On one hand, I absolutely agree with this. It's human nature to want to avoid such a fate if one can reasonably avoid it. If I had the money and could buy my way out of participation in a fucking war...I'd hate to think that I wouldn't.
I know it's their home and things like that...but not everyone cares about those sorts of ties, and they become even less meaningful in death. I'm not saying I condone their actions, just that I understand.
I mean, I have some sympathy for the ones giving the bribes. No sympathy for the ones taking the bribes who are being charged.
For sure, that's what I was commenting on. Can't speak at all for the one's accepting the bribes, knowing what it means for their fellow soldiers.
Military pay is shit and you've got to make up the difference somewhere.
Living in a warzone isn't cheap.
Trust me, you'll find an official to bribe in such a situation in Eastern Europe. This is a PR move, to arrest some from time to time and show that in the news. Happens regularly.
Doesnt have to be Eastern Europe. Plenty of examples of rich people finding ways for their kids to avaoid the draft during Vietnam and WWII in the US.
My dad got out of Vietnam (unwittingly) when my grandparents paid the doctor to give him a bad medical evaluation. He was all hyped to go, only to discover he had... I want to say it was flat feet or something? Basically "you're no good at marching so you won't war good".
Stayed in college, got his masters and then his PhD, then went on to work for a major energy company and move out to the suburbs and live the good life into his golden years. A couple of his high school buddies went and got killed - one in a helicopter crash and another after stepping on a landmine.
When 9/11 happened and I was ready to enlist, he grabbed me by the shoulder and explained the best thing his parents ever did for him was keeping him out of the war.
I only wish every parent had this conversation with their kids. The world would be a better place.
Really glad to hear your grandparents had some sense.
It's not about rich, it's about rather middle class people somehow allocating a sum to bribe a military commissariat. See the article with 10k$ - it's a lot in Ukraine, yes, but not what the size of such a bribe would be if only rich people would be doing that.
I don't understand this comment. Are you saying it's only fine to dodge the draft when rock people do it?
I'm saying that this is very common in Eastern Europe. It's not something only rich people do. Not that it's fine or not.
I would definitely try to get out too. Either by bribes or just fleeing
Ultimately human conflict is meaningless and there's a non zero chance that you'll be immortal if you survive the next ten years.
Well, "I understand" doesn't mean much here, now does it?!
I understand how many people who are unable to feel the pain of others, including the pain that they cause to others, such as Sociopaths, Psychopaths, Narcissists and so on will, if they think they can get away with it, not at all refrain from causing huge suffering to countless other people if they themselves come out of it better.
And it's all irrelevant: whilst it's psychologically easier for them to cause suffering to others (as they feel no guilt) as individuals with agency they're still the ones who choose to or not-to cause suffering to others: if they act thus they should be punished, if they don't they should not.
The only thing the "understanding" brings is putting such people higher up the list for surveillance and as suspect when it comes to detecting and punishing the harming of others than people who psychologically find it a lot harder act so because, unlike this group, they feel guilt.
If it's a crime, do not fire them, lock them up in pris-
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the actions "treason" and has initiated criminal proceedings.
Oh. Oh well.
Also, one of the main reasons the Russian army has been underperforming is corruption. Loads of money siphoned, incompetent people getting positions, you name it. Zelenskyy is also making sure the same doesn't happen in his country and stays on top performance/efficiency wise.
Zelenskyy will go down in history with the likes of all great leaders. The man has risen to legendary status. Once this war is won and Ukraine is free, I hope he gets that much deserved beer and beach vacation.
Slava Ukraina
I can only agree with every single word, but I think he should go the Churchill way, and just find some peaceful and relaxing job once the whole thing is over (I know, Churchill actually stayed around for a while). For one: because he will definitely deserve it; but for two: looking at history (not excluding my own country's), too many great politicians have fallen into the "...or you live long enough to become the villain" category. I'm rooting hard for Zelenskyy to at least get a draw and not go mad later.
He has said a few times that after the war he'll retire from politics.
Considering his abysmal approval rating before the war and his huge popularity during it, I think he'll take the "amazing wartime president" label and happily walk away afterwards.
If history has shown us anything, the politicians you need in wartime and peacetime need very different skillsets.
I love that the guy now being a hardass leader saving his country from a powerful invading force is there because he got famous playing the piano with his penis. What a career path! (Also, watch that video because it's really funny.)
I think it's far more likely that, over time, we find out he was pocketing a huge chunk of the wartime aid we US taxpayers are graciously going into further debt in order to fund, like Hamid Karzai and Saddam Hussein, themselves once also darlings of the US war machine.
Ah yes because the money we give them is definitely more than a tiny drop in the lake which is the US military spending.
The key words there are 'US military spending'.
Canada spends approximately 26 billion a year on their national defense.
The US spends over a trillion, and Congress has approved around 113 billion (and that was way back in March) for Ukraine. That is, by any measure, not a drop in the bucket. It's unreasonable to argue that all 50 states wouldn't benefit more from having those funds distributed at the state level. Hawaii in particular comes to mind right now.
Arguably out of all the times pepole should complain about us military spending this is probably the worst .war in ukraine is probably one of the most just conflicts america was invloved in since probably the korean war or perhaps even WW2 . Its pretty rare to have a situation where you can say one side is the bad guy with such a certainity.And its not like they are sending troops or anything.just equipment and ammo ,more often that not american made, which means most of those dollars stays in USA either way.
Alghtough the fact that the usual US military budget is overblown is also true.
Arguably out of all the times pepole should complain about us military spending this is probably the worst .war in ukraine is probably one of the most just conflicts america was invloved in since probably the korean war or perhaps even WW2
Our entire right wing in the US rolls like this. Like literally the only time they scream and shout and threaten is when people are just, competent, knowledgeable, and reasonable. They hate anything that works well and love blanketing the earth in mass misery.
And its not like they are sending troops or anythin
I HATE this argument.
Yeah, we're not sending soldiers, but we're still getting people killed for this war. You know why? We neglect our own people's needs. There are people dying in heat waves that we could save with proper resources. There are diabetics who need insulin. We don't have a health care system, and if you suffer a major injury or illness, chances are you're dying or going bankrupt.
Our war spending gets our own people killed, just maybe not with a missile. There are real life consequences the poor and middle class experience because our government chooses to make war profiteers richer every single year.
Literally the only time you people whine about wasting money is when it's used to keep a bunch of nazis away...frikin ayyyyyy.
Not a big fan of this "us or them" attitude. Ukrainians matter as much to me as Oklahomans, and a large part of our country's wealth comes from extracting labor and resources from underdeveloped nations. It's only right that we spend that hoard helping outside our borders.
But you know just as well as I do that this money would never go to those causes. It would either go straight back to the military budget, or to rich people's pockets in the form of more business tax cuts.
OK, ๐ท๐บVlad๐ท๐บ
the Russian army has been underperforming is corruption
Check under the hood of any army and you're going to find all sorts of corruption, graft, and kickbacks. War Is A Racket.
His country has no choice but to. Even though Russia is a big bumbling country with oodles of corruption and a poor military - they have a huge population they can draw from.
Russian tactics during WWII was to use that overwhelming population to their advantage to buy time for them to get their military and manufacturing base up to scratch. Then when they countered, they still had more than enough people for an overwhelmingly large army - it wasn't through good training, or good supplies that they won, but through just being the biggest.
Ukraine doesn't have that luxury. In order for them to survive this, they have to be as lean and as well trained as possible. Each soldier needs to be worth more than 10 Russian soldiers. It's a brutal, harsh world. Attrition is probably the main fear.
Every person who is capable of fighting, needs to be fighting at their peak. So I can totally see the reason for zelenskyy not letting off those dodging the draft - they don't have men to spare.
After 2014 they took some notes that ex-soviet army is garbage. One needs a lot of changes to make it reliable and efficient. Lots of ukrainian fighters would tell you that as well (like ั ััะฝัะธะบ from reddit), it's just so happens that they took it a little more serious this time and also trained with NATO troops. But the whole beaurocracy, man, it needs to be flushed like a turd. I have a distant knowledge of how it is in Ukraine, but I'm pretty sure that up to 2014 or even further they had everything on paper, no central digital database of draftees, this eased the bribing and fixing papers. Zee's office would have a fun time cleaning this shit.
Zelensky didn't want the job either but he packed up his actor clothes and has so far been putting on a damn fine leadership show. I can imagine plenty of wealthier families are trying to dodge. who wouldn't...10k seems low for bargaining ones potential life. not that any of this or that in ukraine is good right now. I just hope zelensky's soul isn't so blackened that he turns this into a teaching moment rather than punishment.
Zelenskyy didn't want the job, which is why he created and starred in a show that was basically a glorified political campaign.
People who apparently think just lying down and dying is the best option when facing an invading country killing civilians en-mass. I have a feeling their opinion would be different it was their family being killed by invaders, if it was their country facing complete destruction.
Or, more accurately, people who think they shouldn't be forced to fight in a war. People have their own reasons for fighting or not fighting and it's ridiculous to think you can demand others fight for you. Go volunteer for Ukraine if you feel so strongly about it, they could use the fighters.
His family is not in danger.
Neither are the people who picked up with their family and left.
If you feel that strongly about it, go fight it yourself.
Lemmy.ml tankies gunna tankie
Tankies are what happens when kids start snorting totalitarianism at a young age. Heartbreaking!
Can't help but think they'd be singing a different tune had they grown up in any of the Warsaw pact countries in the 80s.
I mean, I get it. Capitalism has some pretty dark corners and it ain't great for the average person, but holy fuck, the stock market didn't invent greed and selfishness. That motherfucker been with us since we were cavemen. There'll always be some fucker taking your shit.
Yeah, like, I'm down for hating or even wanting to overthrow capitalism. It's when you start bootlicking fascist countries with a coat of red paint that you become insufferable.
Indeed. How dare people have a different interpretation of geopolitical events? Don't they know that world events are all straightforward cartoonish good vs evil storylines where the good guys are 200% good and the bad guys are 300% bad?
There is only one interpretation of an event like one country invading and stealing territory from another.
Russia invaded Ukraine and stole Crimea.
Nobody is contesting what happened, they're contesting why it happened.
Why is irrelevant. Imagine if people argued over if a murderer killed someone because they felt like it or because they looked at them funny. See how pointless the question is? Do you understand how no sane person would argue about that?
I like how the only reasons you give are obviously wrong. If a woman is being horrifically abused by her husband and she kills him in self-defense, it doesn't matter why she killed him because the fact that she killed him is all that matters?
Why is because Putin is a greedy ass.
(And does anybody have a suggestion for better hosts to move my account to?)
You could go back to Reddit lol
I am trying to avoid places run by idiots, guess I have to keep moving
So you're okay with having nazis and pedos to encourage "different interpretation"?
nazis and pedos? What the hell are you talking about?
Just a different interpretation, bro.
Yeah, the Iraq war wasn't that bad either, Saddam was asking to be invaded. There were lots of grounds to prevent the unification of Vietnam too, you need to look at the geopolitical interpretations of the event /s
Good job proving my point by posting examples of popular positions in the US that turned out to be bullshit. So yeah, the different interpretations turned out to be right. If this was 2003, I'm sure I'd be shouted down, mocked, down-voted, and called a "tankie" (or, I suppose "terrorist lover" to be more accurate to the time) for saying we shouldn't invade Iraq because clearly the only correct interpretation is that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.
Cool, I'm not american, so I too disagreed with the invasion at the time, as did most people and governments in Europe and most American allies at the time warned the US not to do it. The american justification for invading was bullshit, as is russia's. The difference is that nobody stood up to the US at the time and now there are a group of countries that at least have an interest in helping Ukraine uphold international law.
Between then and now, nothing changed in international law, I'm just applying it consistently. As you said, bullshit geopolitical reasons to invade a country can be brewed till the end of time, but starting a war with another country is objectively the greatest war crime, because it paves the way for the lawlessness that enables millions of other war crimes, like murder, rape, torture, forced deportation.
I wasn't talking about you personally. My point is that geopolitical situations are more complex than the people here on their high horses would like everyone to believe. Russia is wrong for invading Ukraine and should get out. We should also see how to prevent this in the future, but people are apparently content with the "crazy dictator" explanation. Okay, so how do we prevent crazy dictators from getting into power? The US had played a strong influence in Russia ever since the fall of the USSR and it could be argued that Putin is a result of US policy toward Russia. Is there no merit in examining events from this angle?
I think there is merit in separating two things which are only related if they serve your point.
Look, I also read Shock Doctrine and watched Adam Curtis' recent footage of the fall of the USSR, I understand what russia has been through and how the US gloated about "winning" the Cold War. From there up until 2014 you have a lot of actors, from the IMF to the homegrown oligarchs living the ancap dream to Yeltsin destroying russian democracy in 93 (should any country have intervened then?) and other forces that shaped a path that was only shaped by the US with neglect, greed and giving bad examples, but the US is not russia's caretaker, nor should it have been.
