Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

Putin is a totalitarian dictator who is waging a war against Ukraine to conquer it and bring it under his control because he doesn't like how their democratically elected government is behaving.

That is not the same thing as the US and UK invading and overthrowing totalitarian dictator Saddam Hussein.

The idea that people should pretend the merits of these two things are the same is dumb, or atleast it's dumb if you value democracy or freedom over totalitarian dictatorships.

It's also the case that right now, the UK, EU and NATO are in the right. They're standing up for a democratic country's right to self-determination and independence, and the right for Ukraine's citizens to live free lives. And since that is the case, making the argument "Well you guys invaded Iraq 20 years ago" is a dumb argument - let's concede you're right, the US shouldn't have invaded Iraq (a position most people probably actually agree with right now), Fine. What the hell has that got to do with what's happening now? Should the West not stand up for Ukraine now? Don't be absurd.

This article is written as if the invasion of Iraq is happening today, a fiction which is pretty transparent.

> That is not the same thing as the US and UK invading and overthrowing totalitarian dictator Saddam Hussein.

Either violation of a nation's sovereignty is a crime or it isn't. If being an authoritariann dictatorship is the criteria when is Saudi Arabia getting invaded?

> Should the West not stand up for Ukraine now? Don't be absurd.

Can you point to where TFA makes this argument?

>Either violation of a nation's sovereignty is a crime or it isn't. If being an authoritariann dictatorship is the criteria when is Saudi Arabia getting invaded?

Violation of the sovereignty of a free and open democracy isn't the same as violation of the sovereignty of a brutal dictatorship, and pretending that Putin's regime is somehow as legitimate as a free open democracy is absurd and it's not difficult to see how people come to the conclusion that people pushing that idea are carrying water for Putin. It's also just straight up ignorant to pretend that the US actions in Afghanistan look anything like the straight carpet bombing conducted in Syria. It's also not particularly difficult to see how you would be strategic about where you would intervene.

>Can you point to where TFA makes this argument?

To quote the article I'm "reading between the lines". We're not stupid, when Russia invades a sovereign nation and you spend time talking about everything bad the west has done in the last 30 years, we're going to point it out. When people try and manufacture false equivalencies between what the west has done and what Russia is doing, we're going to point it out.

This article, frankly picks out a tonne of quotes to try and paint the west as some massive war mongering groupthink, but the truth of it is that there has been huge criticism of the western interventions in the middle-east and it's ridiculous to cherry pick war hawks and pretend that's a homogenous view from the west. The truth is that even by 2008 Obama was running against the Bush-era wars, and there have been massive campaigns from both sides of the the aisle in the US to take the US out of foreign wars.

> Either violation of a nation's sovereignty is a crime or it isn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Pirating WinRAR is a crime. Murdering someone is also a crime. Just because two things are described by a single word, doesn't make them equal on a moral landscape.

Interesting. Which moral standards are you going to apply?

> Either violation of a nation's sovereignty is a crime or it isn't. If being an authoritariann dictatorship is the criteria when is Saudi Arabia getting invaded?

Ah but here you are changing the goalposts, the OP never said it was a crime, they said it was different. And it IS different. I marched against the Iraq war and was against those wars from the beginning, and I still would argue that they are being fought for a very different reason, a reason that is a big cause for concern. Afghanistan and Iraq, for all the folly, were not attacked with a clear goal of expanding territory and maintaining long term control of each country. US and allies were only too eager to get out if they could get some stability and not have it look like a big L. They were attempting to allow the locals to vote in a self determined government, however miserably those attempts ended up.

Russia is very clearly expanding its territory at the cost of a peoples right to self determination.

Now you can say, well in terms of the consequences, what's worse? If many more civilians die in the first case, maybe it's worse?

My counter would be, we don't know where this ends, and I don't think we can measure impact only in civilian deaths.

Additionally, I would recommend the R2P (responsibility to protect) doctrine as a good rule of thumb for when we may consider it necessary to overthrow a totalitarian dictator.

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