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Pacifism is always an unpopular stance, because always, always, always, THIS war is different! THIS war is justified!
The way pacifists are treated right now, when they criticize involvement in the Ukraine war, is pretty similar to how pacifists were treated before the first World War.But also, we shake our heads at the war enthusiasm before WW1, and don't realize our own today. Cause this war is different.
(For the record, I'm not personally against supporting Ukraine. But I also realize not everyone who is against involvement is a Putin-bot)
But we must also look at pacifism as a convenient shield at times. There were “pacifists” in the Second World War who clearly weren’t ideologically opposed to war but were opposed to fighting hitler. I see letting putin continue as utterly chamberlainian.
Ok that's not really fair. Declassified docs have revealed that Chamberlain knew damn well what was going to work and intentionally played down causus belli because he was buying Britain time to rearm, the problem was that time is a resource you buy for both sides, and the axis used theirs a lot better.
Not really comparable. If in 2003 the US did nothing Iraq would still be doing what it was doing and there would have been no war. If Ukraine stops fighting for even a day the country no longer exists.
It isnt special pleading when you can point out major differences between cases.
Kraut IMO made a pretty good argument based on exactly that point that Iraq would have been doing what it had been doing already,
That being that what Iraq was doing was plenty horrible on its own, and that Bush and co could have made an argument for US involvement just on the merits of stopping a genocidal dictator. The question with no answer is if the public would have accepted that argument for going into Iraq at the same time as Afghanistan.
The war was illegal and justified by WMDs that weren't there.
Yup. Support for the Iraqi war was at like 80% in the US when it started.