If you want honest comparison, then you would always criticize your own family but never the neighbors family, even when they do exactly the same things, you find a way to show your family in bad light but neighbors family in good light.
This is what you (and Chomsky) do. This is what is nature of whataboutism.
These are the real double standards.
No, I criticize the worst actors more and less bad actors less. Russia China and USA are all rather bad and create a lot of misery outside their empire, and they sometimes do it to jostle for control.
However, I agree Chomsky appears to do it and I criticize him for it. I believe that we should criticize the WORST ACTORS FIRST, and solve the worst problems first, and then move on down the line. Chomsky believes one should criticize one's OWN country first, because that is where one has the biggest influence. I disagree, and asked him, how much did all his criticizing change USA? It invaded Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and destroyed many people's lives, just in the last 20 years.
I mean, you don't have to guess, I am on video (I linked you!) arguing with Chomsky about this very point!
Once again, to be clear: I criticize families regardless of whether they are mine or theirs. If anything, I feel MORE loyalty to my family, and my criticism is out of love. You know, with kid gloves. I think it would be absolutely fair for USA to face sanctions from the world community to stop its invasion of Iraq, just as Russia faces to stop its invasion of Ukraine. But, you and I obviously give more of a pass to USA than to Russia. What's funny and ironic, is that even with this pass, you somehow think I am biased towards Russia and hate USA.
Listen, Russia talks for years about its red lines next door, tries diplomacy, and then invades. Yes that's bad. USA would invade for far less, e.g. Bay of Pigs invasion. Meanwhile, USA employed chemical weapons and carpet bombed south Asian countries that never presented any threat to it, bombed more than any country in history ever. The USA's justification for doing so is just as messed up as the Russians: it is to "fight Communists over there". Laos presented a threat to USA? Please. It goes halfway around the world 3000 miles to bomb shit in Wild Weasel operations before their soldiers ever come in. It did so in Iraq, in Libya. And you don't even question it. I repeat: the LARGEST humanitarian crises in the world are in Yemen and Ethiopia, RIGHT NOW. And if I bring it up, all you can think is "whatboutism".
I mean, seriously, I told you Russia did FAR WORSE in Chechnya, and recently in Syria. Compare footage of Homs and Aleppo. They are truly wiped off the map. Destroyed. The cities are not standing. In Ukraine, every city is standing. The citizens are back. You can see footage of them today. Every city. Russia's army is capable of a lot more destruction than it does, and so is Ukraine's army. Do you understand, the UN official figures of civilians dead is 4000? This is the only warn in recent history where a country killed less civilians than its own troops got killed. Show me a single other army where this happened. Obviously both armies are holding back... BUT THE SHRAPNEL FROM CROSSFIRE IS WHAT KILLS CIVILIANS. And far more people can die from famines, if we don't stop this.
My concerns are people's lives, civilians, famines. Yours are what flag will fly over a city, and you treat "Ukraine" as a person. You talk like this: "Russia has no right. Ukraine feels this way or that way." The reason I say I'm a libertarian is because I think about individual people and families first. I don't think of "the interests of Ukraine" as much as the people, who have diverse lives and opinions.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Israel? I have discussed with rabid anti-Zionist people who focus on Israel in every issue first, despite it being 22nd in terms of actual bad actors. And they call any sort of argument "whataboutism" also. When you pick the bad actor country first and navel gaze at it for all bad issues while ignoring the problem everywhere else, you're biased against it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31602479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31603138
Criticizing does not help. It does not matter if you criticize the worst, or the second worst or the third worst actor.
Helping helps. The first important step in this is figuring out what will help. I explained it in the linked comments, so I will not repeat it here.
The way Chomsky addresses the issue makes him look dishonest and this removes all his credibility.
His failure to recognize genocide Serbians committed on Balkan is very repulsive for me. Also seeing him dance around Ukrainian question does create similar associations in me.
I will address Russia and Israel in other comment.
Everyone claims genocide in order to justify military action. To justify our invasion of Libya, we claimed there was a genocide there. In that case I can excuse the UN for thinking so, the security council unanimously authorized the intervention and it was rather international, which is why I blame Obama and USA far less for invading Libya. We all were under the impression at the time that genocide was taking place. But anyway, as you can clearly see, such an intervention created a failed state, which is rules by warlords and gangs now. The international community needs to have more cooperation and prevention of wars, its current methods are like bloodletting and leeches were for health interventions until we wised up and got scientific !
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/23/gaddafi-libya-...
The word genocide and concentration camps has been co-opted and cheapened to the point where Ocasio Cortez used it to refer to migrants held in detention on the border. Yes those are basically internment camps but not full blown concentration camps.
I will definitely press Chomsky on the Balkans next time we speak because it is one of the examples of NATO aggression, bombing civilians for regime change. The difference between that, with Ukraine war (as well as with Russo-Georgian war for instance) is that those wars ended quickly, otherwise MORE civilians would have died.
