Ukraine Conflict - Das Himmelfahrtskommando

[Zoraptor]

 

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

Contrast this with the idea (expressed here, too) that Russia is trying to avoid civilian casualties, and things don't add up neatly at all.

Jesus Christ, the Daily Mail. That's actively worse than just 'unnamed politician' or 'unnamed intelligence official'. Guess at least it wasn't The Sun. Plus of course there's a seldom mentioned and in this case absolutely contemporaneous western example of the same thing, in Al Hawl refugee camp....

As for civilian casualties not adding up:

Precise and humanitarian western liberation of Iraq, 2003: minimum civilian deaths 3200 in just over a month (and the more realistic figure is ~7000)

Brutal and indiscriminate Russian invasion of Ukraine, 2022: ~1000 minimum, and even Ukraine is only claiming ~4000, in just over a month

Either the Russians aren't being indiscriminate, or the US was as much or more so in 2003. Take your pick, either is fine as long as you're consistent.

[Lexx]

So what's the point exactly? If I remember right, we never cheered them on. America got criticized a lot for their actions, still are today. Russia doesn't even acknowledge their crimes. Should we be ok with this war, because America did the same? What's the agenda?

Edited March 27, 2022 by Lexx

[kanisatha]

Nothing wrong with the Daily Mail. Speak to the information provided, not your personal view of the source.

In Iraq, under Hussein's orders, thousands of Iraqi troops deliberately switched to civilian clothing and merged with the civilian population while attacking US forces. No credible effort was ever made by those who were supposedly counting civilian deaths to verify whether a person in civilian clothing was in fact a civilian.

In Ukraine, the Ukrainian figure of ~4,000 civilians killed is the officially documented number thus far. One cannot obtain a complete figure of those deaths, including people in mass graves, bodies still inside bombed buildings, and people 'disappeared' by those humanitarian Russians, until well after the war ends AND independent sources have complete and unfettered access to all of Ukrainian territory. At that point the numbers will surely be in the tens of thousands minimum.

[Hurlshort]

2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

 

Either the Russians aren't being indiscriminate, or the US was as much or more so in 2003. Take your pick, either is fine as long as you're consistent.

I'll take the latter. Both deserve condemnation. 

[213374U]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Should we be ok with this war, because America did the same?

I don't think anyone has suggested anything of the sort.

And yet, in this very thread you have people insinuating that war crimes are ok if they are committed against Russians, and that civilians killed by the US are not, in fact, civilians.

So yeah, what's the agenda, indeed?

Edited March 27, 2022 by 213374U

[Chilloutman]

6 minutes ago, 213374U said:

I don't think anyone has suggested anything of the sort.

And yet, in this very thread you have people insinuating that war crimes are ok if they are committed against Russians, and that civilians killed by the US are not, in fact, civilians.

So yeah, what's the agenda, indeed?

I didn't seen anyone supporting war crimes in this thread. But it might have been removed

[213374U]

2 minutes ago, Chilloutman said:

I didn't seen anyone supporting war crimes in this thread. But it might have been removed

And hence why discussing stuff that cannot be posted is problematic... just ignore that, I guess.

[Malcador]

1 minute ago, kanisatha said:

Nothing wrong with the Daily Mail. Speak to the information provided, not your personal view of the source.

The "information" provided may be outright lies, though.  If it's a British tabloid, likelihood goes up, same with any paper called Pravda

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/21/michael-kofman-russia-military-expert-00018906

Old, but is an interesting interview with Kofman.

 

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

The "information" provided may be outright lies, though.  If it's a British tabloid, likelihood goes up, same with any paper called Pravda

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/21/michael-kofman-russia-military-expert-00018906

Old, but is an interesting interview with Kofman.

 

Pravda, Sky News, Fox News, Daily Fail Mail, Bild (Germany), Ekstra Bladet (Denmark)... there are some tabloid sources that are just automatically disqualified as a reliable source of truth. There are probably also a lot of French, Spanish, Italian etc. sources falling into this category

 

Edit: I should really add The Mirror too...

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Malcador said:

Nothing wrong with the Daily Mail. Speak to the information provided, not your personal view of the source.

I'm sure you would feel the same way about RT, .

(e): Oops, it quoted Malcador instead of kanisatha...well, that happened for a pretty obvious reason, actually.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

that happened for a pretty obvious reason, actually

Oh my god!

[Malcador]

42 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm sure you would feel the same way about RT, .

(e): Oops, it quoted Malcador instead of kanisatha...well, that happened for a pretty obvious reason, actually.

Yes, you think I'm a Russian shill ?

[Zoraptor]

3 hours ago, Lexx said:

So what's the point exactly?

