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Comment by MarcellusDrum | Hacker News Reader

The phrase "the free world" rubs me the wrong way. I'm obviously against what Russia is doing, any sane man would be. But as a middle eastern, the US to us has been 10x worse than Russia: They killed a million Iraqis, they killed Syrian civilians by bombing hospitals and schools. They overthrew a functional government in Libya, and they supported Syrian/Iraqi separatists (Kurds). They forcefully tried to build a military base in Lebanon. Not only that, but they also tortured, raped, and humiliated innocent Iraqis in Abou Gharib, without any major repercussions.

Just because the US did it, doesn't mean that Russia is justified or less wrong, both are wrong, and neither get to call out the other for humanitarian reasons.

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All good points. I am ashamed for both some of the things that happened and that way too few has been held responsible.

Please forgive those of us who where tricked into it, too young to vote etc.

I'll try to do my part to prevent more of it.

Edit: as for the phrase "the free world", read it to mean "freer to those inside it" if that helps.

> Please forgive those of us who where tricked into it, too young to vote etc.

Then you blame the voters of America when their government started an illegal war based on falsehoods.

Yes, UK and US foreign policy has been, and in many places around the world, is currently, ethically, morally questionable.

As a UK citizen, of voting age for 20 years now, I'm guilty as charged. I voted for Blair before the Iraq war, but like many others protested on our streets in the build up (and I haven't voted for them since).

Doesn't make us wrong about Putin though.

I'm right there with you. I voted for Bush in 2000 based on his education platform; when it was clear the war was a major mistake that he wouldn't admit to, I tried to vote him out in 2004.

So you’re to blame for an illegal war started after 2000? Because that was the initial, implied claim.

Elections have consequences but electors sometimes need to come face to face with those who bear the consequences to remember that.

Voters aren’t responsible for war crimes unless war crimes were part of the election program. But blame yourself all you want. Your impotent guilt is not my problem.

If you think the US has been worse for the Syrians than Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of its cities, I cannot take the rest of your argument seriously.

The US overall has been worse to the Middle East overall than Russia is my argument. You knew that, of course, but you chose the vaguest claim in my argument, and ignored the rest which are also valid just to make yourself feel better. Which is fine, of course.

Reading this for a second time and sticking to what I said about being ashamed for many of the things the west did I'd also like to remind that Russia hasn't really done much at all in the middle East.

But I can remember stories from my childhood about Russians tying up Afghan fighters and driving over them with tanks to make an example, so again without defending drone strikes on weddings or Abu Ghraib or anything other spectacularly bad I

1.) think it wouldn't have been much better if it was the Russians who went in

2.) think the reason why the Russian government hasn't been involved in more badness in the middle east until recently has not been its peaceful nature but the fact that they have been cash strapped.

Your first response is very respectful and much appreciated. As for this comment, you have a fair point. I don't doubt that if you ask Ukrainians right now, they will say that Russia is 10x worse than the USA, and they would be correct. Looking at the big picture, all current superpowers are genocidal power hungry tyrants, to various degrees.

Looking at history, Russia seems like the lesser evil here. It makes far more sense to have security concerns over your backyard. Attacking the local mosque on the other side of the river, because a Muslim robber came by is not self-defense

Tell that people living in ukraine at the moment. They certainly think the same way.

Ukraine is sovereign European country, not Russian backyard.

If you want to be historically (more) accurate, you might want to go back to Churchill's decision to extend UK power to this region of the world, in an attempt to get the UK fleet to move from coal to oil power.

You could also look at some of the responses and choices made by the people/cultures native to this region over the years since then. Yes, "cultures" is plural.

While I think that’s true to some extend, I have the feeling that Afghanistan is regressing now, which means that it must’ve arguably been better than it was before. at least for some half of the population.

You can certainly question whether that was worth the cost.

I agree with your point that "the free world" seldom lives up to the values it proclaims.

The difference might be that at least it proclaims them, and good people like yourself can hold them accountable to those values.

> good people like yourself can hold them accountable

Seems to me you can't really hold the US military to account, any more (or less) than you can the US police. Maybe a win here-and-there for political PR, but overall no.

Lol, what? Remember when US Navy shot down a commercial airliner, killing some two hundred people? None of the responsible was punished for that; they got decorated instead.

I suppose then if Nazi Germany just killed Jews and other undesirables in Germany and didn't try take over Europe then we should just stand back and do nothing because otherwise millions of Germans would also die? I wonder why people here seem to consider violent dictatorships and other such governments in equal standing with democracies.

