Leftists: This war is spilling unnecessary human blood for gas and oil
Libs: This war is spilling unnecessary human blood for gas and oil
We don't have to pay the medical costs for all the Ukrainians who get shot or blown up!
Absolute ghouls
The US paying to rebuild Ukraine and covering medical care for Ukrainian veterans and civilians is the one thing that could really shake my idea that the US is the bad guy in this war. I doubt the US is willing to pay the 100s of billions over decades that would take.
no way is that going to happen after the war everyone is going to be scrambling to loot ukraine to get back the money they lent them
Oh absolutely, I'm certain of this. That's why it would shake my worldview if that didn't happen and instead the US massively invested in the Ukrainian people.
if it helps I think people might loose money trying to loot the country. If they try and treat it like the eastern european goldrush in the 90's they will likely find the rewards far more meagre than expected. In the 90's there was tons of soviet infrastructure that could be got for a litteral steal now everything worth having is gone or destroyed in the war
it's more India in 1940 than india when it had kings who couldn't fight a war to save their lives and palaces of easily portable gold
The best you'll get is american healthcare companies (just a disgusting chain of words) privatizing the Ukrainian public healthcare system that was a legacy of the Ukrainian SSR. Don't think for a second America has Ukraines best interests at heart when there's a buck to be made
Yeah, what's up with that? Was that due to the lack of tanks or something? That can't end well long-term.
@TomboyShulk@hexbear.net is @JWBananas@startrek.website purge worthy for that ghoulish take?
It's not my take. It's the bean counters' take. They surely use justifications like that one to get involved at all.
So among themselves, libs will admit to this being a proxy war? Cause when they argue with us they act like that is a wild accusation.
There was a comment further down that said "don't call it a proxy war, it's not" but didn't provide any reason lmao
Well they love to jack off about hard men making hard decisions while hard, kind of ruins the whole fantasy if they set the whole thing up instead of having to react with steely stoicism to events outside their control
This is great for everyone! You know, except the Ukrainians getting torn in half by shells,
"Maybe Ukrainians shouldn't keep dying in this war when the west has no intention of accepting them into NATO"
"This proxy war is a great return on investment because we don't have to care for any of the Ukrainian veterans. Got a blown off leg? Slava Ukraini and get back in the front line, patriot!"
Anyway, something about Soviets and Russians throwing waves of soldiers and elderly people to get slaughtered to win an inch or something
the russians have always preferred to fall back if they don't like their positioning or odds. The theory being that they're Russia they have plenty of land
Dumb opinions about a heavily propagandize war an ocean away is one thing.
But this? this is the kind of delusion that calls everything else you say into question
People aay the strangest things to justify our military spending.
I remember once someone responded to the budget increase by saying that "they need to pay the troops, their was a raise for them in the budget." Do they believe even 1 of those 800+ billions annually goes to paying da troops? A lot of military families are on SNAP, they pay them shit. You could give them a raise and still not scratch the defense budget
I remember once someone responded to the budget increase by saying that "they need to pay the troops, their was a raise for them in the budget." Do they believe even 1 of those 800+ billions annually goes to paying da troops? A lot of military families are on SNAP, they pay them shit. You could give them a raise and still not scratch the defense budget
Surely nothing bad will come out of a state not feeding its own troops https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/01/what-it-means-for-hunger-to-burn-through-the-pentagons-ranks.html
Its a disgrace because homelessness is man made and easily solvable. Not because some were troops. Fuck the troops
It's not an opinion that providing weapons is cheaper than providing soldiers. And it's certainly not an opinion about the merits of being involved in the first place.
Factually, if you're going to be involved, weapons are cheaper than boots. That's it. I don't like being involved at all.
The way how your comment was phrased, it look like you were saying the bulk of US military spending is on veteran care, which would be an absurd claim.
There was a citation in the original post. The screenshot cut it off.
The total cost of the US post-9/11 wars is $8 trillion by 2050, approximately 1/3 of which will go to veteran care and the majority of which has not yet been paid.
Yes, 1/3 by 2050 is not most. My bad.
Yes, it will continue to rise after 2050.
The statement that funding another country's military is cheaper than putting boots on the ground isn't a hot take or even a position. It is objectively true.
I don't like war. I'm not cheering for war. I don't endorse the parent post's take about it being a proxy war (have you never contributed to a conversation while simultaneously suppressing the urge to ackchyually the other person?). And I do hope that humanitarian assistance is provided down the line by the parties involved.
