No. Don't assume malice where ineptitude will be sufficient.

Our Foreign Policy is run by armchair, master-degree wannabe-generals in suits and ties, some dark triad, some not, but always away from real bullets, to instead being preoccupied with their own advancement, protecting their friends, and increasing the size of their portfolio, justifying their grand aims with real (or imagined) claims of good intentions

This is the essentially same thing the person you're replying to said: amoral hypocrites and liars.

I notice your standards for US/EU intervention are very very high and basically nobody should ever being killed.

Why don't you apply the same reasoning to Gaddafi's regime and Syria/Russia/Al-Qaeda? You seem to have every problem existing in the Universe when the evil West does something ( and also a problem when it doesn't, also a problem that the West exists I suspect ), yet not a peep when these regimes torture and kill people by the thousands, or are you going to tell me that's just a fantasy? Or when they do it it's justify because it's the West's fault too, so those poor victims have no other choice than to kill everyone who doesn't agree with them?

Btw, I'm not even "defending" the US/EU track record in Libya. I think they did a really bad half-assed job, but I also recognize the context of it all.

Anyway, I've had it.

We used to call this war. Is Russia just ‘intervening’ in Ukraine right now?

We used the term “intervention” to describe limited military action. Countries throughout history have conducted interventions as opposed to full-scale war.

Russia’s assault on Ukraine isn’t an intervention and is instead a war and we know this because of the size and scale of the operation but also the intentions of the operation, which, are to take over the entire country of Ukraine.

And I am inclined to believe them, not because of what Western governments have said, but because the whole Arab Spring played out in real time on social media.

I agree that what happened to Gaddafi himself was horrific. It would have been a much better thing if he had been arrested and brought before a tribunal. But he was killed by Libyans, who were angry about the Libyans that Gaddafi himself had killed. The contribution that Western Governments made to those events was to stop the killing of thousands of people who opposed the regime. Arguing against intervention is arguing in favor of what would have happened without intervention—which is, effectively, what we have seen in Syria.

Now, was Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the verge of murdering tens of thousands? Were Ukranian forces gathered, ready to rain artillery shells down on a major Ukrainian city? If not, I don't think it would be appropriate to describe the Russian invasion as an "intervention". What would Putin have been "intervening" in? Ukranian self-determination?

The Ukraine military was already shelling Donbas before the invasion begun, killing civilians. That was one of the original justifications for the invasion.

Quite a few were - we will probably get a good idea of the numbers ~40 years later unless the President at the time deems otherwise.

Do remember that Yanukovych's election was certified by international monitors. https://www.oscepa.org/en/news-a-media/press-releases/press-...

A significant fraction of Ukraine voted for him - esp from the south and east. Toppling an elected government whose election was deemed valid by a vetted group of international observers is what split Ukraine and finally led to this bloody situation today.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/212663/Election_repor...

And if you think the U.S. was not involved, I am afraid that is a extraordinary act of burying your head in the sand. The U.S. was involved even in the earlier Orange revolution in 2004. At that time, the U.S. media was not as sophisticated as it was later. The Guardian and US papers proudly declared the US combating Russian influence and "protecting democracy" by sponsoring protestors! Ukraine was always a tug of war between U.S. and Russian influence but 2014 coup was what broke the Camel's back.

Remember - Nuland is even on record discussing who should hold the reigns after the coup. She didn't want Klitschko in the central government. Too moderate for her. She wanted the Anti-Russian and far-right guy Arseniy Yatsenyuk in power.

And Lo and Behold - Her Prophecy Was Fulfilled! In an interview with Poroshenko, he admitted that Nuland was in Kiev during the time of the Maidan protests. She traveled 3 times during that period, organizing support and supplies for the "democratic movement" - even going to the extent of giving sandwiches to protestors.

OSCE via Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/osce-reports-surge-numb...

Unless Reuters is "naked Russian propaganda" now, there was definitely an uptick in kinetic activity in the Donbas, with most of it falling on the Separatist side of the line of control.

Note that nowhere in that article does it say that the Ukrainian side did that. For all we know this was a provocation, as Russia is won't to do. Alternative explanations have been present many times and none of them have stuck.

Also note that there was an endless build-up prior to the second phase of this invasion which had absolutely nothing to do with that particular incident even if it was done by the Ukrainian side, which I highly doubt given the fact that it was one of the pretexts used.

Finally: in that region there have been many actions by either side and no matter what: the Ukrainians are well within their right to kick out an invader, the myth of the separatists has been debunked solidly, until the little green men showed up there was no meaningful separatist activity.

If you are asserting that the Helsinki-based OSCE was duped by Russia detonating a bunch of explosions on their own side of the line of control....prove it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

"By February 24th, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Now the [Russian] Defense Ministry attempts to fool society, tries to fool the President, and tell the story of a crazy aggression from the Ukrainian side and they were going to attack us with the whole NATO block."

Not sure how you get more conclusive then that; Putin himself?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_...

It does not support your (Russia’s, really) claim of a Ukraine-initiated escalation

On page 2, with the map of the Donbas, the vast majority of the explosions are in northwest Luhansk, NE of Luhansk city itself, and North of Donetsk....on the Separatist side of the line of contact.

That the surge in shelling was Ukraine-initiated against Russian-backed separatists (and not vice versa coordinated from Moscow as part of the prelude to its own invasion)—and, even moreso, that even if it was, a Ukrainian offensive against separatists in Ukraine (and not even against the openly Russian-occupied part) was a reasonable basis for seeing a threat of NATO invading (or backing an invasion of) Russia—is the Russian propaganda.