There are plenty of countries with active genocidal events going on right now. Should we invade all of them?

Well in a perfect world yes we would. However the world is not perfect, and most "white" people so to speak care more about white people than some Muslims in the Middle East or some Africans in Africa, that's just the reality of the situation. Hence why they're more interested in what goes on in European countries than in other ones.

So we go in, kill everyone doing the genocide, leave, and then another group takes power and starts doing more genocide.

Do we do it again?

Genocide the genociders... what could go wrong

In a perfect world we do that and develop a plan that allows the country to develop and hence stop the circular rot like that.

Yes but at least the US had probable cause to go into Iraq. The world was pretty much behind that decision. We were attacked, civilians were attacked directly, none of that conflict would have occurred if Iraq or neighboring countries stopped their terrorism.

What you’ve just said isn’t any different from Russian propaganda.

Uhuh, isn't any different from calling Ukraine fiction, that it basically never existed, everyone is neonazi. Annexing Crimea, East of country and then attacking under deluaion claims.

> everyone is neonazi

No, but to say that the instigators of anti-russian sentiment in Ukraine are not mostly Neo-nazi's is ignorant. These articles go back years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right...

https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/136008/commentary_56.pdf

https://euromaidanpress.com/tags/azov-battalion/page/2/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40871070

The world was not 100% behind the US invasion of Iraq, or even 20%. The US had the world's support, after 9/11, to go into Afghanistan. The US was emboldened by that and attacked Iraq with very little global support, for reasons unrelated to the 9/11 attack.

I would question if you were alive at the time then because the world basically thought our evidence was bullshit to go into Iraq but we went in anyway and the evidence turned out to be bullshit.

> Yes but at least the US had probable cause to go into Iraq.

Oh my, this is disturbing. What was the probably cause? WMD's? :^/

Assad and Putin intentionally bombed hospitals in Syria

Not the US. Maybe they did some time unintentionally, but with Putin it was part of his plans.

> they supported [the] Kurds

Of course, the Kurds and the US and Iraq were fighting together against Daesh (the so called Islamic State).

You're giving the impression that you like Assad, Putin, Erdagon, possibly Daesh as well. What kind of person are you, I start wondering.

Agreed that the US has done lots of bad things in the middle east though. (Eg helping the Talibans climb to power, supporting Saddam Hussein for quite long etc)

USA unsupervised services created Daesh, and supplied most of its weapons. This was done to destabilize Assad, and of course to enrich the weapons manufacturers. The idea that Assad and Daesh were ever allies is bizarre.

> The idea that Assad and Daesh were ever allies

No one here said they were.

You're misreading.

"Seems someone likes Assad, maybe X" does not mean "Assad and X are allies".

It's possible for someone to like both Stalin and Hitler although they weren't allies (in the end).

> They overthrew a functional government in Libya

That's not really an argument in itself tho.

It is if you look at the state of Libya today. They overthrew Ghadafi for the sole reason of him being anti-Imperialist, killing and ruining the lives of millions in the process.

More or less. They overthrew Gadaffi, but the country tore itself apart.

I’m all for blaming the US where it’s warranted, but I don’t think that particular instance is it.

I'd like (or hate, actually) to see what would happen to the US if a foreign power was able to fund a terrorist militia and overthrow their government. You have too much faith in the morals of humans who don't have a strong leadership that can hold them accountable.

Obviously that's an important point, but OP's assertion has more to do with the cultural and practical history playing a role in the aftermath of a government falling. The US has been at relative peace internally for 150 years and has a relatively strong bent towards republican government. That's not something that can be quickly undone. The government "falling" in some countries is as simple as a particular leader being eliminated. In the US a leader being permanently removed from power on a regular cadence is not only normal but required. If someone came in and eliminated the current president (and his cabinet), the most likely outcome is we would just elect another. The second most likely is we would fracture into sub-nations / states, but still elect another. I don't see the scenario where we all start trying to kill one another -- there's very little difference between people across the US and most of us have family on both sides of the political spectrum / physical location.

The differences between Libya and other nations were not unknown before France and USA started destroying its government.

And yet the USA would be all pissy if some other country overthrew their government.

The difference is the voters of the U.S. punished the presidents who did those things with huge political defeats that have now made most oversea invasions and hawkishness very unpopular political positions at the moment. Russians have a much tougher road to hoe to do the same thing, but it needs to be done for the moral reasons you lay out here.

Not true, both got re-elected.

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