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Comment by raspasov | Hacker News Reader

This is so on point. A prime example of the hypocrisy of western governments. Until we have leaders that truly do what they claim to believe, we deserve everything that comes upon us.

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That hypocrisy is one of the legitimate reasons we are often hated around the world. We talk about freedom and justice but we work behind the scenes to prop up tyrannies that are every bit as bad as the "enemies of freedom." We've been doing this for decades and it's destroyed any moral authority we might have once had in the world. That sort of trust, once destroyed, is hard to earn back.

Yes. At best we're the better evil. Our government is driven by money - the military industrial complex , big pharmaceuticals, private interest. All stuff that Lawrence Lessig talks about.

Just look at our political debates. All of the talk is dumbed down, feel-good, wishy-washy moral statements about religion, God, pretentious ideologies about "freedom", "being the beacon of the world", etc.

Our leaders came from society. All of this is our collective fault. We all can and need to do better.

Don't get me wrong. I am sure Saudi Arabia is much worse. They don't even allow women to vote and treat them like objects. Well, we were there not that long ago.

So like I said, we're most likely better, but not angels.

So hypocrisy justifies spraying random Frenchmen with machine guns? Think harder.

Torture and murder doesn't justify more torture and murder but it often creates it.

It doesn't justify it, but what it does do is undermine our moral authority. "Why do you condemn the Paris terror attacks and at the same time help prop up regimes that chop peoples' heads off in public? Isn't that almost the same thing?"

The thing is that most people condemn the "spraying random Frenchmen with machine guns", but applaud when the day after France carpet bombs Raqqa, a Syrian city with a population of over 200000 with the civilians being trapped in the oppression of ISIS.

Apparently, then the death of dozens of innocent civilians which had no choice other than getting trapped between bombs falling from the sky or ISIS militants controlling the city borders, is justified because "look what happened in Paris!".

From what I read, it seemed like the French were not given the option to carpet bomb Raqqa but instead got to fulfill a long list of kill orders on strategic targets instead of the usual method of doling them out to different allies to take care of.

Well, thanks to the extensive coverage (/s) we all know how it went down.

Does that in turn justify bombing innocent children in hospitals in Syria? France just nuked the whole country. Why are innocent children being roped into this?

And what about France's own colonial and terrorist in Africa that no one wants to talk about?

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