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.
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.
It'll be like conservatives with Vietnam: a stab in the back narrative (albeit less visceral due to it being a proxy war.)
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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"
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
If the libs follow precedent, they won't change their minds about Ukraine as much as stop talking about it and assume it's as done and over as covid. 
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.
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
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
Posts must ask a question.
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.