> But even there, part of what makes this attack ethical is the majority of the bystanders are Russian adults in an industrial city, who themselves are valid military targets.
No they're not.
> Your whole premise here is that Ukrainians are inherently morally superior to Russians
Huh? I've repeatedly made very specific, clear, arguments as to why things Russians (and people working for Russia) have done are evil. I do that precisely because I'm making the argument that it is good for those people to be killed. Those arguments have nothing to do with the identity of who does the killing. It is just as ethical for me to assassinate a Russian general as it is for anyone else to do so. The argument isn't that Ukrainians are morally superior and get to do evil things. The argument is that the things they're doing aren't evil because of who they're intending to kill.
Just the other day multiple drones were flown into apartment buildings in Kazan, Russia, a city of 1 million people, ~600km east of Moscow. That city is well known for its large airplane and helicopter manufacturing plants. Obvious, high-value, militarily relevant targets.
The attacks are almost certainly intentional. This residential apartment got hit twice in almost exactly the same spot:
https://video.nostr.build/6976628c2deaa1b60069c94fbd51b854195806236560659ea3ed99dbe3fcc62b.mp4
It doesn't matter who flew those drones into those residential buildings; it's not ethical to do that because "Ukrainians are perfect" or some other nonsense like that. It's ethical to blow up apartments in Russia because the people being killed are evil and need to die. In this case, it's likely that Ukraine had specific intelligence that a high value target (eg a plant manager) lived in that specific apartment. But even there, part of what makes this attack ethical is the majority of the bystanders are Russian adults in an industrial city, who themselves are valid military targets.
You don't need to be Ukrainian to ethically do this attack. It's likely that some of these drone attacks are actually being done by non-ukrainians, launched from other countries bordering Russia, as well as Russia itself; the distances some of these attacks have been done at aren't easily accomplished by launching from Ukraine. Whomever is launching these drones is doing the right thing. Not because of their ethnicity. But because of who is being killed.
Discussion
This is basic military law stuff that goes back more than a hundred years. There's no justification for inventing your own ethics here.
E.g. Article 25 of the 1889 Hague Convention.
> The attack or bombardment of towns, villages, habitations or buildings which are not defended, is prohibited.
I.e. you can attack military targets inside a building, and there can be collateral damage, but you can't bomb a building because it's inhabited by Russian civilians.
Notice how "evil person" or "evil people" is not a legal or relevant concept.
Which takes me to Article 50:
> No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, can be inflicted on the population on account of the acts of individuals for which it cannot be regarded as collectively responsible.
Apparently Art. 33(1) of the Fourth Geneva Convention takes this even further in the direction you don't like:
> the provision is very broad, not limited to judicial penalties, and rules out collective punishment based on the “passive responsibility” of a civilian population
https://opiniojuris.org/2023/10/24/a-short-history-of-the-war-crime-of-collective-punishment/
Not that I disagree with your take generally but considering the age of this “law” and its lack of adherence or non kinetic enforcement since, query whether it is law at all. International law is one of those things that’s law until someone that doesn’t have to follow it doesn’t. Typically something’s a law when it can be enforced through legal rather than military process otherwise it’s hopium
Wars between states have been around for at least five thousand years. These laws are brand spanking new. Genocide was considered completely fine just a few centuries ago. So was collective punishment.
Many of these treaties get violated in the heat of war, and that's understandable. E.g. bombing cities was banned before WWII. Chemical weapons were banned before WWI. When both sides of a conflict violate the rule, it's unlikely there will be any consequences.
All democratic societies can do is systematically take the side of the most ethically behaving party in any conflict without any preference to historical ties and race. And occasionally sue their own government when it violates these rules.
Very lofty, doesn't happen much. Though arguably Ukraine is a good example here. EU countries had much better ties with Russia, that's where the gas came from. But they support Ukraine, even after they blew up the pipeline. That's very encouraging.
This I agree with.
And remember that (earlier incarnations of) Russia were on the side of England / France during WWII and WWI.
Even during the Cold War is was mostly America that had an issue with Russia, western Europe was fine (and completely ignored the suffering in eastern Europe, including present day Ukraine).
It’s always been clown world and always will be and flux is the norm.
To be clear, are you blaming Ukraine for blowing up the Nordstream pipeline?
That's what the WSJ reported. I can always be convinced otherwise based on evidence. I'm happy someone blew it up, don't really care who.
But that's not the point: most people believe it, including western decision makers, and they're fine with it.
Dude, law is not ethics. I would expect a bitcoiner to know that. You're quoting law from 1889 because you can't make an ethical argument.
I'm making an ethical argument: I'm ethically ok with considering working Russians to be military targets because wars at these scales are economic battles. War is no longer just men fighting at close range in small battles like it was in 1889. Wars are primarily fought by machines, at extremely long ranges, attacking the infrastructure and economies that make those machines possible. The most effective weapon Russia has right now isn't the man in the trench. It's the drones that have turned the lights off in most of Ukraine.
If somehow Ukraine could magically kill every single Russian soldier on Ukrainian soil they _still_ wouldn't have won the war. Russia would still be sending long range drones and missiles into Ukraine, destroying infrastructure to crush their economy and force Ukraine to surrender. I've personally experienced those drone and missile attacks myself.
