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Did the world stop buying US products when it carried out worse crimes than Russia ie invading Iraq or Vietnam?

jamesmishra 5y ago
Why do you ask? Do you believe invading militaries should not be opposed? Or do you see the Russian military as the good guy here?
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  He is pointing out hypocrisy. Why is there a moral imperative to cripple your own economy because country A invaded country B, when you did not do so the 20 times country C did the same and worse?
  - 0dayz 5y ago
    If so why wasn't Russia sanctioning the USA for iraq? And instead gave them the greenlight?
    - BlinkenBlinken 5y ago
      Probably because they have different morals.
  - jamesmishra 5y ago
    From your perspective, is the Russian military doing a good thing or a bad thing? If they are doing something bad, should they avoid punishment?
    - DocTomoe 5y ago
      "Good" and "bad" are unhelpful, moralistic categories to gauge this kind of thing. Morals are culture- and society-specific. If I was a Raytheon stockholder, I would be ecstatic right now and would cheer the Russians on to keep kindling that flame. If I lived in Ukraine, I would have a very different opinion. So, which categories can we apply? In the end, much like standard crime, there can be only one: Are they following the standards set by international law, or are they not? And that we cannot honestly answer as of now. Consider these basic questions: 1. Is the Russian military responsible for the decision to wage what we in the west consider a "war of aggression" against Ukraine? To parse that question lightly more pointed: Has every member of the Russian forces currently engaged in the Ukraine theatre signed off the decision to invade? 2. Is the Russian military collectively responsible for any action the Russian military and/or the Russian political leadership takes? 3. Can we be certain that all the information we get is truthful, especially when it comes to information that would suggest Russian military war crimes? 4. Which amount of civilian casualties is "acceptable" before it becomes a punishable war crime? When "we" kill civilians, "we" call it "collateral damage". At which point does collateral damage become a war crime? 5. Is the Ukraine war illegitimate? When considering this question, please take into account that we may have several gaps in our understanding of the situation, and that we tend to wave away Russian sources as "enemy propaganda". If they are breaking international law, the decision makers in the Russian political leadership and military should be judged and potentially punished by an international court of law. Unfortunately, that only works as long as they are a member of that court (or are thoroughly defeated), and Russia isn't - much like the US - (and is unlikely to be defeated).
      - jamesmishra 5y ago
        You would tell the Russians to continue the genocide?
        beckman466 5y ago
        > You would tell the Russians to continue the genocide? you would tell the Americans to continue the bombing in Yemen?
        jamesmishra 5y ago
        Yes.
      - krzyk 5y ago
        Nice, now I know why west waited with attack on Germany in September 1939. Because of people like you, with moral relativism.
        drekk 5y ago
        This seems like pretty useless ad-hominem. The US only got involved because of Pearl Harbor. At the time Long Island was "the eugenics capital of the world". The Third Reich got their inspiration from the US, although they thought the one drop rule went too far. Heck, in 1939 there was a Nazi rally in Madison Square Park. Do you think it was moral relativists going to that rally? And truly the Nazis basically won WW2 given Operation Paperclip and all the massacres the US oversaw afterwards in Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, etc. Sure we might not speaking German or wearing swastikas, but the American Eagle is currently financing genocide (let's use Yemen as the example here) and the only media attention we can seem to get is for Ukraine because their aggressor is our geopolitical enemy I'm all for the sanctions against Russia before someone accuses me of whataboutism. However, I would like to see stronger international standards, as well as an ICC joined by the US. That requires the US to allow for international oversight and not have a Hague invasion clause. Are Americans willing to be held to the same standard as their enemies? If not just say might makes right and remove this pretense that it's about war crimes or human rights
