Ukraine Is Not “The Good Guys”…

 

…and Russia is not “The Bad Guys”.

One of the conceits we as Americans seem to have, is that wars fall into “Good Guys” vs. “Bad Guys”. We slather this idea over every conflict. In our own history, we can easily apply this to most of our wars, all it takes is some innovation. (What about the Mexican-American War, you ask? Oh, Look! A comet!)

The problem comes when we really try to put this narrative into practice as policy. Putin has been cast a an international bad guy, like Stalin, or worse, a Bond villain. The only motivation he can possibly have is that he is Evil! Without him, Russia would be a wonderful free and non-corrupt nation. He came from the KGB after all, and every single member of the KGB was the blackest of souls. Putin led them.

Meanwhile, the President of Ukraine is a great guy. Good line about needing ammunition. Brave front. Practically George Washington. He is a funny man who is now President. What a great story. He is on the side of right and light and justice.

It is all simplistic and childish. Neither man is a “nice man” or even good man. Good men don’t lock up political opposition. Both of these men have. Good men don’t engage in excessive corruption. Again, both of them have. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Russia is not far behind them. Or maybe Ukraine is not far behind Russia, who can tell? We complain about cancel culture here, but in both these nations, it is a bit stronger when you go up against the ruling powers.

Using narratives to make sense of the world is human. We all do it. This narrative of good vs. evil is just wrong, and it is distorting what is going on. The cake is baked, and I believe the West will look back on this as a colossal blunder on our part, where we helped to unite Russia and China further, all the while being distracted from the economic disaster at home that this conflict made worse. And it is a conflict we encouraged through our inept foreign policy and years of demonizing Russia and Putin for political reasons.

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  1. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Bryan G. Stephens: Using narratives to make sense of the world is human. We all do it. This narrative of good vs. evil is just wrong, and it is distorting what is going on. The cake is baked, and I believe the West will look back on this as a colossal blunder on our part, where we helped to unite Russia and China further, all the while being distracted from the economic disaster at home that this conflict made worse. And it is a conflict we encouraged through our inept foreign policy, and years of demonizing Russia and Putin for political reasons. 

     

     

     

    • #1
  2. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Bryan G. Stephens: And it is a conflict we encouraged through our inept foreign policy, and years of demonizing Russia and Putin for political reasons. 

     

     

    Supposedly, back in 1991, we promised them we wouldn’t expand NATO one inch. 

    I think we should have just given those guys tons of weapons for resistance of an invasion and left it at that.

    • #2
  3. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot) Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)
    @ArizonaPatriot

    [/sarc on/]

    Bryan, you are a Putin stooge and a war criminal for writing this.  How much are you getting paid by the Kremlin?  Or wait . . . maybe you’ve never been real, and you’re just a Russian bot.  Or maybe you’re from Georgia, all right — Stalin’s Georgia.  A sleeper agent!  Like Black Widow’s parents!

    You’re in the tank for Putin, Bryan.  Even though you’re in favor of nuking Russia.

    Of course, I don’t mean a word of the above, Bryan.  Good post.

    (And yes, I do understand that your sarcastic suggestion that we nuke Russia was made to illustrate the way that anyone presenting a nuanced view of the situation is vilified, quite unfairly.)

    • #3
  4. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    Lest see if I understand the argument.  

    Because Ukraine isn’t as pure as the driven snow, and is flawed and corrupt (as are we by the way) then whatever it is that happens to them is OK by us?    

    By that same argument, if and when China moves against Taiwan using exactly the same rationale as Russia is using in its move against Ukraine – they are one people and historically part of the same country – that too will be OK.   After all, corruption is endemic in Taiwan.   It is estimated that 10-15% of the cost of public projects are payments to organized crime.   Three former presidents have been prosecuted after leaving office.   They aren’t “good guys” either.   So whatever happens to them is OK by us.

    • #4
  5. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Let me know when all the straw men have been vanquished, and perfect has finally trampled good.

    This is millennarian nihilism (!)

     

    • #5
  6. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    If you are the Clintons or the Bidens, Ukraine is the good guy since it is a huge source of their graft. While ordinary Ukrainians get a salary of $400 per month that brilliant drug addict Hunter gets a much larger salary than 100 ordinary Ukrainians. Slava Ukraina. 

