Hearts and minds
War crime.
A maternity hospital in the southern port city of Mariupol has been hit by a Russian air strike, Ukraine says.
It doesn’t get much more blatant than that. Bonus: they did it during an agreed ceasefire.
Mariupol has been surrounded by Russian forces for several days, and repeated attempts at a ceasefire to allow civilians to leave have broken down.
“The whole city remains without electricity, water, food, whatever and people are dying because of dehydration,” Olena Stokoz of Ukraine’s Red Cross told the BBC, adding that her organisation would continue trying to organise an evacuation corridor.
I would like to see Putin in the Hague.
Updating to add: Other heads of state have done bad things, so disregard the above.
Perhaps he would volunteer if Obama (the ongoing horror in Libya/Sahel) both Bush Crime Gang members and Trump joined him? Seeing blue and yellow flags on cars here. (Ukraine). Never have seen any flags in response to Obamas peace prize venture in Libya or the ongoing murderous campaign in Yemen we are helping fund. Just saying. Not a big fan of hypocrisy but that doesn’t make me a Putin Lover.
Brian M, I have sympathy for your views, but in some instances at least there are colourable differences. GW1 was in response to the invasion of an allied State. GW2 was just wrong and on a completely fabricated pretext, notwithstanding that Hussein was a very bad man. Libya was a marginal call as to the initial western intervention, but the abandonment of the fractured country to its own devices afterward was utterly shameful and is where the real crime lies IMO. Yemen, again shameful.
These all differ from the current case in that here we have what amounts to a despot invading a sovereign democratic state using brutal methods aimed at civilians for no other reason than that he doesn’t like the implications to his own continued grasp over his population. That said, I’m quite sure a lot of the sympathy Ukraine is getting in the west would be lacking if it were not a white nation.
Also, there are plenty of people in the west who felt that their political leaders were guilty of war crimes and should be prosecuted, so I’m not sure the charge of hypocrisy completely sticks.
Rob: decent points all.
On Bush 2’s invasaion of Iraq. I believe that it was in response to Saddam Hussein’s sending of a hit team to kill his father, Bush 1. See link below.
On the point of the WMD in Iraq War 2: Even Saddam’s own generals were surprised when none were found, as Saddam had been making a lot of noise about having them. Hoist on his own petard.
The western Left post-Vietnam had an anti-US reflex built in, and got caught completely wrong-footed on the Iraq wars. Iraq War 1 was a response to the monster Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, which if successful would have left him in control of a huge percentage of the world’s oil, and likely turned Saudi Arabia into his client state. Not much opposition to that.
When Bush 2 invaded Iraq for revenge, the western Left had to make a choice: support one of the all-time worst tyrants in all of human history, or support Bush 2. In the main, the Left’s choice was support for the tyrant; which fizzled out immediately it got going, as few had much lasting enthusiasm for it. But it divided the Left into pro-ttotalitarian and anti-totalitarian factions: a very useful distinction first made by the late Christopher Hitchens (with whom, for the record and BTW, I have never found myself in disagreement.)
Many leading thinkers on the Left, (eg Noam Chomsky) supported Saddam Hussein in Gulf War 2.
.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/feb/04/interviews.iraq
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/saddam-sent-hit-team-to-kill-bush-in-kuwait-2321888.html
Cruise missile liberals are as bad as neocons. There is always a reason for intervention in other countries. Like the current horror show in Yemen. We NEED to be arming the medieval tyranny of Saudi Arabia, no?
@#5:
No.