Russian atrocities won’t change anything
If you were already against Putin you expected this. If you were already for Putin you're indifferent, if not enthusiastic, about it.
As the Russian armed forces pull back from the Kyiv region, videos and eyewitness accounts illustrate how they went about “de-Nazifying” the area:
Among the horror, grief and anger, there is a sense that these photos and video might be a game-changer that makes people even more determined to fight Putin’s Russia, economically or otherwise.
I’d like to think so. And yet, I’m skeptical that this will really amount to much at all, aside from a few angry posts on social media.
Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, lunatic pro-Russia conspiracy theorist Paul Craig Roberts was complaining about his hero Putin treating Ukraine too leniently. (No link, because fuck this guy, but you probably find it on Google. Or more likely Gab.)
I do think the chance of a wider war would be far less if the Kremlin had committed all of the invasion forces and used whatever conventional weapons necessary regardless of civilian casualties to quickly end the war, while refusing to be delayed and distracted by negotiations and Western bleating. Having made a decisive decision, the Russians needed to demonstrate decisive military action.
I’d like to think Roberts is an outlier, but I’ve seen several years of memes, articles, and social media posts from MAGA and “national conservative” types complaining about how the Russian military is made up to real men, compared to the increasingly “feminized” girly-man American armed forces.
This disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan - from which Biden’s approval ratings still haven’t recovered - cemented this view in some corners of the internet. If only the Americans had really showed these Afghans who’s boss, the way Russians do, they presumably would have won.
Of course, now we’re seeing exactly just how Russia performs when people fight back. The old saying about US military interventions in Vietnam, which also arguably applies to Afghanistan,1 was that the Americans won every battle but lost the war. In Ukraine, the Russians haven’t even been able to win all the battles.
There is nothing uniquely Russian about wartime atrocities. The Wikipedia pages for American and British are lengthy. Even we gentle, peacekeepy Canadians were shaken by what some of our people did in Somalia. Ukrainians have allegedly tortured and summarily executed some Russian POWs during the current conflict. (One thing that might actually change, as Russian atrocities come to light, is that their Ukrainian captors will be even less merciful.)
No military anywhere in the world has completely clean hands. That said, there’s a reason that whenever you watch a WW2 documentary, the German civilians, surrendering soldiers and deposed Nazi leaders are always desperately fleeing West. Anyone familiar with how Putin’s armies conducted themselves in Chechnya and Syria really shouldn’t be too shocked by Bucha.
And for some people, that’s a feature, not a bug. There are two kinds of people: those who think Eddie Gallagher is an American hero and those who believe the Navy SEALs who turned him in are the real heroes. Gallagher was not only pardoned by Trump, he got a trip to Mar-a-Lago out of it.
I don’t think anyone is on the fence about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If you already supported it or at least made excuses for it, none of this will change your mind. Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon, the main pro-Putin or at least anti-anti-Putin candidates in the French presidential election2 likely won’t take a hit in the polls. Viktor Orban is still likely going to win today’s Hungarian election. The JD Vance wing of the Republican Party is still going to handwave away Russian atrocities in favor of something something Disney.
Okay, but what about the good people like you and me? Well, I’d love nothing more than to be proven wrong, but if actual concentration camps haven’t changed how the West trades with China, shocking images and horror stories from Ukraine probably won’t change the way Germans heat their homes.
And Iraq? Honestly, as much as I regret supporting the invasion back in the day, that country still has a chance of emerging from the abyss despite some extreme challenges. Get back to me in a few more years and then we’ll see if it can be called an American victory or a defeat.
Laugh at Eric Zemmour all you want, and I certainly will, but it’s not like the people who had planned to vote for him are flocking to Macron.
Good point about the "direction" of the defeated Germans at the end of WW2. Also about the cleanliness of all hands involved in war. And you make a more than valid point about "the good people like you and me." None of our hands are ever completely clean, collectively or even individually.
But when it comes to people like Roberts (that this cretin was ever a part of the U.S. government and has held teaching positions at several universities is revolting in and of itself), Eddie Gallagher (a true disgrace), J.D. Vance (ditto) et al... well, we're all gonna' get what's coming to us in the end, one way or another. I just hope the Guy meting out our just deserts was paying close attention and dishes out our rewards in proper proportions.