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Comment by youpassbutter | Hacker News Reader

Lunacy. Under what rule, law or authority are we just allowed to bomb/attack other nations? Imagine if china, russia or any other nation acted like this. The media would be screaming bloody murder and calling other nations evil, depraved, etc. When we do it, it's "strikes on chemical weapons sites", it's for democracy, it's for freedom. One day, I hope leaders of all nations are held to account for their crimes and not just the leaders of poor and weak countries. And most importantly, I hope one day the media are held accountable for their part in war mongering as well. Rule of law should be applied to all, not just the poor and weak.

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When was it clear to allies to enter WWII?

Should we have waited for the rule of law there too?

I agree we should disengage from the nation building nonsense Bush and Obama got into, but when Pol Pot copy cats come along, root them out.

> but when Pol Pot copy cats come along, root them out

Probably not the best example. The "free countries" did nothing about the Khmer Rouge and it was left to post-unification Vietnam to invade Cambodia and clean up the mess.

Vietnam was then sanctioned for its aggressive invasion of a sovereign nation..

They unequivocally did the right thing. He was killing millions while the likes of Chomsky defended his unnamed regime.

> Imagine if china, russia or any other nation acted like this.

Russia invaded and bombed Ukraine. Still meddling there, btw.

I mean, he did gas his own people...

The president is supposed to get approval from congress before entering into war. As citizens who are subject to a draft, we should care greatly about this...

Mattis recently admitted that there's still no evidence of the chemical weapons usage from last year.

Chemical weapons inspectors are supposed to be starting their work on the 14th.

And we start bombing with confidence the day of?

Nothing is adding up. LET ALONE THE LEGALITY OF IT.

Sorry, I'm mad.

And how do you know this exactly? By listening to the same media WMD drum beat that caused the Iraq war?

Of course he did. Just like saddam had his soldiers kill babies in incubators. You have to be extremely naive to believe government and media lies.

Look, we can only go by what we're told. We, the people, have no ability at all to ascertain the veracity of assertions of this nature made by our government. It's not that we're naive, it's that we are in no position to go to Syria and watch every second of the hostilities so that attribution can be made independently of government agencies and the media.

If Assad did do it, then we are simply responding to what he did. If Assad didn't do it, well, it's not the first time our government has lied to us. Either way, this military action will not have much effect on the outcome of the conflict so it's not as if we're messing anything up too bad.

That's a horrible way to go about modeling reality.

What the government says is only tiny portion of the information we have on any situation.

We also have what 200 other governments say, what academics say, what thousands of different journalists say, what historical precedent says, and what your own logic and intuition says.

Your obedience to the government narrative makes you the perfect tool of those in power.

Russia annexed parts of Ukraine and Georgia.

what are you talking about? Russia has troops on the ground there. They invaded the Ukraine as well. They shot down a plane full of Dutch people flying to Malaysia.

We have a rule of law. It's called the Geneva Protocol and Assad violated it!

Not that it makes it right, but Russia essentially did just attack Ukraine one day in order to annex Crimea

Right. And russia was sanctioned and attacked mercilessly by the media and the international community.

That's my point. Russia was wrong. And so are we.

Where's the rule of law for the Syrian civilians who were subjected to a horrific chemical attack?

It happened, and Assad did it, whether or not you believe it.

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