Why is Russia being held to a higher standard than the US

[Karmadhi]

Hello

I wanted to discuss something I have been thinking about and that is the higher standard people expect Russia to have compared to the USA

What do I mean by that?

It is two fold

First standard:

Basically when Russia illegally invades a soverign country, it is somehow worse than when USA does it

The invasion of Iraq by the USA was not only illegal, it also was built on totally false pretexes

Yet, nothing really happened to the USA. They continued as usual. 

Meanwhile Russia was banend from SWIFT, sanctioned like hell, banned from Fifa, from Olympics etc

It seems like an illegal invasion of a soverign country is worse when Russia does it

Second standard:

It is pretty clear if you are outside the Western/NATO bubble that NATO is viewed by Russia as a threat

Russia sees how NATO bombed Libya totally illegally, not to mention Iraq as well

Therefore to them NATO is not a defensive alliance all the time

How come it is expected for Russia to allow their biggest neighboor and cultural ally, Ukraine to join this alliance?

Let us revese the roles

What if there was an anti American alliance which had engaged in acts of illegal aggression before and Mexico was considering joining it

Or Canada

Would USA not do anything?

Last time this happened it was with Cuba in 1961, a much smaller country that does not share a land border with USA

USA literally invaded Cuba, just like Russia did to Ukraine. The invasion failed and eventually was cut off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

Therefore, USA has a track record of invading neighboors which become allies of their enemies

Why is it different when Russia does the same?

Note, I do support Ukraine and I do not support Russia. They were clearly in the wrong here

The point of the thread is not that Russia isnt bad, but it is that USA is just as bad, yet it is not considered as such

It has not faced any real consequence like Russia did and that shows that international law does not exist and that might is right

What do you guys think?

 

 

 

[Elliott]

3 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

Hello

I wanted to discuss something I have been thinking about and that is the higher standard people expect Russia to have compared to the USA

What do I mean by that?

It is two fold

First standard:

Basically when Russia illegally invades a soverign country, it is somehow worse than when USA does it

The invasion of Iraq by the USA was not only illegal, it also was built on totally false pretexes

Yet, nothing really happened to the USA. They continued as usual. 

Meanwhile Russia was banend from SWIFT, sanctioned like hell, banned from Fifa, from Olympics etc

It seems like an illegal invasion of a soverign country is worse when Russia does it

Second standard:

It is pretty clear if you are outside the Western/NATO bubble that NATO is viewed by Russia as a threat

Russia sees how NATO bombed Libya totally illegally, not to mention Iraq as well

Therefore to them NATO is not a defensive alliance all the time

How come it is expected for Russia to allow their biggest neighboor and cultural ally, Ukraine to join this alliance?

Let us revese the roles

What if there was an anti American alliance which had engaged in acts of illegal aggression before and Mexico was considering joining it

Or Canada

Would USA not do anything?

Last time this happened it was with Cuba in 1961, a much smaller country that does not share a land border with USA

USA literally invaded Cuba, just like Russia did to Ukraine. The invasion failed and eventually was cut off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

Therefore, USA has a track record of invading neighboors which become allies of their enemies

Why is it different when Russia does the same?

Note, I do support Ukraine and I do not support Russia. They were clearly in the wrong here

The point of the thread is not that Russia isnt bad, but it is that USA is just as bad, yet it is not considered as such

It has not faced any real consequence like Russia did and that shows that international law does not exist and that might is right

What do you guys think?

 

 

 

Saddam mass murdered people, and the u.s. was not trying to own iraq.

The U.S. is bad, Russia is worse.

U.S. was much worse 50 years ago, Russia was even worse then too.

 

NATO is not a threat to Russian state, nato is threat to Russian expansion. otherwise they would be preparing for offensive toward Russia right now.

Edited Friday at 02:08 AM by Elliott

[BlueOak]

@Karmadhi

Held to a higher standard by who?
That will answer your question. You'll get a million different bias's in this thread with their own standards.

Russia is 
America is
China is
Europe

Insert your bias here.

I held and do hold them both to a similar standard if it matters. It's the only way to stay objective. Both were and are nations driven by militarism. Because they spend so much on their military, and so had or preceived advantage over other countries, they use their military.

