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Moonside OP wrote

Reply to comment by flabberghaster in DSA on the war in Ukraine sucks ass, regrettably by Moonside

I seriously feel like we are back in 2002 and if you're not baying for an invasion of Iraq, you were being told "Say hello to Saddam Hussein for me!"

Well the point is to be in 2022 and not live in the past.

I think flooding the country with guns and turn the place into another proxy war, calls from all quarters of the "Serious People" to establish a no fly zone, etc need to be spoken out against.

It's certainly no proxy war as Russia is directly involved in it and for the most part it's in fact not the Serious People who are calling for a no-fly zone. Scholars in international relationships generally oppose, as do most media outlets and NATO. Zelensky might want one, but he's not getting it and the way I read his message to Congress is that he knows this, which is why he laid out alternatives. Biden didn't support Zelensky's wishes either.

It's absolutely TRUE that NATO has no leg to stand on calling out Russian aggression with our record. We do need to condemn NATO for the role it did play in leading up to this.

How did NATO lead into the war?

None of this is to say "No one should care about the plight of the Ukrainian people." It's to say "Hold your got dang horses, let's not dive headlong into another damn war."

But the DSA IC is also opposed to sanctions, which are not warfare. What sort of means of opposing powerful states trying to annex weaker ones are you for?

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flabberghaster wrote

Well the point is to be in 2022 and not live in the past.

I'm pointing out parallels between this and a previous disastrous context and the political clikqte that lead up to it and you're just brushing it off as obsolete, like as a culture we're past that? If this is where we're at propaganda wise I think we seriously are screwed, not even saying "beware, we have seen these talking points before used against people opposed to escalating a war" is considered in bounds?

How did NATO lead into the war?

In the wiki leaks diplomatic cables, officials were warning that continuing expanding NATO past the point agreed upon in the 90s would be seen as provocation by Russia, but they've been expanding anyway despite the potential to heighten tensions.

Since when is it "the left" standpoint to just assume NATO is completely innocent and Russia are just insane batman villains acting out of a pure drive for chaos with no geostrategic goals of their own?

Obviously the invasion is bad but why should we risk a nuclear war escalating the conflict more directly?

But the DSA IC is also opposed to sanctions, which are not warfare.

Obviously they are, they're economic warfare. The goal is to inflict pain on the populace in hopes of causing a domestic crisis in the country.

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devtesla wrote (edited )

Couple things you seem to not understand:

  • Why is someone who opposes war now, when it's difficult, any different from those who opposed war in 2002? It's not like US foreign policy is any different now than it was back then. Equally evil! Come the fuck on.
  • Part of the agreement to reunify Germany was a promise to not move NATO east, this clearly wasn't kept. This is an act of aggression and NATO knows this. Putin is crazy for ignoring the billion reasons to not get into this quagmire but isn't not like there's been no poking the bear.
  • Cutting off a modern state from global markets through sanctions is essentially an act of war, and results in countless preventable deaths. They're also ineffective, the US has had sanction regimes against multiple states for decades without resulting in regime changes.

Here's the core of what I think your problem is:

What sort of means of opposing powerful states trying to annex weaker ones are you for?

And I don't have a good answer because the foreign policy apparatus is so monumentally evil that we can't trust it to suddenly have the right motives. What can we do? Well if you look outside this single thread at what the DSAIC does, which is protest, fund labor unions helping people in Ukraine, and support politicians that aren't fucking crazy.

That's all. If you want to be mad at the DSA it's not really skin off my back but I don't see the usefulness here

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