This is what journalists were supposed to do, I thought. At least this one time, one confronts a liar for Putin with the evidence.
A devastatingly effective, fair and fact based interview by an Irish journalist with Russian’s ambassador to Ireland. “Why should our government entertain your presence here when you’re acting as an apologist for slaughter.” pic.twitter.com/nKa3m7MoAh
— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) February 26, 2022
You know, this is exactly what I wanted journalists to do to American politicians when we invaded Iraq. We didn’t get much of it. Instead, we got polarization driving people to Fox News, that nest of lies. And now Fox News is demonstrating that they always were a propaganda mill for conservative authoritarians — could you imagine Tucker Carlson doing anything but fawning over a Russian ambassador making excuses for atrocities?
The Irish people are also protesting outside the Russian embassy, while Irish political parties are calling for the expulsion of the Russian ambassador (although the EU is asking to keep embassies in place, which makes sense if there is to be any hope of a diplomatic solution –– a forlorn hope, but I guess it’s there.)
This war has me thinking about the two Afghanistan wars a lot. Also frequently compared to the Vietnam War. Some say Afghanistan was the Soviet’s Vietnam. Defeated by asymmetric warfare. When you have to fight the majority of the population, you have two choices. Either you withdraw, or you embark on the reprehensible path of “Ethnic Cleansing”. Is Putin willing to kill half the population of The Ukraine? I don’t know. I do know that the Ukrainians will not make it easy for him.
(Reconstructed cross-post from the poopyhead’s current thread…)
Putin has pissed off the Irish, which is always a mistake, from the Grauniad’s then-current teh madman’s war live blog:
What a disgraceful little toad. Russian diplomats brazenly lie and a few days later brazenly lie about brazenly lying and act all indignant when we do not swallow the lies.
Well I never did know that.
“Could it be that Greta Thunberg and Leonardo DiCaprio actually might be to blame for what Vladimir Putin is doing?” Kirk asked on his eponymous internet show.
A bit too bizarre,even for Bizarro World.
Good point.
I’ve been wondering that myself.
We easily won our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan against smaller Third World armies. Then we spent a decade or two losing the peace. They could outlast us in asymmetric warfare because they had no other place to go while we could go back to North America.
The Russians as the USSR have a long history of killing millions of people. One of their main victims, ironically enough, were the Ukrainians during Stalin’s famines of the 1930s. It is estimated that 3.5 million Ukrainians died.
Who knows how many Ukrainian people the Russians could kill this time around?
The Obama “pivot toward China” was an overt attempt to contain China’s attempt at establishing an imperial fringe. So now it appears Russian and China may be driven to form an oppositional balance to the US hegemon. Cold war 3.0 here we come!
I’m somewhat ashamed to say it didn’t even occur to me to protest until after we found out our neighbors had been at the embassy.
I guess I’ve kinda lost my faith in the usefulness of such protests for changing policy, and forgot about the importance of showing solidarity. It’s been good to see the opposition to this war, both around the world, and within Russia itself.
Re: Marcus Ranum @ #6
So long as it remains cold…
Apparently, Tucker Carlson was left scrambling to perform damage control after finding out that his previous statements praising Putin were being broadcast on Russia’s state-owned media.
Let’s keep ALL the Ukrainian embassies open with their current personnel and refuse to recognize any Russian-puppet replacements. Likewise the Ukrainian UN mission.
As soon as the the Russians set up a puppet “Ukrainian” president, we need to dust off a neglected term to descibe whoever it is…quisling.
We need to make Russia a pariah state in every way possible. No Olympics for them, and kick them out of every other sporting bodies. Refuse their ships into western ports, and ditto for their planes into any western air space. We don’t need theirs.
I agree with finding a way to put pressure on/punish Putin, but has making an autocracy a pariah state ever actually changed that country’s policy?
It seems like we haven’t found a way to use isolation and sanctions that hasn’t primarily hurt the least powerful people in the targeted country. Am I forgetting an example that indicates it could work?
The old apartheid state of South Africa.
It hasn’t worked too well for North Korea but it hasn’t not worked either.
Same with Iran. It’s set Iran back by a lot but they are still there.
Well, and I’m working on a post about the inter-war sanctions on Iraq, and the current sanctions on Afghanistan.
South Africa is a good point, but that wasn’t one country invading another, you know? It’s a good point but I’m not sure how good of a comparison it is.
I’m not universally opposed to sanctions any more than any other form of violence. They’re a tool that can be used for good or for ill.
I guess I’m just not clear on what the proposed chain of events is. It seems unlikely that the sanctions I’ve heard about will cause any real problems for Putin or his pet oligarchs.
Re: andrei613 @ #12…
The French have seized a Russian flagged ship. See: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60539119
We’ve had our own protests here (embarrassing to admit, I didn’t attend). Sunflowers were part of the protest, just like Ukraine (re: the 2014 “Sunflower movement” that seeks independence and world recognition).
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4456196
Irland: We are all Twisted Sisters.