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Comment by halestock | Hacker News Reader

Very much the latter. Another comparable example is the accidental US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade[0] - almost no one in the US (or much of the rest of the world) even remembers this incident, but to this day China still treats it as an example of US imperialism/hostility.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...

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I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but ...

I can believe the bombing of the Chinese embassy was intentional. The story I have read:

Approximately 1 month prior an F-117 stealth was shot down and the USAF did not attempt to further destroy the wreckage, considering that the technology would not be of any great advantage to Russia, However, when it became clear through intelligence, that sensitive bits of the wreckage had been sold to China, for whom it would be a great advantage there was a bit of flustered panic which resulted in the bombing of the Chinese embassy and the subsequent claim it was a mistake.

To be fair, if China spent several weeks bombing a country that the US did not want it to bomb and, as part of that bombing, China bombed the US embassy there and then said that it had been an accident, I think that this incident would be well remembered in the US 20 years later and many people in the US would doubt whether it had really been an accident.

My (young, bald, very white) professor in college was in China when that happened. He got a call while in his hotel room from a friend telling him to stay inside, so naturally he ran outside to see what was going on. As soon as he got out the door and found out from a very large crowd of very angry people, he said he threw his hands up in the air and yelled "I'm Canadian!" and promptly returned to his room as quickly as he could.

I always get a bit of a sad chuckle that we Americans tend to default to that whenever confronted abroad.

I had a similar experience in Salzburg in the first few days after the first Iraq War started.

Lots an anti-American banners, a few even hung on churches. Couldn't get a table at a restaurant anywhere, tipped off by my accent, I expect. Lots of ugly talk from the tour guide before he finally decided he didn't want to take money from Americans anymore and kicked me and my wife out of the tour group.

Took my wife and my money back to Vienna, flew out, and never went to Austria again.

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