They are not.
> I was talking about the present, with 20 years of many/most Russians just basking in Putin's killer tough guy shtick while he had his soldiers massacre and rape people indiscriminately, and invade countries around the region
Not differently from what US has done in the past 20 years.
Russians are responsible for Putin's actions no more than Americans are for what their DOD does.
> but suffice to say there are many people who think they would not be alive today if it were not for NATO's actions.
That doesn't imply, __again__, that it wasn't bad.
Many people would not be alive if Stalin hadn't defeat Hitler, that doesn't mean it was good.
> However, exponentially more innocent people were killed by the Serbs than those bombings ever killed. And civilian deaths were never the intention.
Arithmetic is the weapon of dictators, not of democracies.
> Whatever we might disagree on, I do think we can agree he was a war criminal, full stop. Whether he was convicted is irrelevant.
Failure to bring criminals to justice is the reason why the death of civilians is unacceptable.
In our democracies nobody is a criminal, unless convicted.
Even war criminals such as Milošević.
It's not enough to know they are criminals to kill them in a prison's cell, that's what people like Putin do.
But most of all, democracies should __protect prisoners at all costs__, not kill them (if your country hasn't abolished death penalty, it's not a real modern democracy and can't be taken seriously when talking about "freedom rights") not let them die in prison and not discard their deaths because they were enemies.
I call myself a democrat because I would never do to them what they would probably do to me.
If we go around bombing civilians and keep doing things like this, covering up the atrocities[1] with lies and false myths[2], we are in no position to believe we are better.
That's why NATO should not intervene outside of NATO territories, because that's what NATO pact is about.
Protecting its members, not policing the World, especially those parts of the World that we kept unstable with our bombs.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/us/us-airstrikes-civilian...