Exactly this.
I would generally say that the US standard is that if you’ve got two guys calling each other names, buying guns, wearing t-shirts that denigrate the other party, etc. the one who is blamed for it all is the one who threw the first punch. All of the other posturing and intimidations are irrelevant, it fully comes down on whoever is the first one to actually practice violence.
I don’t know if that’s the norm in Russia.
But here, at least, it is the norm and by that calculation Russia - as the person who actually sent in an army and started blowing things up - is the bad guy. Everything else is irrelevant.
And, in general, I think that there’s a reason for that standard. There are lots of situations in history where you’ve got two parties who have been annoying each other for years, decades or centuries (in the case of nations), and for any one item where guy 1 could say, “He did this and that’s why he deserved it.” Guy 2 could say, “Well, that’s because he did that.” And guy 1 could say, “Because he did that.” And Guy 2 can rebut with, “After you did the one thing!”
It’s just not worth the mess of trying to untangle it all and, ultimately, the answer is usually that both of them are assholes.
But you’re free to be an asshole. You’re not free to punch someone. Whoever does that, that’s your bad guy.
True. But our new friend WellHellolThere seems to think that the blame should lie with the bystander witness who observed the shit-show developing and said “oh, oh, I see trouble coming soon!”
“Predicting this invasion” and “announc[ing] it before it happened” are quite different things.
Tankie alert…
Of 2014? Because the invasion and occupation of Crimea was the opening action of this war.
It’s not like the US did anything to precipitate the war, except insofar as we have had cordial relations with Ukraine, and offered our help in rebuilding/revamping their military. But that’s pretty much it. Once it started, we’ve done all sorts of stuff to keep the Ukrainians at it though.
Otherwise, all that we did to “predict” the war was to notice the Russian military concentrating forces in the areas surrounding Ukraine for months ahead of time, and then deploying them to staging areas near Ukraine. Those sorts of actions aren’t the sort of thing you do on peacetime training maneuvers, and aren’t the kinds of activities that can be sustained indefinitely.
So by deploying them to positions near the border, they were basically stating their intention to invade.
Wow… that’s absurd. Regardless of how poor (or not) the handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal was, that doesn’t give Putin any grounds for invasion, nor does it assign any blame for that invasion to Biden. It’s the international equivalent of victim blaming. I’m a little surprised that they didn’t say that Putin couldn’t help himself- just look at how Ukraine acted.
Did you see how short that Ukrainian skirt was?
Plus, the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal was all planned by Trump. Biden didn’t have the authority to unilaterally change the international agreements Trump made.
The OP seems to think that the U.S. helping Ukraine is dishonorable/hypocritical because U.S. interests benefit.
The U.S. (and Europe for that matter) will indeed benefit if Putin’s dreams of reconstituting the Soviet Union over the corpses of independent states can be thwarted. Such an outcome would also be good for Ukraine and its neighbors.
The idea that foreign policy must be entirely altruistic is unrealistic, not to mention comical.
And some governments and infectious disease experts were predicting new pandemics before Covid-19 made its appearance. Those entities were not “to blame” for Covid-19.*
The blame can be traced back to Creedence. The lyrics of “Bad Moon Rising” are obviously provocatory.
*except in the view of conspiracy theorists.
Beyond that, it isn’t like the deadline was secret or anything. That’s the part I don’t get; they basically announced it months ahead of time in April, and then in August, it’s a surprise, and we have people trying to stow away in wheel wells/mobbing planes?
Sounds a lot to me like people there didn’t take it very seriously, and then when the ANA collapsed, all of a sudden, it was very serious. That’s not the fault of the US, at least by my reckoning.
I agree with your first sentence. But even Biden has said that he could have put troops back into Afghanistan - which implies that he believes that he could have ignored everything Trump said, since the draw-down was, I believe, part of Trump’s agreement.
Not to say that it would be “legal” for him to ignore the agreements, just that he could have done it and viewed himself as being free to do it.
But, definitely, by all accounts Biden just hit the big green “Go” button on what Trump had set up. It was Trump’s plan and Trump’s guys who executed the whole thing. Biden didn’t fire them nor did he set out a different procedure for withdrawal, so far as anyone has yet determined (to my knowledge).
It is a fair point that the US didn’t do anything but a slap on the wrist over the Russian invasion and annexation (in progress) of Crimea. Putin took that as a message that the US would do much in a lightning war taking over the Ukraine.
Putin invaded and he alone can stop it tomorrow if he wants.
Congratulations. You’ve successfully identified the fact that the US right wing propaganda machine, far from being a nationalist force pushing for the USA’s greatness, is in fact a wholly-owned shill of the Russians which is dedicated to destroying the USA from within.
Our most flag-waving tub-thumping citizens are unknowingly waving the Russian flag, not the US one.
At least one clever troll made it literal:
Taking advantage of that the average Trumpelstilkin has NO idea what flag is that (and probably thinks the Russian flag is still the Soviet one)
I disagree that the US announcing the Russian invasion was not a display of power. It showcases US intelligence capability, considering it was an absolutely correct prediction. The world saw that happen, in real time. The next step, providing Ukraine with US and NATO armaments showed the absolute superiority of NATO to Russia. Certainly a power move. Prior to this war, Russia was considered a near peer, as in a conventional war would be difficult. That NATO was able to arm a proxy to defeat Russia shows that to be a lie. The actions of the US in this war happen to roughly align with what is morally correct, for now. I do not believe that US warplanners are acting out of altruism, I think they are well aware of how their actions will effect the perception of the US, particularly in China.
Edit: You can make power moves against bad actors, which is what happened here. It does not make the US responsible, it’s just a fact. If the US wants to be involved in killing people to further its interests, it should be willing to take in refugees from that conflict as well.
That is just… well, there have been many thoughtful replies to my argument.
Perhaps, but it still fails to establish any causal link. You seem to be suggesting that Russia attacked because USInt said they were going to. As though Vlad amassed his troops at the staging areas as an exercise and would not have actually crossed the border except for the fact that the US provoked him by saying he would.
That is some weak sauce.