  - ilammy 5y ago
    Probably because country U would certainly not go invading countries P, L, E, or even G or F given chance, after it's done invading the country I.
  - IAmEveryone 5y ago
    I vehemently disagree with the (second) invasion of Iraq, but pretending it's the same to step in when some dictator has torture as a favorite hobby as it is to invade a peaceful and happy democracy is taking the cynicism a bit too far. Afghanistan & the 1990 Iraqi war were entirely legitimate for obvious reasons.
    - ElectricalUnion 5y ago
      > obvious reasons. "I don't like those countries and they're angry with me". I guess that puts any invasion as justifiable.
      - IAmEveryone 5y ago
        Aehm, no! Afghanistan was a reaction to 9/11, since the ruling Taliban had been accomodating and supporting Al Quaeda. The first (or second, depending on how you're counting) Gulf War started with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
  - krzyk 5y ago
    Have you been to Russia? Have you seen how they are pumped with propaganda? How every opposition voice has to worry that either they'll get arrested or killed by a "random" person when they go home. Try that in US, what will happen? Nothing. Russia (and China) are big countries and dangerous ones because ruled not by the rule of law but by a will of rulers and oligarchs. And now we have opportunity to stop at least one of them.
    - beckman466 5y ago
      > ...Russia? Have you seen how they are pumped with propaganda? have you been to the US and/or UK? what do you make of the capitalist owned and capitalist controlled media? > Russia (and China) are big countries and dangerous ones because ruled not by the rule of law but by a will of rulers and oligarchs. ah cool, so they don't have weird things like FISA courts and a huge national security apparatus (sort of like this CIA thing), and army, which together coups countries and assassinates leaders? [1] > And now we have opportunity to stop at least one of them. who is this 'we' you speak of? [2] [1] https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/washington-bullets-cia-coups-assassinations-evo-morales https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/washington-bullets-cia-coups-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRh925Is_1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRh925Is_1U
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        “have you been to the US and/or UK? what do you make of the capitalist owned and capitalist controlled media?” You may be surprised to learn how irrelevant the corporate media is now, very low viewership counts, and a flourishing alternative media ecosystem, where everyone can believe what they want. This diversity of information sources has its echo-chamber downside, but no one is being imprisoned because of their views like in Russia or China.
      - pixl97 5y ago
        Yes, I remember last time I posted something on the internet that disagreed with what corporate media was saying and then the secret police came to beat me and warn me that my family members may disappear.
  - belorn 5y ago
    The reasons to keep Russians wars in check has more to do than with morality. The threat that Russia will invade other nearby countries for lebensraum is currently feeling much more real for all countries bordering Russia. The US is unlikely to invade Poland in order to displace the polish people with Americans. To some degree a war over oil resources feel much less threatening to countries than a war for lebensraum, especially for countries which don't have a lot of oil resources. Every nation however has land, and thus every nation is a target when a country like Russia is after territory. This is a big reason why a lot of countries around Russia is currently increasing their military budgets, loosing more money on that then any losses to the economy from not buying conflict resources from Russia. If you are pumping your money into the military, it makes economical sense to not fund the military threat you are defending against.