Actually, no. Ukraine's actions aren't an arguably stronger excuse because they're an understandable response to having some of their sovereign territory violently stolen from them. Nor is western media "cheerleading" Ukraine evidence of propaganda - Russia invaded another country, what is the "reasonable and balanced" side of that? Also I don't know what country you were watching media in, but I remember seeing plenty of critics and criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan here. Sure, there was less of it in the very beginning, frankly Americans were still kind of in shock for the first two or three years after 9/11 to want to give it serious unbiased thinking, but even then criticism existed. Russia allows no criticism in it's media, and the population isn't suffering a traumatic cultural shock to the system to be thinking unclearly. Russia is pure Putin led propaganda.joe00uk wrote: ↑Fri May 20, 2022 11:35 pmRussia also has arguable provocations for its actions which it has referred to extensively (i.e. the actions of Ukraine since the 2014 coup). The difference there, perhaps, is that 9/11 may be an even weaker excuse. It's honestly one of the laziest narratives ever crafted, especially given that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan had anything to do with the attack and that what evidence there is points to countries like Saudi Arabia being involved. Yes, it's true that dissent is stifled in Russia and there is heavy propaganda, but the same is true here. You will never see mainstream corporate media allow anything other than sycophantic cheerleading for Ukraine and the Kiev regime. Any other viewpoints, no matter how reasonable and balanced, are subject to censorship in the mainstream. Here, as in Russia, alternative viewpoints only really thrive on smaller outlets of independent media. It was the same with the Iraq War. Mainstream media in the West was largely uncritical and popular criticism of the war that existed outside of approved media outlets was completely ignored. The differences really aren't so great, and it's silly to think the West has any sort of moral high ground in this situation.Vakanai wrote: ↑Fri May 20, 2022 7:54 pm Difference is, when US, UK, etc have done such things in recent history, there was (arguable) provocation (9/11), people debated the decision, disagreed with it, and the media often questioned it etc. Here there was no inciting incident to attempt to justify Putin's action, no means of debating that decision in Russia, and Russian media is a propaganda machine only. For most of 20 years I was against the war in Iraq, and didn't really care who knew it. In Russia it's against the law to even say this is a war or invasion.
America and it's allies are flawed, I won't debate that fact. We've made mistakes. We frankly did shit we shouldn't have. Some of it was shock, some of it lies (weapons of mass destruction that never existed), some of it was just on us, our fault. We've owned some of it, some we haven't. But Russia is denying any wrongdoing, trying to paint themselves as the victims and their victims as extremist militants, and will not allow it's citizens to argue against the Kremlin's worldview and are being brainwashed into believing it via state sponsored propaganda. The West is not innocent, but there's no comparison here. Russia is flat out in the wrong here, is the aggressor here, and Ukraine is suffering death and despair all because of the tyrannical Nazi-like decisions of an authoritarian and ruthless megalomaniac.