How is Ukraine "our literal back yard"? It is half a planet away! What is USA doing there? On the other hand, it is Russia's literal back yard. Actually, more than that, it used to be former Russian territory and they care about the people on it not being bombed.
For that matter, what is the "north atlantic treaty organization" doing with Georgia, which is the Black Sea?
The answer, of course, is obvious. NATO is a military alliance against Russia. And now, QUAD is a military alliance against China. We will try to surround them, and they'll try to resist, like a cornered animal. Then they'll use military force to prevent being totally surrounded with nukes (which is what they believe will happen if they do absolutely nothing like a "good actor"). And their neighbors (e.g. Ukraine, Taiwan) will carry heavy losses.
OR ... we could just stop this cold war proxy war nonsense, and spare places like Vietnam, Laos, Ukraine, Taiwan, etc. Because they're the ones that have to pay the price, not us. And we know that. If it was OUR cities being bombed, we'd do more to avoid the war.
The whole of it seems quite farcical to me, particularly in retrospect, but I wouldn't equivocate it with Russia's invasion of Ukraine because I don't think the American government ever intended on annexing Afghanistan territory. It does however resemble the Soviet Union's own invasion of Afghanistan to topple the (then communist) government of Afghanistan. In that case there was also a fig leaf of humanitarianism, since the PDPA, lead by Taraki and Amin, were massacring civilians and generally losing control of the country. Taraki evidently got cold feet and requested a Soviet intervention, but was subsequently assassinated at Amin's order before that occurred. The assassination of Taraki and the PDPA's general inability to stop murdering people served as the Soviet justification for the invasion. Of course the reality of the invasion was not particularly humanitarian, but the same can be said of the American invasion.
Anyway, all of it was and is shameful and none of it excuses the rest of it.
The Taliban told the USA: "just provide proof that Osama was behind 9/11", and let's have a court case in a neutral third country. (You know, like they do in The Hague etc.)
USA and Bush admin said: "We know he's guilty. We will give you no proof!"
Then in December of 2001 (that same year!) the Taliban said "we unconditionally surrender! We will disband! All we ask is for you to let us live our lives out in dignity."
The USA said in their great wisdom: "NOPE"
Then we fought for 20 years the very group we ceded Afghanistan to last year. And to think, all we had to do is ACCEPT THEIR UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER and we would have saved trillions. And those girls would have been educated!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanis...
They’d have to be stomped on for no other reason than to prevent them doing it again.
I’m also of the opinion that the US and allies probably had more valid reasons to invade any of the countries they did in the past 25 years than Russia had to invade Ukraine.
I feel like the intentions are generally in the right place (e.g. stems from public pressure to do something to help those poor people), and people that are ‘liberated’ are generally happier and healthier afterwards (if they don’t die first). Look at what’s happening now that the Taliban take over again. 20 years of emancipation destroyed in an instant.
That’s the largest crime in my opinion. The west starts a lot of wars, but isn’t willing to see them through to the end. They just fuck up the current stable power structure (regardless of how messed up it is) and then leave.