Sorry, I suggest you dig deeper. He was killed by Misrata fighters who were directly NATO sponsored and equipped. There were lots of articles on how NATO supported Misrata at the time.

Are you saying that these people were working under orders from NATO? What was their motivation, if they were not fundamentally angry about how Gaddafi had treated their fellow countrymen?

Yes, there were under orders from NATO. They even coordinated air-strikes. This is no real surprise to anyone. Hell, I think some of the NATO generals even complimented the coordination. Can dig that up if needed.

Anger at a nation's leader does not justify NATO intervention. Most of these rebels were quick to take Libya back to the barbaric ages where women were treated as cattle. Libya also became an ISIS HQ. No one talks about human rights violations after Gadaffi was kicked out and tens of thousands killed. Media attention became nil at that point. Of-course NATO nations pat themselves on the back - hey we took out the bad guys. So what if our "good guys" kill 10x more ?

I find the hypocrisy and justification used for NATO wars utterly sickening.

What reasoning? First of all I'm an American citizen, so I concern myself more with what my country does with my tax dollars than what other countries do, especially within their own borders or in situations that don't directly affect American citizens. I don't believe America's job is global law enforcement. It's like asking an American "why don't you apply the reasoning that President Trump is corrupt to President Ali Bongo of Niger? Why aren't you calling for President Ali Bongo's arrest? Double standard?"

also a problem that the West exists I suspect

It's fascinating that my criticism of the US/NATO bombing and invading and occupying other countries leads you to suspect I have a problem "that the West exists". In your conception perhaps "the West" would cease to exist as such if it were not the global hegemon?

yet not a peep when these regimes torture and kill people by the thousands

Saudi Arabia tortures and kills people by the thousands. If China or Russia invaded Saudi Arabia and attempted to turn it into a client state using the justification of Saudi misdeeds, would you support them? I suspect not, but we're back to "when the US/NATO does it it's good, when US/NATO adversaries do it it's bad" being the "rules-based order" many believe should exist.

You're talking about the hypothetical situation when China or Russia would invade a country to stop the regime from torturing and killing people by the thousands. And you proceed to claim that when they would do it, the West would say "it's bad".

There have been plenty of occasions in, say, the last 75 years where China or Russia have invaded some country. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but not one single time was it to stop the regime from torturing and killing people by the thousands.

Otoh there have been, and still are, plenty of regimes that are killing and torturing like that, and which receive the full support from China and Russia.

This is literally one of the arguments put forth by Putin for intervention in Ukraine. The most often-cited example I hear from Russians is the fire in Odessa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/ukraine-dead-o...

And the government was resorting to airstrikes the same month: https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-launches-air-strikes-a...

Can you imagine if the US response to CHAZ/CHOP was to drop JDAMs on Seattle?

Now one can counter-argue "not enough people were dying to justify foreign intervention", to which the obvious retort is "who gets to make that determination?"

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

The context is that Sarkozy didn't want Gaddafi muscling on the Franc's domination of Africa's economy.

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12659

https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy9d49/libyan-oil-gold-and-q...

From those, I'd much rather be under the US or EU sphere of influence.

I realize that other commenters have also been breaking the rules, but your post here stands out in that manner.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Again thanks to Hillary's emails, we can suspect that the CIA had a hand in eliminating the new candidate that france wanted to support (we had contact with both Kaddafi's son and the leader of a rebel group, both died), but i wouldn't put that war, then civil war, on US. Also, while France supported eliminating Kaddafi here, they supported the dictator in Tunisia with police forces and weapons (that are marked as non-lethal, but since we haven't found many nonlethal weapons after the revolution, either there was a kickback, or a lot were stolen/lost, or a part of what was sent were lethal weapons).

And for Syria it's the same, Obama's administration wasn't really focused on that part of the middle east, and Hollande (France) forced their hand.

Truly, i cannot believe France's reputation in Africa is that low. I wonder why.

Qaddafi got what he deserved from a karmic point of view. He was instrumental in gifting the Islamic Republic to Iran so hope you enjoyed that bayonet Colonel. But obviously his regime was far better for Libya and Africans than the loonies that are cranked up, trained, and armed by Western intelligence agencies as part of their mad approach to managing exploited realms. But again “it’s just business”.

The WTO ended up finding the EU guilty in 2020.

For Syria, Obama made threats to try to prevent the use of chemical weapons. The UK wanted to avoid another Libya, the other EU countries aren't warmongers, Turkey wouldn't have said anything, so only France did the 'actually, they used chemical weapons, and the US is not alone if you go so you won't have another Iraq!'.

I don't know what happened to Hollande, why he grew a pair suddenly, but I don't think we ever had a president who didn't stir shit at least once in 70 years.

Yep. Can confirm.

This was publicly reported during the 2011-12 period as well. There were a couple press junkets Obama, the State Dept, and DoD did at the time highlighting this stance of non-interventionism. Read some of the older Economist articles from that era as well.

I didn't know Emailgate actually had emails from that time.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Hmmm. That’s tough to argue against when you put it like that.

Another way to put it is that many facts can be true at the same time. Superpowers are gonna Superpower, but they are also hypocrites operating on a double standard.

So then the question is, are all facts the same? The answer I’ve come to is that some facts are more useful than others.

The fact that America is a great power is a very important fact.

The fact the great powers act alike is a useful fact.

The fact that can derived from these, that America does great power stuff, is of no value. It’s just the obvious result of other facts which are more important if your goal is prediction or parsimonious explanations for historical events.

Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, and Less Rocco (sometimes called Western Sahara) are either stable or were not destabilized by the Libyan civil war.

You won't get any sympathy for that opinion.

Other US military interventions have varying levels of righteousness, but this one is a pretty clear-cut case.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html