From 2014 onwards and the annexation of Crimea, the West just upped their neglect to the maximum, kept western media quiet about Girkin's failed campaign in the Donbas (and let russian media have a party presenting its own views unopposed) and pretended that nothing was happening because we were busy with other things and really didn't want to get into a fight with russia. And since it was just a hybrid war, we mostly told Ukraine to STFU, like we did Transnistria and Georgia. Meh, "it's the russian sphere of influence", "Crimea used to be part of russia", maybe if they have this and we deepen our economic connections, they'll stop and be brought to reason, let's keep Ukraine neutral, maybe that will work...
After Feb 2022 there was no margin of doubt that russia would only stop claiming more territory if it was forced to stop by force and the sooner the better. Anybody who hasn't changed their mind about russia's intentions after seeing russia attempt to storm Kiev is never going to change their POV on this. After that, russia's word lost all crediblity, so there was a mask-off moment and all of putin's speeches just sounded like "Bin Laden" with nukes to me, but maybe you like his batshit hypocritical critique of "satanist" american imperialism.
I have no idea what the basis for negotiation with russia is going to be now, because it can not end this war feeling that this brazen aggression was worth it, since they will come back to finish the job when they are better prepared (russia is great at glorifying the sacrifice of its people for bits of land in history books as an example for the future generations) nor can it accept that it already wasn't worth it, because they imagine that after what they did, defeat means more 90s hardship for them, so here we are ๐
US foreign policy basically created Russia as it exists today, an imperialist capitalist country with it's own ruling class competing for the world's resources. So just as all imperialist hegemons have done, Russia is invading a sovereign nation. As always there's a context that embodies the politics of the time.
US created modern russia
(and everything else that happened since 1989 that goes beyond america bad)
modern russia is an imperialist country that competes for the world resources
(it has never stopped being so and Poland+Baltics warned us and we didn't listen)
There's a context, but the fact is that countries should be stopped from invading (and annexing) other countries, no matter what their sob story is.
If some disturbed kid goes on a rampage on a school, first you stop the shooting, then you investigate wtf caused it to start and stop it happening again, maybe some other school kids bullied him...none of it matters once it got to the shooting part.
I could say the same for Napoleon, for Hitler, for Vietnam, hey look, here's Chomsky on that:
The United States went to war in Vietnam for a very good reason. They were afraid Vietnam would be a successful model of independent development and that would have a virus effectโinfect others who might try to follow the same course. There was a very simple war aimโdestroy Vietnam. And they did it.
When you take the context into account, maybe it helps understand why it's happening, but it's still a war crime that has to be stopped.
PS: if you think the world can withstand going back to 18th century multipolar conquest politics with nuclear weapons on the table, you don't appreciate the miserable suffering that means for most of us. The nuclear era only allows one or 2 poles, more than that and you get an unstable solution. So russia better stop it, go back and cozy up to China, because it's not getting its empire back if we can help it (that's one of the few things China and the US agree on).
Regarding negotiations, I've seen the position "Russia out of Ukraine, NATO out of existence" which I think would generally be fair, but I don't think it'll actually happen since there is an interest in prolonging the war.
lol, NATO out of what? If you want NATO gone, you're gonna have to replace it with something, since it is the closest thing to a European army and as much as I'd love for armies to be unnecessary, after what russia has done there is no way that NATO is going away, even if the US suddenly disappeared. The day the US has a stroke and leaves NATO, Germany, Japan and Korea will have nukes ready to deploy in a week. People underestimate the utility of the US sucking up all the responsibilities with defense that come with hegemony, but I suppose you don't, since you understand geopolitical nuance.
Exactly. Russia proved the only thing that will stop them from invading their neighbors is force, and Hark believes other countries will willingly give up their own defense after this multi-year demonstration? The only thing keeping Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from a Russian invasion is NATO. No way in hell are they giving that up.
That you can't imagine a world without NATO or an equivalent speaks volumes.
No, you need to imagine that Europe has as much of a right (a need, actually) to have an army coordination structure as russia does, what world do you live in? What are we going to have? 30 independent armies? That's how we got the napoleonic wars, WW1, WW2. Turkey membership has kept Greece and Turkey from going to war. You have no idea what you're talking about.
I mean, how about russia disbands its own army? How about that, can't you imagine a world like that?
What's wrong with this comment section is that most of the people chiming in have an opinion wholly formed by the nightly news program they watch and nothing else. I'd rather have universal health care than spend a trillion dollars every year policing ten other countries, personally.
Iโd rather have universal health care than spend a trillion dollars every year policing ten other countries
Correction: The US spends more per-capita lining the pockets of health insurance execs than every other country.
Exactly The idea we should allow a free nation to fall to Russian invaders, just so we can throw extra money at health insurance executives, is laughable.
What's 'tanky' is arguing for your own impoverishment, which is what you're doing when you try to defend our country spending a trillion a year on war in ten other countries.
And then another 100+ billion on another country's war, that we're not even fighting in. That 100 billion could keep people cool in a heat wave, or fix a state's broken power grid, or put clean water in Flint, Michigan. But no, you'd rather we neglect our own people instead.
War spending is 100% why we don't have universal health care in this country, and we are the only country dropping a trillion-plus a year.
War spending is 100% why we donโt have universal health care in this country,
Rurals that worship misogynist inheritor orange blobs that like Putin and Kim Jong Un are why we don't have universal healthcare.
I want my universal healthcare, AND, in this particular case, I want overseas Nazis blown to smithereens with nice expen$ive Patriot missles.
It is kind of funny that people throw around the word "tankie" so meaninglessly when the US has the largest military spending in the world by far and is thus literally the most "tankie" i.e. enforcing their will with military might.
Either you are willingly redefining a word, or you don't even know what it means
Tankie means a person who supports an authoratian communist state.
The word comes from the Tianamen Square Massacre, where tanks were used to silence and kill protester, which some people think didn't happen.
I know the original meaning, I'm simply pointing out the irony that people using the term for everyone who disagrees with them are more likely to support military action against people than the ones they're calling "tankies". The term has been so overused that it has lost all meaning. It's basically the liberal version of conservatives calling everything "woke". Notice how these stupid catch-all words always seem to be spammed toward the left of whoever is using the term?
But that wasn't said in your original message, was it? In your original message you were implying that by the USA spending more money in their military to spread their influence, would make the US government a tankie(?), thus invalidating everyone who uses the word tankie.
Also if your point was that the word tankie lost its meaning by usage in invalid contexts, why did you mention the USA? Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to explain that it lost its meaning by the usage of it, and not by the actions of the US government, since the US is not the only nation who has people who use the word tankie?
Perhaps my original post was worded poorly, but my point is that people are throwing the term around meaninglessly at anyone who criticizes US foreign policy. I also noted that it is made funnier because the US enforces its will around the world with the highest military spending in the world by far. In effect, a global authoritarian government. Again, which people who throw the term "tankie" around meaningless are defending.
But wouldn't that invalidate the usage of that word in the circles that use it wrong, and not for those who use it properly.
Like if there was a hypothetical town where the word "good" was used to describe bad things, would that town invalidate the word "good" for every single town? Of course it wouldn't, it would only invalidate the usage of that word by the ones who use the word in question wrong.
Well, in my limited knowledge and general thoughts about it being treason, I agree with what he's saying as it doesn't come off as these recruiters are trying to be compassionate and save citizens to become soldiers.
Sounds like profiteering favoritism to keep rich and prominent men and women from serving.
This doesn't strike me as 16 year old Billy is getting handed a bayonet and told to die for oil.
Bottom line, against or for the war, people getting rich by saving the rich is a pretty shitty way to do your profiteering.
Is $10,000 the minimum bribe, the typical/average bribe, or the most sensational bribe? Given the news outlet (BI), I'm guessing the latter.
Don't know about you, but I think bribery should be an act of treasen whether at war or at peace.
Treason is a really powerful crime that carries heavy consequences. Bribery at peace should still carry consequences but in some cases (countries) treason alone carries a death penalty. Bribery during peace maybe shouldn't carry such a steep penalty
Agreed, equating them is just penalty inflation.
A more productive focus would be:
that those who have been shown to accept bribes are actually removed from their position prosecuted successfully.
Transparent governance with independent watchdogs so that corruption is harder to hide.
Treason carries the death penalty in a lot of countries. But in most countries treason is poorly defined in law so it's difficult to say whether somebody actually did commit treason from a legal point of view because it's difficult to define what treason is.
Oftentimes it's just easier to fire them on bribery charges and prosecute them using the standard peace time legal standards.
But it's useful to call it treason on national television for PR reasons even if they never actually face treason charges.
*This is generally the case for most countries I have no idea how Ukraine defines treason.
No one should be forced to go to war, trying everything they can to escape it is understandable, the only bad thing is that this is something that only the rich can do, but in their place i would do the same.
You just highlighted the entire reason leaving isn't a fair and equitable decision - only those with the opportunity can afford to leave and others will have to shoulder the burden more because of those absences.
When everyone is facing an existential threat, leaving is the same as agreeing with the threat.
But, Black Dynamite, I take bribes in the community!
Alt-righters calling Zelenskyy corrupt and so on all day long. Look how stressed his face looks. He's aged like 30 years since the war started.
accepting bribes is bad actually
being sent to war against your will is bad actually
Being invaded by shitbirds is bad actually.
Not fighting them is bad actually.
Diluting that message is bad actually.
I'm sorry but invasions are a justifiable reason to impose a draft.
No, youโre wrong. Conscription is always wrong. If fighting is justified you wonโt need to do it.
Cool so I can come in to your house and steal all your shit, beat up your children, and shoot your dog, and you aren't allowed to fight back because if it was justified, you wouldn't need to?
EDIT: I seem to have misinterpreted the comment, as you appear to be referring to conscription being unnecessary rather than the fighting. Taking the whole context of the comment supports that, but taking only the context of the final sentence makes it appear that you are saying "if fighting is justified you dont need to fight" rather than "if fighting is justified, conscription is unnecessary"
they mean 'it' as in conscription, thwyre saying if the fight was worth it you wouldnt need to conscript
Hm, I see how their comment can be interpreted that way, and it definitely makes more sense like that. They worded it extremely poorly tho, and thus is left pretty ambiguous. I think it would have been much more clear if they just spelled out "conscription" again instead of resorting to the pronoun.
That said, since I do agree with your interpretation I will edit my comment to reflect that
Correct, thanks. I guess I couldโve phrased it better but it was worth it for that dudes completely unhinged reply.
If only reality worked that way
Sure is.
fires? That officer should be arrested.
or sent to the front lines to replace the men they took bribes from
the draft is the real crime
What's the alternative?
A volunteer force. It's not up to a president to tell people what they're willing to fight for.
You must be joking? How does a volunteer force work when dictators forcibly recruit whole armies and march into your country? Living in a democracy where you can comfortably post your thoughts on the web requires sacrifices. If we were to count on volunteers to fight wars there would be no free world to live in. And we would probably all be speaking German today.
I'm not joking. Drafts are immoral. Forcing people to kill each other is immoral.
Is it more immoral than letting a murdering dictator dictate and murder in your home?
You assume Germans all willfully signed up but also assume they only had one reason.
If drafts were considered an international war crime, countries would be afraid to use them lest everyone else pile onto them.
Forcibly Drafting women as well
100%
But the chickenhawks here in the US have always been content watching other people march off to war.
Cheering for other people's kids to march off and kill one another.
Booing when they come home, covered in blood and sweet and tears, because they didn't achieve some kind of unequivocal victory.
Then claiming the (((Secret Traitors))) cost you the war by undermining moral with information about what was actually going on.
That's the chickenhawk playbook.
So tell me when the US should have not been involved? WWI? Let the Prussian empire roll over Europe? WWII? Let Hitler 'clean up Europe from less than desirable people. Or maybe later with Korea and/or Vietnam? Let these countries fall under control of Russia/China. Because yes, it is evident that these countries have a better societal model, just look at the millions folks immigrating there each year (unlike the US) .
Your comment is an insult to all the folks who sacrificed their life to provide a better life to their compatriots.
It infuriates me that more people aren't talking about how sexist it is that Ukraine only drafted its men. I can understand instituting a draft when your country is literally being invaded, but it should apply to all able-bodied citizens, not just men.
There is a point in the fact that men are biologically more suited to fight than women. Also no one is preventing a woman to join the military.
In the end it just sucks, no one should ever have to be drafted.
To what end? Just to get woman suffer as much as men in the name of equality? Winning the war is what matters. There are plenty of strategic reasons why you might not want to include woman in a draft. You still need civilians in regular jobs, you will need to population to grow after the war, and overall most military in the world are designed by men, for men, and are extremely missadapted for woman.
A real crime here is the draft. And before the tankies start circling this post, it applies to russia as well.
I usually dislike picking hairs of evil when the alternative solution was getting annexed back into a cultural meat grinder
Downvotes for a comment pointing out that forcing people to fight and die is fucked up? Okay, people...
