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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34760 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Am I the only one genuinely baffled by why it matters whether the missile was Russian or Ukrainian?

Cause and effect. If the Ukrainian missile was fired as a defense mechanism against a Russian attack, then I think it's fair to attribute collateral damage to the initial attack. (Indeed, the whole invasion)

You can stretch the definition of cause and effect arbitrarily far. Anyone can find a justification for why they're the aggrieved party.

"Well we bombed that car full of children because we thought it had a bomb in it and wanted to defend our troops evaccing from Kabul, so it's really the Taliban's fault."

"We incinerated Coventry because the British declared war on us, so it's the British who are at fault."

"We're conducting a Special Military Operation because we're very concerned about Ukrainians mistreating our coethnics, so it's the terrorist Kiev regime at fault."

"We killed those 50-100,000 Poles in Volhynia to preserve the living space of the Ukrainian people, so it's not really our fault..."

Those four examples have something in common which is completely unlike the defense missile example, though. A defense missile is a defense mechanism.

You are using four examples of retaliatory attacks, not defensive maneuvers. I think that is a very crucial difference. Compare the analogy to manslaughter in self defense vs murder. Nearly every nation agrees that it's legal to use lethal force to defend your life, but not to seek out your attacker and kill them in retribution.

But you can still be liable if you return fire against a home invader and hit your neighbor, which is pretty close to this case. ("Your honor, I was trying to shoot his bullets out of the air, it's not my fault I missed and those nuns got in the way")

Well if the Russians deliberately attacked Poland, that would be a game changer.

If Ukraine attempted a false flag (or knew it was an accident and lied) to try to bring the west directly into the war, that would also be a game changer.

If it was an accident that created collateral damage, then no game changer.

I guess the part I'm confused about is how it isn't an obvious foregone conclusion that it was an accident, just based off the complete absence of plausible motive. Why would they deliberately attack two random farmers in the middle of nowhere?

A Ukrainian false flag would make more sense than a deliberate Russian attack, but even so, why would you false flag with something that looks like an obvious accident.

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