Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Ok, I see, you are just against conscription. If you look back through history, wars fought by countries invaded by an aggressor rarely, if ever, were won by small volunteer armies. The nature of war at a national level is that it is actioned by assets raised at a national level. Conscription is an inevitable consequence of this.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

As is the suspension of democracy, evidently.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

In some ways, yes. If you are called up to fight, you are not able to exercise your "democratic" rights and decline. It is always a balance.

The majority can run away and ask the 'volunteers", whoever they are, to die defending their homes. Interesting ....

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

The UK also didn't have elections during WW2. When you're facing an existential threat to your existence as a country then it's not business as usual.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

It’s not “in some ways, yes” it’s in every way.

I do like your scepticism about the volunteer army. That’s an area where I’m sure we agree they would be very few.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

It’s interesting to see a real-world example of just how ideologically captured certain sections of the British Left have become by Russia’s information ops. Ironic that in the US it’s the hard right that exhibits these symptoms. I’m sure there’s a political science PhD study in there somewhere.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

There's probably a more interesting one in armchair war experts willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Ukranians in a military experiment from the safety of their own sofa.

People who disagree with you haven't been "captured" by information ops if what they actually say is true. Its no more credible to claim them to have been captured by propaganda than the "fight for every inch" brigade who are wilfully ignoring that very few border disputes ever resolve themselves with one, larger, force being fully repelled. At some point the human and financial cost of doing so creates diminishing returns. However, it's a much easier judgement to make when it's not your own blood.

At least we are all agreed there's no democratic mechanism for Ukranian people to remove Zelensky if they decided negotiating a peace agreement was a better strategy than throwing more meat into the grinder.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Some of the US hard right seeps into our own. You'll find people sympathetic to Putin on the British Right as well. I think it's because some of them are simply anti-establishment and that a contrarian approach to anything their institutions (government, media) say rather than any deep ideological belief.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

As per usual you prefer to ignore the inconvenient question of Ukrainian agency, which clearly you think only exists to the extent that it aligns with Western policy. Your hypotheticals aren’t addressing it - they’re just regurgitated Russian obfuscation. I don’t know which corners of the internet you frequent when you’re not here but clearly wherever it is has been thoroughly infested by the ‘just asking questions’ tendency, which curiously never seems to want to deal with the answers, even when they are readily available.

There is very, very solid support for continuing to fight from within Ukraine. Sure, without Western arms that would be very hard but the willingness to thoroughly expel Russia from the entire internationally recognised sovereign territory of Ukraine is a Ukrainian desire and a Ukrainian project. That has not wavered, nor is there any evidence of it being likely to do so. Watching your relatives get raped and tortured will do that to you.

Ukraine is in an existential struggle, and your petty obsessions with matters the Ukrainians themselves seem remarkably unconcerned with is distasteful in the context of what they are fighting against.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

You prefer to ignore the inconvenient question of Ukrainian democracy, so it’s swings and roundabouts really.

Ironically hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men will be denied agency on the way to their deaths in the killing fields yet you will not bat an eye.

At some point if Ukraine doesn’t achieve the aspiration for every inch and they run out of men or second hand NATO apparatus the legitimate question will have to be asked if there were missed opportunities for a better settlement, and what decision making processes existed to rule it out.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Would be nice to see you defend as strongly the "denied agency" of the 10,000 Ukrainian civilians killed so far by the Russian invaders…

Tankies got to tankie…

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

I like the fact it took 22 minutes to add the jibe at the end.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

How is that relevant in any way ?

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

It was the same for Churchill. You don’t have time for elections when you are at war.

We’ve all seen the dedication of the Ukrainian people in support of their country. Trust you to deny the obvious, jfman.

They want Putin gone. Why is that not clear to you?

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

I'm wondering what an architect of ideas actually means.