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  GP asks because when it’s geo-frickin-politics it’s really not - Uo is calling R bad, I must also call R bad, otherwise Uo will call I bad as well. Because Uo calling I bad - is less bad for I - than R pissed off with I. Because R and I have supported each other throughout and Uo simply can not be trusted and Uo has repeatedly proved that it cannot be trusted. In fact there’s a good chance Uo as well might call I bad after I has called R bad and had lost a long time ally and eventually has been left alone. And here people make it look like a weekend outing with some pals - hey, you should have called Jack out because he unnecessarily yelled at me! Yeah! And because there’s clear difference of outrage when brown, yellow, black lives are bombed into oblivion, burnt into tar, whisked away into nothingness from sovereign territories without any accountability and repercussions compared to when the war is right inside Europe. Yeah, that’s real. But you all can’t see that. Why? Because it has been given a catchy name “Global War on Terror”? By the way, this is not a thing of past. It is still going on. Full throttle. Others see that. Have been seeing for decades. Have seen the f..ing cold war and its farce as well. So why GP asks? That’s why GP asks that’s everybody is bad here and calling Russia out bad will mean calling others’ actions/deeds good while possibly shooting themselves in the foot. > Do you believe invading militaries should not be opposed? Yes, should be. “Every” invading army should be. Every! Colonial powers should pay. Aggressors should atone, reimburse. In an ideal utopia inhabited only by pure flower children and silver snowflakes all this would happen maybe. Not your or someone’s selective outrage! Bit does it happen? No. In the real world that doesn’t happen, it hasn’t happened, and hence many countries and entities are “not stupid enough” to catch a flying arrow in someone else’s yard in their own hinds. However heinous or a bad bully that archer is. Because as I said that’s the better of two bad options for many.
  - jamesmishra 5y ago
    So do you support taking action against the Russian military's genocide or not?
    - beckman466 5y ago
      > So do you support taking action against the Russian military's genocide or not? of course. and OP answered with the same answer. please stop strawmanning, the joke is on you for not accepting the evidence. try to open your eyes to the murderous hypocrisy and deep-rooted racism of Global North/Western imperialism. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/jakarta-method-vincent-bevins-indonesia-anticommunism https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/jakarta-method-vincent-bevins...
0dayz 5y ago
>when it carried out worse crimes than Russia ie invading Iraq or Vietnam? With the exception of using chemical weapon (agent orange) and napalm, you gonna have to extrapolate and provide source for your claim.
- 10xrubberduck 5y ago
  If not war crimes, were the wars itself of good end-result? And endless streaks of them - Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.. where next? The person is right, US (and NATO) deserved international outcry, and sanctions as Russians got, but instead everyone accepts their twisted "justifications" for their endless wars.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    A lot of them had very positive results, like Korean War or Kosovo.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Sure, other than the landmines, chemical weapons, and murdering of entire villages, and, and... The US is blameless. Or as Wikipedia puts it: "United States war crimes - This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items."
  - 10xrubberduck 5y ago
    In future, depleted uranium usage will make it into the list
  - ShivShankaran 5y ago
    >Sure, other than the landmines, chemical weapons, and murdering of entire villages, and, and... The US is blameless. no no no ... you cant blame US like that. It's pure as driven snow. It's champion of democracy. Pristine. Flawless.
- nnx 5y ago
  Remember Abu Ghraib?
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
One main difference was that the world was extremely critical of the invasion of Iraq. Not just "some countries", but Western societies at large, including - or mostly - the ones whose governments decided to participate. For anybody sane, it was a stupid war for stupid reasons and with unpredictable consequences. Not hundreds of thousands but millions of people protested in main European cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... I was too young to remember the war in Vietnam but my older colleagues told me the general feeling was very much anti-war, and they had to do pretty hardcore stuff in order to avoid being drafted.
krzyk 5y ago
Is that called whataboutism. If US did something wrong how does it relate to Russia or China doing similar wrong things? Stop them whatever means necessary.
- emerged 5y ago
