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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32949 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Sorry, but reversed stupidity is not intelligence. Dodging pro-ukrainian sentiment doesn’t make Russian apologetics correct by default.

The Falklands war had something like 3,500 killed and injured, total, and only 3 were civilians. Clearly, the definition of “war” includes “limited and comparatively humane” invasions. Russia killing 40+ civilians per week is above that bar.

Defending it as just or necessary is one thing. Acting like it doesn’t count as a war is unreasonable.

The Falklands war had something like 3,500 killed and injured, total, and only 3 were civilians. Clearly, the definition of “war” includes “limited and comparatively humane” invasions. Russia killing 40+ civilians per week is above that bar.

Is it?

The intensity of fighting is far higher. Falklands was a tiny war, with few soldiers.

If you adjusted the figure to show deaths per week of fighting / 1000 combatants, would it still look as bad ?

Might as well ask the Russians to tune it down to Falklands levels. The problem is that they’re invading at all, not that it doesn’t compare to Iraq or WWII. OP is trying to elide that bit.

The problem is that they’re invading at all

Try to empathize with them.

Russia killing 40+ civilians per week is above that bar.

How's that compare to Afghanistan or Iraq?

I would imagine pretty unfavorably for the period of normal combat operations (though part of that is because the U.S. is way better with precision munitions, as I understand it). To my knowledge (and I could be wrong here) the Ukraine conflict is much less of a partisan war than Iraq or Afghanistan. I would assume far more civvies die in suicide bombings and random attempted mortar attacks on scattered firebases than in trench warfare.

But then again, I haven't served, so I could be very wrong.

No idea. But I’d certainly rate them both as wars, not as Special Military Obfuscations.

This seems like a reasonable answer. @Supah_Schmendrick also offered what seemed like a reasonable answer. The thing is, aren't your two answers contradicting each other? The part you rate as a war is emphatically not the part he dismisses as bloodless, and vice versa.

First of all, we didn't actually declare war in either Iraq or Afghanistan; both were, quite literally, "special military obfuscations". Secondly, the actual war part in Iraq at least was extremely brief. Who can forget the iconic declaration of the end of major military operations in Iraq? After that point, Iraq was definately a "special military obfuscation", as politics for the next several years centered on trying to pretend that our occupation wasn't a bleeding ulcer.

I think the domestic politics of warfare are separate from the object-level question. If you asked a random…uh, let me find an uninvolved country…Belgian citizen, “was the US waging war in 2011?” He’d probably say yes. Not because of some floor on casualties per week, military or civilian, but because we were parked on foreign territory en masse, shooting at people.

Butlerian was trying some sort of excluded-middle argument where not rating as “full-scale war” means the Russians are being very cool and very legal humane. That’s not true. At the end of the day, they’re still parked on foreign territory, blowing up Ukrainians.

I think "limited and comparatively human special military operation" is the consensus view on the Iraq war as well, though. It's certainly not a view I share, but I will not forget how all the rhetoric about war crime tribunals abruptly evaporated the day Obama was inaugurated. This despite the fact that we were, as you say, still parked in foreign territory, blowing up Iraqis.

It seems plausible to me that the Ukraine war is less objectionable than the Iraq war, on account of killing fewer people, of having less disastrous consequences long-term, and of not being so obviously pointless. Iraq set fire to a good portion of the middle east, and the killing is still ongoing.

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