If you're (general you, not specifically you) going to claim that the Russians are egregiously targeting civilians as a war crime then you need some good evidence that they're being deliberately targeted, not just "of course they are doing it, they're evil". One of the measures of that is... the number of civilians killed, especially in comparison with other conflicts.

Look, no one with any sense thinks the US deliberately targets civilians, as civilians, as a matter of policy; the worst accusation is a lack of care, with a very few exceptions. If nothing else- ie you don't count moral objections etc- what's the point militarily? It's a waste of resources and just pisses the people off. All that needs to be done is to apply the same logic to the other side. It's really, really easy to kill a load of civilians if you want to. Get a bunch of heavy bombers and carpet bomb them. Drop loads of incendiaries. Drop a FOAB, use TOS-1 etc etc. The Russians haven't even bombed the fricking rail network so civilians can get out.

And ultimately results count. Looking at the casualties you end up with two possibilities* if you accept that the US killed civilians at twice the rate, by population, using precise and humane methods compared to Russia's random and inhumane ones (1) the random and inhumane ones are actually better or (2) Russia isn't deliberately targeting civilians/ the US deliberately targeted civilians and was better at it. You can safely discount the last.

The issue of the war itself is a completely separate one from the idea of war crimes committed in it. Thing is, the idea of having war crimes as actual crimes is a great idea. Using them as a propaganda cudgel for western exceptionalism is an absolutely awful idea though and while it doesn't invalidate the concept it does ruin the justification. You have to apply justice even handedly, or it's not justice but just another geopolitical tool for making your enemies look bad. Nobody likes a "well you did it, so it's OK" justification, but equally no one likes hypocrites pontificating about war crimes having actually performed worse, themselves.

An even handed application would have the highly beneficial effect of making everyone a lot more careful; as it stands Saudi Arabia can blow up school buses, the US can kill Afghan aid workers and their 9 children and yes, Russian can also shoot up old couples or hit theatres with impunity.

*Ok, one could also just decide that it's all a conspiracy against the US, the civilians in Iraq were soldiers hiding in the general populace so it was all Saddam's fault anyway, and that figure is a... conspiracy by the left? or something?

2 hours ago, Malcador said:

If it's a British tabloid, likelihood goes up, same with any paper called Pravda

Oddly enough while the Russian Pravda is indisputably worse than the Daily Fail the Ukrainian version of Pravda was meant to be pretty decent.

[kanisatha]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm sure you would feel the same way about RT, .

(e): Oops, it quoted Malcador instead of kanisatha...well, that happened for a pretty obvious reason, actually.

Yes I would. Dividing sources into reliable and not is entirely subjective. Gorth had his list. I would reject that list, because for me sources like NYT, CNN, NPR, and sometimes the BBC are what are unreliable and/or rubbish.

Especially nowadays, all sources are biased. The trick to being informed is (a) learning to sift through inherently biased sources and extract what good/useful information there still may be in those biased sources, and (b) casting a very wide net in the sources you read. I myself have been asked to contribute to stories in Sputnik News for years now. They too are a state-owned source in Russia, but that never stopped me from responding to their questions on a variety of topics. I made sure to insist that they never misquote me or take my words out of context, and the particular journalists who contacted me always kept to that promise.

[kanisatha]

4 hours ago, 213374U said:

and that civilians killed by the US are not, in fact, civilians.

Way to remove context so you can again grandstand against me.

But given your obvious anti-Americanism, go ahead and count up all the Al Qaeda, Taliban, and ISIS killed by the US too. After all, they were "civilians" too, right?

[Bartimaeus]

9 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

Yes I would. Dividing sources into reliable and not is entirely subjective. Gorth had his list. I would reject that list, because for me sources like NYT, CNN, NPR, and sometimes the BBC are what are unreliable and/or rubbish.

Brandolini's Law:

Quote

The amount of energy needed to refute bullsh*t is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it.

The DailyMail is tabloid and has a stupendously terrible track record - it is no surprise nobody else wants to even read it, much less try to determine whether the particular article's contents have any connection to reality. Fool me once, shame on you...and so on.

[BruceVC]

8 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

 

Jesus Christ, the Daily Mail. That's actively worse than just 'unnamed politician' or 'unnamed intelligence official'. Guess at least it wasn't The Sun. Plus of course there's a seldom mentioned and in this case absolutely contemporaneous western example of the same thing, in Al Hawl refugee camp....

As for civilian casualties not adding up:

Precise and humanitarian western liberation of Iraq, 2003: minimum civilian deaths 3200 in just over a month (and the more realistic figure is ~7000)

Brutal and indiscriminate Russian invasion of Ukraine, 2022: ~1000 minimum, and even Ukraine is only claiming ~4000, in just over a month

Either the Russians aren't being indiscriminate, or the US was as much or more so in 2003. Take your pick, either is fine as long as you're consistent.