A lot of keyboard warriors that like to belive they would gladly fight and die for the glory of their country if the time came, but are so far removed from the realities of war, that when they think of war they think of movies and video games, not watching your freinds get blown into chunks by an artillery shell or rocket while you're making an MRE in your trench.
Calling it a crime is fucked up. Especially in a thread where actual crime (taking bribes) is discussed.
You can't seriously be equating the moral shortcomings of taking a bribe to the complete immorality of imposing a draft on others and forcing them to march towards near certain death
I definitely can. It would be a completely different topic in russia where they draft people to sustain occupation. If Ukraine stopped defending now, you'd have Buchas and Mariupols all over Ukraine with many dead. So I don't really see it as immoral as much as it sucks for everyone involved.
Compared to that, taking bribes from desperate people is next level fucked up and it's effectively profiteering on genocide.
Dude, Ukraine was invaded. The last time the US has had to use a draft for circumstances like this was the Civil War, and everyone now thinks it was warranted then.
There were drafts for the Vietnam shitshow as well.
I think people generally agree that the drafts for the Vietnam war were not justified.
Drafts are never justified, you don't own anyone else life
And they don't owe you anything either.
So it would be only fair if Society does not provide any services whatsoever to draft dogers so: citizenship revoked, no ownership of anything they cannot hold and defend themselves, if they're victims of a crime "though luck", no firemen, no use of communal spaces including roads, no public Schools, no emergency medical care and even no indirect benefits like FDIC insurance on their bank deposits and many others.
If you have no duty to Society then Society has no duty to you, aka you're a Pariah, worse than that even, as anybody can kill you anytime they feel like it since Society does not even has that duty to you - if you have no duty towards everybody else then they have no duty to enforce "rights" for you: it's only fair since "rights" only exists because Society has agreed to them and enforces them so those who don't agree with contributing to that agree to have no rights (and, as I said above, that also means the Right To Live and the Right To Ownership as well as any Citizenship Rights).
Strangelly, the crowd claiming they want Freedom only seems to want Freedom of their duties never Freedom from all those "Rights" than everybody else as a Society is making sure they have.
Let me know where you sign up to renounce to public services and stop paying taxes
If it were possible to live somewhere without government interference, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Yeah, well, you're slowly getting to my point: if you want to live amongst other people you have to abide by common rules since your Freedom ends were other people's Freedom starts.
(Which is how we ended up with the complex beast which is the Nation State, with all its imperfections)
Absolutelly, some people would love to trully be free in the genuine sense of the word and there really aren't that many places on Earth were that is possible (they were born in the wrong Age, IMHO), but most people seem to want Freedom AND all the upsides of Human Civilization both at the same time, in other words, Rights without Duties.
The last time the US has had to use a draft for circumstances like this was the Civil War
You missed the "for circumstances like this" part. There were certainly other uses of the draft for other circumstances that are looked at poorly.
WWI and WWII didn't have a direct US invasion, and we're also looked at positively, but is out of the scope of the discussion.
You won't find a single country on this planet that wouldn't draft their citizens in a wartime situation while you're running out of soldiers. Not a single one.
And it would still be fucked up in every single one of those countries.
You won't also find a single country on this planet that isn't rooted on violence and that isn't ruled by corrupted politicians
True, but it's a spectrum, some countries are much more violent and corrupt than others. Arguably Russia ranks #1 in corruption, violence, and terrorism.
Russia's troll farms out here complaining about every other country, when they are globally causing the most problems.
Objection. I would argue that Saudi Arabia ranks #1 in corruption, violence and terrorism and since we are at it i would also want to point out that the west is a partner of SA and sell them plenty of weapons.
Russiaโs troll farms out here complaining about every other country, when they are globally causing the most problems.
Is Russia the country that spends more money on psyops and propaganda?
Arguing who's less of a criminal or less of a dictator sounds like hitting the bottom of the barrel anyway and it's exactly the game these warlords want people to play.
Saudi Arabia is far up there, but Russia is still objectively worse.
The Russia simps like to "whataboutism" pretty much everyone else for doing smaller crimes than Russia. It's cliche, it's low IQ, Russia exports troll farms and nuclear terrorism, we get it.
cough cough North Korea cough cough
Costa Rica doesnโt have an army
And that doesn't make it a single bit better. Not a single one.
Running out of soldiers? I thought the Russians were a bunch of morons who can't do anything and the Ukrainians were beating their asses in their sleep? Why would they need more soldiers?
Pretty sure only you thought that
Guess you weren't paying attention to all the posts laughing about how the Russian military is so incompetent.
If your country is being invaded, you don't have a choice. War is a savage and cruel phenoma. It turns people into animals. What an invading side can do to civilians under occupation is beyond comprehension. The Nanking Massacre comes to mind in modern memory.
You may regard yourself as a pacifist and in the moral high ground, the women and children who get systematically raped and mutilated through no fault other than being a trophy for monsters to use, would think of you in another view.
I know I'm being brutal with my words, but the real fucking crime is the fucking invasion. Zelensky has to do everything to defend it's existence.
Your argument comes down to "sacrices need to be made for the greater good", right?
So, for a hypothetical, if Putin, for some insane reason, offered to leave Ukraine, respect historic border and even pay to rebuild, as long as Zelensky drowned a child with his own hands, would that be worth it? If it is, then what a bout 10 children? 1,000? 100,000? Where's the line you draw of how much of a sacrifice you can make?
If Zelensky ordered his men to charge the Russian line unarmed as a distraction for another force, would that be a necessary sacrifice to defend Ukraine, or would it be a crime against humanity?
Or even for a less extreme example, the same as above, but Ukraine must agree to outlaw LGBT people and take aways women rights to vote. Would that be worth it or would compromising morals in that regard be too much?
You missed the point by so much it's amazing your neighbor didn't lose an eye.
Civilians will be raped and murdered by an invading military. Towns will be bombed and burned. Children taken from their families and sent thousands of miles away to be enslaved in factories or worse, a toy for an oligarch.
And ALL of that you're fine with. Hand wave all of that away, because, by your own argument, a draft is more morally outrageous than all of that. Rape, murder, child sex slaves, ALL of that is worse than forcing people into the military.
If we're really going to make an outrageous argument then here's one for you. If society really has no right to an individual, then taxes and welfare should also be abolished. Who cares if the poor or mentally incapable starve? That's not your problem. Individuals have no responsibility to society. They should just move if they can't succeed.
And ALL of that you're fine with.
Please show me exactly where in my comment I said I'm fine with the actions of the Russians, or said Ukraine draft is worse than Russias war crimes...........
Oh you can't? Because I never said anything remotely close to that and you're just putting words in my mouth because you're a simpleton that can only think in strict binaries and just doesn't have the braincells required to comprehend any kind of nuance.
So let me try and make this easy for you. Pointing out Ukraine is doing a bad thing does not mean Russia isn't also doing a much worse thing.
If society really has no right to an individual, then taxes and welfare should also be abolished.
Again, no nuance. Like some part of you must be aware that there's a fundamental difference between paying taxes and being forced to lay down your life. Like in your black and white world does the existence of taxes justify the state to just murder whoever it doesn't like? Because if they have a right to the individual to force them to pay taxes, then surely that's the exact same as just murdering whoever they don't like right? Definitely no shades of grey between those two things.
My entire comment was about how you missed the point.
I then came up with a ridiculous comparison, to illustrate how ridiculous your comparison was.
So let me reiterate my point. Is it worse to have a draft or is it worse for civilians to be murdered by the, potentially, millions. Including things like elderly and infirm being tortured before they're executed, and children being shipped hundreds or thousands of miles from their home to be the toy of an oligarch.
Ukraine cannot get enough troops with volunteers. If you were leading the country, what would you do? Order a draft or let an invading military run free through your country, raping, pillaging, and murdering.
Regular draft is unacceptable. But this is not a regular draft.
a brilliant attempt to bothsides this invasion situation right here
No. The invading side is clearly worse. If it weren't for the invading army, there would be no war.
Forcing people to risk their lives for a piece of dirt is still evil though.
I think the calculus is different here, because it isn't just dirt. We've seen what happens to cities and civilians when Russia invades an area.
They're not defending just "dirt" they're defending THEIR CHILDREN AND NEIGHBORS.
Children and neighbors can be moved. I don't live in Ukraine, but when shit hit the fan, I was watching the news daily, while thinking about the most efficient way to pack everyone up in the car, and get the hell out. Luckily, the front line has stabilized relatively far from the western borders of UA. That's enough of a buffer between me and russia for now.
If the situation ever changes, I'm not going to wait for the bombs to fall. I'm going to try to outrun them. It would suck to loose my home, but life is worth more to me than a bunch of bricks.
Children and neighbors can be moved.
wow. just wow.
I donโt live in Ukraine,
Whelp.
It would suck to loose my home, but life is worth more to me than a bunch of bricks.
The point goes sailing so far over your head I wonder about your last reply.
The point goes sailing so far over your head
As long as it's not the bombs...
You do realize the irony of "dirt doesn't matter, it's just dirt" when you're not moving right now because....people are defending their own dirt???
Yes. I live comfortably thanks to those who fight.
I'd not fight if I were them, but I would also not FORCE anyone to fight for me.
From what I gather, the vast majority in Ukraine are kinda PO'ed at the invasion and are having no problem fighting against it.
Their needs to be a term when people use the "both sides" argument in bad faith to try and deflect legitimate criticism. I guess it kind of falls under whattaboutism ironically enough "nevermind the bad things Ukraine is doing, whattabout the bad things Russia is doing?
I thought treason was just an excuse for the winners to hang the losers.
No, teason is aiding the enemy in times of war.
teason is teasing russians to get them to invade Ukraine so america wins, allegedly
Russia invaded Ukraine on its own long ago, when they occupied Crimea.
yea, I know, nobody got my joke about the mispelling of treason as teason sounding like teasing and using that to mock people who said this was all an american plan to trap russia devised by the CIA in putin's head using 7-level deep inception.
oh, and
/S
Maybe in a civil war.
Draft is slavery
What do you suggest doing when your home is invaded by people who want to erase your culture?
Lives are not property of the State.
Ukrainian should defend itself by violence. But human beings are not tools or weapons.
War robots to the rescue!
Indeed
It's also the home of people being drafted (even more so than for political elite of the country). If some of them want to get the fuck out (yes, from their home) then those thay have elected shouldn't have the right to force them to stay and die.
It's a little more complicated than that (and the original post is a ridiculous oversimplifications with the intellectual level of a 5-year-old, if that much).
It's down to how much do each of us owe to the Society we grew up in and the Society we live in (if not the same) and thus how much do we have a moral duty to pay it back when called upon it to protect said Society.
Different people will decide differently on those things and thus determine in their own minds what they think their "duty" is.
Then of course, on top of this there's also the whole "protecting my family", "fight alonside my friends", plain old "warrior spirit" and such motivations on one side, as well as "having to stay to work to feed my family" and such on the other, but that's not really to do with "duty" and "moral".
In this specific case there is also the HUGE moral element that they're paying to avoid the draft, and those doing so actually have money, so they're likelly bigger beneficiaries from Society than those who can't afford to make such payments, which brings in a massive element of injustice (one might make the case that the richer the person the more they have a duty towards the Society that made the and kept them thus).
Ultimatelly the draft itself should include some elements to make it fairer (and it does, up to a point, thinks like not drafting poor people with lots of kids - who need to earn a living for their family - or people who don't have the local citizenship - who likely owe much less to local society than the locals) but in this specific case it absolutelly make sense to throw the book at those who are local citizens who have more money than most and yet use it to evade a duty to Society which is likely higher than that of most other people.
So society owes us nothing, but we owe society our lives? Why? I'm not sure I agree with that. I would risk my life protecting myself and my loved ones, but asking me to protect strangers and to die for them is a tall ask IMO.
Society is the return for contributing.
Those people happily enjoyed the benefits of their society, and now try to get around the contribution part - by spending money they got trough their position in this very society.
Everyone is free to dislike this deal, but then you should find yourself a country which doesn't have a draft. It's as simple as that. But they didn't. They lived in their comfort zone and now try to get around the rules.
Last, this discussion should be about the officials who took the bribes.
That's not at all what I said.
That you can read and write, have Internet and are alive past (I assume) the ripe old age of 20, is because of Society: anything that you cannot do with your own hands only exists because people have organised to achieve more than single individuals can by themselves and to protect what they achieved from other individuals that would take it by force.
Being outside Society would basically mean having the same rights as a wild animal: you can be killed at will by anybody, enslaved, own nothing that you cannot yourself protect, will be left to die if hurt, will likely be run over and/or killed if you enter communal spaces (such as road, parks). Forget about more complex rights than that such as the rights that come from citizenship: wild animals are not citizens.
It would be immenselly educational for people who parrot this kind of libertarian crap if there was indeed a way for them to be free of all duty to Society and Society free of all duty to them.