  It’s also a way to smuggle claims of racism into the conversation, since in 2022 you can’t have a conversation without racism or people will fall on the floor shaking in withdrawal.
- unmole 5y ago
  > Stop them whatever means necessary. In other words, please cripple your already struggling economies because of a war that you had nothing to do with. Sure, your citizens might have to freeze or starve but this is absolutely necessary to support the current thing. Oh, and please keep buying Saudi and Emirati oil and please keep selling them weapons to bomb Yemen. Anything else would be whataboutism.
- pydry 5y ago
  Whataboutism would be if they were trying to justify Russian actions. They arent.
- quantum_solanum 5y ago
  People in the US have far more ability to change the US than they do countries on the other side of the globe. Which is why the US's crimes have to be minimized - so people can freely ignore them and simply bray for military action against other countries.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
eadmund 5y ago
The U.S. did not invade Vietnam; it assisted the Republic of Vietnam in its self-defense against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. North Vietnam was the aggressor. The U.S. did invade Iraq, using the authority granted in U.N. resolution 678. That was not a crime either, because it was carried out legally.
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  It invaded me attacked South Vietnam to stop a national uprising there, that was 1961, after some time the war did expand to North Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Saying it was legal and not an invasion, because the client regime invited them, is like saying the Soviet Union never invaded Afghanistan, because they were also invited and it was ‘legal’. They were crimes, the two biggest crimes since WW2
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Saying it was legal and not an invasion, because the client regime invited them, is like saying the Soviet Union never invaded Afghanistan, because they were also invited and it was ‘legal’. While Afghanistan was a Soviet client state before the Soviet-Afghan war, that War started with a successful decapitation strike by the USSR against the Afghan regime, so it’s not really analogous to the US war in South Vietnam.
- qiskit 5y ago
  We did invade vietnam. Vietnam beat their brutal french colonizers and won their independence ( 1st indochina war ). But we decided to get involved and seized half the country. ( 2nd indochina war ). > North Vietnam was the aggressor. No. North vietnam were liberators helping their fellow vietnamese in the south ( viet cong ) expel a foreign occupier. > The U.S. did invade Iraq, using the authority granted in U.N. resolution 678. How sneaky of you. That was the 1st iraq war. What about the 2nd iraq war?
  - FrenchAmerican 5y ago
    I almost agree with you but North Vietnamese as liberators... It's a bit much. The Vietnamese wanted independence and the refusal of France and later the the intervention of the US into the Vietnamese internal politics led the Vietnamese people to turn to the Communist party as the party of independence. The very same thing happened a few years earlier in Cuba. But the Communist parties were not "liberators", as both the Vietnamese and the Cuban peoples discovered very quickly. But the French (obviously) and the US weren't either. Vietnam is a nice country... for tourists. People there are not free at all. Nor are Cubans.
robwwilliams 5y ago
Degrading and highjacking what might have been a constructive thread. Way to go. Yes, lots of hypocrisy to go all around—its called human nature. But what Russia is doing TODAY is just plane evil, and what other countries have done and will probably do again does not make Russian action any less evil.
- ShivShankaran 5y ago
  >But what Russia is doing TODAY is just plane evil Really?? approximately half a million children died in Iraq. Russian soldiers take the brunt of civilians throwing objects and molotov cocktails at them and try to stop them by standing on the roads. You think Iraqi civilians could have blockaded US army by standing on the road? It's human nature when Russia does it (and what Russia is doing is abhorrent and disgusting) and when US does it, its brushed under the carpet as champion of democracy
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Extreme majority of Iraqis dead were at hands of other Iraqis.
    - ShivShankaran 5y ago
      instigated by the US. and if you want to play that card the railway bombing was done by the donetsk army which is nor russian

