Everyone should Condemn the Invasion of Ukraine, but how is the US Government able to do so with its Mouth so Full of Hypocritical Bullshit?
Like many, I wrote off the media’s daily hyperventilating in the weeks and months leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as being yet another of their irresponsible war hype-ups, which rather than simply report the facts, seem to increase the likelihood of war, to make it an inevitability. It wouldn’t be new for the corporate news media to play their part in the business of war. Their owners benefit from investments in the military industry any time war is even hinted at. I expected there to be threats and skirmishes at most, and then for it to be over.
I figured that Putin and his cronies were bluffing, that they were trying to get as many concessions and as much sanctions relief as they could. To an extent, I thought that their behavior was fair, understandable if not condonable. Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion, a military alliance created to oppose and threaten Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, makes sense. Of course they wouldn’t want a hostile force creeping ever closer to their borders. Ukraine was never in the process of becoming part of NATO, but if war could have been prevented by a simple declaration that it would not be, then that should have been done. I didn’t think that Putin would feel so threatened by the theoretical expansion of NATO that he would tip his hand. I was one of many who thought that Putin wasn’t crazy or stupid enough to actually invade Ukraine.
It would have been more advantageous for Putin and Russia to continue bluffing, posturing, and provoking. Even if they succeed in taking control of the whole of Ukraine, which will require perpetually violently pacifying a rightfully resentful people, that doesn’t give them a great benefit in respect to what they’re losing. Putin has tanked Russia’s economy, turned much of his population against him, and made the country an almost universal pariah, not counting the few countries that are allied with Russia or just have less reason to hate them than they do the US, and a handful of American neo-fascists who view Putin as a sort of white savior strongman.
The war in Ukraine is a travesty. The Russian military’s acts of criminal violence there are despicable. Vladimir Putin is a disgusting piece of shit who deserves to die painfully.
That said, the coverage of the war in Ukraine is disproportionate and driven by bias.
It is horrible to see and hear Ukrainians fleeing death and destruction, many of them not making it. But it is horrible to see and hear any people fleeing death and destruction. War is a crime and civilian deaths are a tragedy anywhere they happen.
The war in Yemen, called the worst humanitarian disaster in the world, is still raging. We hardly hear about that anymore. It took the outbreak of the war in Ukraine for news outlets to acknowledge, those few that have, that war is still going on there. It took the suggestion that the US may work with the dictators of Arabia to increase oil production, making up the loss from boycotting the dictator in Russia, for a minority of politicians to speak up against the US doing business with the United Arab Emirate and Saudi Arabian governments, aiding their murderous campaigns in Yemen.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also blew Afghanistan from the headlines, to the extent it was still present, not even a year after the US gave up and left the country to the Taliban. Same for the Syrian war, still ongoing but essentially forgotten in the US press.
There was no shortage of refugees before Russia’s war against Ukraine began. It was as Ukrainians were fleeing over into neighboring countries, and often being welcomed, that a double standard was exposed. Countries like Poland and Hungary vehemently opposed allowing refugees to seek sanctuary within their borders not long ago, when they were brown and predominately Muslim, not white and predominately Christian. More galling in recent events, there have been cases of people of color in Ukraine, whether Ukrainian by nationality, or students, or tourists, being denied passage over borders. It exposes the fact that the bigots who run those countries aren’t actually that concerned about tons of unknown refugees coming to live in their countries, they just don’t want the non-white ones.
The war in Ukraine is treated as being more serious than others because it is a largely white European country. That makes it more relatable to the white commentators, politicians, and public. They care more when the people involved resemble them. Wars in other countries, particularly those in the middle-east and Africa, are treated as less serious because they are more expected. Commentators cite historical instability, general poverty, corruption, and poor social systems as an explanation for this. They usually neglect to discuss the role of western Europe and the US in causing these shortfalls in other countries. Worse than that, they’re taking a view that is short-sighted, even historically ignorant. They have this view of Europe as this stable continent of lasting peace, and much of the rest of the world as a mess of constant conflicts, coups, and chaos. But it was less than eighty years ago that Europe was at the center of the biggest war in world history. And the second biggest about twenty years before that. And going back before that, the European continent was in a state of intermittent wars throughout its history. The idea that other peoples are more preternaturally warlike than Europeans is absurd.
There has also been no time since World War 2 that the US and/or European countries were not involved with waging war in other countries. Having the war happening in a white country is the biggest difference between it and any other footnoted conflict in a news broadcast. Russia’s actions aren’t unusual. While criminal and horrific, they’re no more so than wars we ourselves have waged. Arguably, they even have better reasons than we have had in many cases. The US bombed, invaded, and upended the society of Iraq for more spurious reasons than Russia has in Ukraine. The justification of acting because of feeling threatened is shaky ground for Russia, but it was fabricated or nonexistent for us. We destroyed a country thousands of miles away based on suspicion and lies; they at least had the sensibility to do it to a country they share a border with. Going back to the war in Vietnam and further back than that, we’ve waged endless wars with no true justification stronger than greed and willfulness.
We didn’t face any of the repercussions that Russia now is, either. We can wage illegal wars without facing economy-crushing sanctions, having foreign assets of our citizens and government officials seized, or being portrayed as global villains in the majority of the world.
Russia’s actions are deplorable, but Washington has no moral high ground from which to criticize, and nor do most European nations. Yet while Putin’s actions are not unprecedented, they are confusing. It’s hard to reason what he aims to get from this. The ones who truly benefit from this or any war are the usual merchants of death. While the stock market at large has been suffering, and prices are rapidly inflating, investment in the weapons industry has exploded, producing huge profits. Whatever other causes there may be, war is always hand in hand with capitalism.