As there isn't, if you want a (even partially so) place where people have little or no duty to Society, I suggest you move to a place like Somalia, though I expect that if you take such an extreme "I have no duty to the group" take as you wrote here you would be dead pretty quickly (or maybe just enslaved, who knows): even in a place like that which is pretty much an Anarchy when it comes to the power of the State, people still group up in large groups with a mutual duty of protection (a Society of tribes), and funnilly enough that is same kind of mutual duty of protection you want to evade in the "tribe" you are part of currently whilst enjoying all the benefits only made possible by that very thing you do not want to fight to protect.
Even cavemen had Societies, just very small and called tribes, only back then those who didn't want to contribute to the defense of the group were pushed out and generally died.
Just contribute your life savings to the war effort in exchange?
As corrupt and shitty the Ukrainian state is, very few people owe their life to it. Draftdodging is morally defensible in almost all wars.
Society is not the State.
Only certain political subcultures in the United States and most absolute dictatorships (like China and Russia) think the State is Society.
States are just one form of organisation that naturally emerges in Societies to manage certain aspects of it. They're not Society, just as Legal is not the same as Moral (i.e. sometimes what's lawfull is imoral and what's moral is illegal).
In fact I agree that people have no duty to the State.
And in Russia that does mean that they have no duty to obey the draft, because it was the Russian State that made the war and it's not being done for the good of Society.
However in Ukraine people would be fighting for Society, not the State and in fact they would be fighting against the State: the Russian State, which is trying take over their land, their things and even control their lives and impose their will on them.
On the Ukranian side this is very much a fight for Freedom from a State which does not operate for the good of people and doesn't even want them to be free.
In fact it even makes sense for some Ukranians to be against the Ukranian State as it operates and still join to fight because the Russian State would be even worse - they're fighting for their families, their friends, their neighbours, even themselves, not for the Ukranian State.
I'm surprised so many people read your post without holding the simple truth that Society (all of us) is not the State (just a few people, sometimes not even elected and when elected, often only through lies and rules that mathematically rig the voting systems). I suppose there are a lot of politicans that want people to confuse such things as Nationalism and Patriotism, hence people who are constantly fed that political spin also end up confusing related elements such as the State, the Nation and Society.
(Also most actual Political Thinking has been killed in the last 4 decades and replaced by techniques from Marketing, so it's unsurprising that most people haven't really pondered by themselves on these things which were all the rage for ideologies back in the first half or the XX century, especially in the US where politics has long ceased to be about grand visions for the future of society).
Draftdoging an economic or offensive war is much different than draftdoging a defensive war.
I think that when you grow up and live in a society, you owe many parts of your life to it, to the people who educated you, taught you, protected you or served you, but also the people who came before and made it possible for all those previous people to be there for you.
Therefore, you have a moral responsibility to defend that.
Yeah, we have the moral responsibility to defend our corrupted politicians and billionares who brought humanity to the brink of extinction. This system must be saved at all cost
Do you think what Putin wants to bring to Ukrain is any better? It's what you describe multiplied by a thousand. So yes, we have the moral responsability to resist against the worse even if the current is not great.
^^ found Zelensky's lemmy account
I'm not from Ukraine.
I mean, to be fair, slavery is slavery whether there's a "good reason" or not
You generally don't get paid for being a slave, nor recover your freedom after the crisis has passed.
Forced labour and servitude generally fall under the umbrella of slavery, according to the USIDHR at least
Recover your freedom? So you're not free and are forced to work? Sounds like textbook slavery, to me. Indentured servitude is still slavery
You are forced to go to school, you are forced to work to earn your life. Are those slavery too?
There a huge difference between parents making a child do something, with basically no legal repercussions if they don't, and the government forcing an adult to do something against their will at the threat of prison.
They are all restricting your freedom because there's a consensus that it helps the group in general.
School doesn't kill you. I don't even qualify for the draft anymore and I know it's fucking vile.
I think some school kids in the US would disagree with you there.
Why would I give even the slightest shit about my "culture" being erased if a landmine turns half of my body into pink mist and I bleed out in the middle of a battlefield?
If you only care about your own life, there's indeed no reason to.
Anyone else who doesn't want to stay and fight should flee too. Land isn't worth the blood of millions.
It's not just land, land is intimately related to culture. Also millions moving to a neighbor country will generally create a political and humanitarian crisis, it's not a magical solution with no negative consequences.
Could you expand more on your definition of culture? To me, culture relating to land has no inherent value (assuming you mean shrines, temples, etc) without those that recognize their value. For example, a culturally important place of worship has little to no value if most of the people who value it died trying to defend it.
There are no perfect solutions, of course.
One of the foundation of culture is transforming the land, starting from agriculture. The way the natural land was shaped by the people living on is a first marker of culture. Then comes the art and the buildings, in Europe we have a very dense network of historical remains spanning thousands of years, from cave paintings to modern art museums.
If you have ever seen with your own eyes or touched with your own hands a famous remain of your place, you know the emotion is not quite the same as seeing it on the internet. It creates a feeling of belonging to a line of people who have created things bigger than them, and you reach a better understanding of how everything that allows your life today was progressively developed. It makes you want to protect this inheritance for others to access the same knowledge and emotions, and it may motivate you to produce something that could reach a similar value.
Land inspire artists and creators in general. The most evident example is how Mount Fuji inspired the creation of an insane quantity of art in Japan, such as the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai. The famous Great Wave off Kanagawa from this series, which is actually about the Mount Fuji, had a massive impact on the world culture.
The end of 19th century classical guitar piece Recuerdos de la Alhambra written by Spanish composer Francisco Tรกrrega is an interesting example. It was inspired by the Alhambra palace in Spain, which was built during the 13th century by the Emirates who conquered Spain during the previous centuries. Nonetheless, it became part of the Spanish culture and inspired new art pieces. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjX-m4LkYk
To get back to the mountains, but with a historical scientific experiment this time (science is part of culture). Blaise Pascal did a historical experiment in 1648 at the Puy-de-Dรดme (volcanic mountain in the middle of France) in order to test the "weight of air" that later led to the understanding of atmospheric pressure (immortalized by the Pascal unit of measurement). This would not have been possible in Holland. https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/blaise-pascal-florin-p-and-puy-de-d.html
There are countless examples of how ancient Greece and Rome inspired arts and architecture at different centuries: 16th century St. Peter's basilica, 17th century Versailles palace or Neoclassicism art in the 18th and 19th centuries.
There are many other examples about rivers, lakes, seas, cities etc...
That is to say, the land and how it is transformed and built are major sources of culture. If you take the same people but magically modify their history, so they lived on a different land, you will have a different culture. Probably not worse nor better, but different, because the land inspires the culture.
If your people are not living on its history soaked land anymore, you lose those major culture nutriments. I'm not saying people cannot carry part of their culture with them, nor that culture cannot reinvent itself and be inspired by different origins, but you have more chances to dilute or lose culturally important works of the past if they are not set in stone. Stones that you can access.
So that's a couple of elements about why defending your land is important for your culture.
Apologies for the delayed response, I appreciate the effort you put into your reply and I felt that I could not fully parse it and form a proper response in my ill state a couple of days ago.
I understand what you're saying! I do recognize that culture can be very important to a lot of people and that it can give them a sense of belonging, strengthen their bonds with their community, and give them a day-to-day purpose to do what they do. I strongly believe that if people choose to do so, they have the right to fight and die to protect their culture and that there's nothing wrong with that. The issue I raise is with drafts specifically because they compel people to fight and die for a cause they may not believe in. A draft is essentially a sacrifice of unwilling innocent people in order to protect a culture, and I don't think that such a large-scale sacrifice can be justified to protect something that is NOT human life.
The location of culture is not explicitly stated in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I believe that aspects of it would be spread out across the hierarchy, but are at most at the level of (and are only part of) "belonging and love." This is because as you have stated, culture can be important for giving people a sense of belonging and makes them feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. If you are forced to fight and die a brutal death, you are losing your safety and physiological needs in order to protect others' belonging and love, and to me, that is unfair and wrong. This isn't necessarily always the case - extremes like sacrificing one person to save a nation do seem right to me - but the immense scale of suffering and death of unwilling and innocent people wrought by a draft is unjustifiable for what it protects.
Even though culture as you describe it is clearly valuable, it is something that can only be experienced through the lens of people and therefore only has as much value as the people who experience it. By supporting a draft, you're essentially making the moral judgement call that it is okay to force numerous people to die brutal and bloody deaths so that others can enrich their lives through a strong and protected culture. The cost in human lives, violations of their rights, and infliction of suffering is simply too great.
This comment was specifically about why land is essential to culture.
About drafting, In other comments, I explained how I think that you have the responsibility to defend the culture that raised you. It's like paying taxes in a social-democracy, you may have become self-sufficient and don't need the social system anymore, but you have the moral responsibility to contribute back (at least through taxes), so the next underprivileged group can benefit from what allowed you to reach this point: public education, medicine, culture, research, other public infrastructure and services, etc.
So defending your people/culture/land is an extension of this thought.
Of course, I wish people would enlist out of free will, but not everyone has high moral standards (imperfect education perhaps), so you need constrains, that's also why laws and enforcement are needed.
To be honest, I had a pacifist period where I would have preferred to run away from any military conflict. But now, I think we can't deal in absolute, we have to work with compromises, in this case, supporting the lesser evil that will reduce the amount of deaths and destruction. I think getting drafted people killed to stop Putin's imperialism is a lesser evil than letting it destroy a democracy and its culture. I believe he will not stop until he has done the same to all the ex-USSR countries, and that stopping him in Ukraine should reduce the amount of destruction.
The big differences between taxes and the draft are:
You usually still live even if you get taxed.
Taxes are a cost of participating in society. If you want to stop paying them, you can using money entirely and go live on a boat or something. It's not super viable, but taxes aren't technically mandatory.
Getting drafted is more akin to slavery than taxes. It also threatens your well-being in a way that taxes do not.
I'm gonna have to read this wall of text when I'm not as sleep deprived, so I'm saving it for later. If I haven't responded in like 3 days, feel free to bug me again.
The really first thing you want to do is to try to be better than them
Better than the invaders? I agree with the general statement, but when you're in the line of sight of an automatic rifle, they're not going to be impressed by your ethics.
I'm all for giving the good example and building peaceful relations, but when you're faced with extremists who immediately endanger your life, you have to defend yourself first. It's like a violent aggression in the street, you have to defend yourself against the immediate aggression first, to protect your body, your life and maybe your relatives', before you can find a more civilized alternative like deescalating or getting help from the police.
You are mixing up bullshit. In order to defend themself one of the best thing ukrainian people can do is to ditch their own government who is drafting them to a meat slaughter over invisible lines on the map. Does this mean they have to stop fighting another authoritarian government trying to impose their laws and drafting on them? Nope, people exists with or without a flag on top of their head and a bunch of politicians ruling on them.
Ah yes, I'm sure the new laissez faire Ukrainian army will be able to stand up to a united Russian military machine!
No military can stand up to angry people
There's quite a history of military rolling over angry civilians.
There is also the case of Afghanistan, but they are a quasi-organized paramilitary fundamentalist organization of loose warlords that terrorize their citizens when left unabated.
Do we really wanna be like Afghanistan?
Deconstruction is not an argument.
Lol your house is just a collection of bricks what do you mean I cant live there?
Lmaoo money is literally just numbers why do you give a shit if I take a few numbers from you?
Fighting for your country is always a good thing. Its your country, your land and your people and they deserve to be protected.
Fighting for your country is always a good thing. Its your country, your land and your people and they deserve to be protected.
Russia propaganda.
Drafting is there to protect the state and its government at the expenses of people.
Russian propaganda.
Projection + fixed the grammar for you Vlad
Drafting is used in Ukraine to protect the people from invasive forces. The ONLY way to peace in Ukraine is through superior firepower, nothing less.
Please continue dodging the arguments I make though.
Peace through superior firepower is something illogical that does not make much sense. There will be peace once "fighting for your country is always a good thing" propaganda is no more.
There was peace, which was disrupted by a foreign power using firepower against Ukraine. Peace will be achieved once superior firepower is established by either side. It's very logical. Only thing that will happen if the peaceniks get their wish is rus*ia winning, and that simply can't happen.
Keep ignoring my points btw you're doing a great job at it.
In a situation where losing means you lose everything... It's a small price to pay.
Sorry somepeople don`t want to do for a country. If you want to do die. go for It. I wouldnt
losing means you lose everything
Conscripting a guy to go to war on your behalf, watching them die in your defense, and then breathing a sigh of relief because at least you didn't lose anything.
Apple is truck.
See? I can also spew nonsense.
Words do mean things. Conscription is involuntary labor. Slavery is... involuntary labor. A=A.
On one hand, I absolutely agree with this. It's human nature to want to avoid such a fate if one can reasonably avoid it. If I had the money and could buy my way out of participation in a fucking war...I'd hate to think that I wouldn't.
I know it's their home and things like that...but not everyone cares about those sorts of ties, and they become even less meaningful in death. I'm not saying I condone their actions, just that I understand.
I mean, I have some sympathy for the ones giving the bribes. No sympathy for the ones taking the bribes who are being charged.