    • #6
  7. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    And Obama had Dinesh D’Sousa put in jail.

    Don’t think Trump did, but he did have the mean tweets. 

    • #7
  8. Locke On Member
    Locke On
    @LockeOn

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling?  Shame!

    • #8
  9. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Locke On (View Comment):

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling? Shame!

    Right. 

    I haven’t heard anybody here declare fealty to Zelenzky or start packing for the Holy Land of Ukrainistan.  Straw men.

    And this RUssian invasion of Ukraine very clearly offers a more and less moral choice of alignments.

    I don’t know who Zelensky is because *I do not care*.  What I care about is this guy’s country is getting steamrolled by the Soviets, and that’s enough for me.

    Russkie Na Khuy!

    • #9
  10. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Locke On (View Comment):

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling? Shame!

    Talk about distorting arguments. Please provide evidence of this. Define ‘indiscriminately’. If you won’t or can’t, then stop fantasizing and accusing people of moral blindness.

    If anything, Putin is failing because he hasn’t (yet) shelled indiscriminately, or even targeted civilian infrastructure. And our fat retired Generals still fighting the last Great War going back 100 years mock Putin for insufficient “shock and awe”. 

     

     

    • #10
  11. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot) Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Locke On (View Comment):

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling? Shame!

    I see no evidence whatsoever of civilians being shelled indiscriminately.

    Maybe they have been.  I see absolutely zero evidence of this.  Based on the reports of deaths in the Ukrainian cities, which generally seem to be exceptionally small — in the double-digits, typically — this claim seems completely unsupported.

    As an example, this story yesterday reports nine civilian deaths in Kharkov.  Nine.  In a city with a population of 1.4 million (though perhaps some have fled).

    If the Russians were indiscriminately shelling a city of over a million people, wouldn’t you expect a lot more than nine deaths?

    • #11
  12. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    RufusRJones (View Comment):
    Supposedly, back in 1991, we promised them we wouldn’t expand NATO one inch. 

     

     

     

    • #12
  13. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    There is no substantive analysis in this post of the issues involved  that might help someone determine who are the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this conflict.  Just vague generalities about “Ukraine is corrupt” and “anyone who can get himself  elected to office is a crook” level rhetoric.  

     

    • #13
  14. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Locke On (View Comment):

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling? Shame!

    I see no evidence whatsoever of civilians being shelled indiscriminately.

    Maybe they have been. I see absolutely zero evidence of this. Based on the reports of deaths in the Ukrainian cities, which generally seem to be exceptionally small — in the double-digits, typically — this claim seems completely unsupported.

    As an example, this story yesterday reports nine civilian deaths in Kharkov. Nine. In a city with a population of 1.4 million (though perhaps some have fled).

    If the Russians were indiscriminately shelling a city of over a million people, wouldn’t you expect a lot more than nine deaths?

    Here is the evidence, as presented by CNN.  If you don’t understand what you see, that doesn’t make other claims false.

    For the lawyers here:  Note that our word “missile” is subsumed by the Russian-based use of “rocket”, and “shelling” is not required to be actual howitzer fire to count as shelling.

    If you are prepared to refute this evidence of indiscriminate shelling of civilians, I await something substantial.  We are not looking at BABY MILK FACTORY stuff here.

    Show me either the valid military target, or the apology from the Russians for multiple errant volleys.

    • #14
  15. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    I’m stunned, human beings are flawed. I never knew that. Sarcasm aside, I suspect that there is some resentment towards Ukrainians because if they simply gave in it would make our lives less stressful. We would no longer have to look at human suffering, and more importantly gasoline would be less expensive. Well, we still get to sleep in our own beds, as do the Russians, unlike the Ukrainians.  

    • #15
  16. Chris O Coolidge
    Chris O
    @ChrisO

    Bryan G. Stephens: One of the conceits we as Americans seem to have, is that wars fall into “Good Guys” vs. “Bad Guys”. We slather this idea over every conflict.

