Okay, fair, there's a self-consistent point there we can work with. I also am extremely dubious of the idea of "just war".
> It takes two to tango.
It really only takes one to start a war. You seem to be under the assumption that Ukraine had a choice about whether it went to war or not. It didn't have that choice. War was forced upon it. Indeed Ukraine is not fighting a "just war" by any stretch.
It sounds like you're saying: it's bad that Russia is invading Ukraine, but it's also bad that Ukraine is trying to defend itself? Obviously we'd all prefer the world where Russia does not invade Ukraine. Given that Russia did invade Ukraine, what is the next best world? For me, 2nd best is that Ukraine defends its sovereignty with as little unnecessary death as possible. For you, it sounds like (and please correct me if I'm wrong) 2nd best is that Ukraine rolls over and lets Russia completely annex its territories, commit genocide on its civilians, reduce its cities to rubble and ash, execute or permanently imprison its current government, and install a puppet government, so that it is better positioned to do the exact same thing to the rest of Eastern Europe. Is that right? I think we'd both like to minimize death and suffering, but my intuition is that your 2nd best scenario has a lot more death and suffering than mine.
And again: the idea that Ukraine defending its sovereignty is "just as bad" as Russia invading it is yet another common Russian propaganda line. It may be complete coincidence that your statements happen to exactly match Russian propaganda lines, but they do. If you talk about how you found some cheap viagra at some link you post, you may feel like you have a legit reason for doing so and that you're not a "true" spammer. But to everyone else, you're just another spammer.
I will abstain from attributing the quote in an effort to avoid an appeal to authority, but this neatly sums up my feelings on it.
I am also of the belief that death is preferable to participating in war.
Then you must be for a swift Ukrainian victory right?, cause anything else just raises tensions in the region and increases the chance of another war in the near future.
> Furthermore, even in your worldview, an American citizen using nominally American-jurisdiction hardware to enable airstrikes in a war zone that has nothing directly to do with America is an unforced escalation in the proxy war unrelated to “illegal invasion” that invites retaliation against Americans and American space-based assets.
The war in Ukraine isn’t a proxy war it’s just a plain old war between Russia and Ukraine with both sides having allies that help supply them, and I’m not sure why “illegal invasion” is in quotation marks that’s exactly what it is.
> One may simply be against violence in all forms, which seems much more plausible, given what we know about humans on Earth, especially skeptics like Musk who tend to resist pro-just-war state messaging.
This is an easy view to have when you live the luxury of being able to choice whether or not to be involved in a war.
Ukrainians had no such choice war was forced upon them by the Russians.
I reject the concept of “just war” in general in all instances and think all war is mass murder, definitionally. “Military targets” is a euphemism designed to diffuse blame for premeditated mass slaughter of human beings. It’s not something anyone wants to do, feel, or think about, so euphemisms like these are practically essential to our ability to cope with the world. There is another conflict happening simultaneously where you can see the exact same labelling-war playing out. The scores of dead children remain dead, the hospital remains in ruins regardless of whether it was a failed terrorist missile or a solemn and justified defense of a victim of illegal invasion. It takes two to tango.
As I said, it’s not popular to be anti-war these days. Humans seem to like retribution and righting of perceived injustice more than they like peace. We still have the death penalty, for instance, a clear violation of our widely agreed-upon standard of human rights.
Furthermore, even in your worldview, an American citizen using nominally American-jurisdiction hardware to enable airstrikes in a war zone that has nothing directly to do with America is an unforced escalation in the proxy war unrelated to “illegal invasion” that invites retaliation against Americans and American space-based assets. It’s a fool’s game even if you subscribe only to Realpolitik and don’t care one whit about the lives of enslaved Russian teenagers.
> We know Russia loves Musk because he supports their illegal invasion of Ukraine.
I have seen precisely nothing to support either of the claims in this sentence. They are speculation, not fact. “If you don’t support me, you de facto support my enemy” is not sound reasoning in war. One may simply be against violence in all forms, which seems much more plausible, given what we know about humans on Earth, especially skeptics like Musk who tend to resist pro-just-war state messaging.