People are capable of looking at murder as wrong. At being horrified by it.
Yet, it continues to happen over and over - so clearly, people are also capable of other views of it. Of approving, of being indifferent. If we want more of people being opposed to it, we should try to learn something about why people can have a different view, and how we can help change that.
Various situations - the Vietnam war, the Iraq war for example - from a US perspective have been about 'partisan politics' to some degree - trying to tie support for a war to 'patriotism', issues about even being informed or caring about the people harmed. You'd have some people usually called the 'left' trying to get other people to view the wars as bad, without a lot of success.
But this war by Putin on Ukraine is a great opportunity to help people recognize how that mentality works - how perhaps they themselves are 'enablers' of murder, indifferent if not supporting it, in ways they couldn't appreciate, but seeing it in another country can help them appreciate it more.
We see 80% of Russians supporting Putin and the war, repeating his propaganda - just as we had many Americans who have supported or been indifferent to violence in other cases.
We look at the devastation in Ukraine with great sympathy as we should - but it forces the question, about why most Americans didn't have that sympathy when it came to other victims of violence
We demand Russians recognize right from wrong and stand for right, or be complicit - yet we don't do that for Americans.
It's made easier for Russians to approve of the war with biased coverage; it's easier to see in their case. But in the US, the victims of violence - those Vietnamese, those Iraqis, Central Americans and many others - got nearly zero media coverage, and most Americans wanted it that way. If the media had 'told the truth' and covered the victims, they'd have reacted with outrage at the media.
A point is how easy it is for people to be blinded to murder by 'their side'. You can recognize it when you are targeted; you can recognize it when you are sympathetic to the victims - but how much murder is viewed through a lens blinding people to its wrong?
Take Vietnam - was there a thousand times the coverage of the question, 'are we winning' compared to the question, 'what harm is being done'? Probably not - it was probably much more than a thousand times.
I'm not sure how we help people do that - I don't really see the media recognizing this issue that they are such a big part of. Imagine a Russian saying 'I don't care about the war', or being happy to see Ukrainians killed as a 'win' for their country; think about the condemnation you feel toward them; and understand how similar that is to so many Americans for so many situations.
We haven't had as good a lesson as the Ukraine war I can think of. And I don't see a lot of people recognizing this. It's so easy to limit the outrage to Ukraine. And this is why murder isn't so easily condemned by so many.
At risk of derailing the thread, we view abortion as murder and are horrified by it. Democrats don't, and aren't. That's one potential sticking point.
Of course we do. We don't tolerate war crimes from the American military. And even if we fail, no American born would say we should.
To me the relevant question is, "Is/was the harm worth it?" That's a very difficult question to answer. Was it worth it in Vietnam? Probably not. Korea? Probably, and I think SK would agree. Iraq, hard to say.
Well, describe Ukrainians. Civilians? I doubt Russian civilians support the wanton killing of non-combatants. If they do, that's clearly evil. Ukrainian military? For a Russian to celebrate their defeat doesn't strike me as immoral.
I've recognized it, though I've not spoken of it. Each of us has his or her biases. I'm biased in favor of the United States being fundamentally a force for good in the world, and it would take quite a lot of atrocity to dislodge me from that position.
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