In your analysis. Your bias is to completely ignore the Cold War and Russia-funded, armed and trained governments the US hit in these wars you describe. The leftover empire, the new empire was attacking. You must see it as almost random or on a whim. When in reality its actually predictable. Just as it's predictable that BRICS is now doing the same. Because that's human nature.

Insert the 100 reasons this time its different in someone's reply. Well, congrats, but its still a cycle that's happening and has happened for millennia.

The answer is universal disarmament or a reduction in arms. Which is only going to be achieved by AI governance (advice). I have no faith at all humans will reach this point in the next several hundred years, but AI will reach that conclusion in about 5 years; whether it can enact it, I don't know.
 

Edited Friday at 07:16 AM by BlueOak

[Kid A]

Yeah, even though the US of course shouldn't have invaded Iraq, it's pretty unfair to compare Ukraine to Saddam & co. What bad has Ukraine really done, other than trying to protect themselves from this exact "denazification" which is going on at the moment?

[Leo Gura]

It's totally different because the US did not annex Iraq. Putin seeks to annex Ukrainian land and end the existence of Ukraine as a nation. However bad the US is, Bush had no intention of stealing Iraqi land.

That's the key difference.

Iraq is a sovereign nation. Ukraine will not exist if Putin gets his way.

Annexing land violates every international law and principle. If you are annexing another nation's land, that automatically makes you the bad guy. No nation at this point should be annexing anyone else's land.

Russia is being held the correct standard all nations today are held to: no annexation.

Edited Friday at 07:27 AM by Leo Gura

[Daniel Balan]

@Karmadhi well for starters when the US invaded Iraq, it didn't invent 1000 years of false history where claiming that Iraq is not a true state, that it is an invented state, that the US invented and created the statehood of Iraq and that the Iraqi identity is bullshit and that in fact Iraqi identity is a direct result of a NKVD coup d'etat that wanted to separate it to its original identity which has always been American. 

 

[Karmadhi]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It's totally different because the US did not annex Iraq. Putin seeks to annex Ukrainian land and end the existence of Ukraine as a nation. However bad the US is, Bush had no intention of stealing Iraqi land.

That's the key difference.

Iraq is a sovereign nation. Ukraine will not exist if Putin gets his way.

Annexing land violates every international law and principle. If you are annexing another nation's land, that automatically makes you the bad guy. No nation at this point should be annexing anyone else's land.

Russia is being held the correct standard all nations today are held to: no annexation.

Russia at first did not make it clear they wanted to annex Ukraine, they simply wanted to remove the Zelensky government with a pro Russian one

Similar to what USA did to Iraq

They were banning Russia from everything before any land annexation took place, it literally happened in the first week of the invasion

You can make the argument today but not on the first week

Also even if Russia wins, Ukraine will still exist. They simply want the Eastern part of Ukraine that is mostly Russian and Russia believes its theirs. Whether it is true or not, the point is that they do not want all of Ukraine, at least not when the war started

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 under similar excuses and Georgia today still exists as a seperate state. I think if Ukraine had surrendered they would have had a similar fate. Their resistance caused Russia to double down and become more and more radical since now there is a huge sunk cost to the invasion.

And talking about annexation, Azerbajan invaded Armenia in 2022 and literally annexed land from them

Israel is slowly annexing and talking land in the West Bank

Where is the outrage there? I do not see Israel or Azerbajan banned from anything 

Not to mention Turkey that basically occupies Cyprus for decades

We have tons of examples of such actions but only Russia is being banned from everything

It is like that cop that sees 4 people speeding in the highway and decides to enforce the law only on 1 of them

Edited Friday at 11:36 AM by Karmadhi

[Karmadhi]

4 hours ago, Kid A said:

Yeah, even though the US of course shouldn't have invaded Iraq, it's pretty unfair to compare Ukraine to Saddam & co. What bad has Ukraine really done, other than trying to protect themselves from this exact "denazification" which is going on at the moment?

What wrong did the thousands of Iraqi civilians do to be killed by USA bombing of Iraq?

[Karmadhi]

4 hours ago, BlueOak said:

Held to a higher standard by who?

International organizations. They are banned from FIFA, from Eurovision, from Olympics, most firms left Russia and they got kicked from SWIFT

9 hours ago, Elliott said:

Saddam mass murdered people, and the u.s. was not trying to own iraq.

