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Comment by mmjaa | Hacker News Reader

What part of "Russia needs the Black Sea to protect its sovereignty" do you not understand?

What part of "Iraq is essential to the sovereign protection of the borders of the USA" do you .. not understand?

I'm not trying to justify Russia's military action in Ukraine - living quite close to this action, it horrified me. But, on the other hand, I'm not ever going to be compelled to agree with someone who says that the mass destruction of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen .. and so on .. is vital to the defence of the USA. Because, I know where those places are on a map, and they are nowhere near the USA ...

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> What part of "Iraq is essential to the sovereign protection of the borders of the USA" do you .. not understand?

What are you talking about? Iraq was not mentioned in the original comment.

Also, this "The USA has invaded, and destroyed, far, far more territory, resulting in 100x more human suffering and misery." is grossly untrue. Neither country is free of fault here, but for every Afghanistan, or Iraq, there is a North Korea or East Germany.

The point is, Russian military action in Ukraine was for the purpose of protecting its sovereign borders and access to the Black Sea. While I agree that it was a heinous action, it is more justifiable than any military action the USA has projected, if but for the simple fact that it was close to home - literally on Russias' doorstep.

America, however, projects power around the globe - not for its own protection of sovereign assets, and certainly not as a consequence of needing to defend its sovereign border. Rather, American power projection is done in order to interfere with nations that the USA has decided, for some other reason, mostly psychology, is its enemy.

>"The USA has invaded, and destroyed, far, far more territory, resulting in 100x more human suffering and misery." is grossly untrue.

Sorry, but a lot of the world see it as being very, very true.

Perhaps you should pay more attention to the refugee children walking across Europe to get away from American wars.

"Protecting its sovereign borders" by stealing from others' sovereign borders? Sorry, not buying it.

I don't agree that Russia should have done what it did to Ukraine, and its territories. No, sir.

But I find the argument that "USA is not bad, because Russia did bad" to be highly specious.

Russia, and the Russians in the region that was invaded, can justify its mis-deeds as protection of its sovereignty.

America, and thus Americans, cannot.

There were no Americans to protect in Iraq. In Afghanistan. In Syria, Yemen, Libya.

Seriously, Americans are liable for some deep, deep shit. Russians, less so.

>Russia, and the Russians in the region that was invaded, can justify its mis-deeds as protection of its sovereignty. America, and thus Americans, cannot. There were no Americans to protect in Iraq.

And there was no Russians to protect in Crimea, so stop whitewashing Kremlin lies.

Ummm, Crimea has been majority ethnic Russian for over 100 years, Ukranians weren't even the dominant minority in the region for most of the last two centuries. You really should learn some history before commenting

"Ethnic Russian" != "Russian", though. No matter what ethnicity, they were citizens of Ukraine.

And I completely deny that Russia has the right to speak for ethnic Russians of other nationalities, and to invade their countries on their behalf.

Lol you completely ignore the fact that the Ukraine as a country did not exist until 1991, and the only reason Crimea was made a part of the Ukraine after the dissolution of the USSR, is because of a fluke of history whereby Crimea was transferred from the Russian Soviet Federation to the Ukrainian Soviet Federation as meaningless token in celebration of 300 years of the Ukraine as a part of the Russian Empire.

Prior to Russo-Turkish war Crimea was a part of the Ottoman Empire, after Russia won that war it conquered Crimea and absorbed it into the fold in 1783. Crimea has not been a traditional part of the Ukraine since before the existence of the United States of America.

Failure to grasp reality does not change the fact that a Crimea filled with ethnic Russians, host to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, in a city founded over 250 years ago by Russia, which holds extreme strategic importance to the nation could never be allowed to fall under the sphere of NATO.

> Russian military action in Ukraine was for the purpose of protecting its sovereign borders and access to the Black Sea.

Without Crimea Russia won't have access to Black Sea? Or it will lose her borders?

Please clarify.

Are you ignorant to the fact that the port of Sevastopol is host to Russia's Black Sea Fleet? Do you realize that Sevastopol was founded as a Russian naval port in 1783 and that Crimea has been Russian for over 250 years?

Russia as a country exists only for ~25 years.

Also even it had Crimea for thousand years before, it still won't matter - they've signed numerous international agreement s which stated that Crimea belongs to Ukraine.

I wish you the best of luck in all that you do

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