Why do you ask? Do you believe invading militaries should not be opposed? Or do you see the Russian military as the good guy here?

DocTomoe 5y ago
He is pointing out hypocrisy. Why is there a moral imperative to cripple your own economy because country A invaded country B, when you did not do so the 20 times country C did the same and worse?
- 0dayz 5y ago
  If so why wasn't Russia sanctioning the USA for iraq? And instead gave them the greenlight?
  - BlinkenBlinken 5y ago
    Probably because they have different morals.
- jamesmishra 5y ago
  From your perspective, is the Russian military doing a good thing or a bad thing? If they are doing something bad, should they avoid punishment?
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    "Good" and "bad" are unhelpful, moralistic categories to gauge this kind of thing. Morals are culture- and society-specific. If I was a Raytheon stockholder, I would be ecstatic right now and would cheer the Russians on to keep kindling that flame. If I lived in Ukraine, I would have a very different opinion. So, which categories can we apply? In the end, much like standard crime, there can be only one: Are they following the standards set by international law, or are they not? And that we cannot honestly answer as of now. Consider these basic questions: 1. Is the Russian military responsible for the decision to wage what we in the west consider a "war of aggression" against Ukraine? To parse that question lightly more pointed: Has every member of the Russian forces currently engaged in the Ukraine theatre signed off the decision to invade? 2. Is the Russian military collectively responsible for any action the Russian military and/or the Russian political leadership takes? 3. Can we be certain that all the information we get is truthful, especially when it comes to information that would suggest Russian military war crimes? 4. Which amount of civilian casualties is "acceptable" before it becomes a punishable war crime? When "we" kill civilians, "we" call it "collateral damage". At which point does collateral damage become a war crime? 5. Is the Ukraine war illegitimate? When considering this question, please take into account that we may have several gaps in our understanding of the situation, and that we tend to wave away Russian sources as "enemy propaganda". If they are breaking international law, the decision makers in the Russian political leadership and military should be judged and potentially punished by an international court of law. Unfortunately, that only works as long as they are a member of that court (or are thoroughly defeated), and Russia isn't - much like the US - (and is unlikely to be defeated).
    - jamesmishra 5y ago
      You would tell the Russians to continue the genocide?
      - beckman466 5y ago
        > You would tell the Russians to continue the genocide? you would tell the Americans to continue the bombing in Yemen?
        jamesmishra 5y ago
        Yes.
    - krzyk 5y ago
      Nice, now I know why west waited with attack on Germany in September 1939. Because of people like you, with moral relativism.
      - drekk 5y ago
        This seems like pretty useless ad-hominem. The US only got involved because of Pearl Harbor. At the time Long Island was "the eugenics capital of the world". The Third Reich got their inspiration from the US, although they thought the one drop rule went too far. Heck, in 1939 there was a Nazi rally in Madison Square Park. Do you think it was moral relativists going to that rally? And truly the Nazis basically won WW2 given Operation Paperclip and all the massacres the US oversaw afterwards in Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, etc. Sure we might not speaking German or wearing swastikas, but the American Eagle is currently financing genocide (let's use Yemen as the example here) and the only media attention we can seem to get is for Ukraine because their aggressor is our geopolitical enemy I'm all for the sanctions against Russia before someone accuses me of whataboutism. However, I would like to see stronger international standards, as well as an ICC joined by the US. That requires the US to allow for international oversight and not have a Hague invasion clause. Are Americans willing to be held to the same standard as their enemies? If not just say might makes right and remove this pretense that it's about war crimes or human rights
- ilammy 5y ago
  Probably because country U would certainly not go invading countries P, L, E, or even G or F given chance, after it's done invading the country I.
- IAmEveryone 5y ago
  I vehemently disagree with the (second) invasion of Iraq, but pretending it's the same to step in when some dictator has torture as a favorite hobby as it is to invade a peaceful and happy democracy is taking the cynicism a bit too far. Afghanistan & the 1990 Iraqi war were entirely legitimate for obvious reasons.
  - ElectricalUnion 5y ago
    > obvious reasons. "I don't like those countries and they're angry with me". I guess that puts any invasion as justifiable.
    - IAmEveryone 5y ago
      Aehm, no! Afghanistan was a reaction to 9/11, since the ruling Taliban had been accomodating and supporting Al Quaeda. The first (or second, depending on how you're counting) Gulf War started with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
- krzyk 5y ago
