Will libs have a collective realization about Ukraine like they did with Iraq or will they stay stubborn in it forever?

In ten years every liberal who was frothing about russian orcs will confidently tell you they always said the neo-nazi problem in Ukraine was bigger than the invasion, and that they correctly predicted all these terror attacks all over Europe, and they're definitely anti-fascists from way back.

In ten years they will still be demanding Russia cedes Crimea.
- They don't care about the Kurds is Syria after having been told they were out bestest friends in the middle east, I think they'll completely abandon it

Key difference: there's no US boots on the ground in Ukraine. Like with Vietnam, a lot of the Iraq rhetoric is centered on the american soldiers who were killed and maimed. Notice how US/NATO intervention in Libya and Kosovo, which was accomplished primarily through air power and without significant losses, has not had any critical reexamination—I would think the lack of american corpses has a good deal to do with that

disclaimer: this is not financial advice, i am just a small worm

At first I thought that this was the one comment here I agreed with the most, and I might still think that, but the difference is that Libya/Kosovo were "over" much faster than Ukraine. The boogeymen were quickly taken out, while Russia just refuses to collapse, at least so far.
In my extremely limited experience, outside of the internet, libs don't really care about Ukraine anymore and won't push back if you criticize Biden giving tens of billions of dollars to Nazis. This in itself may be kind of a re-examination on their part? They also feel the same way about covid, though. It just doesn't matter at all to them, even though it's actually still extremely important (as is Ukraine). I do have to kind of wonder what they care about at the moment? They were so happy when Biden won the election, but I think most of us strongly suspected that this was going to be as good as it got for them for quite some time. Who knows, it might even be their last major victory.
Like with Vietnam, a lot of the Iraq rhetoric is centered on the american soldiers who were killed and maimed.
Even when they oppose war, it's backed by nationalist reasons.
- It's the same with the "forgotten war" (Korea). The tragedy there isn't the slaughter in Korea but the fact that US vets don't get the same societal admiration that WW2 or Vietnam vets do 😢 .
i am just a small worm
Does your SO still love you?
- I'll let you know when she exists :')
There’s definitely US boots on the ground, just like there are in Syria, Yemen, Kenya, Pakistan and all the other nations we don’t officially invade. There are literally US soldiers, spec ops and bases and officers stationed there coordinating raids, launching drones, doing spec ops.
Americans think there is this hard solid line between invasion with boots and other activities, but in reality there’s no discrete border it just slowly becomes a full invasion
- Advisors and intelligence guys are not the same as the US occupying in force.
I and a lot of others protested the Iraq invasion before it took place, and predicted the somewhat obvious quagmire that resulted. I would have protested the Russian invasion as well if I were a Russian citizen and if it would have been safe enough to do so (Putin’s dictatorship makes that purely hypothetical though).
- Did you also protest the NATO coup in Ukraine in 2014?
- remember after Ferguson when Putin had the US police murder several BLM leaders in separate incidents and then light their cars on fire?
- If I were Russian I would have volunteered to fight with the DPR in 2014 and would be posting Z and helping destroy AmeriKKKa

when they have a collective realization it usually comes long after it stops mattering (like denouncing the coup in Chile that happened 50 years ago)

The collective realization happened with Iraq before the war was over at least. But yeah there's a lot of differences that mean that I dont think thatll happen here.
- I feel like that realization had more to do with the part where it just kept going even after the whole overthrowing Saddam bit by a lot. Especially after all the reasons given for going in were one by one shown to be wrong from the jump. Even with all that, I think the libs were more embarrassed about how much money was used in "nation building" while the US economy tanked. And not so much for the reasons that we constantly hear from them about "cost of human lives" or whatever pretend moral shit. I think most of them would still resort to adding something to the effect of "well even if we were lied to, it was still worth getting rid of Saddam" after front loading how they were lied to.
  So this time the big "gotcha" bit of smugness will still be about how "evil Russia has always been". So it will be still considered America helping "protect freedom" is the "correct" and "moral" choice (even with the price tag that would never be treated as "sooo important" for helping poor US citizens at home). Hell, they still like to call the FSB the KGB. So real "lessons" will not matter outside the same talk but no actions shit they do every single time. They did all kinds of talking nice words for BLM protests (not the org), but their actions were to paint anyone that wasn't "correctly protesting" as bad and over-funded the pigs more. And the cycle continues.
- I really think a lot of that realization is due to the financial collapse of 2007-08 where a shit ton of people started pointing out how horrible the USA is.
  Sadly that all seemed to die down when Obama hired that ferry guy to male him some low effort campaign posters that everyone wet their pants over.

It'll be like conservatives with Vietnam: a stab in the back narrative (albeit less visceral due to it being a proxy war.)

