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Tom's avatar

Gotta say I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't see a pro-ukraine consensus. I see lots of folks on both left and right taking Putin's side for all sorts of reasons, with a bewildered middle going "obviously there's a good side and a bad side here, right?

I gotta call a spade a spade here though and say this is actually a war of Goodies vs Baddies. Yes obviously that's reductive. But it's a war of a country aspiring to enter the ranks of prosperous, liberal democracies, that has spent the last several centuries being oppressed and literally starved, fighting for survival against a vastly mightier imperial power. It would be challenging to come up with a less morally complicated war if I tried to.

What I see is cope on the other side - "oh, it's really about NATO expansion" or "ah actually the US are the imperialists" or "this one random militia group is really racist actually." No, it's not about those things. Or, those things are secondary to the raw attempt by Russia to establish dominion over a fiercely independent neighbor.

I guess to you this comment will feel like part of the cathedral or whatever coming to make sure the pro-ukraine consensus is enforced in all spaces. I don't really have a counter to that other than I'm just a guy who feels strongly about it and is subscribed to your blog. I promise I'm not here to thought-crime you or whatever. I just wanted to come here and make the basic, obvious case as I see it. Sometimes everyone agrees on something because it happens to be right.

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Tana Ganeva's avatar

With all due respect, it sounds like you're writing about the Iraq war, not the situation in Ukraine.

You've never before in your life seen widespread ideological consensus like this? In 2001, there were protests against the war, but every "serious" person dismissed them as dumb college kids or idiot hippies. The NYT not only published Judith Miller but their op-ed section and virtually ALL prestige publications and pundits were frothing with blood lust and snidely hippie punching anyone who wasn't.

In their news coverage of Ukraine, the NYT goes a little purple with the prose, but the op-ed pages are balanced between people who warn about larger repercussions and the threat of nuclear escalation, alongside people advocating for more aid to Ukraine. As far as I'm aware, no one, including the gov't of Ukraine, is lobbying for US involvement beyond money and weapons, or even weapons that could potentially cause serious damage beyond the Russian border.

If you want to air an opinion that'll get you laughed out of the room, it's to suggest the US destroy a whole new generation of poor young people by sending them abroad to fight someone else's war.

What's this "you get sidelined if you dare raise a peep of opposition? Tucker Carlson and all the Marjorie Taylor Greenes are flirting with a pro-Russia stance. Many, many prominent writers and pundits associated with the Left, from Matt Taibbi to GG to Katie Halper, are asking questions you say no one dares to ask. Taibbi asks these questions on the Bill Maher show. Do you think anyone would read Grayzone if they were still babbling conspiracy theories about Douma?

If anything, the perspective I most encounter in progressive spaces is yours: What Putin did is wrong, but — NATO, nuclear war, etc. As for

"There are Nazis, but ... " I've never heard anyone sane say that, unless it's followed by "but there are Nazis in every western Democracy and at least the ones in Ukraine don't hold legitimized political power."

It seems like left pundits all agree with each other that "EVERYONE'S SOLD OUT AND BETRAYED THEIR ANTI-WAR STANCE!" and that they're the silenced minority, because what, the Atlantic keeps publishing Anne Applebaum or people get mad at Jeremy Scahill on Twitter?

You ask some important what ifs. What if Putin is deposed? Would we get something worse? Maybe!

But there's a more pertinent what if. What if Russia's military campaign weren't a disaster and they had taken over Kiev and large swaths easily? How many lives would you save longterm in a brutal occupation that would inevitably spawn decades of guerilla warfare?

What if Putin had taken Kiev and Zelensky had fled? Would Putin has said, "OK, that's enough of that!" What I don't get is that the same people who blame NATO for Russia's invasion seem to think that the reason Putin is NOT trying to grab back all of the former Soviet satellites is because ... he doesn't want more power or more access to natural resources?

I think people should ask questions! And I also think that they can, with none of the professional and social blowback we saw in 2001.

But I also think that it's OK to be happy that a strong and successful Ukrainian resistance might force Putin into a corner where he can spin defeat as victory ("we killed this many Nazis so now we don't need to be there anymore") and end the conflict in a way that maintains Ukrainian sovereignty.

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