Trump, Vance and Zelenskyy spar over Russian war in tense exchange at White House

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

Again, this is not about me. This is about truth. Please stop making this about me and let's focus on discerning the truth.

Do you know for certain that what is seen in these videos is "kidnapping?" And if so, upon what basis is that claim being made?

I know that the BBC article quotes a Ukrainian national using the word kidnapping, but the article does not use the word itself. So, the only thing we have to go on here is the opinion of a Ukrainian national who doesn't want to be conscripted.

If it helps, consider how many times police officers in the US have been recorded doing something, had it presented as ill behavior, and later when the full context is known they were actually in the right. How do we know this is not the case here? This is why verification is important. This is why context is important.

If someone is being dragged off against their will, is it not impressment? Do you consider it morally righteous to force people to fight in a war they don't want to participate in?

I did not claim conscription was moral nor immoral. You claimed it was moral. So I want to know what the basis of this claim is. How do you justify the claim?

I already made the argument. That it is immoral to force someone to fight in a conflict they don't want to participate in. Why can't you address it?

These are not issues I raised.

They are issues I have raised. You support Ukraine as somehow being morally superior to Russia. I am attempting to show they are not and in fact seem to be more guilty of forced conscription than Russia because the latter has more volunteers. Should we not then question the narrative that Ukraine wants to fight? Especially when the only ones saying this are westerners and Zelensky who wants the war to continue?

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

There is a counterpoint to this though. If we're going to object to "state coercion" in forcing people to fight, how should we feel about the coercion that Putin is applying to the Ukrainians? Should we reject self-determination and argue that they should just accept Putin's rule?

Do you consider it wrong for Putin to conscript Russians? Why? Does practical necessity and utilitarian reasoning determine what is right or wrong in this case? Do you also think that the Russian speakers in the Donbass/Crimea don't want to be part of Russia? Self determination isn't the only basis for thought here, but if you are justifying Ukrainian conscription of unwilling participants you have entered the world of pure utilitarian ethics.

Whether or not this particularly war is about imperialism is going to be a tough sell given Putin's history.

Only if you're bought into the western narrative and can only think in terms of WW2. Putin didn't start this war by threatening Ukraine that he wanted their territory, he started it on the basis of Russian security concerns. He only asked before this war started that Ukraine not enter NATO. In Istanbul he was willing to agree to terms with the Ukrainians which would have preserved Ukraine as it was in 2022 if they would agree to neutrality. Instead Ukraine chose Boris Johnson and the West and has suffered as a result. This image of Putin being the next Hitler (btw every time the west fights a war its always a new Hitler) simply wrings false when we consider the Russian perspective.

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

Only if you're bought into the western narrative and can only think in terms of WW2. Putin didn't start this war by threatening Ukraine that he wanted their territory, he started it on the basis of Russian security concerns. He only asked before this war started that Ukraine not enter NATO. In Istanbul he was willing to agree to terms with the Ukrainians which would have preserved Ukraine as it was in 2022 if they would agree to neutrality. Instead Ukraine chose Boris Johnson and the West and has suffered as a result. This image of Putin being the next Hitler (btw every time the west fights a war its always a new Hitler) simply wrings false when we consider the Russian perspective.

This idea that Ukraine was going to join NATO has been brought up by pro-Putin advocates for three years, and it’s hard to believe that it’s anything but wilful ignorance and blatant propaganda now. As has been pointed out over and over, Ukraine could never join NATO as it did not have national border integrity due to Putins invasion of the Donbas.

Putin then tried to push Ukraine to give up a huge chunk of its territory and agree to “neutrality”, i.e. disarmament, leaving them wide open for Russia to simply invade at a later date. Yet people seriously expect them to choose Russia over the west at this point?

And if Putin doesn’t like being compared to Hitler, then he should stop behaving like Hitler. And if he’s upset about the supposed threat of NATO on his doorstep, then he only had himself to blame. His imperialist invasion has guaranteed that every country bordering Russia will join and remain part of NATO for decades to come. And why shouldn’t they? It’s become the easiest way to protect themselves against Russian aggression.

 

[lifepsyop]

This idea that Ukraine was going to join NATO has been brought up by pro-Putin advocates for three years, and it’s hard to believe that it’s anything but wilful ignorance and blatant propaganda now. As has been pointed out over and over, Ukraine could never join NATO as it did not have national border integrity due to Putins invasion of the Donbas.

Putin then tried to push Ukraine to give up a huge chunk of its territory and agree to “neutrality”, i.e. disarmament, leaving them wide open for Russia to simply invade at a later date. Yet people seriously expect them to choose Russia over the west at this point?

And if Putin doesn’t like being compared to Hitler, then he should stop behaving like Hitler. And if he’s upset about the supposed threat of NATO on his doorstep, then he only had himself to blame. His imperialist invasion has guaranteed that every country bordering Russia will join and remain part of NATO for decades to come. And why shouldn’t they? It’s become the easiest way to protect themselves against Russian aggression.

This is funny, the way you are trying to paint Putin as a paranoid madman... when just a decade ago it was U.S. senators in Kiev, actively supporting a violent insurrection against the Ukrainian presidency that was deemed too friendly to Russia....

but yea, Putin's just imagining things, it's all in his head.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

David Brooks of the NY Times on what happened today in the Oval Office:

Donald Trump believes in one thing: he believes that might makes right and in that he agrees with Vladimir Putin - they're birds of a feather and he and Putin together are trying to create a world that safer for gangsters where ruthless people can thrive and we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office. It's a moral injury to see the country I love behaving this way.

Well I think we know that conservative concepts of morality are no longer priorities. Rather somehow we are now all about disruption and personality. People will tolerate and defend anything from Trump.

 

[lifepsyop]

Hm. On a forum that is nominally for Christians, you openly confess you don't care about 45 million lives.
I'd recommend looking for an altar of repentance.

Ukrainian men are now a slave army in a proxy war.

Let me guess, the dozens of videos that are published every week of Ukrainian men kidnapped, beaten, and thrown in vans as forced conscripts... that's all Tucker Carlson's Russian propaganda too, right?


The Christian thing to do would have been to make peace with Russia and allow eastern Ukraine to split off into a Russian territory and avoid all these millions of deaths. Most of the people in that region already wanted this anyways.

It is you who apparently desire this massive blood sacrifice in the name of preserving a pretend Ukrainian nationalism (that is in reality, clearly just a puppet regime of the greater western powers shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars into your war)