Comment by orangepurple | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orangepurple | Hacker News Reader

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> Hostile, unpredictable, militaristic country, ran by a wanna-be dictator, committed to an active invasion of another country's sovereign territory.

Just imagine living in America in 2003 with 9/11 fresh on everyone's minds. Were you there? Do you remember the mindset of adult Americans in 2003? What did the US military do in 2003? What did the average CNN-watching American feel and want? I remember well. We wanted to bulldoze Saddam Hussein and his "Axis of Evil" because terrorism. We wanted to raze Iraq to the ground as revenge for "harboring terrorism" and "WMDs" which were about to be unleashed upon our friends. Americans were in a complete frenzy, psychosis, and out for blood. Do you remember? I remember soldiers wanting nothing more than to "take out those stupid rag heads." Did the occupation ever end? Did Iraq have anything to do with 9/11? Did anyone suffer the consequences of the invasions back in America besides the Americans killed overseas? Do you think Russians are not actively being brainwashed by their government to support a war like the Americans were for their wars? Think again. The media is more powerful than ANY WMD because it perpetually and incessantly corrupts the minds of its viewers.

I remember people doing daily protests against the war and organizing large demonstrations.

There was a lot of support for that war, but that support was far from unanimous, especially on the grassroots level. I do not remember any supporters of the war who I knew personally who wanted to raze Iraq to the ground and, as I recall, the antipathy was more directed at the Saddam regime and not the Iraqi nation.

Your overall point is valid, whitewashing enter nations with a single brush is inaccurate and unfair. However, you are doing the exact thing you are trying to criticize.

There were at least 16k detainments [^1] of anti-war protesters in Russia since the start of the invasion, most of them in the first month of the invasion if I remember correctly. Somewhere in the first 2 months it became more risky to protest the war - fines starting at 50k rubles (~1 median monthly salary) and the risk of criminal persecution increased (in addition a high risk of being fired from a job).

[^1]: https://data.ovdinfo.org/anti-military-events-report

I was not intending to imply that the Russians did not protest. They did and generally faced far higher consequences for doing so.

Just added a bit of info/context to this branch of discussion, without any additional intent.

Sure I remember. Let's talk about that another time. Those things have been discussed. You are missing some key plot elements such as the entire rest of the UN security council.

Whataboutism aside, those events are not 1:1 relevant to what is going on today. Turkey maintains an indefensible invasion of Cyprus, and engages in acts of wargames by frequently flying fighter jets over Greek airspace, constantly taunting them and threatening to take more of their land, laying baseless claims to Aegean seas, and Russia maintains an indefensible invasion of Ukraine, and followed a very similar plot.

Missing in either of these two situations was 16 other nations imploring the country soon to be invaded to comply, and the largest act of terrorism in the modern world.

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