Comments by "Daniel B West" (@danielbwest) on "Why U.S. Airstrikes Won’t Solve Anything in Iraq and Syria" video.
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@AniMageNeBy As I pointed out above, for the countries in the West, there is accountability there domestically and Internationally. Something that doesn't exist for Russia. The West always deliberately tries to make its case for military intervention using the same international rules and the recognize world based order. Most of the time, it will in fact often use them to justify the use of force, even if the UN doesn't recognize it as "legal" buy its own definition.That's why the type military intervention the West does is very rare. When it's valid it's there for the whole world to see. When it's not, as was the case in ONE case in 2003, there is at least some accountability. I myself am not trying to make the case or to justify anything. I am pointing out the case that these Western countries made and we're having a discussion about the validity That's what's great about living in a democracy where we have freedom of speech. Again, something Russia doesn't have.
And because the bar is so low for Russia, Putin doesn't even bother properly making its case. It made no case for Crimea, and your assertion that it has a strong legal claim to Crimea is extremely false. Crimea was given to the Ukrainian SSR and to its successful state Russia has no legal claim to Crimea. On top of that, it was easy to see through the lies of the case it was making in the Donbas. Especially since Russia had been infiltrating the region and using propaganda in the region for years even before 2014.
So this is a complex discussion. It's not as simple as "I think the West does it so Russia can do it too". Context and nuance matter. And because there's no accountability for Russia internationally or internally Russia's justifications for doing it will almost always be weaker than Western democracies
Therefore, the West doesn't selectively apply the rules of sovereignty and international law on a consistent basis. In my previous post I said what is legal is obscured by the internal politics within the UN itself, on the one hand, but also by the inherent contradictions and weaknesses within the UN itself. If a country is murdering its own people in a genocide, or is a narcos state that has an indirect effect on another state, what recourse is there?
These are hard questions that you're not even trying to address in good faith because you're too busy trying to make an argument for Russia. You're deliberately trying to misconstrue what the West was doing just to make an argument that Russia can do the same thing you claimed the West is doing. Your stance is entirely self-serving. So yes, you are pro Russian
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@AniMageNeBy You really are a strange fellow you know that?
Here you are arguing vociferously for the sovereignty of a country that that is aligned with Russia. In other posts you are also arguing with other people about on the one-hand, that territorial sovereignty doesn't matter and that the people of the donbas should should decide, which is very convenient for your pro-Russian stance, and on the other hand that the United States should respect Syria and Iraq's sovereignty. You even have the gall to argue for the legitimate claims Russia has on another country's territory, yet here you are crying about what you claim the US doing, the very thing that Russia is doing in Ukraine. You seem to love Russia so much yet you live in the West. Isn't that interesting? you value the very thing that the West gives you that you would never have in Russia, yet here you are speaking on Russia's behalf with a passion
I guess considering that you are pro Russian none of this contradictory language is strange at all on second thought 😂😂
Let me just address your extremely unnecessarily long post with an even longer post of my own
To your first point, what is an "official demand" as you are characterizing it? I explained in the previous post that it was not a demand. Re read it again. You say you understand that there is politics involved yet you don't seem to grasp the context of what I said. An official demand is not a statement made by an elected official to to the media. When it's official there is a specific way that is it is communicated and will often be repeated by several others in the administration or government as official policy and have a plan for that. That's not what's happening in Iraq
You then go on to say the US has no right to bomb target in another country's territory. Which territory specifically are you talking about? Cuz if you're you are referring to Syria, again they did not even have control over their territory and Isis is an existential threat to the United States and it's allies both the domestically and their interests abroad. So what are you arguing here? That the United States has to stop bombing targets in Syria because the Syrian government says so? As it's stands, Syria is still unstable. They clearly cannot deal with it alone and Russia is just as inept in dealing with the problem. As far as I can see, Turkey has the same assessment, although for a different concern. So this isn't just an American thing as you're trying to pass it off as call it and invasion all you went to fit your narrative but you can't change history
The reason why I brought up the reason for the Russians being there in the first place was to highlight the hypocrisy of the Syrian government and you're hypocritical claims of legality. They didn't even invite Russia in to help them deal with threat of Isis caused by the chaos of the Syrian Revolution. Instead they brought them to help prop up the Assad regime. Furthermore yes, the US did bomb the Syrian government forces after they used chemical weapons on their own people. You convently forgot to mention that didn't you? No matter. Anyways, as I'll explain further below, what is considered "legal" can be very fluid. Context is needed to understand what legality means in each case is it legal. For an oppressive dictatorship, is it legal to ask another dictator of another country to intervene to save itself? sure. Considering that that dictator controls the sovereignty of the nation and question, which is in this case Syria. But by the Western perspective, the government dictatorship is not a legitimate one after the actions it took the United States can argue that the Assad regime has no legal right to tell the United States can't be on a territory it doesn't control has no capability of controlling
Again your characterization of it as a coup is also pure propaganda just to support a brain dead narrative that doesn't exist. If the US wanted to continue air strikes in order to force regime change, they would have by now. They used the air strikes to force the Syrians to stop using their own Air Force to to drop chemical weapons, which succeeded. Again, you can't rewrite history for your own benefit
And all this talk of UN international laws and rules is very interesting to me considering you bend over backwards to make all sorts of excusees for what Russia is doing in Ukraine. So what even is the point of complaining about double standards from the US when you yourself are a talking double standard?
