As someone from the middle East (with a high chance of having Mongol blood), it does annoy me how much people are enamoured by Genghis khan. The guy was a brutal imperialist.
I was international student and met many at my university. It was mind boggling how almost everyone would celebrate their cultures' conquests & wars and at the same time call Western conquests evil and the worst thing.
It was also amazing how most of the Western students would agree that Western imperialism was horrible but never argue against glorification of other cultures horrible wars.
I am assuming the people who celebrate the wars of kings in their lands are more than 500 years old while Western colonialism sort of stopped just 50-100 years back.
So the Western atrocities are still fresh in the mind while people forget the 1000 year old atrocities.
E.g. when looking at Robert Mugabe's hostility towards Britain in particular (without wanting to justify his authoritarianism and violence) it is worth considering that he fought for independence, and though Britain as responsible for allowing Rhodesia to happen.
But the list is massive.
Are you forgetting about modern western imperialist adventures such as Iraq and Afghanistan, entering their 16th year? Where millions of civilians were and are still being killed, injured, displaced, tortured and all around stomped on in terms of human rights, led by some of the most powerful western nations in the world. These wars were cheered on by a good chunk of US and UK citizenry for years before they conveniently faded into the background.
http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/body-count.pdf
That's even ignoring the direct relations of these invasions to the more recent conflicts in Libya, Syria, and ISIS, the boogeymen armed and created by the same people who started these wars not long ago.
Western imperialism is alive and well.
And that western nations are supporting freedom fighters in Syria.
I'm not sure what a "thorough self evaluation" would actually mean. I don't think that's even remotely feasible, given the immense scope of the subject matter. What has happened is that certain elements within western civilization have focused their efforts on criticizing western civilization, some in good faith and some not, and the rest of western civilization has allowed them to do so. That is the part that is rare, just like suicide, and for the same reason.
It is rare everywhere. Even in the west.
We celebrate george washington and have statues, schools, etc named after racist slavers and genocidal murderers.
> It was also amazing how most of the Western students would agree that Western imperialism was horrible but never argue against glorification of other cultures horrible wars.
Really? You think most of us think western imperialism was horrible? We may give lip service to it, but we celebrate our heritage. From ancient greece to rome to the british empire to now our american empire, we celebrate our conquests and victories.
The standard trope amongst the british is that the british empire brought civilization and democracy to most of the world. Our justification for the american empire is that we bring "freedom" to the world.