 

The victims of the invasion were ordinary Iraqis who died in the thousands, not just Saddam

USA basically put a puppet Iraqi state which is not different from what Russia intended to do to Ukraine if Ukraine had not resisted

You can NATO is not a threat to Russia, well Russia does not see it that way. They see how they started bombing other countries and they see them as a threat. To ask you again: Would USA tolerate Mexico or Canada join a pro Russian anti American alliance? USA literally invaded Cuba when they created an alliance with the Soviet Union. I am 1000% sure USA would do the same thing if they were in Russia's place given their track record.

Edited Friday at 11:31 AM by Karmadhi

[Karmadhi]

2 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

@Karmadhi well for starters when the US invaded Iraq, it didn't invent 1000 years of false history where claiming that Iraq is not a true state, that it is an invented state, that the US invented and created the statehood of Iraq and that the Iraqi identity is bullshit and that in fact Iraqi identity is a direct result of a NKVD coup d'etat that wanted to separate it to its original identity which has always been American. 

 

You can make an arguemnt that Eastern Ukraine has ties to Russia historically. I do not know the history to say with confidence. Many Russians see it that way. Just like Israelis see the West Bank as Israeli land, Azerbajan sees Karabakh as Azeri land etc. Yet nobody seems to complain much when they also illegally annex land there.

Land claims never end. Countries need to respect their borders and stop taking more land. Which is why I do not support Russia on their war. My whole thread was about the fact that other countries do the same (I gave 2 exmaples) yet only Russia is punished properly. It is as if 4 people are speding in a highway and only 1 gets a proper fine. Does he deserve the fine? Totally. Did the other 3 deserve it but didnt get it? Yup.

Edited Friday at 11:34 AM by Karmadhi

[Kid A]

50 minutes ago, Karmadhi said:

What wrong did the thousands of Iraqi civilians do to be killed by USA bombing of Iraq?

Roughly as little as the Kurdish, Kuwaiti, Shia, and Marsh Arab civilians who were killed by the Iraqis under Saddam. Like I said: «the US of course shouldn't have invaded Iraq.»

[Karmadhi]

2 minutes ago, Kid A said:

Roughly as little as the Kurdish, Kuwaiti, Shia, and Marsh Arab civilians who were killed by the Iraqis under Saddam. Like I said: «the US of course shouldn't have invaded Iraq.»

I think invading soveirgn countries and killing a bunch of people in them is equally bad whether Ukraine or Iraq are invaded

Law is law.

[Elliott]

1 hour ago, Karmadhi said:

 

 

The victims of the invasion were ordinary Iraqis who died in the thousands, not just Saddam

I said USA is bad, but attacking a murderous dictator is not as bad as attacking a fairly civil democracy like Putin did.

1 hour ago, Karmadhi said:

USA basically put a puppet Iraqi state which is not different from what Russia intended to do to Ukraine if Ukraine had not resisted

Not a puppet state, adjacent but not quite. Iraq has more autonomy, Ukraine would not.

[zazen]

14 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

The point of the thread is not that Russia isnt bad, but it is that USA is just as bad, yet it is not considered as such

It has not faced any real consequence

Because the US is the global hegemon and holds a dominant position in the current system.

Digging a little deeper: both invasions are bad, but one is based on fabricated lies of a threat (Iraq), the other is based on at least some level of perceived threat (Ukraine) - the severity of which is obviously debated. One is lies to justify imperial domination for gain, the other actually has some tangible facts on the ground indicating a threat - allowing us to understand the act was preemptively done for preservation (national security) rather than purely for gain. One has a empire logic to it, the other has as least some survival logic to it.

The argument of whether Ukraine is a threat or not is debated, but no serious person can say no threat at all existed. When we say Urkaine we don't mean Ukraine itself but a global superpower trojan horsing its aims through Ukraine. This is a country that neighbors you, that is used by a rival power bloc (US-West) you have had a historic Cold war with, who have think tank pieces talking of containing and overextending you, that have a track record of naughty behaviour their entire existence, that's ignored your red lines and security concerns or calls for a security architecture to be established post soviet era, that's increasing its military interoperability in a region that has been a historic invasion corridor, that Western strategists themselves have warned against - all this is apparently no threat at all. This threat was explicitly talked about, warned about, and eventually responded to in the final straw that broke the camel's back.

