Re:The downside of encouraging ‘the fight’ on the streets of...
by marginalia_nu on Saturday March 05, 2022 @07:29AM
(#30566940)
I do think it's fair to show the whole picture. Even if the Ukrainians do halt the Russian war machine, it comes at an incredibly steep price.
Fighting for freedom is glamorized as some wholesome star wars rebellion where the good guys always win. In practice the dynamic often gets incredibly ugly and whatever victory there is to have is Pyrrhic at best.
The way to fight a guerilla is to oppress harder, to break the population, to systematically ransack and destroy anything beautiful, monuments, cultural icons, anything that gives identity or a cause to fight back until there is nothing left but rubble.
It's real easy to sit in an armchair halfway across the world and say it's worth sacrificing everything for freedom.
But yeah, maybe this is worth it, I don't presume to know. Drawn out guerilla war comes at the sort of cost nobody other than Ukraine gets to decide whether they think it's worth it.
Fighting for freedom is glamorized as some wholesome star wars rebellion where the good guys always win. In practice the dynamic often gets incredibly ugly and whatever victory there is to have is Pyrrhic at best.
The way to fight a guerilla is to oppress harder, to break the population, to systematically ransack and destroy anything beautiful, monuments, cultural icons, anything that gives identity or a cause to fight back until there is nothing left but rubble.
It's real easy to sit in an armchair halfway across the world and say it's worth sacrificing everything for freedom. But yeah, maybe this is worth it, I don't presume to know. Drawn out guerilla war comes at the sort of cost nobody other than Ukraine gets to decide whether they think it's worth it.