    This calls for the Zero Effect…

    • #16
  17. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Bryan G. Stephens: Good men don’t lock up political opposition. Both of these men have. Good men don’t engage in excessive corruption. Again, both of them have. The Ukraine is one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Russia is not far behind them. Or maybe Ukraine is not far behind Russia, who can tell. We complain about cancel culture here, but in both these nations, it is a bit stronger when you go up against the ruling powers. 

    I disagree with this, in a way. I’m beginning to believe leaders of these kinds of countries – or maybe even any country, cannot be “good” men. They have to act and they have to defeat their enemies somehow, otherwise someone ‘worse’ than they will take control. In some countries like North Korea, I believe it is impossible for a leader to emerge who could even change the direction of the country and ease the totalitarian restrictions on the population even slightly without getting himself and his family executed.

    But in general, I certainly agree with this post and it’s sad how many can’t see their own base-psychologies over-invested and distorting their viewpoints.

    • #17
  18. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I don’t think Putin is the monster that he is constantly portrayed as being by the mass media. The big surprises after the terrorist attacks in September 2001 were Putin and Gaddafi. They were both horrified by the attacks and helped GW in the early years of the war on terror. Putin had been in office only a couple of years, and he actually liked and respected GW.

    Furthermore, I’m not sure that the USSR was entirely wrong about their impression that Afghanistan was harboring terrorists in the late 1970s. The anti-communist mujahedeen may have been a nascent terrorist group in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) group of terrorist organizations that were forming in the Middle East and South Asia. At the time, the media was giving cover to Carter’s abysmal foreign policy actions, and some think Carter used the invasion of Afghanistan to distract the world from his failures in the Middle East. Carter’s opponent George McGovern wrote a piece for the Atlantic Monthly criticizing Carter’s policy. It was an article that changed entirely the way I saw Carter, the USSR, and Afghanistan. At that time, I was ticked off at the Democrats over Carter’s wheat embargo that caused so much suffering in Russia. I would recommend this article for anyone looking for a different view of the events of that time. It puts the development of Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan in a perspective that’s very different from the one the Democrat media has given us.

    Putin has been trying to be a civilized leader of Russia. What he did in invading Ukraine was a clear wrong to me. It’s 2022 and sovereignty is inviolate. When I read Putin’s speech this past week, what I heard were echoes of GW’s speech to the UN about Iraq. Not surprised. They respected each other in working together on the war on terror. I’m sure GW’s rebukes this past week have really stung Putin. I think Putin thought he was doing the right thing. For some reason, he deemed Ukraine a threat. His mentor GW made a big impression on him. What Putin overlooked was GW’s dad’s earlier speeches on sovereignty. What united the world against Iraq in 1990 was Iraq’s invasion of the sovereign Kuwait.

    Other people see this situation completely differently from the way I see it, and I’m not sure I could even say that I see Putin correctly. I am open to other possibilities than the one I’ve written. It is really hard to sort this out from such a distance. And people do change.

    I am completely on the side of Ukraine this week. I’ve seen nothing to support the contention that they were an unstable corrupt dangerous terrorist state on Russia’s border. Putin’s actions were wrong. But I’m not ready to condemn Putin. It is complicated.

    • #18
  19. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Bryan G. Stephens: Good men don’t lock up political opposition. Both of these men have. Good men don’t engage in excessive corruption. Again, both of them have. The Ukraine is one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Russia is not far behind them.

    LOL.

    Look in the mirror.

    We’ve been a self governing Republic for over 200 years.

     What’s our excuse?

    The Ukrainians are defending their country. They have not invaded a neighbor.  They have not killed innocent civilians.  They have not killed or poisoned expats in foreign countries.  

    If an American “Conservative” can’t tell the difference between Good and Evil, I have to rethink my position around here.

    • #19
  20. Jager Coolidge
    Jager
    @Jager

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Locke On (View Comment):

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling? Shame!

    I see no evidence whatsoever of civilians being shelled indiscriminately.

    Maybe they have been. I see absolutely zero evidence of this. Based on the reports of deaths in the Ukrainian cities, which generally seem to be exceptionally small — in the double-digits, typically — this claim seems completely unsupported.

    As an example, this story yesterday reports nine civilian deaths in Kharkov. Nine. In a city with a population of 1.4 million (though perhaps some have fled).

