Recently I watched an 1,5 hour interview of John Mearsheimer on the Ukraine war. My personal stance is diametrical but I appreciate Mearsheimer's contrarian takes. I cannot remember the exact words he used. It is difficult to put it into words. But he said many dictators are described to be similar as bad as Hitler and that this is usually a strategy to frame a narrative. (Was it they get hitlerized or something like that? I think reductio ad hitlerum is even a logical fallacy in debates but I think this is about something else). So after this introduction I can now explain my uneducated opinion that noone really likes because let's be real most people on the internet in comment sections or forums seem to be in favor of takes similar to Mearsheimer's.
So maybe the mainstream position gets contrarian. Well that argument is even too stretched for me.
So now really to the opinion part. I think Putin is a mass-murderer. Though Biden, Clinton and Obama are mass-murderers too. I am not sure whether Olaf Scholz is a mass-murderer. I think the German Bundeswehr or the German intelligence services are too incompetent to murder anyone. So far people might agree with this take. I kind of agree with Noam Chomsky that if the Nuernberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been charged.
Though now I am come to the unpopular part. I think it would be wrong to put Biden and Putin into the same category. We could talk about Putin and Bush. Though Biden did not attack an innocent country and started a war to conquer a country.
For me the decisive difference is in which magnitude and how systematically civilians are attacked and tortured. The war crimes for example the Bucha massacres and in the Kharkiv region and so many more prove that. It is hard to prove whether Putin ordered it with full certainty but noone who is serious would doubt that. It is a strategy to break the will of the Ukrainian people. Little children get abducted etc.
I think there is even a discussion among Western analysts in favor of sending weapons whether the Hitler comparison fits. I think Tmothy Snyder is in favor of this argument. I think they discuss whether Putin's actions are equivalent to a genocide. I think the debate has to be way more nannced than that what I can offer with this thread. It is the question whether the attack is against a certain ethnicity. For the Hitler comparison a genocide might be important.
In the end this debabte can evoke many heated exchanges and blood boiling though finally maybe it is kind of useless. He is a bloody murderer. It is difficult to quantify evil. Putin should get the death sentence but we all know that is kind of unlikely.
The debate could go into different directions. Whether the war against Ukraine is a genocide. Or to posture yourself as fighter for one of the two sides in this war.
So maybe the mainstream position gets contrarian. Well that argument is even too stretched for me.
So now really to the opinion part. I think Putin is a mass-murderer. Though Biden, Clinton and Obama are mass-murderers too. I am not sure whether Olaf Scholz is a mass-murderer. I think the German Bundeswehr or the German intelligence services are too incompetent to murder anyone. So far people might agree with this take. I kind of agree with Noam Chomsky that if the Nuernberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been charged.
Though now I am come to the unpopular part. I think it would be wrong to put Biden and Putin into the same category. We could talk about Putin and Bush. Though Biden did not attack an innocent country and started a war to conquer a country.
For me the decisive difference is in which magnitude and how systematically civilians are attacked and tortured. The war crimes for example the Bucha massacres and in the Kharkiv region and so many more prove that. It is hard to prove whether Putin ordered it with full certainty but noone who is serious would doubt that. It is a strategy to break the will of the Ukrainian people. Little children get abducted etc.
I think there is even a discussion among Western analysts in favor of sending weapons whether the Hitler comparison fits. I think Tmothy Snyder is in favor of this argument. I think they discuss whether Putin's actions are equivalent to a genocide. I think the debate has to be way more nannced than that what I can offer with this thread. It is the question whether the attack is against a certain ethnicity. For the Hitler comparison a genocide might be important.
In the end this debabte can evoke many heated exchanges and blood boiling though finally maybe it is kind of useless. He is a bloody murderer. It is difficult to quantify evil. Putin should get the death sentence but we all know that is kind of unlikely.
The debate could go into different directions. Whether the war against Ukraine is a genocide. Or to posture yourself as fighter for one of the two sides in this war.
