Comment Re:Does this mean a kinetic attack? (Score 1) 73
I do not know if the Russian perspective is complete BS or BS mixed with some elements of reason because I have never seen it. The bottom line however is this: if any country X tries to introduce good Y into a country Z and the result is that the country's material wealth is destroyed, millions have to flee and hundresd of thousands die then I'd say whatever good that was that was being introduced it is not so good. Now X=roughly West/NATO, Y=Democracy and civil rights, Z= Syria or same X&Y with Z being Libya or Kosovo etc - this is ok. even if it is not. If however X=Russia (or Serbia), Y is protection of certain ethnic population (same in the Serbia/Kosovo conflict) and Z is Ukraine (Kosovo) it is somehow bad, even evil possibly hitler level evil. The only thing I know is this: media are lyig and politicians in the west as well as in the east just do whatever they think is right. Very often this right is just wrong, often enough on both sides. I do not have to justify what Putin does. I think his actions are not rational but then again - I am pretty sure Ukrainians are not heroes of democracy and human rights - they and the Baltic states do discriminate against Russians although they do not have to. Ukraine is also full to the brim with our weapons. I wonder if that matters for a guy like Putin who does not care about how things look like but act on basis of facts (this is my speculation) - maybe indeed he wants to prevent these two tiny enclaves from being overran? Ukraine is in any case in much better position than Georgians were more than 10y ago and i would have good chance to cleanse the tiny enclaves in the east Krajina style (Krajina is a place in Croatia). Bottom line we have blood on our hands for no good reason, if we did no mess around Ukraine this may still have happened but at least it would not be our fault.
BTW: I actually do not mind killing Saddam. This was one rare occasion we did something good and considering that he was killing his people with gas (for this we do have evidence not like in many cases in Syria for instance) the price may have been worth it. We still messed it up at the end. But I guess this was a good try. Still based on a lie and I guess the goodness of it was an accident.
Additional complexity in our current situation is the absolute infantile and idiotic behaviour of our media and politicians that use that to gauge public opinion. The way it goes if NATO invokes article 5 now (I am pretty sure DDoS attacks on many Russian sites were done from the Western countries - how about that?) it may actually provoke escalation. This is what the West did at least since Joe became a potus - talk BS and escalate. I am old and I do not give a shit. But there are lots of people that do because they dislike the nuclear war for some reason. Another thing - Putin actually killed pandemic - I have not seen any covid BS in media for like 3 days in a row! He is my hero even if he goes down (which I find likely).