Regardless, let me finally address the central point being made here. You now conveniently want to use legality and international law as a crutch to make an argument. Fine. Unfortunately, the hard truth is that the dynamics of the UN are an extension of real-life geopolitics. I'm sure if you're here writing all this you really should know this by now. The fact that Russia and china are permanent members in the Security Council have veto power is a significant obstacle to getting any kind of resolution or mandate even if it has majority support. The internal dynamics in politics in the UN itself bleed out into the real world. Any resolution from the west for an international security or humanitarian reason that is it in the interests of Russia and China will never pass realistically in the first place. And when action is taken without it, it is used by people like you to point fingers at the US and its allies and claim they are doing something illegal, as was in the case of in 1999 in Kosovo. I believe the same was true in Bosnia (don't quote me on that if it's not accurate). The United States and its allies in NATO didn't need a UN mandate to again intervene has there was an active operation of ethnic cleansing ongoing in the territory by the Serbs themselves. You can't possibly argue that NATO needed permission from the Serbs to intervene against their interests. That makes no sense. That is the exact same situation we have in Syria, and getting a UN mandate would have been impossible anyway if China and Russia would vetoed it on the spot. Does that mean the UN and international law doesn't matter? Of course not. What it does mean is Russia and china don't act in the interest of international law and humanitarian principles when it doesn't suit them on a consistent basis. Far more consistent than the United States. You want to know why? cuz as dictatorships they can get away with it with no accountability. In western democracies like the United States, the criticism you would get means there is at least some level of accountability as given by the recriminations of the anti war movement in 2003 for iraq and scandal that followed. Such a thing doesn't exist in the country you so passionately come on here to make excuses for at all costs
How's that for substantiation?
Next time, keep it shorter
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@AniMageNeBy Now to address your points, what you need to take into consideration if you want to continue this pretense of objectivity in such a conflict, then you have to acknowledge that it is impossible to say what would likely happen because in order to measure the probabilities of such a thing, an accurate record of what constitutes those probabilities is needed. Whether you want to admit it or not, neither you nor I know or the ppl you listent to know the facts around who is capable of waging war for the longest period of time and to what extent. Not even the people you listen to on the Duran, no matter how often they pretend to to know what the heck they're even talking about.
If you're actually doing a serious cost benefit of analysis, the assertion that Ukraine should start negotiations now makes no sense from a realistic point of view as they are neither exhausted and still have the manpower and resources to fight. Why are you desperately advocating for Ukraine to negotiate? Because you haven't done a serious analysis of what Ukraine's capability is beyond your own biased perceptions of what Ukraine is capable of
The truth is there is a range of what may happen given these unknowns in the fog of war. What I have said is definitely firmly in that range of possibility. There is also the range of possibility where the population of Ukraine may also get tired of the war and want to sue for peace. Everything I have said however is based on historical precedent. When a country is invaded and its territory taken away from it, the point it will take to get to where there willing to give up that territory is very very far if that country still has the ability to fight back. Saying that it's irrelevant because Russia has three times the resources is ignorant. There are so many historical precedents where a country with more resources dedicating only a fraction of its resources is defeated it by a country it is in invading that has dedicated all of its resources to fighting. That's the hard truth for Russia. It's fighting a country that can still fight back and still has hundreds of thousands in manpower to pull from. Countries like those are willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of their citizens because for them it's not about territory, it's about security, and those two things are interestingly linked. Ukraine doesn't have to beat Russia in production. They only have to beat Russia in their will to fight
Giving this historical precedent, your fooling yourself if you think the same applies to Russia. Approval ratings you site as your reasoning are not reliable cuz if you listen to interviews with people on the street in Moscow and other major cities you will notice something. The people who are most in favor of the war are those who aren't going to be called up. And if you've seen Russia's demographic chart you would know that those people are larger portion of the population than age fighting men. On top of that, if Russia wants the increase military production it needs a number of those men to work in those factories to produce munitions. So having numbers is mute if you're wasting those numbers in pointless attacks and the Russian public isnt seeing a prospect for for victory in the near future
