Love Is …

Source: apostrophe.ua, supposedly from comments posted on Valentine's Day of this year.

Comments

[DaivdBehar]

Inside those tanks are working guys who want to go home, and want no part of these war crimes. Light a tank, they burn alive.

[Aladdin's Carpet]

Yes. They are also soldiers. Thereby legitimate targets. Yes, it is awful. War sucks. We should do less of it. I feel sympathy for the Russians who got caught up in this but that doesn't mean we should discount Ukrainian military victories. Those victories necessarily involve loss of Russian life.

[DaivdBehar]

The American lawyer must be held to account for why heads of state and their oiligarchs are not the first target of any war. The guys who funded 9/11 and bet on the fall of airline stock prices, making $85 million profit, are still alive. Why were they and their entire families not killed 9/12? If they were Saudi royalty, give the courtesy of asking the Kind to behead them in a public square or to join them in death.

[DaivdBehar]

Hey, Eugene. You want to make yourself useful? Get us names. Who are the American lawyers preventing the killing of Putin and of his oiligarchs?

[Seamus]

It's almost as if war were not healthy for children and other living things.

[Michael P]

You forgot to say that they are just following orders.

[Absaroka]

Oh, I dunno. People defending their country against an invasion can be pretty enthusiastic about it.

[Michael P]

I meant the ones in the tanks. I don't think many of them really believe they are defending Russia from an invasion.

[Gasman]

Whether they are enthusiastic, or merely following orders, they marched into a 'stand your ground' country.
Russians getting shot is pretty damn American.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

War sucks. "Leaders" start wars, people fight them. Collective punishment is a war crime, I have heard, yet wars themselves are collective actions. We hated Hitler, yet fought Germans. Ukrainians hated Hitler and Stalin, yet had to fight both without hope of defeating both, and we supported Stalin because he had better PR than Hitler, in spite of having killed more civilians than Hitler over a longer period.

You got a solution, or are you just here to blame lawyers?

[Gasman]

" We hated Hitler, yet fought Germans. "
Yet hitler never fired a shot, crossed a border, or raped and killed the women. Germans did that. Lots of them voted for Hitler. The rest failed to vote with their feet.

[Ed Grinberg]

Inside those tanks are working guys who want to go home, and want no part of these war crimes. Light a tank, they burn alive.

If the Russian soldier in the tank "wants no part of these war crimes," shouldn't he get out of the tank? If he stays in the tank, drives it across the border, uses it to kill civilians -- isn't he committing "these war crimes"?

[Absaroka]

Lawd knows I'm not an international law expert, but I don't think so.

If he is deliberately killing civilians, sure. But I think a lot of 'collateral damage'[1] is legal. For example, in WWII if the US Army took fire from a town, they would call in artillery/air support or use direct fire on the town. That could and did cause civilian casualties.

There are things you can't do even if ordered - use civilians for bayonet practice a la Nanking - but generally speaking following orders to invade another country is legal, even if it causes civilian casualties. Consider Panama or Grenada, for example.

I'm open to correction!

[1]I have never liked that phrase

[Jmaie]

Speaking of civilian deaths, the last Ukrainian government estimate of casualties through yesterday was 2,734-3,000 in Kharkiv and Mariupol. Always difficult to get accurate information in a war zone, the UN estimate is 902. This is from wikipedia, so take with as many grains of salt as you wish.

Not to minimize the situation but this doesn't seem to match all the headlines about the Russian forces committing war crimes, bombing hospitals, deliberately targeting civilians, etc. With this level of casualties after four weeks of fighting it feels more like Russia is trying hard to avoid killing unnecessarily.

And then there are things like this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10633061/Ukrainians-chant-home-force-Russian-military-trucks-Kherson-protest.html

Point being, it seems like the media and our government are working hard trying to gin up anger and outrage when there's no one (aside from possibly a few fringe lunatics) coming out in support of the Russian invasion.

[Absaroka]

"Not to minimize the situation but this doesn't seem to match all the headlines about the Russian forces committing war crimes, bombing hospitals, deliberately targeting civilians, etc. With this level of casualties after four weeks of fighting it feels more like Russia is trying hard to avoid killing unnecessarily."

I kinda disagree with that last sentence. ISTM the Russians are at best being pretty careless about e.g. targeting hospitals. It's one thing to shell a line of buildings you are taking fire from and killing civilians that are in those buildings. But IIRC some of the hospitals have been targeted when they are pretty far behind where active combat is happening, and targeted by precision enough weapons that they weren't accidentally hit.

The US has made its share of tragic civilian casualty mistakes over the last 20 years, but y sense is we actually try pretty hard to avoid e.g. hospitals.

[Michael P]

A war crime can be committed with zero deaths. And when the whole invasion is an unjustified war of aggression, every death is unnecessary.

And I am sure that a whole lot of Ukrainians are surprised to see, contrary to the facts that you lay out, all the Russian troops newly in their neighborhoods who came out in support of the Russian invasion.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Speaking of civilian deaths, the last Ukrainian government estimate of casualties through yesterday was 2,734-3,000 in Kharkiv and Mariupol."

That's actually quite a lot. For a comparison, the overall 9/11 death toll was 2,996.

[Jmaie]

I'm talking about 4 weeks of a country-wide invasion by 100,000+ (or more troops). You're talking about one hit by one plane. Apples and oranges.

(Up to) 3,000 dead in a month of war, while unfortunate, is not a lot - especially if (as is claimed in various reports) the invaders are indiscriminately shelling civilian areas. Just today, Zelenskyy reportedly said that Putin is trying to carry out a "final solution" for the Ukrainian people. If that's the case, Putin is doing a really really bad job of it.

Bottom line, the reporting doesn't seem to match the facts on the ground and I'm wondering why. During the run up to the first gulf war there were reports of Iraqi troops throwing babies out of incubators. The Kuwaitis of course wanted us to defend them so I can understand why they made these claims. The current situation is different, there's no (reasonable) chance that we'll get directly involved. So why the need for exaggeration?

[Armchair Lawyer]

You're talking about just civilian casualties, in 2 cities. I'm talking about 4 separate plane strikes, in two (3) cities.

3000 civilians dead, in just 2 cities, is considerable.

[SgtDad]

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.