What does this even mean
Urban warfare bad - ok
So Representatives believe human life so expendable keeps doing grave danger - don’t equate what Russia is doing to representative democracies
Representative democracies need to prioritize human life.
That has obviously not been the case for a long time.
But the COVID-19 horror made it unquestionably so. Their focus on power, pride, greed continues to undermine the democratic systems themselves. Over 1,000,000 dead in USA, and for a LONG time we had 2,000-3,000 dying every single day (like February 2022) and it is a shrug to U.S. authorities. I remember 20 years ago when we were rightly horrified when 3,000 were killed on 9/11. We had ceremonies. We sang the nattional anthem. We mourned. We built monuments. Now 1 million dead is a speed bump to national capitalist progress. And as an advocate of the democractic and capitalist systems, I see that is a serious fault line. We believe fighting with one another solves these. It just makes them worse.
In Ukraine, the representative government would rather fight than win. What success is it when over 10% of your nation are now foreign refugees, and today the UN in Ukraine claims 3,381 civilians are killed (surely a fraction of the real horrific deaths which must be at least 20,000 or more). How much land was 20,000+ lives worth? How much land was worth 4 million plus refugees? How much land was worth destruction of city after city? This is not 100 years ago in WWI with soldiers fighting on horsebacks in uniforms in fields and countryside. This is urban warfare destroying city after city of Ukraine making much of country into a giant Aleppo. This is "winning" to Volodymyr Zelenskyy? I would hate to see what he thinks losing looks like.
Who in their right mind would tell its elderly and its women to fill about bottles of gasoline into Molotov cocktails and place their civilians lives in danger? The Ukraine defense leadership. How brave and responsible. Who in their right mind would not do everything possible to get a cease-fire to stop the Russian killing of civilians in urban warfare? The Ukraine leadership. What are these representatives winning for Ukraine? A nation of expats? Cities that are decimated. But Zelenskyy has his pride. He is the hero of the West against the Russian monsters. He is a world celebrity. Tell it to the Ukrainian people without families, orphans, refugees, those without homes anymore, lives or jobs anymore. Isn't it wonderful how Zelenskyy is "defending" the Ukraine (what is left) and he is "showing Russia" who is tough. Really? Not for those people who are just victims now. Oh, but the advocates for democracy can put a hacker message on TV screens in Russia. That's really going to help these innocent, helpless people.
What has his pride cost the Ukrainian nation and the innocent people who could not defend themselves? The white hot fury against the Russians is so blinding, there is little continuing concern for people, normal civilians whose lives have been made a living hell by this horrific war. For what? For some land? Who in their right mind would not have stopped this instantly, and stated wait - we will call a cease-fire and negotiate a settlement. Oh, "the West" might not like that. Because, after all, "the West" is going to bring these families back, their parents back, their children back, their homes back, their lives back, right? But "the West" has its pride too. It has to "defy" the monsters of Russia by any means necessary. But at some point going down that path, you can become just as bad or even worse, because you are supposed to have the balance of morality and conscience.
I remember here, on one discussion, I mentioned God forbid people should be shooting around a nuclear power plant. I was labeled a traitor to the Great Western War Against Monster Russia for this sanity. How I dare I make such suggestions. Lay down my weapons around a nuclear power plant? No, of course not! We should keep shooting around a nuclear power plant and defend Mother Ukraine at any cost. And literally the commenters saw nothing wrong in that. (So what if a nuke plant get blown up, as long as we get the Russians.)
But fighting at any cost is just as unbalanced aa a "foreign policy" at any cost. Such unbalance allowed the dictator Putin to rationalize this horrific invasion. So we should encourage the Ukraine people (and people in other countries) to be unbalanced as Putin. Give little old ladies Molotov cocktails. After all. "He deserves it." But "at any cost" like "by any means necessary" at some point loses touch with humanity.
If we want to defeat the horrors that Russia has inflicted, the idea that we should have the same contempt for human life does not promote our viewpoint. We have to show that we are DIFFERENT. Trying to out-Putin Putin undermines everything that we are supposed to represent. I am sorry a lot of NatSec will not get that. But in the most serious fights, you really can't win them with guns and bombs. You just have to be smarter.