For sure, that's what I was commenting on. Can't speak at all for the one's accepting the bribes, knowing what it means for their fellow soldiers.
Military pay is shit and you've got to make up the difference somewhere.
Living in a warzone isn't cheap.
Trust me, you'll find an official to bribe in such a situation in Eastern Europe. This is a PR move, to arrest some from time to time and show that in the news. Happens regularly.
Doesnt have to be Eastern Europe. Plenty of examples of rich people finding ways for their kids to avaoid the draft during Vietnam and WWII in the US.
My dad got out of Vietnam (unwittingly) when my grandparents paid the doctor to give him a bad medical evaluation. He was all hyped to go, only to discover he had... I want to say it was flat feet or something? Basically "you're no good at marching so you won't war good".
Stayed in college, got his masters and then his PhD, then went on to work for a major energy company and move out to the suburbs and live the good life into his golden years. A couple of his high school buddies went and got killed - one in a helicopter crash and another after stepping on a landmine.
When 9/11 happened and I was ready to enlist, he grabbed me by the shoulder and explained the best thing his parents ever did for him was keeping him out of the war.
I only wish every parent had this conversation with their kids. The world would be a better place.
Really glad to hear your grandparents had some sense.
US war fever is stupid.
Covfefe?
What? Don't criticize. He had his own personal Vietnam!
It's not about rich, it's about rather middle class people somehow allocating a sum to bribe a military commissariat. See the article with 10k$ - it's a lot in Ukraine, yes, but not what the size of such a bribe would be if only rich people would be doing that.
I don't understand this comment. Are you saying it's only fine to dodge the draft when rock people do it?
I'm saying that this is very common in Eastern Europe. It's not something only rich people do. Not that it's fine or not.
I would definitely try to get out too. Either by bribes or just fleeing
Ultimately human conflict is meaningless and there's a non zero chance that you'll be immortal if you survive the next ten years.
Well, "I understand" doesn't mean much here, now does it?!
I understand how many people who are unable to feel the pain of others, including the pain that they cause to others, such as Sociopaths, Psychopaths, Narcissists and so on will, if they think they can get away with it, not at all refrain from causing huge suffering to countless other people if they themselves come out of it better.
And it's all irrelevant: whilst it's psychologically easier for them to cause suffering to others (as they feel no guilt) as individuals with agency they're still the ones who choose to or not-to cause suffering to others: if they act thus they should be punished, if they don't they should not.
The only thing the "understanding" brings is putting such people higher up the list for surveillance and as suspect when it comes to detecting and punishing the harming of others than people who psychologically find it a lot harder act so because, unlike this group, they feel guilt.
If it's a crime, do not fire them, lock them up in pris-
Oh. Oh well.
Also, one of the main reasons the Russian army has been underperforming is corruption. Loads of money siphoned, incompetent people getting positions, you name it. Zelenskyy is also making sure the same doesn't happen in his country and stays on top performance/efficiency wise.
Zelenskyy will go down in history with the likes of all great leaders. The man has risen to legendary status. Once this war is won and Ukraine is free, I hope he gets that much deserved beer and beach vacation.
Slava Ukraina
I can only agree with every single word, but I think he should go the Churchill way, and just find some peaceful and relaxing job once the whole thing is over (I know, Churchill actually stayed around for a while). For one: because he will definitely deserve it; but for two: looking at history (not excluding my own country's), too many great politicians have fallen into the "...or you live long enough to become the villain" category. I'm rooting hard for Zelenskyy to at least get a draw and not go mad later.
He has said a few times that after the war he'll retire from politics.
Considering his abysmal approval rating before the war and his huge popularity during it, I think he'll take the "amazing wartime president" label and happily walk away afterwards.
If history has shown us anything, the politicians you need in wartime and peacetime need very different skillsets.
I love that the guy now being a hardass leader saving his country from a powerful invading force is there because he got famous playing the piano with his penis. What a career path! (Also, watch that video because it's really funny.)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=6Up6HoEvqls
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I think it's far more likely that, over time, we find out he was pocketing a huge chunk of the wartime aid we US taxpayers are graciously going into further debt in order to fund, like Hamid Karzai and Saddam Hussein, themselves once also darlings of the US war machine.
Ah yes because the money we give them is definitely more than a tiny drop in the lake which is the US military spending.
The key words there are 'US military spending'.
Canada spends approximately 26 billion a year on their national defense.
The US spends over a trillion, and Congress has approved around 113 billion (and that was way back in March) for Ukraine. That is, by any measure, not a drop in the bucket. It's unreasonable to argue that all 50 states wouldn't benefit more from having those funds distributed at the state level. Hawaii in particular comes to mind right now.
Arguably out of all the times pepole should complain about us military spending this is probably the worst .war in ukraine is probably one of the most just conflicts america was invloved in since probably the korean war or perhaps even WW2 . Its pretty rare to have a situation where you can say one side is the bad guy with such a certainity.And its not like they are sending troops or anything.just equipment and ammo ,more often that not american made, which means most of those dollars stays in USA either way.
Alghtough the fact that the usual US military budget is overblown is also true.
Our entire right wing in the US rolls like this. Like literally the only time they scream and shout and threaten is when people are just, competent, knowledgeable, and reasonable. They hate anything that works well and love blanketing the earth in mass misery.
I HATE this argument.
Yeah, we're not sending soldiers, but we're still getting people killed for this war. You know why? We neglect our own people's needs. There are people dying in heat waves that we could save with proper resources. There are diabetics who need insulin. We don't have a health care system, and if you suffer a major injury or illness, chances are you're dying or going bankrupt.
Our war spending gets our own people killed, just maybe not with a missile. There are real life consequences the poor and middle class experience because our government chooses to make war profiteers richer every single year.
Literally the only time you people whine about wasting money is when it's used to keep a bunch of nazis away...frikin ayyyyyy.
Not a big fan of this "us or them" attitude. Ukrainians matter as much to me as Oklahomans, and a large part of our country's wealth comes from extracting labor and resources from underdeveloped nations. It's only right that we spend that hoard helping outside our borders.
But you know just as well as I do that this money would never go to those causes. It would either go straight back to the military budget, or to rich people's pockets in the form of more business tax cuts.
OK, ๐ท๐บVlad๐ท๐บ
Check under the hood of any army and you're going to find all sorts of corruption, graft, and kickbacks. War Is A Racket.
His country has no choice but to. Even though Russia is a big bumbling country with oodles of corruption and a poor military - they have a huge population they can draw from.
Russian tactics during WWII was to use that overwhelming population to their advantage to buy time for them to get their military and manufacturing base up to scratch. Then when they countered, they still had more than enough people for an overwhelmingly large army - it wasn't through good training, or good supplies that they won, but through just being the biggest.
Ukraine doesn't have that luxury. In order for them to survive this, they have to be as lean and as well trained as possible. Each soldier needs to be worth more than 10 Russian soldiers. It's a brutal, harsh world. Attrition is probably the main fear.
Every person who is capable of fighting, needs to be fighting at their peak. So I can totally see the reason for zelenskyy not letting off those dodging the draft - they don't have men to spare.
After 2014 they took some notes that ex-soviet army is garbage. One needs a lot of changes to make it reliable and efficient. Lots of ukrainian fighters would tell you that as well (like ั ััะฝัะธะบ from reddit), it's just so happens that they took it a little more serious this time and also trained with NATO troops. But the whole beaurocracy, man, it needs to be flushed like a turd. I have a distant knowledge of how it is in Ukraine, but I'm pretty sure that up to 2014 or even further they had everything on paper, no central digital database of draftees, this eased the bribing and fixing papers. Zee's office would have a fun time cleaning this shit.
Zelensky didn't want the job either but he packed up his actor clothes and has so far been putting on a damn fine leadership show. I can imagine plenty of wealthier families are trying to dodge. who wouldn't...10k seems low for bargaining ones potential life. not that any of this or that in ukraine is good right now. I just hope zelensky's soul isn't so blackened that he turns this into a teaching moment rather than punishment.
Zelenskyy didn't want the job, which is why he created and starred in a show that was basically a glorified political campaign.
Bruh what's wrong with this comment section
People who apparently think just lying down and dying is the best option when facing an invading country killing civilians en-mass. I have a feeling their opinion would be different it was their family being killed by invaders, if it was their country facing complete destruction.
Or, more accurately, people who think they shouldn't be forced to fight in a war. People have their own reasons for fighting or not fighting and it's ridiculous to think you can demand others fight for you. Go volunteer for Ukraine if you feel so strongly about it, they could use the fighters.
His family is not in danger.
Neither are the people who picked up with their family and left.
If you feel that strongly about it, go fight it yourself.
Lemmy.ml tankies gunna tankie
Tankies are what happens when kids start snorting totalitarianism at a young age. Heartbreaking!
Can't help but think they'd be singing a different tune had they grown up in any of the Warsaw pact countries in the 80s.
I mean, I get it. Capitalism has some pretty dark corners and it ain't great for the average person, but holy fuck, the stock market didn't invent greed and selfishness. That motherfucker been with us since we were cavemen. There'll always be some fucker taking your shit.
Yeah, like, I'm down for hating or even wanting to overthrow capitalism. It's when you start bootlicking fascist countries with a coat of red paint that you become insufferable.
Indeed. How dare people have a different interpretation of geopolitical events? Don't they know that world events are all straightforward cartoonish good vs evil storylines where the good guys are 200% good and the bad guys are 300% bad?
There is only one interpretation of an event like one country invading and stealing territory from another.
Russia invaded Ukraine and stole Crimea.
Nobody is contesting what happened, they're contesting why it happened.
Why is irrelevant. Imagine if people argued over if a murderer killed someone because they felt like it or because they looked at them funny. See how pointless the question is? Do you understand how no sane person would argue about that?
I like how the only reasons you give are obviously wrong. If a woman is being horrifically abused by her husband and she kills him in self-defense, it doesn't matter why she killed him because the fact that she killed him is all that matters?
Why is because Putin is a greedy ass.
(And does anybody have a suggestion for better hosts to move my account to?)
You could go back to Reddit lol
I am trying to avoid places run by idiots, guess I have to keep moving
So you're okay with having nazis and pedos to encourage "different interpretation"?
nazis and pedos? What the hell are you talking about?
Just a different interpretation, bro.
Yeah, the Iraq war wasn't that bad either, Saddam was asking to be invaded. There were lots of grounds to prevent the unification of Vietnam too, you need to look at the geopolitical interpretations of the event /s
Good job proving my point by posting examples of popular positions in the US that turned out to be bullshit. So yeah, the different interpretations turned out to be right. If this was 2003, I'm sure I'd be shouted down, mocked, down-voted, and called a "tankie" (or, I suppose "terrorist lover" to be more accurate to the time) for saying we shouldn't invade Iraq because clearly the only correct interpretation is that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.
Cool, I'm not american, so I too disagreed with the invasion at the time, as did most people and governments in Europe and most American allies at the time warned the US not to do it. The american justification for invading was bullshit, as is russia's. The difference is that nobody stood up to the US at the time and now there are a group of countries that at least have an interest in helping Ukraine uphold international law.
Between then and now, nothing changed in international law, I'm just applying it consistently. As you said, bullshit geopolitical reasons to invade a country can be brewed till the end of time, but starting a war with another country is objectively the greatest war crime, because it paves the way for the lawlessness that enables millions of other war crimes, like murder, rape, torture, forced deportation.
I wasn't talking about you personally. My point is that geopolitical situations are more complex than the people here on their high horses would like everyone to believe. Russia is wrong for invading Ukraine and should get out. We should also see how to prevent this in the future, but people are apparently content with the "crazy dictator" explanation. Okay, so how do we prevent crazy dictators from getting into power? The US had played a strong influence in Russia ever since the fall of the USSR and it could be argued that Putin is a result of US policy toward Russia. Is there no merit in examining events from this angle?
I think there is merit in separating two things which are only related if they serve your point.
Look, I also read Shock Doctrine and watched Adam Curtis' recent footage of the fall of the USSR, I understand what russia has been through and how the US gloated about "winning" the Cold War. From there up until 2014 you have a lot of actors, from the IMF to the homegrown oligarchs living the ancap dream to Yeltsin destroying russian democracy in 93 (should any country have intervened then?) and other forces that shaped a path that was only shaped by the US with neglect, greed and giving bad examples, but the US is not russia's caretaker, nor should it have been.
From 2014 onwards and the annexation of Crimea, the West just upped their neglect to the maximum, kept western media quiet about Girkin's failed campaign in the Donbas (and let russian media have a party presenting its own views unopposed) and pretended that nothing was happening because we were busy with other things and really didn't want to get into a fight with russia. And since it was just a hybrid war, we mostly told Ukraine to STFU, like we did Transnistria and Georgia. Meh, "it's the russian sphere of influence", "Crimea used to be part of russia", maybe if they have this and we deepen our economic connections, they'll stop and be brought to reason, let's keep Ukraine neutral, maybe that will work...
