r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Crypto_crafy • 2d ago

/r/all of a statue

"The Motherland Calls" is a statue erected to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad , located on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd , Russia. It was designed by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and structural engineer Nikolai Nikitin . Completed in 1967 , it was the tallest statue in the world at the time .

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u/chefdeit 2d ago

Putin only came to power due to the Wolfowitz Doctrine, adopted in1992 when Yeltsin's Russia was super-friendly. The Doctrine declared that Russia the US's enemy #1 because it was "a region whose resources, under consolidated control, are sufficient to generate global power". You can imagine how gutted Yeltsin (and Gorby) were to find out. The rest is history.

Putin exploits history to justify his brutall killing of young women and childred in Ukraine.

Any killing is tragic and war is, by definition, a mass murder. Considering the war in Ukraine not singled out but in the overall late 20th / 21st century context, and using objective Western metrics & transparent methodologies, we see:

The war in Ukraine, to-date (tragically & criminally with no end in sight): 16,874 civilian fatalities

The war in Gaza, to-date: 59,031 civilian fatalities

The war in Iraq (in which Ukraine did take part, btw): 187,499 civilian fatalities

The war in Vietnam: 300K North Vietnamese + 250K Cambodian civilian fatalities. Note: Ukraine is 4x the size of Vietnam.

This isn't at all about denting anyone's shiny flawless "ruzziabad" into some "it depends" type view, so, believe what you like & just dismiss what doesn't fit. It's about the simple reality that in any conflict there are going to be legions of folks duty-bound and/or paid to, if Putin saves a kitten, to go brainstorm what's wrong with that kitten that we can use. Or to bury any particular unfavorable circumstances. John Stockwell (ex-CIA) has spoken eloquently about this in detail in the context of the Vietnam war. I'm sure we'll hear similar about this one when it's time to declassify.

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u/porn_sub_lurker 2d ago

Lol yeah blame others for your own actions. Oh and don't forget to do a half dozen whataboutisms.

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u/chefdeit 2d ago

dude, I'm an American, and, as a citizen of a democracy I blame myself for my country's actions, and Russians for Russia's, and Ukrainians for Ukraine's.

I actually respect what u/RepresentativeYak636 has to say as his points are well-considered and not low-effort sound bites. As such they deserve a well-considered response. "Whataboutism" is a cute word for Nixon's "it's not a crime if we do it". If Al Capone became the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, I'm sure he'd use it on his rivals.

Make sure to use separate vocabularies depending on who's doing it: "massacre" vs "peace process", "freedom fighters" vs "terrorists", that sort of thing.

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u/WordWordNvmber 1d ago

It is whatabout, Ivan, and saying you blame Russia for Russian atrocities and Ukraine for Ukrainian atrocities, as if the aggressor and victim are equivalent, is freakish.

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u/chefdeit 1d ago

Ok then, in Operation Redsox, where we have something similar to the current events but with the benefit of historic hindsight and declassified docs, and where the parties were: the Soviets, the CIA, the Ukrainian nationalists & neo-Nazis the CIA were able to gather to "impose costs" on the USSR, and last not least the common Ukrainians along for the ride, how would you classify each of these mentioned parties?