  Have you been to Russia? Have you seen how they are pumped with propaganda? How every opposition voice has to worry that either they'll get arrested or killed by a "random" person when they go home. Try that in US, what will happen? Nothing. Russia (and China) are big countries and dangerous ones because ruled not by the rule of law but by a will of rulers and oligarchs. And now we have opportunity to stop at least one of them.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    > ...Russia? Have you seen how they are pumped with propaganda? have you been to the US and/or UK? what do you make of the capitalist owned and capitalist controlled media? > Russia (and China) are big countries and dangerous ones because ruled not by the rule of law but by a will of rulers and oligarchs. ah cool, so they don't have weird things like FISA courts and a huge national security apparatus (sort of like this CIA thing), and army, which together coups countries and assassinates leaders? [1] > And now we have opportunity to stop at least one of them. who is this 'we' you speak of? [2] [1] https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/washington-bullets-cia-coups-assassinations-evo-morales https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/washington-bullets-cia-coups-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRh925Is_1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRh925Is_1U
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      “have you been to the US and/or UK? what do you make of the capitalist owned and capitalist controlled media?” You may be surprised to learn how irrelevant the corporate media is now, very low viewership counts, and a flourishing alternative media ecosystem, where everyone can believe what they want. This diversity of information sources has its echo-chamber downside, but no one is being imprisoned because of their views like in Russia or China.
    - pixl97 5y ago
      Yes, I remember last time I posted something on the internet that disagreed with what corporate media was saying and then the secret police came to beat me and warn me that my family members may disappear.
- belorn 5y ago
  The reasons to keep Russians wars in check has more to do than with morality. The threat that Russia will invade other nearby countries for lebensraum is currently feeling much more real for all countries bordering Russia. The US is unlikely to invade Poland in order to displace the polish people with Americans. To some degree a war over oil resources feel much less threatening to countries than a war for lebensraum, especially for countries which don't have a lot of oil resources. Every nation however has land, and thus every nation is a target when a country like Russia is after territory. This is a big reason why a lot of countries around Russia is currently increasing their military budgets, loosing more money on that then any losses to the economy from not buying conflict resources from Russia. If you are pumping your money into the military, it makes economical sense to not fund the military threat you are defending against.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
GP asks because when it’s geo-frickin-politics it’s really not - Uo is calling R bad, I must also call R bad, otherwise Uo will call I bad as well. Because Uo calling I bad - is less bad for I - than R pissed off with I. Because R and I have supported each other throughout and Uo simply can not be trusted and Uo has repeatedly proved that it cannot be trusted. In fact there’s a good chance Uo as well might call I bad after I has called R bad and had lost a long time ally and eventually has been left alone. And here people make it look like a weekend outing with some pals - hey, you should have called Jack out because he unnecessarily yelled at me! Yeah! And because there’s clear difference of outrage when brown, yellow, black lives are bombed into oblivion, burnt into tar, whisked away into nothingness from sovereign territories without any accountability and repercussions compared to when the war is right inside Europe. Yeah, that’s real. But you all can’t see that. Why? Because it has been given a catchy name “Global War on Terror”? By the way, this is not a thing of past. It is still going on. Full throttle. Others see that. Have been seeing for decades. Have seen the f..ing cold war and its farce as well. So why GP asks? That’s why GP asks that’s everybody is bad here and calling Russia out bad will mean calling others’ actions/deeds good while possibly shooting themselves in the foot. > Do you believe invading militaries should not be opposed? Yes, should be. “Every” invading army should be. Every! Colonial powers should pay. Aggressors should atone, reimburse. In an ideal utopia inhabited only by pure flower children and silver snowflakes all this would happen maybe. Not your or someone’s selective outrage! Bit does it happen? No. In the real world that doesn’t happen, it hasn’t happened, and hence many countries and entities are “not stupid enough” to catch a flying arrow in someone else’s yard in their own hinds. However heinous or a bad bully that archer is. Because as I said that’s the better of two bad options for many.
- jamesmishra 5y ago
  So do you support taking action against the Russian military's genocide or not?
  - beckman466 5y ago
    > So do you support taking action against the Russian military's genocide or not? of course. and OP answered with the same answer. please stop strawmanning, the joke is on you for not accepting the evidence. try to open your eyes to the murderous hypocrisy and deep-rooted racism of Global North/Western imperialism. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/jakarta-method-vincent-bevins-indonesia-anticommunism https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/jakarta-method-vincent-bevins...

