I think a material difference between Iraq (v2 anyway) and Ukraine is that they can keep doing the “well Russia was the aggressor” thing indefinitely even if the reality is more complicated.

also yes obviously some libs are still stubborn about Iraq, the worst ones, but for the most part its generally agreed that the Iraq War was a bad thing.

  • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Key difference: there’s no US boots on the ground in Ukraine. Like with Vietnam, a lot of the Iraq rhetoric is centered on the american soldiers who were killed and maimed. Notice how US/NATO intervention in Libya and Kosovo, which was accomplished primarily through air power and without significant losses, has not had any critical reexamination—I would think the lack of american corpses has a good deal to do with that

    disclaimer: this is not financial advice, i am just a small worm blob-no-thoughts

    • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      At first I thought that this was the one comment here I agreed with the most, and I might still think that, but the difference is that Libya/Kosovo were “over” much faster than Ukraine. The boogeymen were quickly taken out, while Russia just refuses to collapse, at least so far.

      In my extremely limited experience, outside of the internet, libs don’t really care about Ukraine anymore and won’t push back if you criticize Biden giving tens of billions of dollars to Nazis. This in itself may be kind of a re-examination on their part? They also feel the same way about covid, though. It just doesn’t matter at all to them, even though it’s actually still extremely important (as is Ukraine). I do have to kind of wonder what they care about at the moment? They were so happy when Biden won the election, but I think most of us strongly suspected that this was going to be as good as it got for them for quite some time. Who knows, it might even be their last major victory.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Like with Vietnam, a lot of the Iraq rhetoric is centered on the american soldiers who were killed and maimed.

      Even when they oppose war, it’s backed by nationalist reasons.

    • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      There’s definitely US boots on the ground, just like there are in Syria, Yemen, Kenya, Pakistan and all the other nations we don’t officially invade. There are literally US soldiers, spec ops and bases and officers stationed there coordinating raids, launching drones, doing spec ops.

      Americans think there is this hard solid line between invasion with boots and other activities, but in reality there’s no discrete border it just slowly becomes a full invasion

        • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          It’s a gradient and blurred line that further blurs over time as “intelligence guys” start doing special operations and assassinations of political and military targets, and the “advisors” are launching recon drones and coordinating the Ukrainian military. Oh, not to mention all the “recently retired” military “mercenaries” driving the tanks.

          Eventually US soldiers do occupy held positions as well, as seen in Syria where there are thousands of literal US troops occupying the country yet almost every American would say we never invaded Syria if you ask them. Huh weird, if you never invaded how did thousands of your troops set up bases in a nation you were not invited into? If you never invaded, why are you launching cruise missiles and drone strikes into Syrian territory? This American fiction about “boots on the ground” is a Liberal delusion to assuage the cognitive dissonance they have about being a bloodthirsty world-conquering military empire.

          Then after the fact, if Liberals ever acknowledge their complicity in an invasion, it’s framed as “the US got pulled, unwilling, into a quagmire” as if that wasn’t the full intention the entire time and they didn’t get pulled but were pushed in by the US government and MIC - first as advisors, then as intel guys, then as mercenaries, then the drone strikes as “anti-terrorism” operations, then as “peace-keepers” in a coalition force. It’s a smooth gradient, there is no wall.