    If the Russians were indiscriminately shelling a city of over a million people, wouldn’t you expect a lot more than nine deaths?

    So residential areas, shopping malls, parks, holocausts monuments and schools are now high value military that require outlawed cluster munitions?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10559373/Ukraine-war-Kyiv-survives-night-Russians-suffer-losses.html

    • #20
  21. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Why all the nuance? Isn’t Ukraine a sovereign nation? 

    • #21
  22. Mad Gerald Coolidge
    Mad Gerald
    @Jose

    I’m about halfway through an interview with Frederick Kagan by Jordan Peterson.  Kagan has been studying the USSR and Russia for years.  He acknowledges that Putin may have leaned toward democracy after the fall of the USSR.  But he goes on to make a strong argument that Putin has dealt with the west dishonestly and in bad faith for a long time. 

    He is not being shaped by events and reacting in a reasonable fashion. Rather, he has himself shaped events and is reaching a desired outcome. Current events are precisely what he has worked to achieve.

    Regardless of Ukraine’s “goodness” or “badness”, Putin’s actions are a step toward his long term goals of elevating Russia and opposing the west.

    • #22
  23. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Locke On (View Comment):

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling? Shame!

    I see no evidence whatsoever of civilians being shelled indiscriminately.

    Maybe they have been. I see absolutely zero evidence of this. Based on the reports of deaths in the Ukrainian cities, which generally seem to be exceptionally small — in the double-digits, typically — this claim seems completely unsupported.

    As an example, this story yesterday reports nine civilian deaths in Kharkov. Nine. In a city with a population of 1.4 million (though perhaps some have fled).

    If the Russians were indiscriminately shelling a city of over a million people, wouldn’t you expect a lot more than nine deaths?

    KHARKIV

     

    BUCHA

     

    Oh wait. not from RT. So i’m sure you won’t believe it.

    • #23
  24. Vince Guerra Inactive
    Vince Guerra
    @VinceGuerra

    Franco (View Comment):

    Locke On (View Comment):

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling? Shame!

    Talk about distorting arguments. Please provide evidence of this. Define ‘indiscriminately’. If you won’t or can’t, then stop fantasizing and accusing people of moral blindness.

    If anything, Putin is failing because he hasn’t (yet) shelled indiscriminately, or even targeted civilian infrastructure. And our fat retired Generals still fighting the last Great War going back 100 years mock Putin for insufficient “shock and awe”.

     

     

    The fact that they’re all hyper focused on “destroying a civilian television tower” *gasp*  as the baseline for Russian crimes against humanity is telling. Maybe it’s happening, but I have yet to see it either. 

    • #24
  25. Locke On Member
    Locke On
    @LockeOn

    Here’s a sample of what’s being willfully ignored, from a Western source:

    Kozak has a lot more above.  This is NOT hard to find.  Plenty of onsite posts on Youtube, twitter, etc., many of them already linked from Rico.

     

    • #25
  26. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    MarciN (View Comment):
    Putin has been trying to be a civilized leader of Russia.

     @marcin 

    You really need to do some research on Putin.

    This is from 2015

    Since Putin took power, dozens of journalists have been murdered and many of Putin’s most prominent critics have ended up dead. While some, like Alexei Navalny, have been able to remain alive, possibly due to the amount of international media coverage, not everyone has been so lucky. And while some critics, like Navalny, are imprisoned after a sham trial, others, like Alexander Gabyshev, are subjected to enforced psychiatric treatment.

    It’s unclear exactly how many of Putin’s enemies have ended up dead in total, but the number continues to rise. And the murders aren’t only in Russia. In 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was gunned down in Berlin in a plot believed to have been perpetrated by Putin’s agents. These are the enemies of Putin who have died

     

    Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB agent who died three weeks after drinking a cup of tea at a London hotel that had been laced with deadly polonium-210.

    A British inquiry found that Litvinenko was poisoned by FSB agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who were acting on orders that had “probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin.

