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Comment by michaelmrose | Hacker News Reader

It isn't an incredibly military feat to march a few hundred miles from occupied territory into a nation with 1/10th of your GDP and a week later sort of control one city at the cost of thousands of your solders and hundreds of vehicles with no air definitive air superiority, shrinking supply of munitions, factories reliant on foreign parts that will soon grind to a halt, market heading toward freefall and a geopolitical position so bad that the only thing keeping the rest of the world from absolutely murdering them is a threat to murder the world combined with a reputation so degenerate that people believe they are apt to do it.

It is a humiliating defeat because it indicates that the cost of pacification would be outright horrifying. Full control might well cost a 5 figure death toll and could approach the Russian GDP and this indeed buys you what? The privilege of getting to literally square one in Afghanistan 2.0.

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Well what makes you say all that?

Which part do you believe to be incorrect?

I think my question was probably less a matter of, "you have this wrong" and more "what motivates you to think about it from this moral standpoint" or perhaps "is the moral standpoint from which you speak driving the view of the logistical and strategic situation in the region (which forgive me if I'm wrong, is a conflict you are not currently, personally engaged in)"?

I don't understand your moral stake in it. I also don't know your level of experience. Caveat: As I'm neither a military strategist nor a military historian, my understanding of what constitutes a difficult situation military is rather poor. I've certainly never won any wars. But I wonder why you think marching a few hundred miles from your territory into someone elses territory in a week isn't significant. It took the US a couple weeks to take Fallujah, at an arguably far greater mismatch. Not as close, I know, but America was already in the region. I don't know why you think the cost for one city was thousands of vehicles and soldiers. I can imagine I'd lie about those numbers whichever side I was on, if I was involved. I also don't know that these are massive numbers at the scale of modern war. I don't know why you think air superiority was something they needed to have before going in, or something they had to have in a week, when it's quite possible neither of those are true. I imagine we will know the answer to that one shortly. I don't know why you think their supply of munitions are shrinking, when Russia has a decent sized munitions industry. I don't know why you assume their factories rely on foreign parts, when they might very well be quite autarchical in their operation, as opposed to the western manner of global supply chains. I don't know why you assume the status of the ruble in the foreign markets is directly germane to the continued existence of Russia as a country, when again, they might be quite autarchical. After all, Russia is not America. And finally (for your first paragraph) I do not understand how you have come to the conclusion that Russia is in "a geopolitical position so bad that the only thing keeping the rest of the world from absolutely murdering them is a threat to murder the world combined with a reputation so degenerate that people believe they are apt to do it." given that the worlds largest superpower, China, seems to be behind them, and India also does not seem to be terribly opposed. It seems more that half the world seems to support Russia, and it is that half that manufactures most of what the world consumes. I don't know why you believe Russia's reputation to be "so degenerate". I find the language more charged than necessary.

I don't understand how you know what Putin wants is "pacification" when it could very well be surrender, treaty signing, and then departure, or why you judge 5 figure death counts to be "horrifying" when on the scale of modern war (as opposed to "counter-insurgency" and "counter-terrorism") those seem to be rather small.

Above all, and forgive me as I don't know who you are or what kind of stake you have in all this, but I don't understand why you're grandstanding moral about it.

This. Russia, is no different from the USA when it comes to war crimes. The only difference is the USA can get away due to the political clout in their sphere of influence. Those countries that did not condemn the aggression - India, Brazil, UAE, etc could see through the western hypocrisy. Crazy to say, but the USA was the "role model", precursor to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. No point in calling any nationality as barbaric, because let's be honest, power comes exploitation, no matter who you are

Well what makes you say that?

Cute.

What makes me say all that is the fact that the moralizing position on this is incomprehensible to me. It feels like everyone got whipped up into a frenzy because all the major western propaganda organs and all the social media astroturfing started marching in lockstep to the drums of war.

If I believed in our rulers, I suppose I’d be marching too. But they’ve lied a lot on every other war. And worse? They’ve LOST every other war. Why follow a bunch of losers?

The war drums are Russian.

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