Ukrainians pushing for membership of the EU. Putin and his entourage could not face a Ukrainian becoming as wealthy as Poland.
As for legality of attacking civilian infrastructure, its a question of interpretation.

Is attacking the electricity infrastructure used by civilians always a war crime?

Since Russia’s grotesquely illegal invasion of Ukraine last February, experts have detailed the failures, incompetence, and savagery of its military. In that context, consider this disturbing new …

sites.duke.edu

The single most effective thing the western allies did in WW2 was destroy German fuel production facilities. That seriously German agriculture and came close to sparking a massive famine: but it led to the annihilation of its air power and a major contributor to the destruction of two entire army groups (Heeresgruppe Mitte in Bagration and Heeresgruppe B in Normandy). This does not mean every attack is justified, its a motivating example of the more extreme case to justify. You can easily show other cases that are not justified.
We live in a world denuded of nuance.

and there was of course the blockade of germany which continued after the end of ww1 which did cause widespread hunger (plus the blockade during the war made the germans think of other ways of obtaining chemicals including by haber, the chemist so many of us may remember from chemistry lessons, who came up with the eponymous haber process)

 

[WouldBe]

That's 'bRush' not 'bush'.

 

[The39thStep]

Igor Sushko. Still on Twitter. I think even the most gullible of gullible aren't buying his nonsense anymore.

Found him . You are right he’s now got a NAFO fella avatar , full blown crackpot .

 

[nogojones]

I know it’s been said many times but this destruction of utilities in civilian areas really is a despicable war crime.

Yeah, but Brits and Yanks are cool with doing it as well

 

[TopCat]

I know it’s been said many times but this destruction of utilities in civilian areas really is a despicable war crime.

You know the US did this in Iraq and NATO did it in Serbia?

 

[Yossarian]

I think most people are aware of the US/UK war crimes in Iraq, they were definitely document and condemned extensively on the boards at the time.

https://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/urban-75-fallujah-dossier-of-war-crimes.24796/

 

[A380]

I’m part of the pickmans clique now. Fuck my life .I know it’s not on to post up pm but yeh, this was unwarranted.

Happy Xmas

Ypu should deffo change your tag line to: 'Pickman's sock puppet'...

 

[A380]

You know the US did this in Iraq and NATO did it in Serbia?

What's your point caller?

We have graphite bombs (which fire out carbon ribbons designed to short out transformers) as do the Americans) so it's certainly part of western doctrine. Preumably Russia either don't have any, had some which got flogged off by bent airforce types or have run out.

Graphite bomb - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[teqniq]

What's your point caller?......

Whataboutery I surmise.

 

[Pickman's model]

Ypu should deffo change your tag line to: 'Pickman's sock puppet'...

Everyone will want one now

 

[A380]

Everyone will want one now

Perhaps in a massive plot twist now is the time for me to reveal that you are actually my sock puppet...

 

[Artaxerxes]

Whataboutery I surmise.

"Support for Ukraine fighting the capitalist fascist hell regime is implicit support for everything America and the UK hell regime has ever done"

It's very special

 

[spitfire]

Perhaps in a massive plot twist now is the time for me to reveal that you are actually my sock puppet...

At this point U75 should shut down for 6 months until the next series starts with the denouement of this bombshell.

 

[moochedit]

But since leaving the SAS I have not had any military experience, so wtf do I know, really!

What colour is the boat house at Hereford?

 

[TopCat]

What's your point caller?

We have graphite bombs (which fire out carbon ribbons designed to short out transformers) as do the Americans) so it's certainly part of western doctrine. Preumably Russia either don't have any, had some which got flogged off by bent airforce types or have run out.

Graphite bomb - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

My point is attacking this type of infrastructure is typical of the US and NATO. Hence US and NATO supporters condemning these attacks as beyond the pale seems hypocritical at best.

 

[nogojones]

What's your point caller?

We have graphite bombs (which fire out carbon ribbons designed to short out transformers) as do the Americans) so it's certainly part of western doctrine. Preumably Russia either don't have any, had some which got flogged off by bent airforce types or have run out.

Graphite bomb - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you catch cholera because your water plant is fucked or if you freeze to death due to no power, do you really care if they were taken out by graphite or dumb bombs?

 

[Supine]

My point is attacking this type of infrastructure is typical of the US and NATO. Hence US and NATO supporters condemning these attacks as beyond the pale seems hypocritical at best.

Which countries have nato done this to unprovoked?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

What colour is the boat house at Hereford?

If I told you the true answer to this I’d have to kill you, which I could, obvs, with my little finger, or something…