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Russia's Losses as of July 4th, 2023
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I’m deleting this comment, what I thought was just an observation seemed to upset instead.
Yeah way more Iraqi civilians died.
That’s a great point. War is so stupid. I bet the collateral numbers from this war will also be depressing
Yep, and as long as war is profitable for the US it will always be something the US is looking to engage in.
You mean where the US and it's allies, with air superiority, carpet bombed the fuck out of civilian centres? Who'd have thought those school children and families cooking their supper wouldn't put up much of a fight?
How many people did the US lose in Vietnam or Korea? How many soldiers has it lost in Ukraine, even?
Fair enough. I didn’t think my comment would incense so many people. I just think it’s interesting how Americans think of war when they really have no concept of all-out war like is happening in Ukraine. That’s all I was trying to convey
Ah, in that case, I apologise and we're in agreement. I construed it as saying the opposite, that the US wins wars without many casualties (relatively speaking) because it's superior rather than because it learned in Vietnam that it can't win conventional wars and so now only targets places that can't really fight back.
I'm afraid that you may have walked into an in ongoing discussion as to whether the US military and NATO are forces for good or are particularly good at what they claim to do. People who dislike NATO and US imperialism can get a bit critical. You can't win though, because now the USians who 'have no [real] concept of all-out war' will be around to get you from the other side. 😬
Think about WWII numbers. About 1,100,000 Soviets died in the Battle of Stalingrad alone.
It may have been different if the west had sent them billions in equipment as aid against the invasion.
Maybe it is because the US invaded a third world country to steal their resources and destabilize it politically and economically in assimetrical warfare and here it a world power against NATO? 🤔
I absolutely LOVE how you're shitting on Americam imperialism here, when Russia is doing the exact same thing you're complaining about? You know, the whole invading Ukraine to steal their resources and destabilize it politically thing, or is it OK when the country is next door instead? 🙂
Russia should continue to be glad they aren't actually fighting NATO yet, they can hardly beat the Ukrainians as it is.
Out of curiosity, have you read any of the following authors' works on imperialism, empire, or the development of capitalism? Hobson, Hilferding, Lenin, David Harvey, John Smith, Michael Hudson, Zac Cope, Anievas and Nisancioglu, Samir Amin? If not, what have you read? Maybe Giovanni Arrighi, Paul Kennedy, or Niall Ferguson? I'm not saying this as a rhetorical 'gotcha'. I'm curious as to how you define imperialism.
I have three questions.
-- Russia shouldn't invade other countries and kill people there actually
-- Yeah, but what about that other time other countries killed people? Also, had you read Lenin? Lenin has something to do with this actually, also here's a bunch of names. As you can see, that means Russia should invade other countries and kill people actually
I agree, this war is terrible. I wish it could be stopped today. I wish it didn't happen. Yet it has happened and is ongoing. It won't stop, and we can't hasten that end, without a rigorous analysis and understanding of what's actually going on.
Yes, I have read Lenin. Well, I've read a lot of Lenin. Not everything. What do you think he has to do with this war? You know he's been dead for a long time, right?
That bunch of names represents the state of the art in imperialism studies, give or take a few others. I'm listing then because I'm curious about what people have read. It's no use me going off on one about this or that theory if the people I'm talking to haven't read the theory.
Also, you should know, that those writers aren't all in agreement. Hobson, Ferguson, and perhaps Cope and Harvey, for example, would likely be critical of Russia's actions in Ukraine. Like I said, I didn't list them as a rhetorical 'gotcha'; that part of my comment means it cannot be read as something like a trump card to close down the discussion. It's meant to open up the discussion.
I take it that you haven't read any of them and considering your position, I suggest starting with Ferguson and Hobson.
For the purposes of my comment I'm using the dictionary's definition of 'imperialism', which is to say no, I've not read those author's works.
As for your questions:
If Russia had immediately ended the war, it would have been a great success and put Russia in a good position. But they didn't and now even if Russia succeeds and upends the Ukrainian government, it would seem like a pyrrhic victory given the circumstances.
I see. Would you like to get into a discussion about the theory of imperialism? I can't claim to know everything and I will likely start with linking some other comments I've written but it will shed light on the situation and will reveal why I disagree with your characterisation of Russia as imperialist.
When you say that it was okay for the coach to give the boxer steroids, does this not mean that you think NATO is right to back Zelensky's government?
At the least, denazification likely means disbanding the neo-Nazi militias and batalians, acting on the support for Stephan Bandera, reinstating memorials, etc, to the Soviets who liberated Ukraine in WWII, regulating Nazi-adjacent speech in the media, fully explaining the history of Ukraine in educational settings, and ending the attacks on innocent civilians in Eastern Ukraine. Much of this was reported in Western press before the invasion but it's become very difficult to find if the articles still exist.
Did Russia realistically hope to take Kiev in one fell swoop? That narrative does contradict the denazification and demilitarisation rationale. Another interpretation is that bogging down the Ukrainian military, with it's known support from NATO, would achieve Russia's publicly stated goals via a war of attrition. Even if Russia had taken Kiev, it would have been unlikely to have achieved it's started goals.
The invasion of Ukraine cannot be compared in terms of war crimes to what the US did in West Asia, have you heard of Operation Awe and Shock? I'm not saying that what Russia is doing is perfectly fine, my point is that you all people sound crickets when it's about a non-white, non-imperial core country, you give a fuck, you are just paying attention to this because Russia has been made enemy number 1 of the West during the last hundred years. You don't give a fuck about Hawai'ian independence, you don't give a fuck about a Puerto Rican independence, you don't give a fuck about any of the West colonies. When you all people really get a grip of reality and can manage to evaluate everything as equals then a real conversation can happen around the current events in Ukraine, otherwise it's just you all excusing about the West atrocities and saying it's not so bad but making a lot of noise when this shit happens.
How are they not fighting NATO if NATO trains soldiers, provides weapons, provides support, money and basically everything? What does fighting NATO looks like, then? Because as far as I know it's the same. What's the difference, the US goes thermonuclear and eliminates the human race with nukes, is that fighting NATO enough?
Only a fraction of the currently active troops in Ukraine have received training from NATO, only a fraction are armed with NATO weaponry, and Ukraine hasn't received significant amounts of aircraft, which is the linchpin to the entire NATO offensive strategy.
So if Russia is struggling to make the progress it has against a force that ISN'T fully armed with NATO weaponry and strategy, it stands to reason they would fare even worse against NATO itself.
The rest of your post is lot of words without much of a point. So Russia should be allowed to invade Ukraine and commit atrocities against their people because... the United States did bad things in the past? But if its awful when the United States does it why would you support Russia also doing it?
No, I want to see you on some post that doesn't include the West, you give a fuck about the rest of the world, you just pinpoint whatever your nazi bourgeois overlords tell you to, the rest of us can die and you won't blink an eye.
This is literally the first post I've made on this platform haha.'nazi bourgeois overlords' is a meaningless word-salad, and by this point you're really reaching.
You don't care about the rest of the world, you would laugh watching Africans and East Asian's die, all you do is swallow the propaganda your fascist elitist masters tell you to.
Didn't that sound crazy? How that sounded to you, is how what you said sounded to me.
America is better at war. Shock and Awe was effective. War is an atrocity, to be good at it you have to be willing to commit atrocities. If Russia had started out with a similar strategy Ukraine might be an occupied territory of Russia right now. I don't support any invasion, but if you decide to invade a country you need to hit them hard before they have time to organize their defense. I think Russia had some weird Idea that Ukraians were going to welcome them as liberators. I think this is because the Russian government began to believe their own propaganda. Putin surrounds himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear.