THE WESTERN WORLD'S NIMBYs ARE IN UPROAR OVER UKRAINE
War has come much closer to the comfortable liberal elites of the western world than they can tolerate. They can pretty much accept it in far-flung locations that lie at the periphery of their interest, but not almost up close and personal as in Ukraine.
How dare the Russians fight for their national interests in the way the western liberal majority find vaguely unpleasant but largely not too unbearable in the succession of nations the United States (with their nations' assistance) has done in similar style recently?
Not in my back yard, right? The geopolitical Nimbys are therefore in uproar. "How do you have the gall to bring what we find more or less tolerable elsewhere near to us?" War becomes very suddenly totally unacceptable, a matter for vast outpourings of hand-fluttering woe, a mobilisation of every liberal voice to speak in unison demanding this particular war stop. That other one, in Yemen... well, we'll just keep ignoring that as usual. It's being fought by 'our guys', the USA & UK supplying the necessary logistic support and weaponry to promote... What was it again? Oh yes, freedom and democracy. Yeah, right.
War is hell. But whether that hell is semi-respectable or outright wrong depends in the western world on who's fighting it, who gets sanctioned, punished, sent to The Hague and who gets to write their memoirs saying they'd do it all over again?
All depends it seems on four factors:
Who is fighting the war, is it our western guys are or some others deserving of demonisation?
How far away is this war? Is it right 'over there' where people with brown faces live that we feel we have little or nothing in common with?
How white and familiar in culture are the people in this war who we've been told to support with all our might?
How will we be affected by the war? If we are going to be greatly out of pocket and feel it then we're against it.
The Nimbys are currently busting a gut to help and support Ukraine and through them NATO (that did its level best to destroySerbia and did destroy Libya) and the twin empire-builders, the USA and UK who are part of the Coalition of the Willing (or Coalition of the Killing if you like or don't like).
Isn't the proximity, the white faces, the identification with a similar culture and that good old and very reliable , extremely simplistic mythology concerning total good and total evil that is really the basis for the present attitude of the liberal West. And ignorance of course, huge indifference and commensurate ignorance regarding anything approaching a desire to investigate the historical timeline involved.
Will the Nimby's get their way and have all war... well, THIS war... banished? No, I don't believe so. They are having their noses pushed in their own noses for once. And both NATO and Washington's elites are going to do all in their great power to see that those noses get pushed ever deeper.
Be careful what you wish for is a well known saying. It should also be said 'Be careful what you don't protest against'. Good men and women did next to nothing to stop the USA & UK's wars of choice. Now they have one right next door.