After Feb 2022 there was no margin of doubt that russia would only stop claiming more territory if it was forced to stop by force and the sooner the better. Anybody who hasn't changed their mind about russia's intentions after seeing russia attempt to storm Kiev is never going to change their POV on this. After that, russia's word lost all crediblity, so there was a mask-off moment and all of putin's speeches just sounded like "Bin Laden" with nukes to me, but maybe you like his batshit hypocritical critique of "satanist" american imperialism.
I have no idea what the basis for negotiation with russia is going to be now, because it can not end this war feeling that this brazen aggression was worth it, since they will come back to finish the job when they are better prepared (russia is great at glorifying the sacrifice of its people for bits of land in history books as an example for the future generations) nor can it accept that it already wasn't worth it, because they imagine that after what they did, defeat means more 90s hardship for them, so here we are ๐
US foreign policy basically created Russia as it exists today, an imperialist capitalist country with it's own ruling class competing for the world's resources. So just as all imperialist hegemons have done, Russia is invading a sovereign nation. As always there's a context that embodies the politics of the time.
(and everything else that happened since 1989 that goes beyond america bad)
(it has never stopped being so and Poland+Baltics warned us and we didn't listen)
There's a context, but the fact is that countries should be stopped from invading (and annexing) other countries, no matter what their sob story is.
If some disturbed kid goes on a rampage on a school, first you stop the shooting, then you investigate wtf caused it to start and stop it happening again, maybe some other school kids bullied him...none of it matters once it got to the shooting part.
I could say the same for Napoleon, for Hitler, for Vietnam, hey look, here's Chomsky on that:
https://chomsky.info/20060109/
When you take the context into account, maybe it helps understand why it's happening, but it's still a war crime that has to be stopped.
PS: if you think the world can withstand going back to 18th century multipolar conquest politics with nuclear weapons on the table, you don't appreciate the miserable suffering that means for most of us. The nuclear era only allows one or 2 poles, more than that and you get an unstable solution. So russia better stop it, go back and cozy up to China, because it's not getting its empire back if we can help it (that's one of the few things China and the US agree on).
Regarding negotiations, I've seen the position "Russia out of Ukraine, NATO out of existence" which I think would generally be fair, but I don't think it'll actually happen since there is an interest in prolonging the war.
lol, NATO out of what? If you want NATO gone, you're gonna have to replace it with something, since it is the closest thing to a European army and as much as I'd love for armies to be unnecessary, after what russia has done there is no way that NATO is going away, even if the US suddenly disappeared. The day the US has a stroke and leaves NATO, Germany, Japan and Korea will have nukes ready to deploy in a week. People underestimate the utility of the US sucking up all the responsibilities with defense that come with hegemony, but I suppose you don't, since you understand geopolitical nuance.
Exactly. Russia proved the only thing that will stop them from invading their neighbors is force, and Hark believes other countries will willingly give up their own defense after this multi-year demonstration? The only thing keeping Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from a Russian invasion is NATO. No way in hell are they giving that up.
That you can't imagine a world without NATO or an equivalent speaks volumes.
No, you need to imagine that Europe has as much of a right (a need, actually) to have an army coordination structure as russia does, what world do you live in? What are we going to have? 30 independent armies? That's how we got the napoleonic wars, WW1, WW2. Turkey membership has kept Greece and Turkey from going to war. You have no idea what you're talking about.
I mean, how about russia disbands its own army? How about that, can't you imagine a world like that?
What's wrong with this comment section is that most of the people chiming in have an opinion wholly formed by the nightly news program they watch and nothing else. I'd rather have universal health care than spend a trillion dollars every year policing ten other countries, personally.
The US spends more per-capita on healthcare than almost every other country. Making sure a free nation isn't overrun by Russian invaders is not the reason the US healthcare system sucks.
Correction: The US spends more per-capita lining the pockets of health insurance execs than every other country.
Exactly The idea we should allow a free nation to fall to Russian invaders, just so we can throw extra money at health insurance executives, is laughable.
What's 'tanky' is arguing for your own impoverishment, which is what you're doing when you try to defend our country spending a trillion a year on war in ten other countries.
And then another 100+ billion on another country's war, that we're not even fighting in. That 100 billion could keep people cool in a heat wave, or fix a state's broken power grid, or put clean water in Flint, Michigan. But no, you'd rather we neglect our own people instead.
War spending is 100% why we don't have universal health care in this country, and we are the only country dropping a trillion-plus a year.
Rurals that worship misogynist inheritor orange blobs that like Putin and Kim Jong Un are why we don't have universal healthcare.
I want my universal healthcare, AND, in this particular case, I want overseas Nazis blown to smithereens with nice expen$ive Patriot missles.
It is kind of funny that people throw around the word "tankie" so meaninglessly when the US has the largest military spending in the world by far and is thus literally the most "tankie" i.e. enforcing their will with military might.
Either you are willingly redefining a word, or you don't even know what it means
Tankie means a person who supports an authoratian communist state.
The word comes from the Tianamen Square Massacre, where tanks were used to silence and kill protester, which some people think didn't happen.
I know the original meaning, I'm simply pointing out the irony that people using the term for everyone who disagrees with them are more likely to support military action against people than the ones they're calling "tankies". The term has been so overused that it has lost all meaning. It's basically the liberal version of conservatives calling everything "woke". Notice how these stupid catch-all words always seem to be spammed toward the left of whoever is using the term?
But that wasn't said in your original message, was it? In your original message you were implying that by the USA spending more money in their military to spread their influence, would make the US government a tankie(?), thus invalidating everyone who uses the word tankie.
Also if your point was that the word tankie lost its meaning by usage in invalid contexts, why did you mention the USA? Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to explain that it lost its meaning by the usage of it, and not by the actions of the US government, since the US is not the only nation who has people who use the word tankie?
Perhaps my original post was worded poorly, but my point is that people are throwing the term around meaninglessly at anyone who criticizes US foreign policy. I also noted that it is made funnier because the US enforces its will around the world with the highest military spending in the world by far. In effect, a global authoritarian government. Again, which people who throw the term "tankie" around meaningless are defending.
But wouldn't that invalidate the usage of that word in the circles that use it wrong, and not for those who use it properly.
Like if there was a hypothetical town where the word "good" was used to describe bad things, would that town invalidate the word "good" for every single town? Of course it wouldn't, it would only invalidate the usage of that word by the ones who use the word in question wrong.
You should see the threads where the huxbear and lemmygrad users get going!
It's easy to say "you need to fight for your country no matter what you want" when you are at your home in a phone talking in Lemmy
Well, in my limited knowledge and general thoughts about it being treason, I agree with what he's saying as it doesn't come off as these recruiters are trying to be compassionate and save citizens to become soldiers.
Sounds like profiteering favoritism to keep rich and prominent men and women from serving.
This doesn't strike me as 16 year old Billy is getting handed a bayonet and told to die for oil.
Bottom line, against or for the war, people getting rich by saving the rich is a pretty shitty way to do your profiteering.
Is $10,000 the minimum bribe, the typical/average bribe, or the most sensational bribe? Given the news outlet (BI), I'm guessing the latter.
Don't know about you, but I think bribery should be an act of treasen whether at war or at peace.
Treason is a really powerful crime that carries heavy consequences. Bribery at peace should still carry consequences but in some cases (countries) treason alone carries a death penalty. Bribery during peace maybe shouldn't carry such a steep penalty
Agreed, equating them is just penalty inflation.
A more productive focus would be:
Treason carries the death penalty in a lot of countries. But in most countries treason is poorly defined in law so it's difficult to say whether somebody actually did commit treason from a legal point of view because it's difficult to define what treason is.
Oftentimes it's just easier to fire them on bribery charges and prosecute them using the standard peace time legal standards.
But it's useful to call it treason on national television for PR reasons even if they never actually face treason charges.
*This is generally the case for most countries I have no idea how Ukraine defines treason.
No one should be forced to go to war, trying everything they can to escape it is understandable, the only bad thing is that this is something that only the rich can do, but in their place i would do the same.
You just highlighted the entire reason leaving isn't a fair and equitable decision - only those with the opportunity can afford to leave and others will have to shoulder the burden more because of those absences.
When everyone is facing an existential threat, leaving is the same as agreeing with the threat.
But, Black Dynamite, I take bribes in the community!
Alt-righters calling Zelenskyy corrupt and so on all day long. Look how stressed his face looks. He's aged like 30 years since the war started.
accepting bribes is bad actually
being sent to war against your will is bad actually
Being invaded by shitbirds is bad actually.
Not fighting them is bad actually.
Diluting that message is bad actually.
I'm sorry but invasions are a justifiable reason to impose a draft.
No, youโre wrong. Conscription is always wrong. If fighting is justified you wonโt need to do it.
Cool so I can come in to your house and steal all your shit, beat up your children, and shoot your dog, and you aren't allowed to fight back because if it was justified, you wouldn't need to?
EDIT: I seem to have misinterpreted the comment, as you appear to be referring to conscription being unnecessary rather than the fighting. Taking the whole context of the comment supports that, but taking only the context of the final sentence makes it appear that you are saying "if fighting is justified you dont need to fight" rather than "if fighting is justified, conscription is unnecessary"
they mean 'it' as in conscription, thwyre saying if the fight was worth it you wouldnt need to conscript
Hm, I see how their comment can be interpreted that way, and it definitely makes more sense like that. They worded it extremely poorly tho, and thus is left pretty ambiguous. I think it would have been much more clear if they just spelled out "conscription" again instead of resorting to the pronoun.
That said, since I do agree with your interpretation I will edit my comment to reflect that
Correct, thanks. I guess I couldโve phrased it better but it was worth it for that dudes completely unhinged reply.
If only reality worked that way
Sure is.
fires? That officer should be arrested.
or sent to the front lines to replace the men they took bribes from
the draft is the real crime
What's the alternative?
A volunteer force. It's not up to a president to tell people what they're willing to fight for.
You must be joking? How does a volunteer force work when dictators forcibly recruit whole armies and march into your country? Living in a democracy where you can comfortably post your thoughts on the web requires sacrifices. If we were to count on volunteers to fight wars there would be no free world to live in. And we would probably all be speaking German today.
I'm not joking. Drafts are immoral. Forcing people to kill each other is immoral.
Is it more immoral than letting a murdering dictator dictate and murder in your home?
You assume Germans all willfully signed up but also assume they only had one reason.
If drafts were considered an international war crime, countries would be afraid to use them lest everyone else pile onto them.
Forcibly Drafting women as well
100%
But the chickenhawks here in the US have always been content watching other people march off to war.
Cheering for other people's kids to march off and kill one another.
Booing when they come home, covered in blood and sweet and tears, because they didn't achieve some kind of unequivocal victory.
Then claiming the (((Secret Traitors))) cost you the war by undermining moral with information about what was actually going on.
That's the chickenhawk playbook.
So tell me when the US should have not been involved? WWI? Let the Prussian empire roll over Europe? WWII? Let Hitler 'clean up Europe from less than desirable people. Or maybe later with Korea and/or Vietnam? Let these countries fall under control of Russia/China. Because yes, it is evident that these countries have a better societal model, just look at the millions folks immigrating there each year (unlike the US) . Your comment is an insult to all the folks who sacrificed their life to provide a better life to their compatriots.
Ok, you go fight then internet tough guy
It infuriates me that more people aren't talking about how sexist it is that Ukraine only drafted its men. I can understand instituting a draft when your country is literally being invaded, but it should apply to all able-bodied citizens, not just men.
There is a point in the fact that men are biologically more suited to fight than women. Also no one is preventing a woman to join the military.
In the end it just sucks, no one should ever have to be drafted.
To what end? Just to get woman suffer as much as men in the name of equality? Winning the war is what matters. There are plenty of strategic reasons why you might not want to include woman in a draft. You still need civilians in regular jobs, you will need to population to grow after the war, and overall most military in the world are designed by men, for men, and are extremely missadapted for woman.
A real crime here is the draft. And before the tankies start circling this post, it applies to russia as well.
I usually dislike picking hairs of evil when the alternative solution was getting annexed back into a cultural meat grinder
Downvotes for a comment pointing out that forcing people to fight and die is fucked up? Okay, people...
A lot of keyboard warriors that like to belive they would gladly fight and die for the glory of their country if the time came, but are so far removed from the realities of war, that when they think of war they think of movies and video games, not watching your freinds get blown into chunks by an artillery shell or rocket while you're making an MRE in your trench.
Calling it a crime is fucked up. Especially in a thread where actual crime (taking bribes) is discussed.
You can't seriously be equating the moral shortcomings of taking a bribe to the complete immorality of imposing a draft on others and forcing them to march towards near certain death
I definitely can. It would be a completely different topic in russia where they draft people to sustain occupation. If Ukraine stopped defending now, you'd have Buchas and Mariupols all over Ukraine with many dead. So I don't really see it as immoral as much as it sucks for everyone involved.
Compared to that, taking bribes from desperate people is next level fucked up and it's effectively profiteering on genocide.
