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Comment by krisoft | Hacker News Reader

> So how can we look at Russia and say they are committing war crimes if the US blatantly does things like this.

I don't understand what you are saying here. More than one group can commit war crimes.

I believe what the grandparent post actually meant was, "This undermines our moral posture in accusing Russia of war crimes." Which is true.

It also makes us more threatening which in turn is more likely to provoke a violent response to our mere presence.

That assumes that everyone is American. I’m not. Even if I were I did not commit war crimes, nor did most of the people who post on this forum.

So it is not true that it undermines “our” moral posture. That is just rethorical gymnastic.

I think the US militaries have insufficient controls to uncover and punish war crimes, and the “American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002” is particularly disgracefull. I believe the US should do better.

That being said when Russian troops intentionally shell civilians that is a war crime.

I apologize if there wasn't enough context to understand that both I and the grandparent of the person I replied to are Americans. When I used "we" and not "the U.S." it was because I was specifically speaking as a U.S. citizen.

This is referred to as "Whataboutism". Russia has a colorful history of using it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#History

I feel like it's still worth considering that despite the existence of this strategy, acknowledging it doesn't necessarily repair the damage of being seen as hypocritical. Evoking "whataboutism" could even be seen as a sort of counter-deflection in some cases.

The solution is simple: don't use whataboutism. Acknowledge history and context and appreciate that moral relativism absolves no one of their own actions.

This case of excusing Russia's invasion of Ukraine because the US commits war crimes is gold medal mental gymnastics and really only makes sense in the context of the history of Russian propaganda.

> This case of excusing Russia's invasion of Ukraine

I double-checked the parent comments and not a single person did that.

No, it's called pointing out hypocrisy

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