Yep, "they didn't let us win" cope.
- we gotta start making flowcharts for the different stages of manipulative rhetoric they use as an issue progresses from background to forefront to background again

I think that they will continue to do the "russia was the aggressor" but they'll almost certainly start saying "we should have negotiated sooner, it was obvious we had bad intelligence (or, if we're lucky, 'it was obvious the media was lying') about how weak the russian army/economy was"

They're already hate eastern Europeans for being poor "white" people (the thing a liberal hates the most), and truly do not see how the west is responsible for this poverty. My whole life I've heard them mock the cheap, durable housing that was built throughout the USSR with no appreciation for this mass, collective effort to house everyone after a devastating war. It's almost like libs don't actually recognize these people as humans.

Even more apparent is their failure to connect fascism with capitalist collapse and false scarcity. Libs hate that there's visible fascists in eastern Europe, but think it's an individual failing of these unenlightened people, not an obvious consequence of the west winning the so-called cold war.

These currents in liberal thought are so strong, and have been so prominent for decades, that I would say there's no chance of reconsidering the narrative that is essentially bad things happen because Russia exists.

Edit: A lot of libs I think ultimately found the racism directed towards Muslims and Middle easterners to be unseemly, and this was a good starting point for reanalysis. I don't see Slavs and their neighbors getting that same treatment.

I think it's gonna be more like how cons dealt with Iraq. They eventually will just say it was bad strategy, we should have just started WW3 essentially. They will not examine it to understand that is what they are saying, but it will be a tragic failure of NATO not being strong or something like that.

The libs will still be anti-Russian in general, but the state and the media will definitely pull a 180 when Ukrainian neo-nazis begin their campaigns of violence across Europe, the libs will then pretend they never normalized global neo-nazism and decry Ukrainians in the same strident tone they currently decry Russians

The blowback from this war will be hideous and the libs are going to be extremely obnoxious about it the whole time, I suspect by 2025 the libs will all become Polish nationalists and start accusing the "tankies" of being neo-Nazis apologists for opposing the deportation and liquidation of every Ukrainian refugee for the actions of Nazis that libs armed, that's the level of absurdity I'm expecting

Get ready for the whiplash

This is spiritually true
We'll also see many people justify the neo-Nazis, by saying they're necessary to weed out communists and get rid of immigrants in Europe.
Libs will probably be both defending the nazis and also denouncing them, depending what makes them look good in that moment.
- get rid of immigrants in Europe.
  I think this bit would heavily depend on the lib lol. I guess I can see a case where as the refugee crisis worsens more and more libs become more openly anti-refugee (scratch a liberal ect) but the ones I'm generally talking about in these threads are the "refugees are welcome" type of lib.
  "weed out communists" also depends on the level of ideological commitedness probably.

They will not because they see Russia as the main reason why Trump became president instead of Clinton. "Russia kinda had a point in the invasion" will never be accepted by them. They desire the complete destruction of the Russian Federation, and when it becomes clear that the invasion is not leading to the downfall of the Russian state anytime soon, they will not only not come to see the truth but double down on their delusions. As the US and the rest of the west continues to decline, cope about Russia collapsing any day now will blend with cope about China collapsing any day now.

Gen alpha libs will. They'll say that "X conflict we're supporting is unlike America's past mistakes such as Ukraine, which is ancient history."

The year is 2034 and as generation alpha prepare to restore democracy to Mexico the keyboard warriors explain why it’s totally different to Ukraine.
- Very optimistic of you to think it'll take as long as 2034.
  I saw Trump Derangement Syndrome afflicted libs who froth at the mouth and gnash their teeth at the mere mention of his name become reasonable, rational and bipartisan when mention comes up regarding Trump potentially invading Mexico or Venezuela. Adolf Hitler could literally eke out a victory and libs would be ready to set aside their differences when the matter of invading nations the newspaper tells them are bad comes up.
Gen alpha libs will. They'll say that "X conflict we're supporting is unlike America's past mistakes such as Ukraine, which is ancient history."
I work with a lib who I probably won't still be working with in about ten years time (our company has high turnover) who will absolutely be like this, and he's in his mid-30's. At best he's going to agree that Ukraine was a mistake (although I doubt it) although instead will most likely still defend the decisions with Ukraine as 'do you agree that Putin is bad?'; this guy says he's against US empire, but any lengthy discussion with him will reveal that no he doesn't really oppose the military decisions of the US. 'He was no angel' will be the prevailing argument every single time; never mind that the lives of the people in countries that get invaded or suffer intervention just get far worse. He lacks a ton of knowledge regarding the wars and interventions and receiving that knowledge does nothing to shake his unwavering faith in the goodness of the US government.

