If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they're lying.
Evidence or GTFO.
You do have a point, it's probably better to spend time on instances where people have the same disdain for facts that I do (none) as opposed to instances where people have a much higher disdain for facts, as evidenced by the fact that you're allowed to run around telling blatant lies about people constantly.
Every word you speak is a lie. Are you even capable of being truthful?
Do you ever get tired of following me around and telling lies?
What I said is that you have no alternative, which you just agreed with.
So that returns to my question - if you're not aware of any alternative, you have zero solutions to what could've been done differently, even with the benefit of hindsight, then what, exactly, has led you to make this criticism? Because the news told you to, the same news that told all sorts of lies to justify the wars?
As a tankie, I oppose virtually all war, because that's what being a tankie means. I don't consider it acceptable for Russia to knock out the ability for people to heat their homes.
How about just "never bother in the first place?"
That's a completely ridiculous stance. You have no alternative whatsoever to what happened, and as I pointed out, it was always going to be messy because it represented 20 years of total failure, but you're criticizing it... why? Because the news told you to? The same news that lied us into the wars in the first place?
I didn't forget how bad the pullout was, I just also didn't forget how bad the occupation was. Ending the war deserves enough props to outweigh any mistakes made in the pullout.
If we had pulled out then, the regime we were propping up would instantly collapse and the withdrawal would've been messy and y'all would be criticizing Obama for pulling out the exact same way you're criticizing the pullout the way it actually played out, because it was always going to play out the same way.
And what would that plan have looked like, exactly? How do you pull out of the country, watch the inevitable collapse of the regime you spent 20 years building, and hand the county over to your enemies without it being messy and getting egg on your face?
It was inevitable that things would play out the way they did, and it needed to happen. Biden made the call and accepted the fallout for a completely necessary and good decision that everyone had been calling for for years. And yet, rather than taking credit for it, y'all want to try to shift it over to Trump! That's insane to me.
You understand that stopping fighting would in no way benefit the average Ukrainian
No, I do not "understand" this at all. The average Ukrainian would certainly be better off of the fighting stopped.
and I think most people would agree your nation no longer existing would be the least beneficial thing for Ukraine.
First off, Ukraine "no longer existing" isn't really on the table. Secondly, while a state no longer existing is obviously a bad outcome from the perspective of the state, whether it's good or bad for the average person, and to what degree, depends on the state and what the alternative is.
I'm not aware of very much that the Ukrainian state was doing to help it's people before the war, or what rights people living in the disputed territories would enjoy as part of Ukraine as opposed to if they were part of Russia, or vice versa. So I see very little case for supporting either side in the war, from the perspective of class interests as distinct from state interests.
I’m genuinely curious: we all want the way to stop but I really do want to know what’s your solution?
Negotiate. Diplomatic approaches have been completely written off from start to finish, with Ukraine insisting on a complete withdrawal from all disputed territory as a precondition for talks, even from Crimea, which Russia already had before the war. Some territorial concessions are worth it to stop the meat grinder, because the amount of lives that would have to be sacrificed to reclaim all the territory are not worth the benefit.
If only we'd continued our brutal occupation of Afghanistan another 20 years, maybe the regime would've lasted another two weeks after we left.
Y'all are completely hopeless, enjoy your forever wars.
I suppose it's considered acceptable for the Ukrainian people to suffer like that for the sake of the state interests of Ukraine and NATO, but personally I disagree, which is why I want the war to end. I personally don't see how continued fighting is meant to benefit the average Ukrainian.
War profiteers. If you work for a company like Raytheon or Lockheed Martin then you are doing an incredible amount of harm to the world and I have even less respect than I have for people in the military. These companies are constantly looking to fuel conflicts, destabilize, and pump all sorts of weapons into every corner of the globe. These people are the true scum of the earth, they are among the worst people who have ever lived.
It's bizarre that libs got mad at her either now or in the first place. I've heard this bizarre take of "Voting is not an endorsement!" plenty of times on here, and it just means that the person believes in unconditionally supporting the Dems while assuaging their conscience by sending thoughts and prayers to alter reality. Publically saying that you'll vote for someone is an endorsement. It doesn't matter what thoughts you hold on your head unless those thoughts actually impact material reality in some way.
again, shitpost because i didn’t understand what you were saying
Yeah I'm done here.
'Morally Indefensible' - but Adolf Hitler will not come out against drinking cow's milk.
This is even more incoherent than ever, but whatever, I guess I'll try.
ok well in this case it just makes complaining moot, because for some reason, you’re admitting that you’re going to hold a worthless protest vote that means nothing. So that’s cool.
Isn't it your job to show that voting for Harris would be meaningful? If my vote is meaningless, then you should have no problem with me voting however I personally prefer.
in terms of how elections work, i suppose so, in terms of how power works, not really. Down ballots are much more ambiguous and nebulous than primary candidacy, by the virtue of there being like 500 congress members. as opposed to one president.
How does there being more congress members change anything about the dynamics we're discussing?
also, i didn’t realize that both trump and kamala were running for downballot positions.
I genuinely cannot even begin to follow your logic. Walk me through how you got from point A to point B here.
The fact that Harris isn't running downballot is even more reason why your argument is completely nonsensical. Why should I withhold my vote from a different candidate, who might even be pro-Palestine, instead of withholding it from the person I'm actually criticizing? This is, again, a point in my favor.
do you unironically think that in a vacuum, if you were to elect kamala harris, and one republican congressman for example. That it would functionally equivalent to you not voting at all?
No, I think that would be worse than not voting at all, because my vote in down ballot races is more important than the presidential race.
