…Yet, with Putin’s unprovoked invasion into peaceful neighboring Ukraine, the humor of Putin’s self-made macho image is fading. Writing for WORLD, Andrew Walker points out, “Putin’s masculinity is one of cavalier ruthlessness and vainglory — one using raw strength to self-aggrandize, bully, destroy, denigrate, and suppress.” Standing in stark contrast to the Russian president’s shirtless wilderness photoshoots is comedy actor turned politician, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Before the Russian invasion, Zelensky was a relatively unknown figure on the world stage. But now, he has risen to the task of being a wartime leader with determination, good humor, and fearlessness. Standing in the dark streets of Kyiv as the invasion was underway, Zelensky recorded a video on his smartphone reassuring his people and warning his adversaries that “We are here.” The risks to his own life are great, but thus far, Zelensky has refused to leave. In an address from his office, he said, “I stay in Kyiv. On Bankova Street. I’m not hiding. And I’m not afraid of anyone. As much as it takes to win this Patriotic War of ours.” This is a strength and courage that Putin’s vacation pics can’t replicate. Zelensky’s unwavering and passionate communications to his fellow Ukrainians and the outside world have earned him countless comparisons to Winston Churchill. His leadership has rallied Ukrainians to fight back against the Russian onslaught and stirred the hearts of world leaders to act. Neither Zelensky’s politics nor his lifestyle are a perfect model of masculinity. Yet, as he leads his country’s struggle to fight back against one of the most powerful militaries on earth, people around the world are drawn to his powerful example of what masculinity can look like when channeled in the right direction. He has shown he is willing to sacrifice his life for the good of his people and country after being offered an easy way out. Instead of modeling sacrificial leadership, Putin chose to put the lives of his troops on the line — for some, perhaps even unknowingly — to assault a neighboring sovereign country without a legitimate cause… read more: https://www.christianpost.com/voices/real-men-dont-bomb-women-and-children-they-protect-them.html The contrast between these two men could not be greater. Zelensky is defending his people and risking his life for his people. Putin is a wimp of a “man” who frustrated by the resolve of the United people he invaded and by the way his forces were slowed by such all in resistance to his aggression has targeted innocent women and children and places they might be.
The title of this thread is correct, and why we should not have used the atomic bomb at the end of WWII.
Zelensky has definitely represented his nation extremely well during this entire aggression by Putin and his Russian military, while Putin has come across as a disgrace to the Russian people and their nation. I do not feel his actions are representative of the Russian people.
My support for Ukraine stems from the idea that offensive violence is always wrong, and thus Russia's invasion of Ukraine is wrong. But from Russia's perspective (not Putin's perspective specifically, but rather the Russian people, their military and their personnel) they are putting down aggressive neo-nazi and provacative NATO threats on their doorstep. Their perspective is most certainly being twisted to some degree by state propaganda, just as ours was when we invaded Iraq to stop Saddam from building "WMD's!!" and "taking babies out the incubators to leave them to die on the cold floor..." Whether Putin himself actually believes the legitimacy of the threats his propaganda machine is feeding to his people or not is anyone's guess... but clearly a lot of his people believe it (and also clearly its true to some lesser extent than they're being told). If you're interested in 'the other side of the story' from what our media prefers to focus on, Oliver Stone's Ukraine on Fire accounts that perspective pretty well and is worth a watch. Its available free from multiple websites including youtube (though its age restricted and requires an account there). We deliberately bombed civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan when tactically necessary. We tried to limit how much we did (and so are the Russians, though less and less as their progress slows), but we still did it. In WWII we deliberately targetted civilians on many occasions, firebombing several large German and Japanese cities with the express purpose of killing as many women and children as possible to try to demoralize our enemies, end the war sooner and reduce how many of our own people would have to die fighting. Was it wrong? Probably depends entirely on whether we're asking the families of the victims or the families of our soldiers... To be clear, Putin is clearly in the wrong to attack Ukraine like this. But whatever his motivations are, the motivations of his military and his citizens are the same as ours when we attack other nations and end up killing a lot of civilians and find out later we weren't exactly told the truth about why.
A lot more people including women and children would have been killed during an invasion of all the Japanese islands. The bombs in Japan were a least bad of bad options. While I agree that war fighters should always make every effort to avoid as much as possible affecting civilians, not all war fighters agree. Some use civilians as human shields and others target them as means to an end.
So millions instead in five more years of war would have been preferable? Or would you have dropped FDR’s demand for unconditional surrender after Pearl Harbor.
They had no intention of surrendering. They were intent on fighting Iwo Jima style over every inch of every island. They intended to make the cost to us high enough that we’d let the regime survive intact in a settlement to end the war.
Wrong. "Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war. Leahy wrote in his 1950 memoirs that "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Moreover, Leahy continued, "in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." "President Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe during World War II, recalled in 1963, as he did on several other occasions, that he had opposed using the atomic bomb on Japan during a July 1945 meeting with Secretary of War Henry Stimson: "I told him I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon." "Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, the tough and outspoken commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, which participated in the American offensive against the Japanese home islands in the final months of the war, publicly stated in 1946 that "the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment." The Japanese, he noted, had "put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before" the bomb was used. https://origins.osu.edu/history-news/hiroshima-military-voices-dissent?language_content_entity=en
bringing this back to your op, putin is making the same decision now as truman made in 1945 - kill many women and children now or more later. this is why war must be the LAST resort and must never be waged casually. if we MUST go to war we must kill men women and children on an industrial scale or lose our own. if putin is rational (any other assumption is based on propaganda) he will kill as many ukerainians as necessary to end the war (and stop the killing) as quickly as possible. . he will use any weapons necessary to do so. "war is hell" wm tecumsah sherman
Then you have to think Zelensky isn't a real man, either, since Zelensky bombed, starved and killed approximately 14,000 separatists in Donbass, Ukraine since 2014.
I am totally in agreement with this OP. For everything, there is a first time. Nice thread, thanks for posting it.
There is a lot of hard truth in this posting. I would add that the nonsense about nazis in the Ukraine is based on old assumptions about Ukraine from well more than 100 years ago. You can probably count on two hands at most the number of real nazis that are Ukrainian and living the Ukraine, a land that used to have 44 million people. That being said, when the other side is the madman's side, it interests me little. I didn't need to know all of Adolph Hitlers's inner thoughts in order to clearly see that he was a genocidal maniac. Also, your words about what WE have done in war are indeed factually correct and painful to remember. But the necessities of war make for all sorts of nasty things.
Harry Truman absolutely made the right decision, having seen how many lives we lost just to take Iwo Jima.
They are not real “western men”. Just because they are white doesn’t mean they adhere to Angle-Saxon values. They are remnants of the eastern kingdoms that place little value on the lives of individuals. Leveling cities is not “wrong” in the mind of hard core Russian communists. In fact they see it as Ukraine’s fault for not surrendering immediately.
The Russians never imagined that 30 years of freedom despite the pre Zelensky problems they had and everyone under 35 having no real living memory of the USSR would lead to such strong resistance. People knowing nothing but freedom and those who did know the old ways refusing to just give it all up. They did not expect the resistance of the Ukrainian military nor that civilians would arm up and hunt Russian soldiers. They way under estimated Zelensky as well. Glory to Ukraine!
You're right. Zelensky has been the head of the Ukranian gov't since 2019. Plenty of separatists in the Donbass regions have been bombed, starved and killed by the Ukranian gov't since 2019.