No because the US invaded Iraq and thus is basically impossible to ever defend. They will literally ALWAYS say Ukraine support was justified because Russia started the physical invasion that all the western news agencies reported. Anything that's more complicated than the Iraq invasion is going to be defended forever the same way they deliberately misinterpret Molotov-Ribbentrop, etc.

deliberately misinterpret Molotov-Ribbentrop, etc.
This is a good comparison I think, especially since when the invasion first started and I got into arguing with some libs in a small friend server I was in about it, the admin of the server brought up this very thing to justify the idea that Russia is always evil invasion country. I didnt have the material at the time to object to that idea. So my attempts to do so where met with "well I side with what the historians think". I left the server voluntarily after that but it was treated like a ban for awhile. They let me back and we just dont discuss the Ukraine War at all ever. Politics channel is kinda dead in general lately.
- Thank them for their recognition that Kiev is Polish territory.
also very similar to the way the US puppet state in South Korea massacred Korean leftists and failed to comply with agreements for several years, and when the DPRK invades in 1950 the US went wild with the same "unprovoked" bullshit
- Yeah, and I know people who buy this one too.
  Another "small server I'm in" story (a different, but related one). Server owner has as strict rule about 9/11 jokes that I've been scolded for breaking before. OK fine. But one of his posters posted a meme that involved bombing North Korea, and I objected saying if we can't joke about 9/11 then we shouldnt be able to joke about that because that actually happened and a massive amount of people died ect ect.
  Server admin said that that's different because 9/11 was an "unprovoked attack" (lol at it being unprovoked) while "Kim was being a new Hitler" (shorthand for "doing an invasion" I guess, all invasions the same I guess) and therefor the US was justified in bombing them (said civilian deaths are tragic but its still not the same). Luckily in that case his mods revolted against this decision, one because he thought "no jokes about tragedies means no jokes about tragedies" and the other because she agreed with more on a more political level even though she's still mostly a lib. So that decision got overturned and the meme got deleted and it was made clear you can't joke about that. So I "won" but it stuck with me that these are things people actually believe.

Their realization with Iraq is not "we shouldn't have supported the war", it is "we should be in charge of it, not GW Bush, who screwed it up by not going full Thomas Friedman SUCK ON THIS mode".

That is why Biden and Clinton supporting the Iraq war lost them zero votes in the Dem primary, since the libs don't blame them for the war because Bush is the one who fucked it up. Should have sent more troops!

As usual with broad sweeping claims like this, i think that heavily depends on the liberal in question. Though i do agree that liberals opinions on Iraq would be different if Gore had been president during it (though idk if Gore would have invaded Iraq or not)
- Just look at Lib opinions on Lib wars like Libya and Syria. They still hold their imperialist chauvinist views after being proven monstrous and empowering jihadists. They will never turn on Obama or his actions, it's too core to their identity
- Sure, but all those same libs then supported Libya, Yemen etc. So their intentions are clear. They consider Libya a success because all the goals were achieved.

I don't know but I intend to blame every supporter of the war for killing 500k people both russian and ukrainian with bloodthirsty nationalism. I will not let it go. They will respond "Putin's war". I will continually repeat that they are nationalists that sent all of these people to their deaths over lines on a map. Some of them might realise their own nationalism, maybe.

The only way a dent gets made in any of this in the long term is by chipping away at american nationalism. Otherwise they'll just do the same thing for the next war which totally won't be just like all the others.

If significant blowback happens then you'll see people start to turn in large quantities.

I don't know but I intend to blame every supporter of the war for killing 500k people

Another key reason it's different - US troop involvement. A bipartisan part of anti Iraq war movements was the 'save our troops' angle, lamenting the poor American soldiers who stepped on mines while destroying Iraq.

Ukraine, with it's new labour laws, and banderite sympathies will be either be under Ukrainian control a derelict country of exploited people, many scarred physically and mentally by war, with no social safety net. They will undergo an 'economic miracle' and the libs will say job done, when the miracle is really just further reappropriation of wealth to the rich through cheap labour. The top 1% and foreign 'investors' will make millions while the people starve. Under Russian control, probably much the same, but with a fuse lit, ticking away until the war starts again with new funding. The cycle may repeat.

I actually don't think they'll ever change their minds about this one. They'll just bury the nuance forever. In 10 years they're not going to be saying "I always knew it was wrong" they're going to be saying "what? a war in ukraine? sorry i havent read about that, i dont really know ancient history"

The Ukraine war is a lot more nuanced than the Iraq war, so no.

