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Your reply is pure, distilled whataboutism.

by fzn7 20d ago

ericmay 20d ago
The premise of the OP is whataboutism. But you can take a step back and ask, well, what's the guiding framework here? Is it arbitrarily picking certain time periods to make a point? Why do we go back to "Japan" and World War II when Japan started the war and was massacring and colonizing people throughout east Asia? Why wasn't Germany mentioned in the body count? Dresden is a popular one that comes to mind. Why do we only focus on lives lost? Maybe America saved 10,000,000 Chinese from Japanese occupation so on balance we're saving lives?
- Hikikomori 20d ago
  Yeah lets take a step back to 1953 when the British overthrew their government for wanting more profits from their oil. This lead directly to the revolution in 79, in the meantime the western "aligned" leader had suppressed all opposition except religions leaders so they were able to take over. Now you know why they shout death to America. Would you also like to know that al qaeda didn't just hate american "freedom"?
  - ericmay 20d ago
    Why stop there? Why not go back to when the Greeks made Darius mad and started the Greco-Persian wars? If you want the Iranian people to engage in a forever war against the West, this is the kind of attitude you must hold. “Some arbitrary injustice done by dead people forever justifies us to do whatever we want” isn’t a viable political or culturally progressive route to go down. Vietnam got over it. Why can’t Iran? Do they need a nuclear bomb to get over it? Will they stop hanging gay people, helping Russia, and providing militia support to destabilize Arab countries once they get what they want (whatever that is)? What date or specific thing do they need? Can anyone say? Of course not. Because totalitarian regimes always have to obsess over past injustices, perceived or real, to drum up support for the regime so that it can continue to hold power against the best interests of their people. It masks their own failures, like Tehran running out of water because their government spent all their money bombing innocent people.
    - AlecSchueler 19d ago
      > Why stop there? Why not go back to when the Greeks made Darius mad and started the Greco-Persian wars? People often ask these questions as if they're unanswerable or as if any answer would essentially be arbitrary. What you need to do is look at contemporary global systems of inequality and consider their roots. For this it would seem British imperialism is often a sensible place to go to, in this case almost certainly.
      - ericmay 19d ago
        That seems like a different kind of criticism, one that unfairly singles out the United Kingdom and ignores the global systems of inequality and injustice that were instantiated by broader colonial powers and conflict, whether that's the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, or Persian, for that matter. We're not talking about global systems or inequality which have innumerable reasons, but talking about Iran and their specific bad behavior and how authoritarian governments point to random historical injustices to justify their own repression.
        AlecSchueler 19d ago
        > one that unfairly singles out the United Kingdom and ignores the global systems of inequality The UK was spoken of in the particular because of its long and violent history in Iran. We could point to any number of things like Anglo-Persian oil, the 1941 occupation or the 1953 which was previously mentioned. Countries like Portugal and the Netherlands simply don't have that history in the Iranian context. Of course if we were speaking about somewhere like Indonesia then we would foreground other colonial powers. There is also of course much that should be said about broader colonial history but the question above was why do we bring up British wrongdoing rather than ancient Persian history. > but talking about Iran and their specific bad behavior "Bad behaviour" is your terminology. We're talking about why they have sanctions imposed on them. > and how authoritarian governments point to random historical injustices to justify their own repression. No-one else was talking about this but you, and it feels like it was only raised in an attempt to undermine genuine concerns about legacy issues.
  - Danox 19d ago
    The United States have been effing up in the Middle East since 1947. We can’t seem to get anything right, and with every involvement, we just get weaker eventually like the British we’re going to run out of money and resources, and Russia is following the same path.
- fzn7 19d ago
  Not clear how dump a laundry list of other countries crimes to deflect will help to address original claim
  - ericmay 19d ago
    The original claim was an incoherent laundry list of made up statistics. I just pointed out the problems with it by extending the claims further.

Your reply is pure, distilled whataboutism.

by fzn7 20d ago

Your reply is pure, distilled whataboutism.

The premise of the OP is whataboutism. But you can take a step back and ask, well, what's the guiding framework here? Is it arbitrarily picking certain time periods to make a point? Why do we go back to "Japan" and World War II when Japan started the war and was massacring and colonizing people throughout east Asia? Why wasn't Germany mentioned in the body count? Dresden is a popular one that comes to mind. Why do we only focus on lives lost? Maybe America saved 10,000,000 Chinese from Japanese occupation so on balance we're saving lives?

Hikikomori 20d ago
Yeah lets take a step back to 1953 when the British overthrew their government for wanting more profits from their oil. This lead directly to the revolution in 79, in the meantime the western "aligned" leader had suppressed all opposition except religions leaders so they were able to take over. Now you know why they shout death to America. Would you also like to know that al qaeda didn't just hate american "freedom"?
- ericmay 20d ago
  Why stop there? Why not go back to when the Greeks made Darius mad and started the Greco-Persian wars? If you want the Iranian people to engage in a forever war against the West, this is the kind of attitude you must hold. “Some arbitrary injustice done by dead people forever justifies us to do whatever we want” isn’t a viable political or culturally progressive route to go down. Vietnam got over it. Why can’t Iran? Do they need a nuclear bomb to get over it? Will they stop hanging gay people, helping Russia, and providing militia support to destabilize Arab countries once they get what they want (whatever that is)? What date or specific thing do they need? Can anyone say? Of course not. Because totalitarian regimes always have to obsess over past injustices, perceived or real, to drum up support for the regime so that it can continue to hold power against the best interests of their people. It masks their own failures, like Tehran running out of water because their government spent all their money bombing innocent people.
  - AlecSchueler 19d ago
    > Why stop there? Why not go back to when the Greeks made Darius mad and started the Greco-Persian wars? People often ask these questions as if they're unanswerable or as if any answer would essentially be arbitrary. What you need to do is look at contemporary global systems of inequality and consider their roots. For this it would seem British imperialism is often a sensible place to go to, in this case almost certainly.
    - ericmay 19d ago
      That seems like a different kind of criticism, one that unfairly singles out the United Kingdom and ignores the global systems of inequality and injustice that were instantiated by broader colonial powers and conflict, whether that's the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, or Persian, for that matter. We're not talking about global systems or inequality which have innumerable reasons, but talking about Iran and their specific bad behavior and how authoritarian governments point to random historical injustices to justify their own repression.
      - AlecSchueler 19d ago
        > one that unfairly singles out the United Kingdom and ignores the global systems of inequality The UK was spoken of in the particular because of its long and violent history in Iran. We could point to any number of things like Anglo-Persian oil, the 1941 occupation or the 1953 which was previously mentioned. Countries like Portugal and the Netherlands simply don't have that history in the Iranian context. Of course if we were speaking about somewhere like Indonesia then we would foreground other colonial powers. There is also of course much that should be said about broader colonial history but the question above was why do we bring up British wrongdoing rather than ancient Persian history. > but talking about Iran and their specific bad behavior "Bad behaviour" is your terminology. We're talking about why they have sanctions imposed on them. > and how authoritarian governments point to random historical injustices to justify their own repression. No-one else was talking about this but you, and it feels like it was only raised in an attempt to undermine genuine concerns about legacy issues.
- Danox 19d ago
  The United States have been effing up in the Middle East since 1947. We can’t seem to get anything right, and with every involvement, we just get weaker eventually like the British we’re going to run out of money and resources, and Russia is following the same path.
fzn7 19d ago
Not clear how dump a laundry list of other countries crimes to deflect will help to address original claim
- ericmay 19d ago
  The original claim was an incoherent laundry list of made up statistics. I just pointed out the problems with it by extending the claims further.