Are you seriously suggesting Russia is responsible for more death and destruction around the world than the US?
Yes, without any question. WWII alone is responsible for tens of millions of deaths. USSR enabled Germany by dividing Europe with them in Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was followed by joint invasion of Poland weeks later, war against Finland, occupation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, massacres like Katyn on the newly occupied territories, and eventually the war between themselves. USSR supplied hundreds of thousands of tons of all kinds of raw materials (oil, iron, grains, etc) between 1940 and 1941 to support German war effort in the West. 2/3 of all imported goods to Germany in 1940 and 1941 came from the USSR. Oil train after oil train went to Germany while Luftwaffe was bombing London.
Not to mention what went on 1941-1945... There's a book by Russian war reporter who recorded atrocities committed in Prussia. One scene had small groups of Russian soldiers and officers across a field as far as the eye can see, all with their pants down, waiting for their turn to rape German women who they had found in a refugee convoy. Houses in "liberated" towns were full of naked women dead in blood-soaked beds, sexual organs destroyed from non-stop raping. In total, several million women were raped in state-sanctioned violence against German civilians in the closing months of WWII. They raped even "liberated" concentration camp prisoners.
But if that's too old for you and you want more modern examples, read a few books on the Soviet-Afghan war in 1980s or the Chechen wars in 1990s, preferrably translations of works by independent Russian authors like Anna Politkovskaya and Svetlana Alexievich. You will find similar unmatched brutality.
Believing that the actions of US government come even close are... naive.
The USA drops bombs on innocent people, on average, at a rate of one bomb dropped on an innocent person, every twenty minutes, for the last twenty years.
There are 34 million refugees from Americas' wars, started in 2003.
Iraq lost 5% of its population to American war agression, and still loses children every single day as a consequence of America's invasion.
You'd really better inform yourself. The USA is the #1 promoter of terrorism and calamity in the world today. https://airwars.org/
Russia has a long way to go to catch up with the US' war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed this century - not to mention the massive violations of human rights that is occurring as part of the heinously criminal 5-eyes regime.
A long, long way to go.
>Believing that the actions of US government come even close are... naive.
I think you have to be very, very ignorant - bordering on cowardly - if this is your position today.
Don't you know what your country did to Mosul? To Raqqa? To Libya?
I am suggesting that Russias wars are far more brutal than America's.
There is no systematic rape and torture involved in America's wars.
It's pretty much a stable of Russias recent wars.
to quote the UN report.
"Investigating cases related to sexual and gender-based violence present specific challenges. The Commission has found that some Russian Federation soldiers committed such crimes. These acts amounted to different types of violations of rights, including sexual violence, torture, and cruel and inhuman treatment. There are examples of cases where relatives were forced to witness the crimes. In the cases we have investigated, the age of victims of sexual and gendered-based violence ranged from four to 82 years.".
Please..
https://capl.army.mil/case-studies/wcs-single.php?id=78&titl...
Read about the My Lai massacre
about torture in Abu Ghraib
About the bombing of Kunduz Hospital
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-checkpoin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
Of course, your reaction might be: "these are only one-off cases, it's not systematic!"
It's always unreported. Or reported several years after the fact (when there's nothing that can be done about it). Or it's always "excusable", "accidental"...
But when the other side does it, it's always proof of their barbaric attitudes.
There's a comic about this:
A single case is hardly systematic.
> My Lai massacre
>> 16 March 1968
Whilst Russia is still stuck in the 1960's the rest of the world has come a long way since then and generally agrees that the atrocities committed then where quite bad.
But honestly, if you have to go back 55 years to find a comparable event I dare say the Russians are brutal.
> Of course, your reaction might be: "these are only one-off cases, it's not systematic!"
It is.
> It's always unreported. Or reported several years after the fact (when there's nothing that can be done about it). Or it's always "excusable", "accidental"...
I agree!.
Just think about how many more civilians have been raped and tortured in Ukraine that haven't been reported, we have seen so much reported smoke the fire must be bigger than any other fire recent memory.
> But when the other side does it, it's always proof of their barbaric attitudes.
I think its terrible what the US did.
Do you think its terrible that Russia rapes and tortures civilians in Ukraine?.
I think it's terrible, just as much as it's terrible that the US rapes and torture civilians in the middle east.
But that's inflammatory language, which I don't like to use.
I prefer to say that some US soldiers rape and torture civilians, and some Russian soldiers rape and torture civilians.
