Because Russia is fighting a war, with the resulting casualties and destruction, right now. The faster they are stopped, the less damage is ultimately caused. George Bush, for the example you used earlier, is not currently doing this. So while he's still someone who has gotten away with things he should not have done, time is less of essence in his case, at the moment. It's like asking why it is more critical to attempt to stop an attempted murder in progress, then it is to work on investigating the one that someone else committed last week. Again though, the relative importance of them is not really relevant here anyway, because the discussion was about Ukraine and Russia in the first place. There are a great many bad actors in the world, many of which have faced no justice for what they have done, to include quite a few in the US, yes, and one could ask that same question about any one of them, whenever one of the others comes up.

Oh I have no problem at all with having George Bush see justice for his actions, but this thread wasn't exactly about him, it was about the whole Ukraine/Russia situation. Were it a thread about some sort of trial or such for him, I'd absolutely be advocating turning him over.

That would make it even more critical though, because it would not enough to reinforce the status quo, it would be necessary to demonstrate that things that once were considered acceptable on the international stage no longer are.

I used to be pretty bad at European countries, apart from the UK, Spain, France, Portugal, Germany, and Italy, until I started playing EU4. Good with most of the countries around the world now save for some of the ones in Central and western Africa, and a few of the smaller -stans, bit still only can label maybe half the US states.

Id say that those officials should be or should have been punished, the fact that they have not been is not a factor in how I feel that the current situation should be dealt with. "Other people got away with it" is not an excuse

Just going to reply to myself here, as I did not finish what I was thinking earlier (I was on my lunch break and as I like to take time to reply to these things, I ran out of time, my apologies). In any case, what I was trying to say is, that I do not think a mutually satisfactory peace settlement can be achieved here, due to the sides involved having completely exclusive objectives. As such, I see three options for how the war could end:

1. some degree of a Russian victory
2. some degree of a Ukrainian victory
3. a long grinding war of attrition that never results in victory for anyone and settles into a frozen conflict, like seen in Korea.

I think most will agree that the last one is a bad outcome, due to the result of a long war with no resolution. I personally do not believe a Russian victory is acceptable either, for the reasons I talked about earlier, about rewarding aggression. Therefore, the only remaining option I see as plausible is a Ukrainian victory, therefore I take the stance that Ukraine should win. If Ukraine were to win, I further hold that it is preferable that they do so quickly and decisively, as it is better that the war be resolved with the minimum number of casualties, on either side, and a war of attrition does not do that by definition. Ukraine does not currently seem to have the resources required to achieve this, given that their current counter-offensive operations are proceeding relatively slowly. I therefore do support giving them those resources, and more, if they need it, and security guarantees afterwards- not because I am in any way in favor of war, but because I honestly believe that doing so is required in order for it end as quickly as realistically possible with the lowest chance of a similar war breaking out again soon after.

I imagine that you and others in this thread will disagree with the premises I take, or the conclusions I draw from them, but I hope at least that I've been able to make my reasoning clear on how I arrive at the conclusion that I do.

While in principle I do get the idea that a negotiated peace is preferable to a situation where the two parties in a conflict simply fight themselves until one side physically cannot, I do not see a way in which that can reasonably be done in the case of this conflict without one side being beaten militarily, because the goals of each side are not comparable. Russia has been trying to annex territory from Ukraine, but as far as I have seen, Ukraine has not sought to take land from Russia (if you take only the current phase of the conflict, one might suggest that they are seeking to retake Crimea, but as you yourself pointed out, the conflict itself has been ongoing for longer than the current large scale war has been going on, and as such, even if the Ukrainians managed to take it somehow, that would not represent the addition of new territory not in their possession before the conflict started). The problem this presents is that, if one were to negotiate a "white peace", that is to say, just put the border back to how it was before the conflict started, then that effectively represents Ukraine accomplishing pretty much all of its major goals and Russia none of it's own. As such, Russia has no particular reason to accept this, unless physically forced to by virtue of military defeat, which would kind of defeat the point of a negotiated settlement in the first place as that would simply represent a Ukrainian military victory anyway. But on the flipside, ceeding any of the disputed land to Russia represents a situation where Russia wins- maybe not anything like as big a win as they would like, but they would in that scenario have started a large scale war (regardless of how exactly the conflict itself began, Russia did take the step of turning it from what it was into a full-scale war, by invading Ukraine), and then ultimately gained territory from it, which is exactly the sort of precedent that we've already established needs to be avoided. What then, is left for such a settlement to be?

Where did I claim to be smart? I am merely pointing out that, if you give those who start wars what they want, they have an incentive to go and start more of them.

Suggesting the defender in a war should just stop fighting, or that helping them is bad because if they did not have the ability to defend themselves, they'd quickly be unable to fight and the war would end with their defeat, is not anti-war. It is appeasement, and that is ultimately pro-war, because it creates a situation in which starting wars of aggression can benefit the ones who start them, which inevitably leads to more wars being started. To be against war, in the long term, one must support a situation in which starting wars is against the self-interest of those in the position to do so, and one of the clearest ways to do that is to try to ensure that those who begin wars of conquest or other such aggression, lose them.

humans are an animal species, so technically everyone is treated like an animal already.

And if they try the whole "protect people's right to property" excuse in response that I've seen a few of them try, you can do the same with "What kind of "property"?"