As I said before as well, you're also starting to see resistance to the war in Ukraine that was even there in 2022, but now it's becoming more prominent with more wives of soldiers hearing the reality of what's going on in Ukraine. That's the reality that you and Putin try so hard to hide from. I've heard these people on the street myself. I've heard the intercepted phone calls myself. This is real. This isn't some Western propaganda. You want to continue to fool yourself and believe that optimism for the war in Russia is the same as in Ukraine, then go ahead. You're free to live in your delusion
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@AniMageNeBy There is there is a difference between being critical of your own government and what they're doing, and legitimizing an argument Russia has made which has no basis the precedent or in law. The only one Russia can remotely use is 2003, and I acknowledged that (and even in that case, the Western powers didn't ANNEX parts of yhose countries). What I also said was here in the US there was accountability for that and an acknowledgment that it was wrong, even in the political class. I also tried explaining to you the influence of real world politics in the UN and the inherent contradictions in deciding what is legal and what isn't. So again you can't use hypocrisy of the West as an excuse to give legitimacy to a position Russia is taking under this pretense of being vigilant and critical
Also, the extent of your nuance is "Russia has more resources and manpower, therefore, therefore they're likely to win". That's it. How's that nuance? I've outlined social, political, and practical considerations when it comes to Russia you aren't even interested in paying attention to
Please 😂😂😂...
I've also never made any hopeful assertions about Putin getting toppled or Ukraine needing a miracle. I think you're projecting here brother 😂
So what claims about Ukraine should I address with nuance? I've gone after the claims you've made about Russia because those are the most commonplace claims I've seen over the past two years. It's the same talking points over and over. So you tell me what about Ukraine's ability to fight am I not seeing?
Please, what factual indications do you have that are reasonably accurate, and from what source? Where are you getting information that Russia has increased its military production by three times in all areas? And where are you getting in your information from that ukraine's own production has plummeted? again give me a reasonablly reliable source
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@AniMageNeBy First, I've gone to the site you claimed was proof for the claims you made about Russian industry. I think you already know I didn't find what you claimed existed, unsurprisingly
Secondly, the West has internal accountability for actions it has taken that didn't have ANY grounds in international law. Your pretense of vigilance and criticism of the West as a Westerner yourself is proof of that. Russia does not. If you don't believe me, move to Russia and say this same thing about Russia in public. I dare you 😂
Third, we're going around in circles because you refuse to actually read what I wrote. I have addressed every single point that you've brought up including This supposed precedent is a flimsy excuse for Russia. You just don't want to hear it.
No matter how often you try to twist the facts, you're narrative will never be the truth. And the facts are no country in the west created a precedent of intervening militarily for the purpose of annexing another country's territory. That's the crux of the issue that you are intentionally avoiding. Not to mention in addressing this so called precedent, I presented the dichotomy of the incoherent stances of the UN when it comes to the legality of what a country does to its own citizens, when intervention is necessary regardless of that country's sovereignty, and the internal dynamics of the UN make interpreting when intervention is legal or necessary pointless because of certain countries like Russia and China. All these factors I've mentioned here and in my previous posts are all feedback loops that feed into each other and make all that you're saying about international law and rules completely pointless in the context that you are presenting in terms of precedent, not to mention a clear false equivalency. Saying that there was no basis in international law for any of the interventions the the West undertook is factually false because of all these factors
The explanation I've given is a lot more nuanced than what you are clearly capable of. I've said this over and over, yet you just choose to ignore it just so repeat the same thing argue. You're so focused on arguing and being right it's hilarious that you actually believe that what you're saying is even remotely nuanced. Do you even realize how often I've heard the same argument over the past two years? Not just from others like you, but from the very channels you watch? I know this line of argumentation isn't even your own. Just something you heard somewhere else and you're trying to apply it here. It's a clear sign of someone who doesn't know how to think for himself, let alone break down the very concept she's trying to argue for.
This the veneer of pseudo intellectualism that you're trying to display here doesn't work if you don't actually know how to provide depth to what you're saying.
And now you're going on this unhinged crazy rant repeating the same thing over and over as if doing so will make it sound anymore sensible
I now understand why you're so desperate to accuse me of lacking any arguments. Its a very reflection of who you are. A sad attempt at projecting
Good luck to ya. You're gonna need alot of it
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