I hate how “anti-war” has been hijacked by these people to mean, let imperialist countries invade whoever they want with no consequences. (in the case of tankies, any imperialist country that isn’t in NATO).
I don’t even know what they (western tankies) get from this. Average dumbass Russian only cares about his ass, and the pretended “glory”. There is no “Conservative brotherhood which spans across the ocean”. They don’t speak your language, they don’t have the same problem, and they hate YOU with passion, because on average, they are racist and dumb.
So my only hypothesis is that tankies think (??) that by going “contrarian” they show how smart they are, and that “did the research” lol.
I’m not a tankie, but I probably am what everyone in this thread is calling a “tankie”, so here’s my answer:
Yes, it is extremely bad that Russia invaded Ukraine. The ideal scenario would have been Ukraine quickly repelling the invasion when it happened. But we don’t live in magic fantasy world where everyone gets what they deserve. We live in the real world, where Ukraine cannot possibly defeat Russia in a war. The option which saves the most Ukrainian lives is a negotiated peace, with Russia getting much more of what they want than we would like.
All that is achieved by pouring more weapons into Ukraine is prolonging the meatgrinder for years, wiping out an entire generation of Ukrainians and risking a global nuclear war.
No, it’s because “America bad”. There’s a lot of reasons to hate America, and the drip feeding of munitions to Ukraine is one of them. I think we should have been sending everything from the start with the only restriction being no hitting civilian targets. A million 155 shells a week. Tomahawks. Predator drones. Hell, even F-15s. I agree, end the war, but end it in a Ukrainian victory with their borders restored.
There was never any chance of Ukrainian victory. Russia is not that weak and everyone knew it from the start.
But arming ukrainians and sending them to die weakens Russia, so the US likes that. It’s all a game, and none of it was ever in the interest of Ukraine nor its people.
Russia has a long and proud history of losing to "smaller, weaker " countries. Russo Japanese war, WW1, Polish Soviet war of 1919, the winter war, Afghanistan, Chechen war until they paid homage to the Kadyrovs. there’s no reason to think there was never a chance at Ukrainian victory. Russia fumbles the bag plenty. But I get it. America bad so Russia stonk and good.
Yet 3 years later Russia still has not completed its objectives, took its eye off Syria, and needs troops & ammo from North Korea.
It’s even worse than that. It’s “America bad, therefore Russia good.” As if there has to be some sort of cosmic balance.
Tankies entire world view is formed around hating the US.
They will glorify terrible regimes that literally commit genocides and straight up murder thousands of innocents just because that regime is in opposition to US influence.
They use left wing language, but they do not care about leftist issues. They do not care about disabled people getting focibly euthanised, about anyone who dares critique the regime being forcibly silenced, about minorities being genocided (unless the US or NATO does it), that their “socialist states” literally have billionaires while others starve. They think it’s all US propaganda. (Alternatively, they’ll admit part of it and say it’s for the greater good).
A much simpler way of putting that second picture is: " . . . but that doesn’t mean you have to support another empire."
