Generally my mentality. This is a European war in Europe's back yard. CNN and Fox (with the exception of Carlson) are in lockstep, Google's demonetizing content that's dismissive of, or opposed to Ukraine.
Ukraine is the victim here, not the aggressor. I hope they win, I doubt they will.
But domestically, the rhetoric around the war has infuriated me.
A redneck shows up to a domestic political rally with his tacky Confederate flag, and everyone involved is a bigot, a fascist, or a potential domestic terrorist.
A country constitutionally bans same sex relationships, turns trans refugees fleeing the conflict away at the border because they're 'actually' men, supports the efforts of a pseudo-autonomous militia whose ~10k soldiers walk around wearing sonnenrads, and its only a tiny minority that we should overlook. Facebook even made an exception for their policy on supporting them.
I'm fine with nuance. It's important. But why is it only a thing when it means we might get to spill American blood in a police action for someone else's benefit?
I'm still disgusted that the US tolerated afghan allies who indulged in bacha bazi. Now people on my facebook feed and in the news who spent the last six years hyperventilating about neonazis and demanding restrictions on speech to stop them are telling me that supporting ethnonationalist militias is the price of democracy in Europe.
The EU is rich. This is their neighborhood. I've heard plenty of lectures from EU nationals that the US needs to stop enforcing its will on the rest of the world. If they want US arms in Ukraine, buy them from us.
I don't want American boots on the ground, and I'm leery of providing military aid with tax money that could be better used serving the people who paid it for a war that likely won't end in a win.
1) Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine?
2) Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The bully or the victim?
To me, these two questions and their answers determine my sympathies. You were lied to about Iraq and you are right to mistrust the US government, but the world media is not the US government. If you see reports from multiple news sources about mass graves and such, you should believe them.
The fact that Ukraine now defends itself means that we are in a very different situation. None of the countries Hitler annexed during the appeasement actually defended themselves, he got them for free through diplomacy. If they did defend themselves instead of joining the German side then Germany wouldn't have been threat, and there would be no need for an alliance against them and Germany wouldn't have been the biggest threat in WW2. That is the situation we see today, Ukraine is defending itself, there is no way Russia can continue invading like that, they can't afford it, so the WW2 scenario has already been averted.
yeah the problem is that these are obviously the wrong questions. You behave like a doctor treating the symptoms rather than the root cause. Why not ask "_why_ did Russia invade Ukraine?" The answer is that nobody wants to deal with the inconvenient truth that the US contributed heavily to the inflamed tensions.
You present a false dichotomy. I can have sympathies for Ukraine and distrust the US at the same time. Not viewing Russia as a cartoon villain is far more realistic than what the Western media is pushing.
Why should we believe a single thing you have to say about going to war?