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Comment by galaxyLogic | Hacker News Reader

Right. What propagandists often use is the logical fallacy called "Whataboutism". Russia invaded Ukraine but what about US invading Iraq, doesn't that show that Russia is no worse than US?

The fallacy in that argument is that Russia is doing its war-crimes right now at this moment. What US did in Iraq was far less bad, and most importantly whatever US did in Iraq they stopped doing. But Russia has not stopped bombing Ukraine. Therefore, at the current moment, we must condemn Russia for what it is doing now, not US for what it did long ago and stopped doing.

And even if it was true that US was and still is as bad as Russia then so what? That doesn't give Russia the license to do war-crimes. Two bads don't make it right. Hey, I may be bad, but what about Al Capone? He was much worse than I!

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very few people blame Iraq for having been invaded by USA, it was a war of aggression and unfinished business

as is the case with ukraine, it is not ukraine or NATOs fault that cities are being leveled, Putin is in control of Russia's artillery, no one else

We did cause 1M deaths.... and our troops are still in Iraq.... you should be protesting Biden for maintaining the troops there still just as hard as Russia, and boycotting products sold by the US.

FROM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_tr.... :

"On 9 December, Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition announced that the coalition's combat mission had concluded, formally transitioning remaining U.S. forces in the country to an advisory, assistance, and training role."

Assuming the "We did cause 1M deaths" is true (do you have a link?) that is exactly the whataboutism I was talking about. If it is true, it still in no way justifies what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

Not him but from 2007: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/16/iraq.iraqtimel...

This doesn't justify the mess in Ukraine tho and people really need to stop acting like it.

I think it’s important to draw a distinction here. Whilst America’s war of aggression was in no real way justifiable, Russia is on an entire another level. The Russians rape, loot and pillage with either impunity or active support from their military. We only recently got reports that they executed journalists when they entered certain cities earlier in the war, and have seen a number of cases of Ukrainian children being raped and killed by Russian soldiers.

True. Another logical fallacy propagandists use is "False Equivalency". Just because there might be some similarities between two cases does not mean they would be qualitatively equivalent in any sense. But some people will fall for that trick too, especially if they are so disposed.

You dont think NATO troops have done similar but its been covered up like the Chinese have covered up Tiananmen Square. We have some naive simpletons on HN!

I’m sure troops in every country have done reprehensible things, but as I said before the difference is that the Russian troops do this a lot and with the full support of there military and we have even seen there partners support there raping and looting in the past.

There’s no need to cover it up for the Russians cause it is fully supported.

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