Call it a proxy war, or don't. It doesn't make any difference to me what people want to label it. That doesn't change the objective truth about the cost difference. Either way, I would love more of my tax dollars to be steered away from war and toward the problems in my own country.
The statement that funding another country's military is cheaper than putting boots on the ground isn't a hot take or even a position. It is objectively true.
No one here is arguing about the accounting (aside from doubting that most of it is going to the VA). Of course its cheaper! Its also a disgusting and ghoulish thing to endorse. That's why it got posted here.
I don't like war. I'm not cheering for war. I don't endorse the parent post's take about it being a proxy war (have you never contributed to a conversation while simultaneously suppressing the urge to ackchyually the other person?).
I'm not enthusiastic enough about accounting to view a gross and inhuman statement that endorses "fighting to the last Ukrainian" because its cheaper and good for US empire, and think, "well its horrible, but i can't argue with that math."
And that's not an "akshually" that's a statement of principle. NATO supporting ghouls are no better than the nazis they arm and support. They deserve a spot in the pit next to them
That doesn't change the objective truth about the cost difference
If that's what you care enough about to post over here, or see statements endorsing proxy war and only care enough to congratulate their objectively true math, then fuck you.
You can say you hate war all you want, but when it comes down to it you don't care about them making a nakedly evil and indefensiblely ghoulish position, you care more about math so
Have you considered that I agree with your take, and that I think this is the sort of callous justification that the bean counters use when making these sorts of decisions?
No I havent, and i don't care what you claim to believe. Say you are against war all you want. You saw a post say dead Ukrainians and Russians is good for the US, and that the US paying for it all is good because its cheaper. And your first reaction was, "math checks out."
That's even how you were just trying to justify it a moment ago. You didn't say, that person is wrong and I'm actually against NATO and this kind of thinking. You said its not even a take, just "objectively true math."
Oh, you think the war is bad? Well, let me load up my actuarial tables to prove how this war turns a profit!
What a facile opinion.
"War is bad"
I suppose fighting bad against a rapist is just senseless aggression in your eyes?
With the current movement, they want everyone to change their behaviour and the way they think about things.
You'll often see criticisms of the modern gender movement labelled as "homophobia" but they aren't.
Shut the fuck up reactionary loser
lost lib in thread defending NATO shit
post history full of transphobia
Why does this happen every time?
Let's go with your dumbshit metaphor.
In this case it would be continuing to give the girl money so it keeps happening because the rapist is "your former I ternational rival"so wasting his time and effort is a big win as far as you're concerned.
"Formerly your biggest advesary"
Like yeah if you spend decades scaring yourself with ghost stories I guess the result seems impressive for spending over a hundred billion dollars. This is like the bear patrol episode of the simpsons.
"They also have the ability to sever Europe's need for Russian energy"
How's that working out so far?
The VA comment is . Omg literally just mask off "it's not our boys dying"
"They also have the ability to sever Europe's need for Russian energy"
I assume this is because the official story atm seems to be that Ukraine blew up Nordstream 2 (and definitely without any help from the Americans wink wink nudge nudge)
That, but even that has resulted in Europe buying Russian gas from India as a much more expensive price so the argument isn't even true
The Ukraine War is a tragedy because Hollywood won't be able to produce Shoot and Cry movies since Americans don't want to read subtitles.
They can do it hunt for red october style where everyone starts speaking in a cheesy accent
BORIS NOŁ, LUK AUT!!!! DAT TERITORI YS MAJND TU HEL ENT BAK!!!!!!
I already see them going that route.
if you think about it, the more deadly a war is, the better, since it leaves fewer useless eaters behind!
They defederated with us pre-emptively because they knew we had the posting tenacity to possibly shake up their reddit-brain circle jerk
It's fascinating to see these people come to something of an understanding, albeit superficial, of some of the most obvious realist motives and calculations behind the US's essential involvement in Ukraine as if they were stumbling onto a revelation, which should have been not only obvious before it even began (the US's foreign policy in this regard hasn't changed in 30 years) but should have made obvious how incomparably dangerous the US is, only for them to then say: "actually this is smart and good, I love paying top $$$ to impoverish Slavs and Chinese people".
Human lives are just capital to them.
Actually sickening.
I mean whatever way you slice it, that's evil shit. Right?
Evil only exists when someone needs to die for military-industrial complex profits.
Until then, evil is fictional. There is only the unwashed ignorant masses and the Adults In The Room who Make The Hard Decisions and Get Shit Done because Getting Shit Done is Just Good Business.
