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Notes -
Letting Russia conquer Ukraine unopposed is pro-war, not anti-war.
NATO expansionism into every last corner of the map is pro-war. Russia wanted to negotiate over and over again. Zelensky's election platform wasn't that different than the Minsk agreements.
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War is peace.
TIL being anti-war means you must instantly roll over for anyone.
In Us American writings about the Pacific War, the term "pro peace faction" is used to denote a clique of Japanese leaders who supported, after less than four years of war with the USA, terms of surrender much harsher than ones offered by Putin to Ukraine.
This term is also used as a label of the collaborationist faction (Wang Jingwe's regime) of Chinese during the Second Sino-Chinese War.
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3 years is instantly? But I'll expand on my unnecessarily snarky comment.
Let's say you are anti-murder. Surely, a nice thing to be. But now you see someone about to blow up a bomb in a market so you shoot them dead. Are you still anti-murder? Probably yes, because you saved many people from being murdered at the cost of one.
Since you are a good utilitarian you decide, like Dexter, to start murdering serial killers. You kill 10 people who you are pretty sure would have killed more than 10 others. Are you still anti-murder? Probably... Except remember that time that Dexter killed an innocent person to keep from getting caught. You do it too. Are you you still anti-murder? After all, your expected value is still positive. At least, I think... What if you kill 5 people to save 6? What if you kill a guy who has a 20% chance of being a terrorist?
The point I'm trying to make is that politicians always try to justify the current war as an exception to the general principle of "no war". And these politicians are almost always wrong. Their complicated strategic calculations fall apart the instant they come into contact with reality. Simple heuristics are best. Military conflict begets more military conflict, and wars almost always cost more than people think (Hofstadler: this is true even when you take this into account).
When you're doing utilitarian calculations that involve the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, make sure your calculations are correct, and give yourself a wide latitude for the chance they might not be. While the initial defense of Ukraine was a good thing, continuing to spend the lives of innocent Ukrainian and Russian men in this conflict is not. And escalation is practically a crime against humanity.
If you want to wear the mantle of peace, you need to have a strong pro-peace bias, even if that means you aren't always a pacificist. And there is no way you could possibly characterize the actions of the U.S. blob in that light.
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How about demanding a negotiated settlement instead of keeping the meat grinder going? Is that pro or anti?
Would Putin accept any settlement short of "I get some of what I want now, and come back for the rest later."?
If he wanted war why did he push for negotiations for 8 years after the coup? Even in 2022 the goal wasn't to take Ukraine, it was to get Ukraine to accept a peace agreament that was almost the same as Zelensky's election platform.
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