We don’t. Russia is a capitalist country. In some ways, more so than America.

The thing is, the US is not a country. It is an empire. It is the largest empire in the world, and definitely the most powerful. A lot of wars, especially ones in countries with resources valuable to the US or to the US’s Allies (most specifically Libya, and Syria, and Yemen) are propagandized to an extent that most Americans have literally no idea about.

We also kill a bunch of people. Like, I know that metrics for evil are hard. Metrics in general are hard. It’s hard to know that what you’re measuring properly represents what you are trying to measure. But I think the number of people killed over time is a pretty good one. I’m always open to input on that, but most of the time it is simply to defend the current bi-partisan Neo-liberal foreign policy, and not an actual discussion on what is a good quantitative representation of evil.

America kills a lot of people. Like, orders of magnitude more than any other country. Most of the people killed are not killed with military means. Instead America mostly kills people through restricting access to trade with the entire world. It mostly kills civilians through these measures. The genocide in Yemen was done basically with the knowledge, approval, and assistance of the US. When it does kill people in countries that it is in active military campaigns against, it kills people by intentionally destroying all infrastructure in that country. This is excused as being a necessary aspect of war, but it really isn’t. It really is a specific tactical doctrine that then also makes the country a lot more easy to control with sanctions after the fact. Not excusing the Russian invasion, which is absolutely wrong, but they are the perfect example of a military doctrine that doesn’t destroy infrastructure in the first wave of an invasion. It was interesting because there was a sense of “WTF?” from the American Military, if you looked in the right places. Like “Why the fuck did they not do that? That is basic strategy 101. What the hell are they trying to do?” And, maybe that is a proof that the people who argue that destroying infrastructure has to be the first step in a war. I’m not sure about that. But regardless, it kills far more people than bombs or bullets. And the people that it kills are almost always civilians. And it generally makes the civilians tie themselves to the leaders we’re trying to oust. The whole justification of sanctions is to make the civilians rebel against their leaders, and to hurt the leaders. We now know, after multiple decades of experience, that it NEVER works. It hasn’t every worked. Maybe you could say Libya, but again, they were destroyed because Macron needed to try and erase loans that he received from Libya. I.e. even when the leader capitulated, it still wasn’t enough and France and America started a war there that ended with open-air slave markets in Libya, again.

The Russian-Ukrainian war is being used to justify a lot of fucked up stuff that is going on domestically here. Not only that, but by using sanctions in the manner that we have, I think Biden has permanently broken the American Empires most potent weapon in using sanctions the way he has against Russia. American sanctions are basically just us saying “We won’t trade with you, and we won’t trade with anyone that trades with you.” When EVERYONE trades with America, that is a really powerful threat. But, the more you use that weapon, the weaker it becomes. If you can’t trade with anyone if you piss off America, that is a lot scarier than "You can’t trade with anyone but Cuba, Venezuela, China, North Korea, Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa. I’ve missed some countries, and now some of allies are willing to trade with others assuming that America won’t do anything, but you understand my point. The more you use sanctions the less scary and useful they are. Obviously, I think that the American empire needs to be brought down, but there is a huge difference in a soft landing vs a crash.

Finally, Ukraine can’t win. Cannot. In fact, I would make the argument from a war goals perspective, Russia is already victorious, no matter what happens from here on out. i.e. it will make a costly victory, into an even more costly victory. Ukraine’s already had enough damage done to it that is effectively a dead state. It cannot exist without outside countries basically paying for literally every aspect of the government running. It cannot run on its own anymore. It has no production of its own. On the production issue, when you see articles like “Ukraine was given 6 months of HIMARS, and they used them up in a week and want more” what that really means is that we’ve given them the total amount of weapons that takes us 6 months to make. There is a reason for that. America makes basically nothing but weapons now. We outsource everything else, and that still hits the production of weapons, and thus even our weapon production systems are slower than countries that valued maintaining internal production systems for their weapons. One of the countries that have done this (For a variety of reasons, some of them not voluntary) is Russia. That is part of the reason of the artillery advantage that Russia has. That and the fact that Iran is basically the king of the drone game right now, but that is completely different side topic. But, if you assume Ukraine can’t win, and you have one side continuing to give Ukraine weapons and training and intentionally blow up peace negotiations between the two sides than that makes the country that is propping Ukraine up evil, as well as the country that invaded. Its like if you encouraged a 5 year old to keep fighting with a teenager. A teenager attacking a 5 year old is evil. No question. But, so is the person who keeps comforting and encouraging the 5 year to not make peace with the teenager and encourages them to keep fighting back. Can the 5 year old hurt the teenager and surprise them? Sure. Can the 5 year old win against the teenager? I could make up some scenarios where they do, but it is unlikely enough that you can say no, they never will. I know that this is a bad analogy, but this is already a book, and I think this bad analogy explains the gist of what I’m trying to get across.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the only groups that really care about the Russian-Ukrainian war are America, and Europe. Africa, South America, The Middle East and Asia do not care. The stuff I wrote above is just part of the reasons why.

I know people will say that all of this is whataboutism, but if I truly believe that America is the most evil country as measured by the number of people that die as an intentional direct outcome of America’s actions then the focus on Ukraine is nothing but a smoke screen so that people can ignore the much larger numbers of people that die because of our actions. America is very good at killing people in ways that photos don’t show that America is responsible for it.

Basically, America is the most destructive evil empires in existence right now, if measured by the number of people intentionally dying of our actions, and if you want that to stop anything that is used to justify Americas foreign policy needs to be dealt with again.

Not a fan of Russia, and I think Russia’s biggest crime is invading, as that is what caused all other crimes of this war. Being critical of the US’s role of this war is not, and never has been, pro Russian, though. The fact that you think being critical of the US’s role in this war is the same of being supportive of Russia should tell you something about how you think about this war. Why do you think it is binary?

Finally, and this is purely personal, I’m a war nerd. The amount of insane propaganda around this war is worse than any other war I’ve lived though. It makes it both impossible to figure out what is going on, and it causes insane shit like saying this latest Ukraine offense that obviously failed, where most of the NATO trained people died and significant amounts of material was destroyed is a great success. It wasn’t. But somehow that is viewed as pro-Russian. It’s not, its pro knowing what is going on in a war. But this is a reason that only really applies to me and other war nerds.

“Support” is a big word. Most would see it as an inter-capitalist war. One staged and initiated by American imperialism in the region. The end result of which will be the weakening of American imperialism and the emergence of a multipolar geopolitical reality, in which the conditions for socialism are more amenable.

But really this “seem to support Russia” is simply an inability to deal in nuance, much like how libs think criticising Joe Biden equals “support” for Donald Trump.