>Russia flirted with Turkish airspace in 2015; Ankara shot it down [1]. Zero further provocations. You can’t appease a bully by lying prostrate. Even if the bully has big guns at home. We aren’t risking nuclear war by drawing clear lines, we’re inviting it by clumsily blurring them.
Zero further provocations doesn't seem right [1] [2]
I don't understand how you can characterize this as dictatorship. If anything, it's the very normal realization of the representational democracy: The people have voted for representatives, that themselves voted on laws to force everyone to serve, or go to jail.
If the people wish to repeal that law, then they should vote for representatives that will repeal this.
For me what seems deeply unethical is that some crooked old politicians/military are able to force young people to kill each other in wars the later had no part in starting.
> For me what seems deeply unethical is that some crooked old politicians/military are able to force young people to kill each other in wars the later had no part in starting.
In countries where drafts are thing, they are a part of the social contract.
Rejecting the social contract means rejecting the primacy of that society.
Furthermore, most countries that retain a draft have active security threats or are in frozen conflicts that can re-ignite at a moment's notice.
By dodging the draft you are essentially freeloading off of the rest of society who did get drafted.
>By dodging the draft you are essentially freeloading off of the rest of society who did get drafted.
The problem I have is with selective enforcement of such social contracts.
In case of the conflict, none of the rich or important people and their kids will be on the front line or even take part in the draft, they'll be chilling in US, UK, New Zeeland, Switzerland, Austria, South of Europe, etc, and yet I and every other Joe Schmoe have to go and die or suffer to fulfil my so called "social contract"? They can eat shit.
Go to any fancy town in Europe and it's full of the Russian and Ukrainian elites living the good life while the poor people in their countries suffer. It was the same in WW1. All of the European plebs were dying in the trenches while Monaco hosted the hottest party and gambling scene of the European monarchies and elites. Go visit Monaco and see for yourself the history.
So until I see the rich people dying in the trenches with the poor, the social contract is a scam and I'll do everything in my power to avoid it since that's what the rich and powerful have always done as that's how they've become rich and powerful in the first place, they never followed the herd.
Social contracts are for gullible people to get scammed easier by the ruling class.
Laws do not define the ethics of a society though. While laws may be informed by ethics, laws are not mutually inclusive or exclusive of one’s cultural ethics. One need simply look at a country’s tax laws to understand the disparity.
While I’m unsure of Singapore’s current situation, I know there was a sizable amount of able-bodied men in both Israel and Ukraine who had left, and an underground railroad of sorts sprouted up to help them. To me, that sounds like the ethics of their society are clashing with the geopolitically-driven laws their governments erected.
there is a very real possibility that Western Europe gets dragged into that conflict, and Putin has said, unequivocally, that he is at war with the West.
In my opinion, it's very simple. I became a one issue voter after one of the candidates tried to obstruct the process (violently), the last time. That's antithetical to America. It's ironic because it's the type of thing that happens in the "shithole countries" that we're so focused on keeping out (I say this as a person who thinks immigration reform with strong structure is long needed).
Rewarding Trump by giving him the keys is stupid if you can even muster the courage to say you believe in anything America stands for.
Zero further provocations doesn't seem right [1] [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Russian_Air_Force_Al-Bab_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Balyun_airstrikes
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