A Yahoo News article (here) this morning begins, “From the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and throughout the conflict, Moscow has pursued a strategy of aggressive public dissembling, prevarication and disinformation aimed at creating an alternative reality to explain how events have unfolded on the ground.”
“In Russia itself, the rules for even talking about Ukraine have become Orwellian, with citizens now facing lengthy potential prison sentences for simply stating that their country is at war, let alone expressing opposition to it. (The Kremlin-approved term for the conflict is ‘special military operation,’ not war.)”
Russia lies about everything. Well, almost everything. During the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989), they called their invading army a “Limited Contingent.” That was actually true; the Soviet force never exceeded 140,000 men, and Moscow never waged all-out war in Afghanistan (although the war they did wage was plenty ugly enough). They told the people back home their soldiers were “building schools and planting trees,” which was a bald-faced lie, and concealed the casualties (they snuck the coffins home and buried them in the dead of night). They never acknowledged they were fighting a war.
As noted above, they’re repeating that same lie about their war in Ukraine, and still plastering their military aggression with euphemisms to hide from their own people what their government is up to (although the rest of the world knows, and their people don’t choose their government or have any say about it anyway).
Bottom line, Putin and his henchmen are bad guys. (Biden called him a “war criminal,” but that’s a technical definition, whose application is to be determined by an international court, if anybody can ever drag Putin before one.)
But it occurs to me that he probably views us as hypocrites. So let’s check that out.]
He sees Ukraine as a secessionist province of Russia, and invaded them to bring it back into the Russian union. (Remember, his ultimate and larger aim is to reconstitute the Soviet Union.) What did the United States do, when its southern states seceded? The U.S. invaded them, and forced them to remain part of the Union. Putin, if he knows any American history (and he probably does), likely sees little or no difference between that and invading Ukraine to keep the Russian union intact.
He’s threatening to use nuclear weapons if foreign busybodies get between him and the Ukrainian Rebels. We actually used nuclear weapons in a war. We’re the only country that ever was. He’ll see any complaint from us about him using nukes against Ukraine as hypocritical.
He’s leveling cities, using cluster munitions, maybe some tear gas and white phosphorus, destroying apartment blocks, and kidnapping and murdering civilians. In World War 2, the United States and its allies bombed German cities into rubble (killing many civilians) and firebombed Japanese cities (and the German city of Dresden) into ashes (and charred bodies of civilians); and in Vietnam we torched villages, moved their occupants into what amounted to concentration camps, and routinely used napalm, cluster bombs, and white phosphorus. Hypocrisy much?
Wars are ugly, period; and when it’s kill or be killed, war fighters will use every weapon at their disposal. (Wouldn’t you?) In all wars, the bulk of casualties are civilians, and there are atrocities. Russia hasn’t done anything in Ukraine that Sherman didn’t do in Georgia on his march to the sea. “Total war” isn’t exactly a new innovation. And there’s no such thing as a polite war, and there never has been.
So what’s the difference between us and the Russians? Putin likely would argue there isn’t any. We’ll say he started this war; he’ll reply we’ve started wars, too. We’ll say he invaded a country that was minding its own business and didn’t attack Russia; he’ll say we’ve invaded countries that didn’t attack us. (And he’ll be right.) So what is the difference between us and them? Is there one?
Russia is lying through its teeth about this war. Our political leaders lie, too (e.g., George W. Bush), but they don’t get away with it, because unlike Russia, our government can’t control the press, keep its citizens from learning what’s really going on, or throw them in jail for criticizing their government’s leaders or actions. (Except I can’t remember a war when Republicans didn’t want to jail antiwar protesters.)
Russia is a dictatorship, we’re not, and if we were to impose democracy on somebody (as we did in Germany and Japan after World War 2), that’s less onerous on their citizens than imposing a dictatorship on them. Converting a dictatorship to a democracy isn’t the same thing as converting a democracy to a dictatorship (which is what Putin’s trying to do in Ukraine, and any other country he might invade).
I would also argue that we don’t engage in aggression like he does, or use our military offensively as he does; our military is for defending ourselves and our democratic allies, and our defense posture is defensive in nature.
So, we’ve done all the ugly things in our wars that he’s doing in his current war which we’re condemning, but there’s a qualitative difference in what we fight for. Dictators fight to impose oppression; we fight to free others of oppression. That makes us better than them. At least, that’s what we want to believe about ourselves, even if how we fight is just as vicious.