For a split second I did believed you, that Russia haven't invaded Ukraine, it merely 'protected it's local territory'.
What part of "Iraq is essential to the sovereign protection of the borders of the USA" do you .. not understand?
I'm not trying to justify Russia's military action in Ukraine - living quite close to this action, it horrified me. But, on the other hand, I'm not ever going to be compelled to agree with someone who says that the mass destruction of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen .. and so on .. is vital to the defence of the USA. Because, I know where those places are on a map, and they are nowhere near the USA ...
What are you talking about? Iraq was not mentioned in the original comment.
Also, this "The USA has invaded, and destroyed, far, far more territory, resulting in 100x more human suffering and misery." is grossly untrue. Neither country is free of fault here, but for every Afghanistan, or Iraq, there is a North Korea or East Germany.
America, however, projects power around the globe - not for its own protection of sovereign assets, and certainly not as a consequence of needing to defend its sovereign border. Rather, American power projection is done in order to interfere with nations that the USA has decided, for some other reason, mostly psychology, is its enemy.
>"The USA has invaded, and destroyed, far, far more territory, resulting in 100x more human suffering and misery." is grossly untrue.
Sorry, but a lot of the world see it as being very, very true.
Perhaps you should pay more attention to the refugee children walking across Europe to get away from American wars.
Without Crimea Russia won't have access to Black Sea? Or it will lose her borders?
Please clarify.
Also even it had Crimea for thousand years before, it still won't matter - they've signed numerous international agreement s which stated that Crimea belongs to Ukraine.
But I find the argument that "USA is not bad, because Russia did bad" to be highly specious.
Russia, and the Russians in the region that was invaded, can justify its mis-deeds as protection of its sovereignty.
America, and thus Americans, cannot.
There were no Americans to protect in Iraq. In Afghanistan. In Syria, Yemen, Libya.
Seriously, Americans are liable for some deep, deep shit. Russians, less so.
And there was no Russians to protect in Crimea, so stop whitewashing Kremlin lies.
And I completely deny that Russia has the right to speak for ethnic Russians of other nationalities, and to invade their countries on their behalf.
Prior to Russo-Turkish war Crimea was a part of the Ottoman Empire, after Russia won that war it conquered Crimea and absorbed it into the fold in 1783. Crimea has not been a traditional part of the Ukraine since before the existence of the United States of America.
Failure to grasp reality does not change the fact that a Crimea filled with ethnic Russians, host to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, in a city founded over 250 years ago by Russia, which holds extreme strategic importance to the nation could never be allowed to fall under the sphere of NATO.
That was most wonderful comment so far.
So you're not aware that fleet's flag was changed at least 4 times during last 100 years and half of the time it was nothing to do with Russia?
The USA has invaded, and destroyed, far, far more territory, resulting in 100x more human suffering and misery.
Its not a duality - but if you want to be honest about the hostile intentions of nations, you have to look at the most hostile state there is: the USA. The stats are not pretty.