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Comment by wesselbindt | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure the folks who were tortured in Abu Ghraib were very happy that their toruturers bore no swastika. And I'm sure the Iraqi children who lost their entire families felt very blessed that the people who killed them were in fact the good guys. And the 130000 Mayans killed in the silent Holocaust? Well, imagine the added humiliation of knowing your killers were armed by Nazis. Phew, dodged that (metaphorical) bullet!

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This debate could continue forever since there's no single measure by which one can quantify how evil a nation is.

I will leave our audience to consider the 20th Century and decide for themselves how America compared to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, the USSR, Maoist China, Spain under Franco, Imperial Japan... etc.

"In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil."

Crazy how well this Hannah Arendt quote applies to both you and mid 20th century Germans.

'Anti US bias' (that's a direct quote, not a jingoistic insult I throw around) is different than a refusal to choose between evils.

Ok, from what you say, I get the sense that the applicability of the quote is non-obvious. I'll paraphrase the quote: "people who choose the lesser of two evils, forget that they chose evil".

In our conversation, we are essentially choosing between two parties: - The nazis, or the communists, or whatever. Let's call them the baddies. - America. The good guys!

I personally believe (and you do not have to agree with this, I realize that this is subjective) that murdering children and committing genocide is evil. The nazis committed a genocide, and so they are evil. Let's say the holodomor was a genocide, so the communists are evil too. Conclusion: the baddies are evil. It is also a fact that in the past 75 years or so, America has gone around the globe murdering children, and committing genocides. This is not up for debate. This is a fact. I have listed the examples countless times in this thread, I will not do so again. Conclusion: the good guys are also evil (if you believe murdering children is bad, which again, totally up to you).

In saying "but the nazis were worse!" in response to American murdering a million Koreans, you are effectively choosing the lesser evil (the nazis killed 6 million jews, 30 million Russians, in a fairly short timespan, whereas the US has killed about 12 million over the decades, the nazis are worse). And in saying that we did pretty well in the American century, you are dismissing the genocides, the murders, the torture that the US is responsible for. You're forgetting that the US is also evil. When you say we did alright under American hegemony, you are completely dismissing the suffering, overexploitation, destabilization, and violence that the US has meted out on the global South.

Our thread doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists in the Chomsky-fied world of the 21st Century. This is a world in which quite a few people really do defend the regimes I mentioned, as though there were no difference between totalitarianism and a liberal democracy.

Note that I made a point of defending America in the 20th Century, not the 21st.

Because, at the moment, America has an authoritarian leader.

And I wonder if people who obsess on America's bad side, even know the difference!

Considering the last HN thread I commented on was full of comments in support of the anti-American yet horrifying Iranian regime, I don't have much hope.

I'm talking about the 20th century as well. The silent holocaust was in the 80s, east Timor extended from the 70s to the 90s, the highway of death and the gulf war was in the 90s, the invasion of Vietnam and the illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos was in the 60s, the mass killings in Indonesia were in the 60s, arming the Mujahideen (ultimately leading to 9/11) was in the 80s, bombing Korea, killing 20% of its population was in the 50s, the overthrow of the democratically elecred Allende leading to the reign of Pinochet, the terror they've inflicted on Cuba by Poisoning crops and the sanctions, the coup in Iran, the assassination of Lumumba, and so on, and so forth. On the whole, America has absolutely terrorized the world. And yes, that has been quite nice for the beneficiaries of this reign of terror, but to say the world did well in the American century is just wrong.

And regarding the support for Iran, it's possible to be supportive of a party you're otherwise critical of. Sure, the Iranian regime executes gay people, but do you think Israel's bombs and famine somehow make an exception for gay people? One side is worse, and it's the one that's been committing an ethnic cleansing for 77 years.

I'm tempted to take apart that list of American evils, one by one, because in the cases with which I am familiar, it is Chomsky-level reductive, but that would take a few pages of writing. Again, there is a problem with this sort of discussion:

  This debate could continue forever since there's no single measure by which one can quantify how evil a nation is.

I wrestled over what I'm about to say, because it's condescending, but: it's one thing to read about the past, and it's another to live through it.

So many things feel real to me that might not if I were younger.

I grew up... surrounded by adults who lived through WWII, ...hoping for tens of millions suffering under Apartheid to be free, ...hoping for the Wall to come down and free hundreds of millions from Soviet oppression (not for ideological reasons, but because it was at North Korean levels), ...rooting for the Chinese protest movement to win. And so much more.

Thankfully, for the first half of my life, the world kept inching toward progress (and what I would give for young people to live through the 1990s!).

Then we had 9/11, and America embraced its worst side. That America is the only America young people know. That's a shame, because many of them now, politically, are sprinting straight towards the propeller-blades.

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