What a name
We shall see. Libs at the time of the invasion of Iraq worked overtime to convince us all of the reasonable nuances and all the human rights reasons we had to invade. At the time it was unthinkable to publicly denounce the war unless you were a random nobody, Dixie Chicks basically had a fatwa imposed against them by Bush for a light criticism. Jon Stewart on the daily show only got away with criticisms as a jester and only things like “our troops don’t even have adequate body armor and the humvees aren’t safe enough”

Idk, I've seen many libs still justify Iraq. It's not likely, given how almost cult-like the libs have gotten with this war. Any disagreement and they call you a Z Putin Bot or a 50 cent army

Agreed, I still see boomers try to justify Vietnam, an incredibly well documented illegal and immoral war, that is still unpopular in the collective memory.
In online spaces at least it seems like only the really ideologically commited crackpots will defend Iraq, baseline libs on social media are often both full throated supporters Ukraine and also think the Iraq War was bad. Like not NAFO wackos obviously but like, the more normaler ones.
I admit I dont have as much experience talking to libs about geopolitical shit irl so idk what default not online normie opinion is like but it seems like "Iraq War was a bad idea" is normie sentiment from what I can tell. They may think that for the wrong reasons or whatever but they do think it was bad to get involved there, and that the Bush admin lied about WMDs. At MOST they might say "well at least we got rid of Saddam" or something like another poster suggested, but even that seems rare.
I do think their devotion to the current Ukraine narrative seems pretty set in stone though, and the material differences between the war make it easier to justify their position.

Which libs realized anything about Iraq?

They didn't change their minds, they just went from believing thing a to believing thing b without ever passing through a midpoint, it is an instantaneous process with no regard for prior conditions

I mean I agree, but thats what I'm referring to. I agree that no critical thinking was involved for most of them, they just shifted when the narrative shifted, but my question was if the same thing is going to happen with Ukraine or not.
- Ahh. I think we're starting to see the shift now as things continue to go badly, and the west pivots to damage control and excuses for why they're still superior

No. Their role is to support it, like Iraq, then lament the consequences after the fact as damage control.

I remember Chris Hedges saying something to that measure in regards to Iraq. The liberal intellectual class is there to support the state and American project.

I guess I should have been more specific, but when I say "libs" I'm not referring to the thought leaders, I'm referring to the rank and file. (This is generally what I mean when I use the term in a general sense actually).
- the rank and file will probably follow the thought leaders

The closest they'll come is saying "we didn't know any better" or admitting it didn't go well but not recognizing the US's role and still seeing us as just "trying to do what's right"

There was significant opposition to the Iraq War among mainstream US Democrats from the beginning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Iraq_Resolution_of_2002?wprov=sfla1 Also very large protests at the time in the US and EU.

58% of Democrat senators voted for it, 39% of Democrat representatives voted for it.
This was only a year after all but one Democrat voted to give Bush a blank check with the previous AUMF. It gave him unilateral power to launch military operations around the world without oversight. It was used for 20 years to send troops to 10 different countries.
Both parties are beholden to the military industrial complex.
- I think the difference there is that many liberals were against the war in Iraq, but no liberals will go against The Troops. They may not always like what the military is doing, but they will always gleefully vote for funding their every wish.
Both Clinton and Biden voted in favor lol.
blatant bourgeois liberal apologia. let's see the numbers for afghanistan, libya, syria, somalia, and yemen.

Nah, best case they just forget about it (unless Ukraine goes full nazi and invades Moldova or something). Think the US support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets, or the northern alliance in Afghanistan against the taliban.

Ukraine invading another country would be Russia's fault too.

If the conflict stays like it is, just a constant battlefield with meters traded back and forth every week, then they probably won't. It'll just ... slowly fade away from their minds.

Now, something big is going to have to happen like a bomber full of ordinance gets knocked out of the sky over a densely populated civilian area or a nuke plant melting down... something that kills a TON of people in a very short period of time... then they might "burn their uniforms" a year or two later.

I don't know that there's a collective left to realize things like in the days of the Iraq hangover. Sure there’s like your CNN watchers, but thats a shrinking group and more people now get their shit algorithmically on some level. (Consensus) reality isn't what it used to be, like my favorite cult blue curtains classic In the Mouth of Madness.

Nope. They'll just pretend they were anti-war from the start.

yes, but news are just commodities and they'll just stop paying attention to it in 2 years unless you bring it to them after 2-3 glasses of wine.

You can see how news has been commodified when journalists don't have any accountabilities (like a 9-5 jobs with questionable practice where you can pressed on the person and they'll respond: "well it's capitalism, i have to eat, i'm just following order, i try to stay away from the politics of it) for reporting disinformations during the Iraq wars, Chinese Ballons or any others subjects; not even an official editorial apologies (they really don't have to because people don't care)

I remembered in a national radio broadcast, they invited a chinese expert who said that Chinese people like to create a political scandal (chinese ballon) to pressure the opponent before a diplomatic visit (blinken's visit). I doubt that the radio station will not invite him back for the next chinese "political scandal"