The non-Western world didn’t endorse Russia’s invasion, but it understood it - because it followed a logic familiar to any nation that’s ever had to navigate security, encirclement, or survival.  By contrast, the US invasion of Iraq was built on outright fabrication and had no logical foundation to understand it.  Both were condemned and escalatory - but only one could at least be understood on some basis of security. Iraq poses no security threat to a superpower entire oceans away on a different continent - compared to Russia's proximate threat on its border, however illegal, brutal and morally wrong it was for them to invade.

Russia annexing land is secondary and incidental to their primary aim of neutralizing the threat. US obviously can't annex land it doesn't border - that doesn't mean it can't annex its resources and plunder it imperially.

 

The key word here is lies - and an actual threat assessment being made rather than fabricated upon those lies. It's just as bad as Israel exaggerating its threat assessment of Hamas posing a existential threat to them - when they simply put their guard down, or as some have speculated stood down to allow the attack to continue and use it for their ethnic cleansing aims. The most militarized and surveilled place on earth (Gaza), by a regional power backed by a global superpower - against a non-military stateless group of people besieged - is somehow a ''existential'' threat. Get the fuck out lol

Edited Friday at 01:17 PM by zazen

[Karmadhi]

14 minutes ago, Elliott said:

attacking a fairly civil democracy like Putin did.

To be honest I have heard conflicting terms on this

Some say Ukraine was treating Russian speakers in Donbass like shit, banning their language and religion and some say they were not

I cannot say something for sure 

But in either case the Kiev government is not as bad as Saddam thats for sure

 

Edited Friday at 12:58 PM by Karmadhi

[Kid A]

26 minutes ago, Karmadhi said:

I think invading soveirgn countries and killing a bunch of people in them is equally bad whether Ukraine or Iraq are invaded

Law is law.

I think this is a strangely absolute position to hold. Do you mean this about all invasions of sovereign states? Do you think, for example, that it was evil of the Allies to invade Nazi Germany and that they shouldn't have done it?

[zazen]

Just now, Kid A said:

I think this is a strangely absolute position to hold. Do you mean this about all invasions of sovereign states? Do you think, for example, that it was evil of the Allies to invade Nazi Germany and that they shouldn't have done it?

Their was actually a defensive logic to it which makes it totally understandable. This is where a proper threat assessment has to be made. Usually the threat is entirely exaggerated (Iraqs case was fabricated) which is where the devilry comes. Nothing is as black and white or absolute. The abstractness of ''laws'' will never negate the reality of survival - that will be acted upon regardless of those laws making those actions ''illegal''. 

[Kid A]

6 minutes ago, zazen said:

Their was actually a defensive logic to it which makes it totally understandable. This is where a proper threat assessment has to be made. Usually the threat is entirely exaggerated (Iraqs case was fabricated) which is where the devilry comes. Nothing is as black and white or absolute. The abstractness of ''laws'' will never negate the reality of survival - that will be acted upon regardless of those laws making those actions ''illegal''. 

Good point.

[Daniel Balan]

3 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

 To ask you again: Would USA tolerate Mexico or Canada join a pro Russian anti American alliance? USA literally invaded Cuba when they created an alliance with the Soviet Union. I am 1000% sure USA would do the same thing if they were in Russia's place given their track record.

This is not true. Canada and Mexico have entirely different political perspectives and the US has never tried to install puppet governments in neither of them. 

The US would be more justified to invade Mexico for how much drugs and how many migrants enter illegally to the US than Russia is justified for invading Ukraine with their "Perceived threat" myth. 

Regarding the evil that the US has done, sure It is a bad look for the west that the US hasn't been punished severely for the huge mess they've done in Iraq. What they've done in Iraq is preposterous and has no excuse.

[Something Funny]

8 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

Russia at first did not make it clear they wanted to annex Ukraine, they simply wanted to remove the Zelensky government with a pro Russian one

Similar to what USA did to Iraq

They were banning Russia from everything before any land annexation took place, it literally happened in the first week of the invasion

Lol, you are regarded. Russia has been annexing Ukrainian land since 2014.