And then trump having the potential to win, and you still having no options down ballot. This is an objectively worse position to put yourself in. You simply have less leverage there.
I don't know what this is even saying.
i don’t believe the 22nd prevents VPs from running for presidency for a term. That would be weird. Unless you’re implying as a russian bot would do, that kamala is literally only a one term pony. Which would be odd.
Again, I am extremely confused by your logic here and cannot even begin to fathom how you got from point A to point B.
The only thing I can think of is if you're using "midterms" to refer to the next presidential election in 2028, as opposed to the, you know midterm elections that happen every two years, the next being in 2026. Kamala will not be up for reelection in the 2026 midterms, because, and this is true, presidents serve four year terms. Do you think presidents having four year terms is Russian misinformation?
??? I mean if you specifically only care about israel palestine maybe but trump literally tried to overthrow democracy. How is that not markedly worse than literally any other republican, who has not yet tried to do that.
I'm not invested in protecting the capitalist, imperialist state. It doesn't represent me at all and frequently makes my life worse, I have zero loyalty towards it.
George W. Bush started two major wars that got nearly a million people killed, he instituted unprecedented and illegal mass surveillance programs that removed any semblance of civil liberties that once existed in this country, he used indefinite detention without trial - and he did everything with the full support of the Democrats, who have happily continued his policies without any challenge at all (despite the fact that they were allegedly meant as "emergency powers"). Trump is bad but his presidency was nowhere near as bad as that of Bush.
curious how you only list 20 years of foreign military policy, and not republican policies. Or domestic policy at all.
Seems to me like you only care about foreign military policy. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a problem, but the war on terror is over, we’ve pulled out of afghan. This shit’s literally done right now.
Yes, I was discussing Democratic foreign military policy because that is the topic that we're discussing. I don't mind discussing domestic policy, but those issues are not unrelated. The only way we'd have the funds to do the kinds of things that need to happen domestically is by cutting the unbelievably massive military budget, which is higher than the next 9 countries combined.
But even if we could, I am opposed to imperialism even if the spoils of that imperialism were distributed to the people. So bad foreign policy but good domestic policy would not be satisfactory. But even that isn't on the table, the profits of all this killing go straight to the top.
And no, it's not over. The war in Afghanistan is (now replaced with sanctions to impose starvation), but we're still involved in other places like Gaza and Yemen. We may not have boots on the ground, but my priority is not on whether American soldiers are being placed in danger, it's with stopping the violence towards the people living there.
The war on drugs might be another thing, paired with more democracy war, however unpopular that may be, it’s the only realistic way to solve the immigration crisis, the one that republicans constantly make shit up about.
What on earth are you even talking about? Going to war with Mexico or something?
Not a single one of these applies to me but your lazy condescension is noted.
Totally fine so long as it's our rich people who control politicians, just so long as it's not foreign rich people.
Nationalism is a hell of a drug.
That analysis makes no sense on multiple levels. First of all, since I don't live in a swing state, my downballot/midterm votes are far more important than my vote for president. Second, if my vote for president was so important, that would be all the more reason for me to use it as leverage. Third, the fundamental dynamics are the same for downballot races as the race for president, there is nothing unique about the presidential race that would mean I should treat it differently. If withholding a vote is an effective strategy downballot, then it is an effective strategy in the presidential race. And if the risk of Trump getting elected is too great to employ that strategy in the presidential race, then the risk of another Republican getting elected downballot should be a deterrent too. Lastly, there is virtually no chance that Kamala could be pressured to change her position during the midterms when she herself is not up for reelection.
The only way I can make any sense of your logic is if Trump is uniquely horrible compared to other Republicans, and I don't really consider that to be the case.
If your ideals don’t match at all you’ve either got a failure of ideals, or a failure of government, which one probably depends on which one is at a larger scale.
Well, let's see. For the past 20 years, my entire adult life, my ideals have been saying that we should stop slaughtering people in the middle east. In that time, the democrats ran Kerry, a hawk, Obama, a hawk, Clinton, a hawk, Biden, a hawk, and now Harris, a hawk. The result of that was nearly a million people dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, some more in other countries like Yemen, and now more and at a faster rate than ever in Palestine. And what exactly do they have to show for any of it in terms of making people's lives better? I think it's pretty clear which side the failure is on.
Why? You wanna know why? Because from the earliest age that I was aware of politics existing, we were sending people overseas to commit mass murder for no fucking reason! Why? Because I was calling for it to stop since I was thirteen and there was never any indication that it ever would! It legitimately could have continued for another 20 years as the corpses piled up higher and higher while having no meaningful voice to oppose it! My own damn brother came back so fucked up from the experience that he made my family's life a living hell and eventually went out to try to kill some innocent person! And we got off so unbelievably lucky, do you have any idea, and shred of understanding of what the people of those countries went through, for absolutely nothing? How dare you ask me why. You have a fucking responsibility to understand the horrors that you're supporting if you want to criticize the withdrawal.
But thank you for answering my question, you are indeed, blindly trusting what the "experts" in the media and government tell you to think, even when those exact same "experts" lied to the public and faced zero consequences, completely failed to show the perspective of the victims, and never experienced any personal cost from it.
It's absolutely bizarre to me that y'all refuse to give your own guy credit for ending the war. Trump "made a plan" but left it for the next guy to carry out so that he'd have to take the flak from the media when they inevitably attacked whoever ended the war. If he'd won reelection, he very well could've torn up that deal and left it to the next guy again, prolonging the war. Biden could've done the same, but he accepted the responsibility and took the flak, and there is absolutely no reason I can see for y'all to accept the media's framing of that as a bad thing, except that you just love war so much you won't take credit for ending it even when it would benefit you.