0dayz 5y ago

>when it carried out worse crimes than Russia ie invading Iraq or Vietnam? With the exception of using chemical weapon (agent orange) and napalm, you gonna have to extrapolate and provide source for your claim.

10xrubberduck 5y ago
If not war crimes, were the wars itself of good end-result? And endless streaks of them - Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.. where next? The person is right, US (and NATO) deserved international outcry, and sanctions as Russians got, but instead everyone accepts their twisted "justifications" for their endless wars.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  A lot of them had very positive results, like Korean War or Kosovo.
lozenge 5y ago
Sure, other than the landmines, chemical weapons, and murdering of entire villages, and, and... The US is blameless. Or as Wikipedia puts it: "United States war crimes - This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items."
- 10xrubberduck 5y ago
  In future, depleted uranium usage will make it into the list
- ShivShankaran 5y ago
  >Sure, other than the landmines, chemical weapons, and murdering of entire villages, and, and... The US is blameless. no no no ... you cant blame US like that. It's pure as driven snow. It's champion of democracy. Pristine. Flawless.
nnx 5y ago
Remember Abu Ghraib?

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

One main difference was that the world was extremely critical of the invasion of Iraq. Not just "some countries", but Western societies at large, including - or mostly - the ones whose governments decided to participate. For anybody sane, it was a stupid war for stupid reasons and with unpredictable consequences. Not hundreds of thousands but millions of people protested in main European cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... I was too young to remember the war in Vietnam but my older colleagues told me the general feeling was very much anti-war, and they had to do pretty hardcore stuff in order to avoid being drafted.

krzyk 5y ago

Is that called whataboutism. If US did something wrong how does it relate to Russia or China doing similar wrong things? Stop them whatever means necessary.

emerged 5y ago
It’s also a way to smuggle claims of racism into the conversation, since in 2022 you can’t have a conversation without racism or people will fall on the floor shaking in withdrawal.
unmole 5y ago
> Stop them whatever means necessary. In other words, please cripple your already struggling economies because of a war that you had nothing to do with. Sure, your citizens might have to freeze or starve but this is absolutely necessary to support the current thing. Oh, and please keep buying Saudi and Emirati oil and please keep selling them weapons to bomb Yemen. Anything else would be whataboutism.
pydry 5y ago
Whataboutism would be if they were trying to justify Russian actions. They arent.
quantum_solanum 5y ago
People in the US have far more ability to change the US than they do countries on the other side of the globe. Which is why the US's crimes have to be minimized - so people can freely ignore them and simply bray for military action against other countries.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

eadmund 5y ago

The U.S. did not invade Vietnam; it assisted the Republic of Vietnam in its self-defense against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. North Vietnam was the aggressor. The U.S. did invade Iraq, using the authority granted in U.N. resolution 678. That was not a crime either, because it was carried out legally.

Synaesthesia 5y ago
It invaded me attacked South Vietnam to stop a national uprising there, that was 1961, after some time the war did expand to North Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Saying it was legal and not an invasion, because the client regime invited them, is like saying the Soviet Union never invaded Afghanistan, because they were also invited and it was ‘legal’. They were crimes, the two biggest crimes since WW2
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Saying it was legal and not an invasion, because the client regime invited them, is like saying the Soviet Union never invaded Afghanistan, because they were also invited and it was ‘legal’. While Afghanistan was a Soviet client state before the Soviet-Afghan war, that War started with a successful decapitation strike by the USSR against the Afghan regime, so it’s not really analogous to the US war in South Vietnam.
qiskit 5y ago
We did invade vietnam. Vietnam beat their brutal french colonizers and won their independence ( 1st indochina war ). But we decided to get involved and seized half the country. ( 2nd indochina war ). > North Vietnam was the aggressor. No. North vietnam were liberators helping their fellow vietnamese in the south ( viet cong ) expel a foreign occupier. > The U.S. did invade Iraq, using the authority granted in U.N. resolution 678. How sneaky of you. That was the 1st iraq war. What about the 2nd iraq war?
- FrenchAmerican 5y ago
  I almost agree with you but North Vietnamese as liberators... It's a bit much. The Vietnamese wanted independence and the refusal of France and later the the intervention of the US into the Vietnamese internal politics led the Vietnamese people to turn to the Communist party as the party of independence. The very same thing happened a few years earlier in Cuba. But the Communist parties were not "liberators", as both the Vietnamese and the Cuban peoples discovered very quickly. But the French (obviously) and the US weren't either. Vietnam is a nice country... for tourists. People there are not free at all. Nor are Cubans.

robwwilliams 5y ago

Degrading and highjacking what might have been a constructive thread. Way to go. Yes, lots of hypocrisy to go all around—its called human nature. But what Russia is doing TODAY is just plane evil, and what other countries have done and will probably do again does not make Russian action any less evil.

ShivShankaran 5y ago
>But what Russia is doing TODAY is just plane evil Really?? approximately half a million children died in Iraq. Russian soldiers take the brunt of civilians throwing objects and molotov cocktails at them and try to stop them by standing on the roads. You think Iraqi civilians could have blockaded US army by standing on the road? It's human nature when Russia does it (and what Russia is doing is abhorrent and disgusting) and when US does it, its brushed under the carpet as champion of democracy
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Extreme majority of Iraqis dead were at hands of other Iraqis.
  - ShivShankaran 5y ago
    instigated by the US. and if you want to play that card the railway bombing was done by the donetsk army which is nor russian