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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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However terrible Prigozhin may have been, the fact remains that there were other innocent crew members at least on that plane who were killed for nothing (I reserve judgement on the moral worthiness of the other passengers). This is yet more evidence that the evil at Barad-dûr the Kremlin needs to be destroyed.

Is this supposed to give anyone pause?

Do you feel the same about the crew members of Yamamoto's plane when we assassinated him in WW2?

I would feel the same if Yamamoto were being flown by an American air crew, yeah. I'd feel it a national disgrace to intentionally directly kill any quantity of American citizens to kill an enemy general.

Yes, I find it morallydifferent to lose a randomly selected number of soldiers to enemy fire to achieve the same objective.

Nah, that was fair game.

Soleimani would be a better example, and I’ll still bite the bullet on that one.

Yamamoto was an active general flying in a military transport with a fighter escort.

This is not really the same.

They're literally in the middle of a war. Are a few people on a plane really tipping the scales that much?

I think it depends on whether the plane crew were Wagner or just some random plane crew. Killing random plane crew in order to kill Prigozhin and Utkin would be a pretty bad look. If the plane crew were Wagner loyalists, then not as much.

If the plane crew were Wagner loyalists

Almost certainly. What warlord would trust his safety to anyone who was even slightly suspect?

Well, he seems to have trusted his safety enough to Russia, the country controlled by the regime that he had launched an insurrection against just two months ago. I can imagine him maybe thinking "well, they could just have just killed me as soon as I crossed the border" and as a result, not worrying too much about what plane and crew would carry him inside of Russia.

I say seems... I guess it is also possible that he has basically been in some equivalent of house arrest since two months ago and he was forced to go on that plane trip.