Dude, Ukraine was invaded. The last time the US has had to use a draft for circumstances like this was the Civil War, and everyone now thinks it was warranted then.
There were drafts for the Vietnam shitshow as well.
I think people generally agree that the drafts for the Vietnam war were not justified.
Drafts are never justified, you don't own anyone else life
And they don't owe you anything either.
So it would be only fair if Society does not provide any services whatsoever to draft dogers so: citizenship revoked, no ownership of anything they cannot hold and defend themselves, if they're victims of a crime "though luck", no firemen, no use of communal spaces including roads, no public Schools, no emergency medical care and even no indirect benefits like FDIC insurance on their bank deposits and many others.
If you have no duty to Society then Society has no duty to you, aka you're a Pariah, worse than that even, as anybody can kill you anytime they feel like it since Society does not even has that duty to you - if you have no duty towards everybody else then they have no duty to enforce "rights" for you: it's only fair since "rights" only exists because Society has agreed to them and enforces them so those who don't agree with contributing to that agree to have no rights (and, as I said above, that also means the Right To Live and the Right To Ownership as well as any Citizenship Rights).
Strangelly, the crowd claiming they want Freedom only seems to want Freedom of their duties never Freedom from all those "Rights" than everybody else as a Society is making sure they have.
Let me know where you sign up to renounce to public services and stop paying taxes
If it were possible to live somewhere without government interference, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Yeah, well, you're slowly getting to my point: if you want to live amongst other people you have to abide by common rules since your Freedom ends were other people's Freedom starts.
(Which is how we ended up with the complex beast which is the Nation State, with all its imperfections)
Absolutelly, some people would love to trully be free in the genuine sense of the word and there really aren't that many places on Earth were that is possible (they were born in the wrong Age, IMHO), but most people seem to want Freedom AND all the upsides of Human Civilization both at the same time, in other words, Rights without Duties.
Didn't teach history in your school?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States
You missed the "for circumstances like this" part. There were certainly other uses of the draft for other circumstances that are looked at poorly.
WWI and WWII didn't have a direct US invasion, and we're also looked at positively, but is out of the scope of the discussion.
You won't find a single country on this planet that wouldn't draft their citizens in a wartime situation while you're running out of soldiers. Not a single one.
And it would still be fucked up in every single one of those countries.
You won't also find a single country on this planet that isn't rooted on violence and that isn't ruled by corrupted politicians
True, but it's a spectrum, some countries are much more violent and corrupt than others. Arguably Russia ranks #1 in corruption, violence, and terrorism.
Russia's troll farms out here complaining about every other country, when they are globally causing the most problems.
Objection. I would argue that Saudi Arabia ranks #1 in corruption, violence and terrorism and since we are at it i would also want to point out that the west is a partner of SA and sell them plenty of weapons.
Is Russia the country that spends more money on psyops and propaganda?
Arguing who's less of a criminal or less of a dictator sounds like hitting the bottom of the barrel anyway and it's exactly the game these warlords want people to play.
Saudi Arabia is far up there, but Russia is still objectively worse.
The Russia simps like to "whataboutism" pretty much everyone else for doing smaller crimes than Russia. It's cliche, it's low IQ, Russia exports troll farms and nuclear terrorism, we get it.
cough cough North Korea cough cough
Costa Rica doesnโt have an army
And that doesn't make it a single bit better. Not a single one.
Running out of soldiers? I thought the Russians were a bunch of morons who can't do anything and the Ukrainians were beating their asses in their sleep? Why would they need more soldiers?
Pretty sure only you thought that
Guess you weren't paying attention to all the posts laughing about how the Russian military is so incompetent.
If your country is being invaded, you don't have a choice. War is a savage and cruel phenoma. It turns people into animals. What an invading side can do to civilians under occupation is beyond comprehension. The Nanking Massacre comes to mind in modern memory.
You may regard yourself as a pacifist and in the moral high ground, the women and children who get systematically raped and mutilated through no fault other than being a trophy for monsters to use, would think of you in another view.
I know I'm being brutal with my words, but the real fucking crime is the fucking invasion. Zelensky has to do everything to defend it's existence.
Your argument comes down to "sacrices need to be made for the greater good", right?
So, for a hypothetical, if Putin, for some insane reason, offered to leave Ukraine, respect historic border and even pay to rebuild, as long as Zelensky drowned a child with his own hands, would that be worth it? If it is, then what a bout 10 children? 1,000? 100,000? Where's the line you draw of how much of a sacrifice you can make? If Zelensky ordered his men to charge the Russian line unarmed as a distraction for another force, would that be a necessary sacrifice to defend Ukraine, or would it be a crime against humanity?
Or even for a less extreme example, the same as above, but Ukraine must agree to outlaw LGBT people and take aways women rights to vote. Would that be worth it or would compromising morals in that regard be too much?
You missed the point by so much it's amazing your neighbor didn't lose an eye.
Civilians will be raped and murdered by an invading military. Towns will be bombed and burned. Children taken from their families and sent thousands of miles away to be enslaved in factories or worse, a toy for an oligarch.
And ALL of that you're fine with. Hand wave all of that away, because, by your own argument, a draft is more morally outrageous than all of that. Rape, murder, child sex slaves, ALL of that is worse than forcing people into the military.
If we're really going to make an outrageous argument then here's one for you. If society really has no right to an individual, then taxes and welfare should also be abolished. Who cares if the poor or mentally incapable starve? That's not your problem. Individuals have no responsibility to society. They should just move if they can't succeed.
Please show me exactly where in my comment I said I'm fine with the actions of the Russians, or said Ukraine draft is worse than Russias war crimes...........
Oh you can't? Because I never said anything remotely close to that and you're just putting words in my mouth because you're a simpleton that can only think in strict binaries and just doesn't have the braincells required to comprehend any kind of nuance.
So let me try and make this easy for you. Pointing out Ukraine is doing a bad thing does not mean Russia isn't also doing a much worse thing.
Again, no nuance. Like some part of you must be aware that there's a fundamental difference between paying taxes and being forced to lay down your life. Like in your black and white world does the existence of taxes justify the state to just murder whoever it doesn't like? Because if they have a right to the individual to force them to pay taxes, then surely that's the exact same as just murdering whoever they don't like right? Definitely no shades of grey between those two things.
My entire comment was about how you missed the point.
I then came up with a ridiculous comparison, to illustrate how ridiculous your comparison was.
So let me reiterate my point. Is it worse to have a draft or is it worse for civilians to be murdered by the, potentially, millions. Including things like elderly and infirm being tortured before they're executed, and children being shipped hundreds or thousands of miles from their home to be the toy of an oligarch.
Ukraine cannot get enough troops with volunteers. If you were leading the country, what would you do? Order a draft or let an invading military run free through your country, raping, pillaging, and murdering.
Regular draft is unacceptable. But this is not a regular draft.
a brilliant attempt to bothsides this invasion situation right here
No. The invading side is clearly worse. If it weren't for the invading army, there would be no war.
Forcing people to risk their lives for a piece of dirt is still evil though.
I think the calculus is different here, because it isn't just dirt. We've seen what happens to cities and civilians when Russia invades an area.
They're not defending just "dirt" they're defending THEIR CHILDREN AND NEIGHBORS.
Children and neighbors can be moved. I don't live in Ukraine, but when shit hit the fan, I was watching the news daily, while thinking about the most efficient way to pack everyone up in the car, and get the hell out. Luckily, the front line has stabilized relatively far from the western borders of UA. That's enough of a buffer between me and russia for now.
If the situation ever changes, I'm not going to wait for the bombs to fall. I'm going to try to outrun them. It would suck to loose my home, but life is worth more to me than a bunch of bricks.
wow. just wow.
Whelp.
The point goes sailing so far over your head I wonder about your last reply.
As long as it's not the bombs...
You do realize the irony of "dirt doesn't matter, it's just dirt" when you're not moving right now because....people are defending their own dirt???
Yes. I live comfortably thanks to those who fight. I'd not fight if I were them, but I would also not FORCE anyone to fight for me.
From what I gather, the vast majority in Ukraine are kinda PO'ed at the invasion and are having no problem fighting against it.
Their needs to be a term when people use the "both sides" argument in bad faith to try and deflect legitimate criticism. I guess it kind of falls under whattaboutism ironically enough "nevermind the bad things Ukraine is doing, whattabout the bad things Russia is doing?
I thought treason was just an excuse for the winners to hang the losers.
No, teason is aiding the enemy in times of war.
teason is teasing russians to get them to invade Ukraine so america wins, allegedly
Russia invaded Ukraine on its own long ago, when they occupied Crimea.
yea, I know, nobody got my joke about the mispelling of treason as teason sounding like teasing and using that to mock people who said this was all an american plan to trap russia devised by the CIA in putin's head using 7-level deep inception.
oh, and
/S
Maybe in a civil war.
Draft is slavery
What do you suggest doing when your home is invaded by people who want to erase your culture?
Lives are not property of the State.
Ukrainian should defend itself by violence. But human beings are not tools or weapons.
War robots to the rescue!
Indeed
It's also the home of people being drafted (even more so than for political elite of the country). If some of them want to get the fuck out (yes, from their home) then those thay have elected shouldn't have the right to force them to stay and die.
It's a little more complicated than that (and the original post is a ridiculous oversimplifications with the intellectual level of a 5-year-old, if that much).
It's down to how much do each of us owe to the Society we grew up in and the Society we live in (if not the same) and thus how much do we have a moral duty to pay it back when called upon it to protect said Society.
Different people will decide differently on those things and thus determine in their own minds what they think their "duty" is.
Then of course, on top of this there's also the whole "protecting my family", "fight alonside my friends", plain old "warrior spirit" and such motivations on one side, as well as "having to stay to work to feed my family" and such on the other, but that's not really to do with "duty" and "moral".
In this specific case there is also the HUGE moral element that they're paying to avoid the draft, and those doing so actually have money, so they're likelly bigger beneficiaries from Society than those who can't afford to make such payments, which brings in a massive element of injustice (one might make the case that the richer the person the more they have a duty towards the Society that made the and kept them thus).
Ultimatelly the draft itself should include some elements to make it fairer (and it does, up to a point, thinks like not drafting poor people with lots of kids - who need to earn a living for their family - or people who don't have the local citizenship - who likely owe much less to local society than the locals) but in this specific case it absolutelly make sense to throw the book at those who are local citizens who have more money than most and yet use it to evade a duty to Society which is likely higher than that of most other people.
So society owes us nothing, but we owe society our lives? Why? I'm not sure I agree with that. I would risk my life protecting myself and my loved ones, but asking me to protect strangers and to die for them is a tall ask IMO.
Society is the return for contributing.
Those people happily enjoyed the benefits of their society, and now try to get around the contribution part - by spending money they got trough their position in this very society.
Everyone is free to dislike this deal, but then you should find yourself a country which doesn't have a draft. It's as simple as that. But they didn't. They lived in their comfort zone and now try to get around the rules.
Last, this discussion should be about the officials who took the bribes.
That's not at all what I said.
That you can read and write, have Internet and are alive past (I assume) the ripe old age of 20, is because of Society: anything that you cannot do with your own hands only exists because people have organised to achieve more than single individuals can by themselves and to protect what they achieved from other individuals that would take it by force.
Being outside Society would basically mean having the same rights as a wild animal: you can be killed at will by anybody, enslaved, own nothing that you cannot yourself protect, will be left to die if hurt, will likely be run over and/or killed if you enter communal spaces (such as road, parks). Forget about more complex rights than that such as the rights that come from citizenship: wild animals are not citizens.
It would be immenselly educational for people who parrot this kind of libertarian crap if there was indeed a way for them to be free of all duty to Society and Society free of all duty to them.
As there isn't, if you want a (even partially so) place where people have little or no duty to Society, I suggest you move to a place like Somalia, though I expect that if you take such an extreme "I have no duty to the group" take as you wrote here you would be dead pretty quickly (or maybe just enslaved, who knows): even in a place like that which is pretty much an Anarchy when it comes to the power of the State, people still group up in large groups with a mutual duty of protection (a Society of tribes), and funnilly enough that is same kind of mutual duty of protection you want to evade in the "tribe" you are part of currently whilst enjoying all the benefits only made possible by that very thing you do not want to fight to protect.
Even cavemen had Societies, just very small and called tribes, only back then those who didn't want to contribute to the defense of the group were pushed out and generally died.
Just contribute your life savings to the war effort in exchange?
As corrupt and shitty the Ukrainian state is, very few people owe their life to it. Draftdodging is morally defensible in almost all wars.
Society is not the State.
Only certain political subcultures in the United States and most absolute dictatorships (like China and Russia) think the State is Society.
States are just one form of organisation that naturally emerges in Societies to manage certain aspects of it. They're not Society, just as Legal is not the same as Moral (i.e. sometimes what's lawfull is imoral and what's moral is illegal).
In fact I agree that people have no duty to the State.
And in Russia that does mean that they have no duty to obey the draft, because it was the Russian State that made the war and it's not being done for the good of Society.