You go on and on about how “capitulation by Ukraine” is the only possible alternative and it’s going to lead to more Russian aggression. But that is plainly ridiculous fearmongering. Georgia is better off, Serbia is better off, than if they had continued to fight for a decade like Afghanistan. In fact, Zelensky already agreed on the main demands, including non membership in NATO, before Boris Johnson visit. If Ukrainian negotiators — whom I spoke to personally — took the negotiations seriously and spent more than 2 hours a day discussing one topic and ignoring others, we could have stopped the war by now.
You should listen to my vimeo video to see what Chomsky says about genocide in Balkans. I will press him on the timeline further. But I would like to ask you… what was so bad about Minsk II agreements? Why couldn’t Ukraine and Russia simply agree instead of both sides insisting “you go first, no you go first”. Don’t you see it is the incompetence of the politicians that causes the civilians to pay a heavy price, while the politicians sit in their safe spots and give interviews and make $$$… or even escape abroad. Same with Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas for example. You have to wake up and see that it is less about Country A vs Country B and more about the system screwing over the civilians.
All this could also be avoided tomorrow if the people (Catalonians, Kurds, Basques, Donbass, Crimeans) could hold referendums regularly that the international community would agree to oversee and respect. Demographics change over time and regions like Kosovo should be choosing the country to serve them, not the other way around.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31607305
I gave it now complete answer.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31607305
I will give multiple answers over the course of the day there.
Russian invasion in Donbas deliberately created a failed state ruled by warlords and gangs. It was no accident. The economy of the whole occupied region has been destroyed.
The main reason of reduced civilian casualties has been many fold in my opinion. First is timely evacuation before Russian forces had reached the populated areas. Around 14 million people fled their homes. Where this was not successful there were huge numbers of civilian casualties like in Mariupol where the estimated death toll is over 20000 people. Destruction of lives in Mariupol has been deliberate to set it as an example result of not surrendering. The actual number is also really unknown. Over 1000 of dead have been discovered in the liberated Kyiv region where many people were evacuated before Russian forces and where occupation was very short lived. Russian forces have not managed to take, or even reach large centers yet. Ukrainian air defense has been effective against bombing attempts and Russian capacity to use long range missiles is limited.
Most importantly, we also do not know what is really happening on occupied territories. Bucha massacre was only revealed after Russian forces were pushed out in hurry.
You are here mixing up many things like they are somehow comparable. You can't compare Serbia, where attacking civilians was not deliberate, or Georgia where fighting did not reach larger centers and was stopped because of international pressure, to Ukraine.
In fact mentioning NATO operation in Kosovo war here in any capacity demonstrates your complete lack of integrity. NATO campaign did not target civilians. In contrary only in Mariupol 600 people died in a single deliberate strike against clearly marked civilian shelter. This is 100 more people killed deliberately in a single strike than after full campaign in Kosovo war by accident (including Albanians used as human shield by Serbian forces).
Objective of the Kosovo war was to prevent Serbian (confirmed) planned genocide against Kosovo Albanians. Serbians committed deliberate planned genocide against other nations on Balkan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_Plan
It is sickening that there are people who call themselves libertarians and who deny this genocide.
Objective of the war in Ukraine, as has been clearly stated on numerous occasions, is genocide against Ukrainians. There are already numerous people who could be arrested based on the international law for committing incitement to genocide if they happen to travel out of Russia.
Minsk II, at least on paper, is restoring pre 2014 invasion situation and having a democratic referendum about the status of the region. I don't see why Ukraine should be against it and in my opinion Ukraine has made all the steps possible from its side to reach this situation. The agreement is very clear about pulling out all the Russian forces from the territory and about disarming other illegal armed groups. Ukraine can't do it. It can't pull out Russian forces, it was also not in any capacity to disarm the illegal armed groups with heavy weapons. Claiming otherwise and accusing Ukraine in any wrongdoing is extremely dishonest. No democratic referendum is possible if Donbas is still occupied by Russian forces and controlled by terrorist groups.
This conflict was beneficial for Russia. So it continued. I do not know why are you so eagerly supporting Russia's imperialist ambitions.
There is war in Ukraine because Putin thinks that it belongs to Russia. It is simple as that. How is it so hard to process for self claimed libertarians when this is what Putin himself clearly claims.
If you are so eager to give something to Russia, why not give Alaska? Why not give Sunny Isles Beach to Russia? Don't want to?
What if Ukrainians also don't want to give their land to Russia?
Well, they are there and I think they do not have any plan to go somewhere else. I think they have made it pretty clear by now.
The solution to end the conflict between people who call themselves Palestinians and Israelis comes down to the question: is there something that would make Palestinians satisfied in long term and is there somebody who can give it to them?
It comes down to this question because it looks to me that Israelis themselves are happy with the current situation, so they do not need anything.