this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Why are we letting the people responsible for Iraq and Afghanistans current state get away with it? Like if the US wants to arrest a war criminal Bush and Cheney are right there. Same for Blair, or Harper, or any of the other architects of the invasions.
Because bourgeoisie law does three things. Firstly it protects capital against individuals. Secondly it protects itself against individuals so it can maintain "order". Finally, it prevents capital against itself, to prevent it devouring itself in competition or sucking hard enough to create a revolutionary populace. Protecting individuals against each other or against capital is not the purpose of law enforcement, much less protecting people from war criminals. (Btw if anyone can find the parenti lecture this was based off, please tell me because i forget)
I'm not saying they should get away with it, I'm just saying that we shouldn't let Russia get away with it because the United States and the UK got away with it. It's like the Boomer argument that it's not fair to them for student loans to be forgiven because they had to pay.
Would you support a policy of student loan forgiveness for only white people?
What kind of stupid ass comment is this?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Do you not understand why I said that? I would not support student loan forgiveness only for white people because, while I like student loan forgiveness, I can recognize that such a program would ultimately just be in the interest of white supremacy. I wouldn't pull the disingenuous liberal line of "you've gotta start somewhere" as though the policy was tethered to some imaginary future state that it is nominally more similar to but practically much further from.
Likewise, saying "well, at least by holding Belarus to account some countries will be held to account, which gets us closer to all countries being held to account!" is absurd. It promotes western dominance, not the abstract idea of "holding countries to account". Striking only one side saying that it's closer to both sides being struck than striking zero sides would be is sophistry.
I’m not sure where in the world you live, but for myself, I’m in a western country. It would be far more easy for my country to hold the architects of the Afghanistan invasion to account than Putin. The fact that my government doesn’t indicates that all the talk of punishing Russia has nothing to do with punishing aggression, it’s just about punishing a rival
It's actually far easier to hold putin to account than western leaders - the western hegemony is hardly going to turn on itself, but it can easily send arms to Ukraine.
That this arming of ukraine is for completely self interested reasons doesn't mean it also has the side effect of helping a country fight tyranny. A good thing done for bad reasons can still be a good thing.
Also, if the western countries will get paid for the help afterwards, that'd be an almost free win
You're trying to say by implication that the ship has sailed on Bush and Obama, but they're still alive. The USA Olympics team is still around. Even if you should've banned them in 1890 doesn't mean you still can't. They haven't apologised, paid reparations, or ceased any of their human rights violating projects.
Why are we letting China get away with it? Why are we letting Saudi Arabia get away with it? The IOC is a toaster and it's like you're asking it to make you a whole roast dinner. It can't even make toast properly...
I’m not asking for anything, I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy in calling for punishing Russia for war crimes when in every respect the US and her vassals have committed and are committing orders of magnitude more violence in the last couple decades
*his. Come on, the US is not a motherland, it's a fatherland.
This is spiraling into whataboutism and I'm disengaging. Have a nice day!
You realise by targetting an official enemy state of the most powerful of the lot, we're essentially rewarding them? And making them more powerful on the world stage? So a fixation on CN and RU is inherently going to become counter-productive to goals of stability and human development etc.