You would rather see Ukraine defeated and the Ukrainian population forced out of them homes and/or subjugated by Russia than have your "morality" offended by killing the Russians who are directly and meaningfully contributing to the destruction of Ukraine. There's a reason why Ukraine is happy to send missiles into Russian apartments, knowing full well that Russian "civilians" will die: Ukraine wants to win. It's the same reason why, as I noted elsewhere, Ukrainian drones kill hundreds of fleeing and wounded Russians every day, aguably in violation of the same international law you're quoting.
It's the same reason why we firebombed Dresden, knowing full well that tens of thousands of Germans would be burned alive in their homes: crushing the German economy was necessary to defeat the Nazis. Even back then, WW2 was an economic war.
You think you are being clever with your high and mighty arguments. But I don't think you don't actually strongly care about Ukraine – and the free world – winning. You care more about your moral superiority.
It's notable how I can't think of any recent time when you've actually said anything publicly about this war that directly supports Ukraine and clearly puts the blame on Russia. You've said some "clever" snarky things about Russian foolishness. But you don't actually take a concrete position of support.
Laws are based on ethics. They can lag a bit, which is very relevant in new fields like Bitcoin, but not when it comes to war.
You have no expertise in this area, as demonstrated by the fact that you didn't even know this treaty (which is more or less still in force). You probably never even read any serious books on the topic.
There's just no reason for me to take you seriously over mainstream thought here. You can't be a credible contrarian on all things. Rolling your own ethical framework for something as ancient and complex as war is ridiculous.
Regarding personal accusations: I live in a NATO country, which means I get drafted if this conflict escalates. Are volunteering for the Ukrainian army? I also pay taxes that go this war effort. I'm not in the habit of virtue signaling support for this or that cause.
> as demonstrated by the fact that you didn't even know this treaty
That's an assumption _you_ are making. I'm quite aware of these treaties and the debates about Ukraine's conduct. As I said, there are plenty of people making legal arguments that Ukraine is violating all kinds of international laws on conduct during warfare. I even gave you a specific example before you wrote the above, the large scale killing of wounded Russians with drones.
Another example is how Ukraine has widely dispersed military infrastructure in the midst of civilian infrastructure to make it harder for Russian forces to find; I personally have seen examples of this in Ukraine, eg military equipment being hidden in unmarked civilian buildings. Amnesty International famously argued that Ukraine should strictly abide by international law and move all military infrastructure away from civilian infrastructure, where it would be easy for Russians to identify. While "law abiding", it would be absurd for Ukraine to actually do this. They'd just lose the war.
Your arguments are quite similar to what Amnesty International was doing there: arguing the letter of law when the ethics and practicality demands something else.
> military equipment being hidden in unmarked civilian buildings
This is grey area stuff, and nowhere near the near the level of what you've been proposing. I do not hold Ukraine to the standard of squeaky cleanness.
I also suspect (and hope) they evacuate at least the immediate vicinity.
As for killing wounded soldiers. Obviously a war crime if it happens as you're stating, but video footage is generally not enough context. But it wouldn't tip the scale for me in favor of Russia.
What I'm proposing is the conduct of the Allies in WW2. We recognized back then that we were fighting an economic war, and freely targeted economic targets of all kinds. Wiping out German and Japanese cities to defeat the Axis was fine; wiping out Russian cities to defeat Russia is also fine.
Saying we were the good guys then, and Ukraine can do the same things now to win, should not be a controversial statement. It is in some circles – when I went to art school some of the teachers were so anti-Western that they were practically engaging in Holocaust denial in their efforts to portray the allies as the bad guys. But those people are nuts.
Re: wounded soldiers, have you actually watched any significant amount of video footage from the war? Dropping grenades on wounded, immobile, Russians is a common activity. There's no secret this is commonly done and it's a topic that gets repeatedly discussed.
Feels to me that your just unwilling to accept that Ukrainians do in fact consider the "laws" of war to not be hard and fast rules that should be adhered to scrupulously at the cost of their own lives.
US troops did that in the war on terror, resulting in tens of thousands killed by restrictive ROEs even with enormous military advantages. Ukrainians don't have that luxury.
Here's another good example of Ukrainians being pragmatic: https://kyivinsider.com/russias-largest-cities-rocked-by-wave-of-coordinated-arson-and-explosions/
Nothing has been admitted officially AFAIK. But it looks like Ukrainian intelligence is defrauding, coercing, blackmailing, and straight up paying Russians on a large scale into committing acts of arson and sabotage, mostly against "civilian" targets.
Is that "clean" and "ethical"? Meh. It's effective. If you can defraud or coerce a desperately poor Russian pensioner into setting a business on fire and causing $100k of damage, that probably translates into something like $20k less tax revenue for the Russian government from the business, and wasting another $20k of government money on a trial and imprisonment. $40k less going to war is probably in the ballpark of what it would take to prevent one Ukrainian casualty.
...and yet another example posted today of a Ukrainian drone killing a wounde, unarmed (his rifle got stolen), Russian left abandoned on a stretcher:
https://video.nostr.build/967ed7a43a78e7f2196a7c149289b8d962bad9a54718f644d38fb0b9bb620cc7.mp4
Fine by me. He was either going to die, or be eventually rescued and likely returned to the front line to kill more Ukrainians.
No reason to abide by this "law of war" when Russia is straight up executing Ukrainian PoWs on a large scale. You're just sacrificing your own men for deeply evil scumbags.
Heads up, you're feeding an engagement-baiting troll whose only goals are to waste your time and energy, and gaslight you
Only politicians want war...none of the citizens want war--they just want to live normal peaceful lives (on both sides).