It never stops being hilarious watching all these suburban masturbators roleplay as either oil excecs or the command staff of the pentagon
100% these minivan driving dipshits have suffered a financial loss from inflation and they still talk like they have a career stake in the warmaking of the state
To say nothing of the psychopathic disregard of the lives of millions of Ukrainians
It never stops being hilarious watching all these suburban masturbators roleplay as either oil excecs or the command staff of the pentagon
100% these minivan driving dipshits have suffered a financial loss from inflation and they still talk like they have a career stake in the warmaking of the state
To say nothing of the psychopathic disregard of the lives of millions of Ukrainians
They saw Prestige TV treats that showed them that The Adults In The Room Make The Hard Decisions and Get Shit Done. That's their worldview.
it is actually bad to kill russians on account of them being people. Supporting ukraine just to kill russians is in fact not good
Absolutely! We must fervently oppose the imperialist powers of the United States, UK, and France who invaded and violated the territorial integrity of Nazi Germany during the Second World War!
wouldn't surprise me. Left-wing sarcasm becomes genuine liberal belief remarkable quickly, and sometimes the latter outpaces the former
When communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia to destroy the genocidal Khmer Rouge, was that imperialism?
Invasions are imperialist
What a facile oversimplification :/ I think the examples the others raised are good enough to explain why but I just need to emphasize, you really didnt think this one through did you?
You do know that any time one country attacks another, it’s not automatically “imperialism”?
The US government is bad
The Russian government is bad
The Ukrainian government is bad
The United States is imperialist
Russia is not imperialist
Ukraine is not imperialist
Imperialism is a specific word with a specific meaning, it's not "When a Bad Country declares war on a Good/Innocent Country and occupies them". Imperialism creates an exploited and exploiter, with a stark difference in the conditions of the imperialist and their new possession. For example, the European powers were imperialist during the Scramble for Africa because they occupied that territory and then created colonies were the native population was regarded as an inferior class to slave away (whether literally or figuratively) while the typically white population occupied higher positions and thus were exploiters.
It's why, for example, the argument that the USSR was imperialist (at least in the specific case of eastern Europe) is so obviously just liberals learning the word "imperialism" and then implying it to every situation that they think was bad, as they do so very often with leftist vocabulary, and in actuality have literally no idea what they're talking about. The eastern European nations were not exploited by the Russians, and USSR massively increased the quality of life and infrastructure of the people living there - which is why the later shock of capitalism was such a complete disaster. That was the point in which eastern Europe was conquered by an imperialist - the United States - because they were treated as an inferior people to be exploited (and so their quality of life and life expectancies plummeted).
Sure, the Americans are imperialist. But the Russians are even more so given that they’re trying to take over a sovereign nation.
By my previous explanation, you can now hopefully see why this statement is wrong. As the United States is the hegemonic capitalist power, they are able to manipulate the world via institutions like the IMF and World Bank to create debt crises and force countries into subservience. They force countries to cheaply export their resources abroad, and take special care not to allow them to create food agriculture, instead making them focus on cash crops like coffee, which has the dual effect of increasing the value of exploitation and making it so that those countries are reliant on food imports (usually from the United States) to survive. If all that fails and the country still wishes to rebel, the United States maintains 750 military bases around the world in lots of different countries. The threat of violence is implicit.
The United States doesn't need to physically occupy foreign territory if those countries are already within its orbit and doing its command, either because the leadership is in ideological agreement (e.g. Europe) or because they cannot rebel without being overthrown by coups or even invasions.
No one country has a monopoly on imperialism.
This is technically true, but the United States far and away is the dominant world hegemonic power and so is by far the largest imperialist power on the planet. We aren't talking "The United States is a little more imperialist than Russia", I'm talking one, two, maybe three orders of magnitude.
holy shit this is a great post. 72T remains far and away the best poster on hexbear
Death to America
Tell that horseshit to the people of Donbass and Crimea, or to the thousands of Ukrainians who are literally dragged kicking and screaming to their deaths by state deputized neo-nazis
No, critical support for Russia is anti-imperialist.
I didn't write the following, but it is a good summary as to why it should be the position of Marxists and leftists in general to critically support Russia especially with respect to the SMO. It was a response to someone else naively saying they just didn't like war in general and this war is just one capitalist state fighting a proxy war against another. While it's understandable to feel that way, given the amount of propaganda we're force-fed in the west, it is not materialist and it is completely failing to see the bigger picture. The person who wrote the response is @SimulatedLiberalism@hexbear.net.
and this struggle is between two capitalist empires which both want to do more capitalism, so there's no benefit to either side winning
I keep seeing this take cropping up in online Western leftist circle and to be very honest, I always consider this to be the laziest takes on war for people claiming to be on the left.