We very consistent, Putin is a warmonger and a liar and he has demonstrated this time and time again

And its easy to understand and accept  the obvious and  egregious targeting of civilians by Russia. They did the same thing in Syria and Chechnya . They target civilian buildings and target towns, these are clearly not military targets

I found it amazing how anyone would defend these appalling actions by Russia

 

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

Way to remove context so you can again grandstand against me.

Context like "No credible effort was ever made by those who were supposedly counting civilian deaths to verify whether a person in civilian clothing was in fact a civilian"?

What do you want, a nuanced and detailed response to your- what else can you call it- unsupported and nuance free blanket assertion of bad faith or gross incompetence? It actively invites out of hand dismissal.

[BruceVC]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/russia-launching-instagram-clone-called-053316738.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

 Putin has banned  Instagram but their alternative is a home grown version called Rossgram

It makes sense especially when you try to control the media narrative except it will lack the global coverage  and usage and ultimately  defeats the point of SM tools like Instagram because who is going use Rossgram....except for some people  within Russia. Its the antithesis of the word social 

This is a interesting litmus test and similar debate  when we talk about " the $ being replaced as the worlds reserve currency " because what you can never censor and influence is peoples personal choices outside of being forced within countries like Russia in China

[Katphood]

 

 

[ComradeYellow]

4 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Look, no one with any sense thinks the US deliberately targets civilians, as civilians, as a matter of policy;

Not officially no, but I had an Iraq war buddy a while back, and he told me how his platoon used to blow up vehicles and got the go-ahead on the slightest hint of being an insurgent, and they all except him got a kick out of it.  If they were in fact innocent civilians, oh well!

Maybe not as bad as Vietnam, but still.

[Gorth]

Some UK think tanks thoughts on the change of strategy...

Russia's aim is slow and methodical capture of towns - military expert

Dr Jack Watling, research fellow for land warfare at the London-based defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute, gives his latest assessment of Russia's movements inside Ukraine

...

The Russians advanced along more axes than they could sustain in the first part of the conflict, and are now in a position where they can only resource one axis at a time. At the moment, their priority seems to be to defeat Ukrainian forces in the Donbas if they can. Once they finish in Mariupol, they're likely to reinforce the axis against Kharkiv to the north of the Donbas.

And so the intent is very much a slow and methodical capture of towns one by one, he concludes.

The link also has a map courtesy of the UK MoD dating 26/03

 

Short version, Ukraine didn't roll over and die when asked to, so now the strategy has changed to a slow (bloody and costly too) grind...

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60890199

Also featuring a repeat story, that Zelensky is ready to consider the neutrality question, albeit not without a referendum.

[BruceVC]

3 hours ago, ComradeYellow said:

Not officially no, but I had an Iraq war buddy a while back, and he told me how his platoon used to blow up vehicles and got the go-ahead on the slightest hint of being an insurgent, and they all except him got a kick out of it.  If they were in fact innocent civilians, oh well!

Maybe not as bad as Vietnam, but still.

Comrade dont believe everything people tell you, people lie and love to exaggerate   

[xzar_monty]

Speaking of the cruel treatment of Russian prisoners of war: a Ukrainian representative has said that if it turns out everything is true, it will be dealt with, as it is not acceptable.

Note the huge cultural difference to Russia: Russia will not admit to anything, and it lies about everything. In my estimate, it would be unheard of for Russia to acknowledge that a) their men might have done something wrong and that b) if so, they will be dealt with.

After all, Lavrov still maintains the lie that Russia has not attacked Ukraine.

Edited March 28, 2022 by xzar_monty

[BruceVC]

3 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Speaking of the cruel treatment of Russian prisoners of war: a Ukrainian representative has said that if it turns out everything is true, it will be dealt with, as it is not acceptable.

Note the huge cultural difference to Russia: Russia will not admit to anything, and it lies about everything. In my estimate, it would be unheard of for Russia to acknowledge that a) their men might have done something wrong and that b) if so, they will be dealt with.

After all, Lavrov still maintains the lie that Russia has not attacked Ukraine.

Yes its the same as the  reality of life living in Russia, Putin maintains its a proud and  free society yet  anyone who doesnt agree with the invasion of Ukraine is scum and a traitor

So its to be expected that Russia will lie about anything negative around their military  campaign in Ukraine 

But the lies do make me laugh still with how absurd they become,  its not an invasion " its a special military operation " and how they get repeated by the Russian apologists