This has been a civilized exchange of views, so that is good. I am totally fine with and understand your point of view very well, as this is the epitom of the "west" narrative that dates to before the Wolfowitz-Cheney doctrine. It is only reinforced in the context of this conflict.

Your attention seems to be to cast the conflict in therm of us-vs-them, good-vs-evil, you are with us or against us. I oppose this for well known reasons. Especially this very conflict, this is simply a false dichotomy and has no basis for understanding the situation, and having a conversation about it. Not only as a logic fallacy, but simply from the facts and history how we got to this point. Im not taking anything away from your firm conviction in the USA's superiority and its view of inherent primacy of its interests above all and everyone else. Im interested in peace, and want to understand what is it in the narrative of the West (not that I do not have opinion on it, just want to see other's views) that peace is so frowned upon or so aggressively dismissed out of a discussion.

There is no doubt as to whether RU pulled the first trigger, I never said anything contrary to that. However, as I explained already in three posts, the "morals" you seems to insists on as a basis of understanding and discussing it are not contained in that fact alone. Or in other words, neither RU is justified in attacking nor is "West" justified designing and pursuing the kind of foreign policies having full knowledge that it will lead to RU to attack (to this point I recommend published notes of the current CIA director, or any of the journals of foreign policy available online). It is simply a matter of consequence, not of morals/justifications from this angle.

So, after all that here we are, RU have attacked and West continues the proxy war as close to total war (financial, economic, information, cultural, diplomatic, weapons, operatives, etc) as one can get without putting "boots-on the ground" (although, that is hardly not the case as the smallest google search will inform you there are more than enough CIA and other operatives on the ground in UA). Hence, as no side really rides the moral high-horse, why to continue killing people instead of pursuing peace? What is the plan and/or should be the plan ? For whom is war better than peace? [if not tactical plan, which is still very difficult to outline; based on which principles you argue to continue and escalate the war over negotiating a peace ?]