Yes, and I also believe that the Western mindset is stuck in a collective dialectic which disallows honest discussion on the subject, because in fact Europe has a lot to answer for on the topic of war, recently, and there is a lot of profit being made by those very European institutions responsible for collectivizing and propagating war-monger groupthink. Europe does not have altruistic arms dealers - it has war-mongering profiteers who have historical ties to the subject dating back hundreds of years.
Russia is not even the worlds #1 source of war-mongering, by a long shot. (The UK and the USA are, having murdered millions of innocent human beings since 2003 in multiple different theatres - countries and cultures deemed inferior by Western, fundamentalist, racist, ruling elites...)
I am not Russian, and can thus do nothing effective about Russia. I am a subject of the criminal 5-eyes western alliance which has murdered millions of innocent human beings since 2003, however, and I no longer believe in Western moral authority which gives us the imperative to 'do something about their war criminals' without "first taking care of our own war criminals", because we have far, far more heinously evil individuals still running the show with bloodied hands and with massive war crimes and crimes against humanity to answer for - yet we do nothing while bleating about Putin.
> which has murdered millions of innocent human beings since 2003, however, and I no longer believe in Western moral authority which gives us the imperative to 'do something about their war criminals' without "first taking care of our own war criminals"
That goes back MUCH further than 2003.
> because we have far, far more heinously evil individuals still running the show with bloodied hands and with massive war crimes and crimes against humanity to answer for -
On this we agree, so what are you doing about it?
> yet we do nothing while bleating about Putin.
Yes, because Putin is currently waging a war of aggression against a much smaller nation which also matters.
The fact that there is more than one thing wrong with the world does not give you leeway to only see the one and ignore the other. Western leadership has often been found on the wrong side of many conflicts and the same goes for the current Russian leadership. But since you've chosen to throw your lot in with us Westerners we still sort of expect you to show some solidarity rather than to start carrying water for at least one enemy. Just so we can hold things together long enough to address all of those wrongs.
Europe has problems, there is no doubt about it. But it also has learned a lot of every expensive lessons and has the scars to prove that. You have yet to integrate or understand those lessons and yet you lecture us as though you've been invited to educate us poor backwards denizens with your superior insight. But all you've done is show the limits of your own understanding, of the history of the content, of how things go to where they are and how we are collectively trying very hard to improve things, which is hard and slow work.
A relatively small fraction of West-Europeans has visited the countries east of the line Berlin-vienna-Rome. In that sense Europe is more like two continents than one. In a nutshell, your viewpoint appears to be 'not my problem'. And I don't doubt it isn't your problem, you have no roots here and can pack up any day with your Australian passport to find a new home. But we actually live here and even though some of us have traveled as much (or maybe even more as you did) as you have and/or have lived in many different countries (which on HN isn't nearly as exceptional as you seem to think).
When you immigrate you accept that the country you immigrate to isn't perfect. But you do make a statement of loyalty, the country that accepts you accepts you with all your flaws and that's a two way street. You don't get to pretend you're some kind of alien from outerspace that expects the people around you to start living according to your ridiculously high and impractical standards. Because theory is fine, of course. The problem is that we don't live in your theoretical world where all conflict can be solved diplomatically so that nobody's holy houses and material gains get upset. Sometimes you really do get invaded, and sometimes you have to fight.
The country that I'm from has a long, long history of abuse that made us fabulously wealthy. This is not something to be proud of. At the same time it got invaded many times and somehow we managed to ultimately fight off the invaders or outsiders fought them off for us. I have no illusions about our leadership, but at the same time, when looking at the various alternatives it could be a lot worse. The last thing I would think of as an immigrant is to lecture the locals on how they should run their affairs. I would be the outsider and it would be up to me to learn, not lecture.
Russia is not even the worlds #1 source of war-mongering, by a long shot. (The UK and the USA are, having murdered millions of innocent human beings since 2003 in multiple different theatres - countries and cultures deemed inferior by Western, fundamentalist, racist, ruling elites...)
I am not Russian, and can thus do nothing effective about Russia. I am a subject of the criminal 5-eyes western alliance which has murdered millions of innocent human beings since 2003, however, and I no longer believe in Western moral authority which gives us the imperative to 'do something about their war criminals' without "first taking care of our own war criminals", because we have far, far more heinously evil individuals still running the show with bloodied hands and with massive war crimes and crimes against humanity to answer for - yet we do nothing while bleating about Putin.