Sweetie, you have to be truthful to yourself.
Did you really mean to say: "If people stop arguing or implying that Russia's war is morally justified, then I shall stop arguing otherwise"?
No!
Your heart meant to say: "You MUST resolutely condemn Russian actions on moral ground, or else, you're in bed with Putin the dictator!" (which by the way, is exactly what Margret Brennan was trying to push Ambassador Qin Gang to make clear.)
So, my advise is that, instead of going around the bushes and try to entrap people in your little convoluted word salads, why don't you just be blunt?
Just say to them straight forward: "Do you condemn Putin or not?". Or you don't even need to ask. Just go: "You are Putin's goon! Atrocity enabler! Dictator's minions and cronies! Russian Troll!", etc. The long list.
It pains me to see you so vain and twisted.....
BTW, the civilians who got trapped in this war are the real victims. I don't care who wins at this moment, I just want the fighting to stop.
Stop putting words into my mouth!
Can you quote where I have demanded that anyone here explicitly condemn Putin?
Indeed, I have criticized Western sanctions against Anna Netrebko, who has disapproved of the war but declined to condemn
Putin by name in a public statement. Because she has not condemned Putin explicitly, she has been barred from following her
profession as an opera singer in many Western venues. I do not believe that Anna Netrebko should be required to condemn
Putin as a precondition of singing at the Met (in New York). Audiences would pay to hear her sing, not to talk about politics.
Anna Netrebko also has been condemned for endorsing Putin in an election in 2012, as if she should have been able to foresee
that Putin would order an invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She also has been put down for supposedly saying that she would have
enjoyed being Putin's mistress. I certainly don't feel that way about him, but every woman's entitled to her own personal taste.
Sergey Karjakin (who was born in Crimea), one of the world's top chess players, has vehemently declared his support for
Russia's war and Putin in particular. In response, he has been banned for six months from international chess events.
While I strongly disagree with him, I oppose banning him from chess for expressing his political opinions.
I have played chess with people (including Israelis) who may have political opinions that I abhor.
My point is that I have supported the right of people (including Russians) to speak in favor of the war, even of Putin.
That contradicts the absurd projection by some ignorant writers here that I must be a lackey of the Russophobic West.
I already have noticed that most writers here seem to be fanatical nationalists, whose highest loyalty is to their tribe.
They apparently find it incomprehensible that anyone--who's not a traitor--could be anything else besides a fanatical nationalist.
Many writers here apparently subscribe to the ideal of 'Might makes right'--which I abhor.
I am not a nationalist of any kind. My identity and my beliefs do not revolve around only my current passport(s).
(Some of my relatives have had several passports in their lives.) I never have believed that I can belong to only one tribe,
never felt that I was the child of only one culture. The people closest to my heart have come from many cultures.
My background and perspectives have been regarded with deep distrust by the narrow-minded partisans of many tribes
(American, Chinese, Russian, etc.). Given my knowledge of various languages and cultures, my father once suggested that
I explore a career in the diplomatic service, but I assumed that I was too 'politically unreliable' to pass the vetting.
Back in the USSR, I likely would have been condemned as a 'rootless cosmopolitan',
I had a German professor, who was born in Lithuania in 1944. Her father was a Lithuanian nationalist, who fled with his
family to Germany in order to avoid Soviet retribution, so she grew up in conditions of hardship in postwar Germany.
While she was anti-Soviet politically, she had no problem with my being influenced by Russian culture in some ways.
I feel sorry for the narrow-minded tribal partisans here who seem incapable of appreciating other cultures.
I hope that even people who want Russia to win the war can respect and admire the Ukrainians for their brave resistance.
After the fall of the Brest fortress in 1941, General Heinz Guderian read reports of the gallant Soviet defense and said:
"These men [the defeated Soviets] deserve the highest admiration."
"Neither Nato nor Ukraine can de-Putinise Russia. We Russians must do it ourselves.
A new, democratic Russia is impossible without a change of national mindset – and an acknowledgment of national guilt."
--Mikhail Shishkin
"Brave young people in Russia who protest against the war are being
, while most people remain
silent – there are no mass protests, no strikes. It hurts to see that many of my fellow citizens support the war against Ukraine:
they put the
at home and on their cars."
"The modern world is separated from most Russians by a revolution, humankind’s most important: the transition from the
supremacy of the collective consciousness to the priority of the individual. People identified with the tribe for thousands of
years and were completely dependent on the pack leader – the chief, khan or tsar. Only in the last several centuries did a
fundamentally different human social order begin to emerge, one in which the individual is free.
...
This huge gap in civilisation has not yet been bridged. This is the drama of my homeland: a small number of my compatriots are
ready for life in a democratic society, but the overwhelming majority still bow before power and accept this patrimonial way of life.
If, over the course of generations, everyone who thinks for themselves is wiped out, the only qualities that will prevail will be
silence and satisfaction with the authorities.
...
Do a dictatorship and a dictator give birth to a slave population or does a slave population give birth to a dictatorship and a dictator?
The chicken and the egg. How can this vicious circle be broken? How can a new Russia begin?
...
Germans learned a lot about dealing with the past and coming to terms with guilt, and were able to build a democratically oriented
society. However, the rebirth of their nation was predicated on total, crushing military defeat. Russia needs this zero hour, too.
A new democratic start in Russia is impossible without paying a price and acknowledging national guilt.
...
We Russians must openly and courageously acknowledge our guilt and ask for forgiveness.
The German writer Georg Büchner wrote this in a letter to his bride in 1834: “What is it that lies, murders, steals in us?”
Only that question can accelerate this most important revolution of humankind in Russians: the realisation that the responsibility
lies not with your superiors, but with you.
Neither Nato nor the Ukrainians can de-Putinise Russia. We Russians must clean up our country ourselves.
Are my people up to the task?"
"A long, painful rebirth is the only way forward for Russia. And all these sanctions, the poverty, and the international outcasting
will not be the worst thing we encounter along the way. It will be more terrible when there is no inner rebirth for the Russian people.
Putin is a symptom, not the disease."
Most Russian emigres of my acquaintance share, more or less, Mikhail Shishkin's revulsion toward Putin and his followers.
After Trump became the US President and set into motion many abhorrent policies, an American friend of mine (a doctor)
seriously considered emigrating, though he may have found it hard to establish a medical practice in another country.
He asked me to join him in his proposed new life, which I could not do. I myself am a child of refugees from war.
My heart is with not only the Ukrainians who flee but also the Russians who feel that they must leave their homeland
rather than share complicity with its state's crimes.
Given the ample hostility that I have endured from many flag-waving Americans, I find it ironic (to put it mildly) that apparently
at least several deluded writers here like to fantasize that I must be a cheerleader for US propaganda or US imperialism.
No American who knows me has ever believed that, and many of them passionately loathe me because I am not.
I could have a more lucrative career in the USA if I could set aside my conscience and tailor it to suit US propaganda's demands.
I don't expect, of course, that any of my detractors or haters here will concede that they are wrong.
When 'truth is the first casualty of war', the next one is being honest about what your perceived adversaries think.
My haters have no clue about who I really am or what I truly think; they just love to attack a caricature of their fantasies.
Слава Україні! (which is not meant as a sign of appeasement)
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