However in Ukraine people would be fighting for Society, not the State and in fact they would be fighting against the State: the Russian State, which is trying take over their land, their things and even control their lives and impose their will on them.
On the Ukranian side this is very much a fight for Freedom from a State which does not operate for the good of people and doesn't even want them to be free.
In fact it even makes sense for some Ukranians to be against the Ukranian State as it operates and still join to fight because the Russian State would be even worse - they're fighting for their families, their friends, their neighbours, even themselves, not for the Ukranian State.
I'm surprised so many people read your post without holding the simple truth that Society (all of us) is not the State (just a few people, sometimes not even elected and when elected, often only through lies and rules that mathematically rig the voting systems). I suppose there are a lot of politicans that want people to confuse such things as Nationalism and Patriotism, hence people who are constantly fed that political spin also end up confusing related elements such as the State, the Nation and Society.
(Also most actual Political Thinking has been killed in the last 4 decades and replaced by techniques from Marketing, so it's unsurprising that most people haven't really pondered by themselves on these things which were all the rage for ideologies back in the first half or the XX century, especially in the US where politics has long ceased to be about grand visions for the future of society).
Draftdoging an economic or offensive war is much different than draftdoging a defensive war.
I think that when you grow up and live in a society, you owe many parts of your life to it, to the people who educated you, taught you, protected you or served you, but also the people who came before and made it possible for all those previous people to be there for you.
Therefore, you have a moral responsibility to defend that.
Yeah, we have the moral responsibility to defend our corrupted politicians and billionares who brought humanity to the brink of extinction. This system must be saved at all cost
Do you think what Putin wants to bring to Ukrain is any better? It's what you describe multiplied by a thousand. So yes, we have the moral responsability to resist against the worse even if the current is not great.
^^ found Zelensky's lemmy account
I'm not from Ukraine.
I mean, to be fair, slavery is slavery whether there's a "good reason" or not
You generally don't get paid for being a slave, nor recover your freedom after the crisis has passed.
Forced labour and servitude generally fall under the umbrella of slavery, according to the USIDHR at least
Recover your freedom? So you're not free and are forced to work? Sounds like textbook slavery, to me. Indentured servitude is still slavery
You are forced to go to school, you are forced to work to earn your life. Are those slavery too?
There a huge difference between parents making a child do something, with basically no legal repercussions if they don't, and the government forcing an adult to do something against their will at the threat of prison.
They are all restricting your freedom because there's a consensus that it helps the group in general.
School doesn't kill you. I don't even qualify for the draft anymore and I know it's fucking vile.
I think some school kids in the US would disagree with you there.
Nor will you if you're dead.
Encouraging people to enlist, not forcing them.
Of course, it would be best if they did it willingly. But if they don't, you just accept being invaded and erased?
I would rather do that instead of indirectly killing a bunch of unwilling people, yeah.
Even if you think that the invader will kill and destroy more than you would by preventing its invasion?
The only reason they can invade another country to begin with is because they are drafting people to do it.
Russian drafts happened after the invasion, especially when they encountered unexpected resistance from the Ukrainian.
Why would I give even the slightest shit about my "culture" being erased if a landmine turns half of my body into pink mist and I bleed out in the middle of a battlefield?
If you only care about your own life, there's indeed no reason to.
Anyone else who doesn't want to stay and fight should flee too. Land isn't worth the blood of millions.
It's not just land, land is intimately related to culture. Also millions moving to a neighbor country will generally create a political and humanitarian crisis, it's not a magical solution with no negative consequences.
Could you expand more on your definition of culture? To me, culture relating to land has no inherent value (assuming you mean shrines, temples, etc) without those that recognize their value. For example, a culturally important place of worship has little to no value if most of the people who value it died trying to defend it.
There are no perfect solutions, of course.
One of the foundation of culture is transforming the land, starting from agriculture. The way the natural land was shaped by the people living on is a first marker of culture. Then comes the art and the buildings, in Europe we have a very dense network of historical remains spanning thousands of years, from cave paintings to modern art museums. If you have ever seen with your own eyes or touched with your own hands a famous remain of your place, you know the emotion is not quite the same as seeing it on the internet. It creates a feeling of belonging to a line of people who have created things bigger than them, and you reach a better understanding of how everything that allows your life today was progressively developed. It makes you want to protect this inheritance for others to access the same knowledge and emotions, and it may motivate you to produce something that could reach a similar value.
Land inspire artists and creators in general. The most evident example is how Mount Fuji inspired the creation of an insane quantity of art in Japan, such as the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai. The famous Great Wave off Kanagawa from this series, which is actually about the Mount Fuji, had a massive impact on the world culture.
Similarly, post-impressionist painter Paul Cรฉzanne painted multiple views of mount Sainte-Victoire https://drawpaintacademy.com/mont-sainte-victoire/
The end of 19th century classical guitar piece Recuerdos de la Alhambra written by Spanish composer Francisco Tรกrrega is an interesting example. It was inspired by the Alhambra palace in Spain, which was built during the 13th century by the Emirates who conquered Spain during the previous centuries. Nonetheless, it became part of the Spanish culture and inspired new art pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjX-m4LkYk
To get back to the mountains, but with a historical scientific experiment this time (science is part of culture). Blaise Pascal did a historical experiment in 1648 at the Puy-de-Dรดme (volcanic mountain in the middle of France) in order to test the "weight of air" that later led to the understanding of atmospheric pressure (immortalized by the Pascal unit of measurement). This would not have been possible in Holland. https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/blaise-pascal-florin-p-and-puy-de-d.html
There are countless examples of how ancient Greece and Rome inspired arts and architecture at different centuries: 16th century St. Peter's basilica, 17th century Versailles palace or Neoclassicism art in the 18th and 19th centuries.
There are many other examples about rivers, lakes, seas, cities etc...
That is to say, the land and how it is transformed and built are major sources of culture. If you take the same people but magically modify their history, so they lived on a different land, you will have a different culture. Probably not worse nor better, but different, because the land inspires the culture.
If your people are not living on its history soaked land anymore, you lose those major culture nutriments. I'm not saying people cannot carry part of their culture with them, nor that culture cannot reinvent itself and be inspired by different origins, but you have more chances to dilute or lose culturally important works of the past if they are not set in stone. Stones that you can access.
It may even get physically destroyed and erased, like what ISIL terrorists did of the ancient temples in Iraq and Syria. To be fair, it also happens from "democratic" movements, such as how the French Revolution destroyed many pieces of arts because it represented the Nobility and the Church. https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/04/archives/notre-dame-statuary-lost-in-1793-unearthed-in-paris.html
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/12/video-islamic-state-nimrud/25667399/
Given that Putin negates Ukrainian's history and culture as a justification to invade it, we can expect that he would continue on his pathway of destruction to erase any reminder of it.
https://theconversation.com/we-should-all-be-concerned-that-putin-is-trying-to-destroy-ukrainian-culture-179351
So that's a couple of elements about why defending your land is important for your culture.
Apologies for the delayed response, I appreciate the effort you put into your reply and I felt that I could not fully parse it and form a proper response in my ill state a couple of days ago.
I understand what you're saying! I do recognize that culture can be very important to a lot of people and that it can give them a sense of belonging, strengthen their bonds with their community, and give them a day-to-day purpose to do what they do. I strongly believe that if people choose to do so, they have the right to fight and die to protect their culture and that there's nothing wrong with that. The issue I raise is with drafts specifically because they compel people to fight and die for a cause they may not believe in. A draft is essentially a sacrifice of unwilling innocent people in order to protect a culture, and I don't think that such a large-scale sacrifice can be justified to protect something that is NOT human life.
The location of culture is not explicitly stated in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I believe that aspects of it would be spread out across the hierarchy, but are at most at the level of (and are only part of) "belonging and love." This is because as you have stated, culture can be important for giving people a sense of belonging and makes them feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. If you are forced to fight and die a brutal death, you are losing your safety and physiological needs in order to protect others' belonging and love, and to me, that is unfair and wrong. This isn't necessarily always the case - extremes like sacrificing one person to save a nation do seem right to me - but the immense scale of suffering and death of unwilling and innocent people wrought by a draft is unjustifiable for what it protects.
Even though culture as you describe it is clearly valuable, it is something that can only be experienced through the lens of people and therefore only has as much value as the people who experience it. By supporting a draft, you're essentially making the moral judgement call that it is okay to force numerous people to die brutal and bloody deaths so that others can enrich their lives through a strong and protected culture. The cost in human lives, violations of their rights, and infliction of suffering is simply too great.
This comment was specifically about why land is essential to culture.
About drafting, In other comments, I explained how I think that you have the responsibility to defend the culture that raised you. It's like paying taxes in a social-democracy, you may have become self-sufficient and don't need the social system anymore, but you have the moral responsibility to contribute back (at least through taxes), so the next underprivileged group can benefit from what allowed you to reach this point: public education, medicine, culture, research, other public infrastructure and services, etc.
So defending your people/culture/land is an extension of this thought.
Of course, I wish people would enlist out of free will, but not everyone has high moral standards (imperfect education perhaps), so you need constrains, that's also why laws and enforcement are needed.
To be honest, I had a pacifist period where I would have preferred to run away from any military conflict. But now, I think we can't deal in absolute, we have to work with compromises, in this case, supporting the lesser evil that will reduce the amount of deaths and destruction. I think getting drafted people killed to stop Putin's imperialism is a lesser evil than letting it destroy a democracy and its culture. I believe he will not stop until he has done the same to all the ex-USSR countries, and that stopping him in Ukraine should reduce the amount of destruction.
The big differences between taxes and the draft are:
You usually still live even if you get taxed.
Taxes are a cost of participating in society. If you want to stop paying them, you can using money entirely and go live on a boat or something. It's not super viable, but taxes aren't technically mandatory.
Getting drafted is more akin to slavery than taxes. It also threatens your well-being in a way that taxes do not.
I'm gonna have to read this wall of text when I'm not as sleep deprived, so I'm saving it for later. If I haven't responded in like 3 days, feel free to bug me again.
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The really first thing you want to do is to try to be better than them
Better than the invaders? I agree with the general statement, but when you're in the line of sight of an automatic rifle, they're not going to be impressed by your ethics.
It reminds me of Gandhi, who recommended his Jewish friends who were facing Nazism to just peacefully protest and wrote a nice letter to Hitler in 1939 to politely ask him to reconsider going to war. 6 million Jews were assassinated nonetheless.
https://apnews.com/general-news-f40d8c2c7d8d4ffeadd576ded89acc0c
https://time.com/5685122/gandhi-hitler-letter/
I'm all for giving the good example and building peaceful relations, but when you're faced with extremists who immediately endanger your life, you have to defend yourself first. It's like a violent aggression in the street, you have to defend yourself against the immediate aggression first, to protect your body, your life and maybe your relatives', before you can find a more civilized alternative like deescalating or getting help from the police.
You are mixing up bullshit. In order to defend themself one of the best thing ukrainian people can do is to ditch their own government who is drafting them to a meat slaughter over invisible lines on the map. Does this mean they have to stop fighting another authoritarian government trying to impose their laws and drafting on them? Nope, people exists with or without a flag on top of their head and a bunch of politicians ruling on them.
Ah yes, I'm sure the new laissez faire Ukrainian army will be able to stand up to a united Russian military machine!
No military can stand up to angry people
There's quite a history of military rolling over angry civilians.
There is also the case of Afghanistan, but they are a quasi-organized paramilitary fundamentalist organization of loose warlords that terrorize their citizens when left unabated.
Do we really wanna be like Afghanistan?
Deconstruction is not an argument.
Lol your house is just a collection of bricks what do you mean I cant live there?
Lmaoo money is literally just numbers why do you give a shit if I take a few numbers from you?
Fighting for your country is always a good thing. Its your country, your land and your people and they deserve to be protected.
Russia propaganda.
Drafting is there to protect the state and its government at the expenses of people.
Projection + fixed the grammar for you Vlad
Drafting is used in Ukraine to protect the people from invasive forces. The ONLY way to peace in Ukraine is through superior firepower, nothing less.
Please continue dodging the arguments I make though.
Peace through superior firepower is something illogical that does not make much sense. There will be peace once "fighting for your country is always a good thing" propaganda is no more.
There was peace, which was disrupted by a foreign power using firepower against Ukraine. Peace will be achieved once superior firepower is established by either side. It's very logical. Only thing that will happen if the peaceniks get their wish is rus*ia winning, and that simply can't happen.
Keep ignoring my points btw you're doing a great job at it.
War is death.
In a situation where losing means you lose everything... It's a small price to pay.
Sorry somepeople don`t want to do for a country. If you want to do die. go for It. I wouldnt
Conscripting a guy to go to war on your behalf, watching them die in your defense, and then breathing a sigh of relief because at least you didn't lose anything.
Apple is truck.
See? I can also spew nonsense.
Words do mean things. Conscription is involuntary labor. Slavery is... involuntary labor. A=A.