     

    “The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal was the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, on 4 March 2018 in the city of Salisbury, England. According to UK sources[5][6] and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),[7] they were poisoned by means of a Novichok nerve agent. Both Sergei and Yulia Skripal spent several weeks in hospital in critical condition, before being discharged. A police officer, Nick Bailey, was also taken into intensive care after attending the incident, and was later discharged.[8][9][10][a]

    Victims

    3 admitted to hospital
    (subsequently discharged):
    The Skripals
    Det Sgt Nick Bailey, Wilts Police.
    Two other people were poisoned later, one died

     

    Get that? Putin has poisoned numerous people in the West with Nerve Gas.

    An entire British village was turned upside down.

    and finally, just to show his meddling in Ukraine goes way back…

    Yushchenko, 64, was poisoned in 2004 when he was campaigning in an election against a Russian-backed candidate Viktor Yanukovych.

    Yanukovych eventually won the initial vote after Yushchenko became ill while visiting Austria but he was successful after the vote was re-run.

    Russian officials claimed the illness was probably caused by bad food and too much alcohol but doctors detected traces of dioxin, which is the toxic chemical used in Agent Orange, in his blood.

      

    I’m not even going to go into his slaughter of Georgians and Chechins.  Or his support of a vile dictator in Syria.

    Do some research.  He’s a monster.

    • #26
  27. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Why all the nuance? Isn’t Ukraine a sovereign nation?

    Apparently not.  Guess it doesn’t meet some super secret checklist in use around here.

    • #27
  28. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Mad Gerald (View Comment):

    I’m about halfway through an interview with Frederick Kagan by Jordan Peterson. Kagan has been studying the USSR and Russia for years. He acknowledges that Putin may have leaned toward democracy after the fall of the USSR. But he goes on to make a strong argument that Putin has dealt with the west dishonestly and in bad faith for a long time.

    He is not being shaped by events and reacting in a reasonable fashion. Rather, he has himself shaped events and is reaching a desired outcome. Current events are precisely what he has worked to achieve.

    Regardless of Ukraine’s “goodness” or “badness”, Putin’s actions are a step toward his long term goals of elevating Russia and opposing the west.

    Actually, I think he’s put Russia in a far worse security position.

    His military is being exposed as having serious deficiencies.  He’s galvanized international opinion against Russia, while putting it’s economy at risk. Bank runs, cratered stock market, and devalued ruble are just the start.

    He’s also shown every single neighbor that they need to be part of some security block, so it’s the greatest add for NATO membership ever. 

    • #28
  29. Vince Guerra Inactive
    Vince Guerra
    @VinceGuerra

    Jager (View Comment):
    So residential areas, shopping malls, parks, holocausts monuments and schools are now high value military that require outlawed cluster munitions?

    We need to seek greater discernment. Let us not forget the lessons of the last two years. Everything they told us about Trump, Russian collusion, George Floyd, BLM, Covid, the election, Jan6th, the vaccines, Ivermectin etc has been a lie. Everything.

    So why are we suddenly supposed to believe them when the say, “Russia bad, trust us.” We need better information than vignettes from known manpuilators and repurposed images from other wars. The propaganda machine is ratcheted up to 11. This is a fluid environment with updates from Twitter abounding.

    Safe and effective. Indeed. 

    The DC swamp couldn’t care less if 1 million Ukrainian men die fighting Russians. Putin maybe couldn’t care less either. The only losers here are Ukrainians who cannot beat them without US aid.

    Those characterizing this as a David and Goliath battle between good and evil dont understand the history or the geopolitics of the region. They need to pray and study before standing and raising their fists once again.

    • #29
  30. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Locke On (View Comment):

    What level of moral blindness does it take to equate civilians being shelled indiscriminately, and those doing the shelling? Shame!

    I see no evidence whatsoever of civilians being shelled indiscriminately.

    Maybe they have been. I see absolutely zero evidence of this. Based on the reports of deaths in the Ukrainian cities, which generally seem to be exceptionally small — in the double-digits, typically — this claim seems completely unsupported.

    As an example, this story yesterday reports nine civilian deaths in Kharkov. Nine. In a city with a population of 1.4 million (though perhaps some have fled).

    If the Russians were indiscriminately shelling a city of over a million people, wouldn’t you expect a lot more than nine deaths?

    Indiscriminately no. Intentionally, yes. 

    • #30
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