That's not to excuse the soldiers. And even if they join the military as destitute teenagers (be they US or Russians), they should put effort in atoning for their contribution to large scale suffering.
Basically, we shouldn't treat all soldiers the same: they aren't all war criminals, and they aren't all veterans worthy of respect. It's a career choice.
Of course, most of the responsibility lies with people like Colin Powell, George Bush, Sergei Shoigu, Vladimir Putin, etc...
That's the thing that is left unsaid often: If the conflict is big enough, there are always war crimes (on either side). That was inevitable once the invasion started, and this should've factored in the decision: it was evidently considered an acceptable cost.
That's the monstruous thing, and yet it's pretty banal: monstruous bureacrauts or accountants decided that the benefits outweighed the cost in human lives (and some of these lives would be innocent civilians, victims of rape or torture).
But considering that is useful only if you're inside the country that is engaged in the military effort. If you're outside, focusing on that doesn't help to de-escalate while the war is still raging. The material conditions guide everyone's decisions, and war is no different.
But the scale is different, that's what people like you are refusing to see.
Just because one US soldier rapes one person in 10 20 years, doesn't make them the same as the Russian armed forces who regularly use sexual violence in warfare.
One is a once off horrible tragedy, the other is a clear systematic issue that the Russian army cannot seem to stop if they even want to.
> Basically, we shouldn't treat all soldiers the same: they aren't all war criminals, and they aren't all veterans worthy of respect. It's a career choice.
Yes but clearly the Russian army has more soldiers who are happy to use the Geneva convention as a checklist more than as a list of things to avoid.
> That's the thing that is left unsaid often: If the conflict is big enough, there are always war crimes (on either side). That was inevitable once the invasion started, and this should've factored in the decision: it was evidently considered an acceptable cost.
Yes but I haven't seen a conflict in probably close to 40 years with war crimes, especially the sexual violence and genocide that anywhere near the scale of what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
Our main disagreement seems to be the scale of the civilian casualties (and other war crimes, which is of course in proportion to that).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#IBC...
lists 12,152 for 2003 and 11,737 for 2004. With the caveat that:
> Gaps in recording and reporting suggest that even our highest totals to date may be missing many civilian deaths from violence
So, for first year and a half of hostilities, we can expect that the lower bound to be between 17k and 18k.
The confirmed civilian casualties in Ukraine since February 2022 are around 9k:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Ca...
(and of these, only ~4100 are due to Russian attacks. Compare with the Iraq war, were US civilians were thousands of km away from the frontlines)
https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/06/ukraine-civilian-casua...
The actual numbers are of course higher than the confirmed numbers (again: lower bounds in both cases), but it's within the same order of magnitude.
Moreover, take into account the fact that Iraq had a population of 25M in 2003, vs Ukraine that has a population of 45M.
You might not be aware of it, but I've seen people genuinely argue that Russia has been exceedingly careful in trying to only strike military targets, and that's why the "civilian casualties rate is so low, compared to other conflicts". I hope that's true, but I think that it's premature to draw any conclusions about that, because the fog of war still means that there's huge uncertainty in the actual numbers (it could even be as high as, or slightly worse than in Iraq).
I know that civilian causalities are high for both sides.
The difference as I said before is that Russia and uses much more sexual violence and torture.
Russia rate of sexual violence and torture is off the charts.
You had to go back decades just to find a single case of something close to comparable in the US army.
> You might not be aware of it, but I've seen people genuinely argue that Russia has been exceedingly careful in trying to only strike military targets, and that's why the "civilian casualties rate is so low, compared to other conflicts".
Russia specifically targets civilian targets, when a PGM levels a shopping mall or a cafe it’s not an accident.
The truth is exactly the opposite of what you’re claiming.
> (it could even be as high as, or slightly worse than in Iraq).
It’s likely much worse than Iraq with Russia the cruelty is the point.
Mosul, Raqqa, Damascus. Just a few easily-remembered examples. Did you not pay attention?
> I was specifically talking about sexual violence.
Makes it clear that he tried to move the discussion away from recognizing civilian suffering and opposing the countries which oppressed most of the world with their military force first... Towards just trying to make a case for Russia to be "more brutal", regardless of factual accuracy. For some people, stoking outrage takes priority.
It's not the first time that the propaganda is trying to scaremonger about a "horde from the east":
More so that im trying to concentrate the discussion on the brutality of the Russian army instead of the abject apathy that the Americans have for civilians causalities.
