There will be an event in my town soonish about the background of the Ukraine conflict, and the speaker is a total lib. What questions should I ask, what incontrovertible facts can I use to combat liberalism?
I have Victoria Nuland and John McCain speaking and handing out cookies on the Maidan and talking about their material support for the coup. The revelations were used by western press but they came from Wikileaks and I can totally see that being dismissed out of hand. They'll probably also obfuscate the Nazi elements in a similar manner to the way the western press is doing constantly.
I have the UN/OSCE reports on civilian casualties in Donbas, I have the Congressional arguments about whether or not they want to support the Nazis directly... What else?
You should try to play to the crowd. I'm assuming the audience will be mostly ordinary republicrat liberals with weeks of TV brain poisoning on this issue, but this might depend on the exact venue and demographics of the place. Aim for questions which reveal important historical background. It might be a good idea to ask some questions about how Putin even ended up in power in the first place. This line of questions could be perfectly cloaked as liberal concern while smuggling in enough historical context to make some people think "wait a minute."
No matter what questions you ask, you are not going to convert the audience into principled anti-imperialists. But you could plant some seeds about what was really going on in the early Yeltsin and Putin years of the Russian Federation. The best outcome I'd hope for is convincing a handful of people that this war is blowback.
"Why is there no Russian parliament anymore? Such an institution could have kept Yeltsin, and later Putin, in check. What happened to it? Did anyone say anything at the time?"
"Does a a culturally/ethnically distinct group within a larger nation have the right to demand sovereignty?" If yes: "So how could the populations in Donbas and Crimea legitimately declare sovereignty, if that's they want?" If no: "So the Tibetans and Uyghurs should just accept that they are part of China, and deal with it?"
This is a really good one, twisting liberals narratives against them and forcing them to show hypocrisy is a very quick way to make them look like fools
Was Ukraine expecting the USA to send troops directly into Russia to support them or did the Ukrainian government accept that their country would be the battlefield, with all that entails (US: cluster munitions, depleted uranium munitions, rolling artillery barrages, MLRS rockets going off target and hitting civilians/infrastructure, smart bombs going off target, US troops doing what US troops are prone to do to local civilian populations) by openly talking about being NATO friendly when Russia was very open about that position being viewed as a hostile action against Russia?
(If you're allowed a follow up)
Why should the civilian/military leaders of Ukraine not face consequences for encouraging this result?
Why should the civilian/military leaders of Ukraine not face consequences for encouraging this result?
Or the US leaders, for that matter, for playing footsie with Ukraine over NATO membership, openly provoking Russia, and knowing full well they would not come to the aid of Ukraine in the event of a full scale war.
Depends on the speaker, the crowd and if OP has a way to counter the "you are now a conspiracy nut and I get to avoid the question by laughing at you" dodge.
Wasn't it written into their constitution by the coup government that they would pursue NATO membership?
I'm not cool enough to know, but if so, its just like, "Hey guys, why you trying to have sex with that alligator? You know that's not a good idea right? Oh? You're going to do it anyways? Oh... alright then."
Ask if they would support a treaty that forbids Ukraine from joining NATO if it stopped the war.
Should Ukraine have allowed the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts to hold referenda on secession? Why did they not simply do that to avoid an 8 year long civil war?
Why did Ukraine integrate Azov and other neonazi formations into their military rather than forcibly disbanding them? Why are so many Ukrainians sympathetic to fascism?
Wouldn't flooding the country with NATO weapons only prolong the conflict - leading to more bloodshed? Surely the quickest possible peace is in the best interest of the Ukrainian people. Trying to flood the country with arms seems to be a repeat of the strategy from when the Soviet-Afghan war which did not lead to a quick peace, but rather a decade long conflict. Does NATO actually want peace?
Step 1: Wave the bloody shirt. Your friend that got CTE in Iraq… my friend who got VD in Kuwait… whatever you got.
Step 2: Express your concern about the risk of world war 3 …and the swastikas on our “allies”
Step 3: Is escalating and/or participating in this conflict worthy of the lives of our beautiful troops?
maybe some Mearsheimer and stuff from the Experts Warned For Years That NATO Expansion Would Lead To This article to counter the whole "Russia just decided to invade Ukraine completely unprovoked because they're evil" take?
"Why do you think we'll be able to do anything to stop this war when we couldn't stop our own government killing millions in the War on Terror?"
If you're accused of whataboutism say that you think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Ask him his thoughts on this excerpt from George Keenan (Mr 'X', .the guy who coined the term 'soviet containment') on NATO expansion
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.
This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves.
I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don’t people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.
And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia
It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.
http://web.archive.org/web/20220201033402/https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/opinion/foreign-affairs-now-a-word-from-x.html
This but less sarcastic:
https://hexbear.net/post/179202/comment/2225649
How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?
