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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28734 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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My understanding of this was that some of it was just "this shit happens in war" (just go look at Fallujah), and some of it was due to a Ukrainian habit of using schools and hospitals etc as military bases. I've seen photos of Ukrainian troops in school gyms and the like, and I find it perfectly believable that Russian commanders would say "fuck them kids, fire the missile" when they notice a school being used to host troops.

Mentioning just this two cases is disingenuous at best.

It is worth mentioning at least some deliberate terror attacks (see Bucha) and incredible incompetence (like shooting that civilian airliner).

You can’t compare Fallujah to Russian wars. The American wars led to only a very brief population loss and small. And for lack of a better word people were back to fucking and making babies a month later. Which isn’t Syria, Chechny, or Ukraine that faced years or permement population. People making kids aren’t people suffering war.

Actually I'd say that the Americans are even worse in some aspects. It might not show up that strongly in the statistics, but are you familiar with the aftereffects of heavy usage of depleted uranium in residential areas? The US explicitly used them in residential areas despite this violating pre-established rules regarding their usage. I don't think the Russian military is full of sensitive humanitarians, but to quote one former commander in chief - "You think our country’s so innocent?"

Actually I'd say that the Americans are even worse in some aspects.

In some? Yes. For example they are more powerful and have more functional military so they droned more civilians.

Overall Russia is still worse, and in cases where they end better it is because they run out of materiel to commit war crimes.

And as far as I know, depleted uranium is some scaremongering by types who claim that climate change is an existential risk and still effectively want to replace nuclear by coal.

It might not show up that strongly in the statistics, but are you familiar with the aftereffects of heavy usage of depleted uranium in residential areas?

Yes, actually, and my understanding is that there's not much to be concerned about.

I think the US is better at war and then rich enough to spend money after is a plausibly correct position I would still disagree with. Countries Russia wars have significant population losses so what’s going on there?

Could you please reword your comment and fix the grammar mistakes? I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

The razing of Mosul alone seems to have a median estimate of around 10k civilian deaths, with the entire Iraq war estimated at around 300k in 10 years - and let's not get started on Vietnam. Wikipedia stats on Afghanistan seem to amount to 3k in three months of American bombing, up to some guessing 20k in a year, which is a very close rate to the 18k in 1.5 years being bandied around for Ukraine.

You are talking direct deaths which I haven’t seen data on but won’t disagree with. I’m talking indirect deaths (either starvation dying or births that didn’t happen).

If you look at population charts for Iraq you get this.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066952/population-iraq-historical/

You can’t look at a population chart and ever known a war happened. That’s not true for Russian invasion. This very clearly indicates Russian wars harm civilians in ways that US wars have close to zero effect. There is an ethnic cleansing that happens in Russian wars.

Surely the only things that you could detect from such a chart are births that didn't happen and generations that had an unusually high death rate (presumably military deaths, which you'd expect to be concentrated in draftable males). Neither is an indicator of ethnic cleansing, and in the case of Ukraine it is not even clear how Russia would be in a position to do that or how you would detect it (since they didn't manage to actually capture any predominantly Ukrainian part of Ukraine).

What would you consider sufficient evidence that US wars are no less harmful to civilians than Russian wars?

You would damage civilian infrastructure, run more brutal bombing campaigns and basically do things that turn people into refugees and depopulate the area. You would do things that make people not have the resources to raise a family.

You are basically just arguing that Russia isn’t running death camps. But they would make the Jews all leave the area and depopulate the area of Jews. Which America hasn’t done in their recent wars. It’s ethnic cleansing because the hypothetical Jews no longer exists in the region.

You haven't answered the question about what you would consider sufficient evidence. If you can't conceive of any evidence that would change your mind, what you have is an article of faith rather than rational belief.

But they would make the Jews all leave the area and depopulate the area of Jews.

Meanwhile, RIA Novosti is reporting that about 46% of students in the annexed part of Zaporozhiya region (Melitopol etc.) have indicated that they want to be taught in Ukrainian rather than Russian in the coming school year (apparently they were given a choice). Commenters and Russian milbloggers seem to be absolutely up in arms about this, and I don't see any reasonable grounds to assume it's made up (it doesn't even seem to be reported for a global audience in English?). Does that sound like a successful depopulation campaign to you?

(For reference, 2004 polls indicated that the entire region, including the unannexed parts further north that light up as less russophone on Wikipedia's map, had about 52% Ukrainian speakers. On the balance the map makes it seem like their numbers might have actually increased.)

Sufficient evidence would be to see a Ukranian population chart that looks the same as pre-war.

I was considering making you one in mspaint, which sounds silly until you realise nobody else is really in a position to compile an accurate chart either, with an unknown number estimated around 4 million having left the country, and drafts and combat losses being kept secret by the government. It doesn't seem particularly fruitful to continue this discussion either way, since it seems to me that you don't want to be persuaded otherwise. (What is even the notion of "looking the same" you are using? Can you not conceive of a scenario where a country commits more atrocities than another while producing less of whatever signal you claim to see in population charts?)

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And if someone disputes this and has no preference in getting invaded by Russia and USA: I am curious are they also claiming that during WW II they would have no preference in choice:

  • (a) be invaded by USA
  • (b) be invaded by USSR

(I definitely would prefer to be invaded by USA in both cases)

Notably in 1945 there were a bunch of documented cases of Germans fleeing west with the deliberate goal of surrendering to non-Soviet Allied forces.

Including some rocket scientists to take an example.

And there were cases of some military units fighting to be able to surrender to USA (or protecting fleeing civilians). Rare case of Third Reich military doing something praiseworthy.

The data just wins. I can get bogged down looking at a picture of Fallujah versus Grozny and questioning whether they look the same. Or some missile attack was same as some Russian missile attack. And probably write some thousand page book comparing all incidents to try and get to a conclusion, but I’m fairly sure the demographic data in one chart is strong evidence for my belief.

I find it perfectly believable that Russian commanders would say "fuck them kids, fire the missile" when they notice a school being used to host troops.

More to the point, the front lines have been relatively static for a long time. There won't be kids in those schools, so it's just another building that if anything is less likely to be occupied by civilians.

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