This is no different than saying that there is no difference for the left when it comes to whether the North or the South wins in the American Civil War because neither of them was socialist. Well, would it surprise you that Marx wrote an entire collection of essays just on analyzing the American Civil War?
To quote Lenin from his Lecture on “The Proletariat and the War”, October 1 (14), 1914:
For a Marxist clarifying the nature of the war is a necessary preliminary for deciding the question of his attitude to it. But for such a clarification it is essential, first and foremost, to establish the objective conditions and concrete circumstances of the war in question. It is necessary to consider the war in the historical environment in which it is taking place, only then can one determine one’s attitude to it. Otherwise, the resulting interpretation will be not materialist but eclectic.
Depending on the historical circumstances, the relationship of classes, etc., the attitude to war must be different at different times. It is absurd once and for all to renounce participation in war in principle. On the other hand, it is also absurd to divide wars into defensive and aggressive. In 1848, Marx hated Russia, because at that time democracy in Germany could not win out and develop, or unite the country into a single national whole, so long as the reactionary hand of backward Russia hung heavy over her.
In order to clarify one’s attitude to the present war, one must understand how it differs from previous wars, and what its peculiar features are.
We can write entire essays about the war in Ukraine, and it is anything but “a war between American and Russian capitalists”.
For one, if this is about Russia expanding its capital, why is the Russian Central Bank doing everything it can (including rate hikes and devaluing the ruble) to undermine Putin’s effort to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the face of unprecedented sanctions, and directly aiding the Western imperialist cause? If anything, it is stifling the expansion of Russian capital.
Such narrative crumbles at the slightest inspection of what is actually going on within the Russian political and economic structures, and points to a more fundamental division that Michael Hudson had pointed out regarding the conflict between finance vs industrial capitalism.
And we’re not even getting to the wider geopolitical implications of the war in Ukraine yet - what does it mean for Western imperialism? The anti-colonial struggles of the Global South? The effects on global financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) and the efforts to decouple from such oppressive structures (which is what de-dollarization is all about).
We have to ask ourselves, what would a fascist victory in Ukraine mean for left wing movements in Eastern Europe? What could the total subjugation of Russia - a country that has large scale military equipments, raw resources and minerals, and agricultural products - to Western capital mean for the anti-colonial movements in the Global South?
Leftists who refuse to apply a materialist and historical method to understand the world’s events will inevitably fail to see the underlying currents of the global state of events, and as such they cannot predict where the world is heading and will not be able to position themselves to take advantage of the impending crisis.
After all, it was WWI that resulted in an explosion of socialist movements within the imperialist European states, why? Because the socialists back then actually combined theory and practice (what Gramsci referred to as praxis) to take advantage of the predicament.
Ukraine is the country under attack
Yes, the Nazi-run Ukrainian government started attacking the Donbass region of Ukraine in an attempt to ethnically cleanse that region of the majority Russian-speaking population. Fortunately, Russia eventually entered into that civil war on the side of those people.
supporting the nation that is a direct victim of imperialism is preferable
Then you should be supporting Russia, since it is the country opposing the imperialist US/NATO (which I hope you have a better understanding of, given SeventyTwoTrillion's response to your other comment). Ukraine is being privatized and sold off for pennies to western the Bourgeoisie even when those same western interests have blocked all attempts at peace at every turn, perpetuating the war as long as they still have Ukrainians to sacrifice.
even if that involves the lesser evil of alignment with the US military.
lol. The US is the greatest evil here, the evil that couped Ukraine's government in 2014, who has funded neo-nazis there since even before, who has stymied peace over and over, and indeed is the main reason this war even started.
I can already tell the second comment is an America worshipper from somewhere in Europe salivating at being a slave to the US. He would probably let the US nuke his own home and cry that they didn't obliterate everything.
I always picture these types of people to be like that X-men character, toad. A sniveling little gremlin that looks up at its master with sad, pleading eyes with hope that it too will be seen as an equal. Only for the US to kick them off a helicopter when they're no longer useful.
I can already tell the second comment is an America worshipper from somewhere in Europe salivating at being a slave to the US. He would probably let the US nuke his own home and cry that they didn't obliterate everything.
I didn't know olaf scholz was on lemmy