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- Jan 23, 2006
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I should address the core of your argument though. Your argument at its heart is that Russians are more moral than Americans. That's why in everything they do, they take significantly more care to minimize civilian casualties. And the Americans don't.
I honestly don't care about whether you think Americans are moral or not. If you want to believe that Russians are actually saints and I just can't see the halo from here, that's fine.
BUT. EVEN IF we grant you that Russia is trying to be more moral than the Americans. As I said above. An inefficient or ineffective war does not prevent more civilian casualties than an effective one. We're 13 days into the Russo/Ukrainian War. The Russians are not on track to conquer Ukraine in the next 13 days. And the longer the war draws out, the more civilians will die. So even if you legitimately think only 474 civilians have died in the first 13 days. Its not as simple a calculation as doubling it for 26 days and just assume the war will be over by then so wow look, the Russians were so much more humane.
Perhaps it's possible, it's certainly not likely, not least in part due to the fact that they have to lay siege on a lot of major cities. Even the first round of smaller cities that they laid siege to (Mariupol, Sumy, Volnovakha, Irpin) have not yet surrendered. Much less the second round of cities that they would need to lay siege to, larger cities with significantly more area to cover and many more inroads/outroads that could lead to the city being resupplied. These include, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odessa. To get to Odessa they first need to finish the siege of Mykolaiv, which only begun after the capture of Kherson. The siege force for Kyiv is that convoy that is stuck in a massive traffic jam outside Kyiv, etc. So not only will the sieges not likely end before 13 days have passed, they may not even have begun before 13 more days have passed. They also continually have to suppress attacks on logistics in the suburbs around both Kyiv and Kharkiv, thus far preventing effective encirclement of Kharkiv. No units have even reached Dnipro, they've only pushed so far as Zaporizhzhia.
So if you think "wow, well this war will be over really quickly and the Russians will have done it really bloodlessly compared to those bloodthirsty Americans." You're wrong. This is going to be a long war, and if Russia persists in waging it, it's really only just beginning. For the invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi estimate for civilian fatalities is 7200 (the Ukrainian estimate so far in this war is over 2000) while the NGO estimate is 3200-4300. Russia has plenty of time to reach and greatly surpass those numbers, seeing as the war for the largest cities has hardly begun.
I'm honestly not even going to bother if you think I believe Russia is more moral than usa..
You guys are absolutely ridiculous lol