> It's not the first time that the propaganda is trying to scaremonger about a "horde from the east":
If you want to keep defending a country that rapes and tortures children go ahead, but know that you're aligning yourself with the new monsters of Europe and I hope you're okay with that.
I guess people supported nazis in WW2 so I shouldn't be surprised that people are supporting the Russians now.
If you think what the American military did to Mosul and Raqqa is not an utter brutality, there is no hope for your further arguments of moral authority.
The fact is that the US' military is more vile and brutal than its captive civilian population is capable of admitting, or even understanding - since those same brutes own your media industry and will never show you what they did, almost every day since 2003, to utterly innocent human beings.
Cultures that Americas' war-criminal class have deemed inferior - on the basis of racial or religious assumed authority, have been suffering miserably for decades because people such as yourself make excuses for the heinous crimes committed in your name, instead of informing yourself as to the truth and nature of the magnitude of those crimes.
Russia is bad, very bad - but it has a long, long way to go to catch up to the depravity and calamity that the US visits on innocent people, every twenty minutes for twenty years. It matters not one iota to the fathers and mothers digging their children out from under the piles of smouldering rubble left across the landscape, if you think your forces are 'the ethical ones'. You'd know that if you'd taken the time to really, really understand the victims of your state, which are only there because of your own ignorance and failure to reign in your own war criminals as a responsible citizen.
Perhaps you profit from the war machine. This is another reason why people think their war machine is better/more moral than any other war machine, but here's a clue: there are no moral war machines, no ethical war machines, no war machine with a more 'divine purpose set by God'. There are only humanity-destroying apparatus, which exist purely because citizens are too lazy or cowardly to confront their war mongers and send them off to The Hague to rot in chains where they belong. Putin can sit there to rot too - right alongside Clinton and Bush and Biden and Obama and Trump - where they all truly, truly belong. But I assure you, Putins' crimes pale into insignificance when it comes to his peers. You better inform yourself, better.
I think American did and does terrible things and more terrible things then Russia.
Do you think that Russias should stop committing the crimes it does?.
Do you think killing someone is worse then raping a child?.
> if you think your forces are 'the ethical ones'.
I never said this.
I am a subject member of the 5-eyes superstate that has been committing heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity, in my name and yours (possibly), for decades.
Therefore the imperative for you and me is to address the very real and very serious war crimes of our own people, first and foremost - before we set those very same war criminals the task of 'doing something about Russia'.
Unless you are Russian, there is nothing peaceful you can do about Russias crimes. Period. The moral authority you claim, to elevate ones own war criminals over those of other nations', is not only a fallacy but does a huge disservice to the 34 million+ victims of our own war criminals.
Stop bleating, uselessly, about Russia. Start instead calling, effectively, for the heads of your own war criminals to be presented on a platter at the ICC. Where they truly, truly belong. Only when that occurs, will the conditions for justice for Russia's victims also be in place.
Until Americans close the 1000+ black op CIA torture sites they willfully fund every single year, nobody in the rest of the free world is going to follow your endless war-crime committing classes into yet another disaster.
When was the last time the US raped and tortured a child as young as 4?, cause the Russians have already done it in Ukraine.
> Soldiers and Marines were instructed to look the other way in the face of violent child abuse, even when it took place on U.S. military bases
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/american-militar...
If you're so worried about
> raped and tortured a child as young as 4
Why don't you react to children being thrown out of incubators?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
Of course this is rhetorical: it's very easy for you to stoke outrage for something for which there is no proof.
Again, I encourage you to read:
https://redsails.org/hordes-of-rapists/
You have some gall to make parallels between "supported nazis in WW2", and being opposed to indiscriminate war now... Given that you're parroting actual Nazi propaganda from the 1940s
Iraq lost 5% of its population to American war aggression. Just ask the doctors: https://psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pdf
Note that this report is 10 years old now, and the statistics have gotten far worse. The deleterious effect of depleted uranium on the birth-rate of the population is there for all and sundry to observe ..
A 'benefit' of genocides is that few if anyone is left tot tell the tale.
Wikipedia has a decent record on the methods of Russian imperial expansion. Sure, many European colonial powers did similar things, but America's empire was won not quite as violently as those.
Anyone that has studied how Russia copied Mongolian methods wholesale knows that they were particularly violent.