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Comment by BeMoreSpecific | Hacker News Reader

Could you please specify to which part of "the West" is US more hostile than China? Being in/from EU, I think mostly everyone - going by recent public polls - is very happy about our partnership with the US given recent events, and a lot of people are already talking about the Chinese threat too. People here hoped China would take a pro-Ukrainian stance (with the TV presenter dressed in UA colors one time, etc), but that didn't materialize and instead China seems to be cooperating with Russia and people here dislike that a lot.

I haven't seen any serious claims (except from the remains of the pro-Putin nutcases, and the amount of these went to like 1/10000 the state before the war) about US hostility for a very long time - most people here think that giving up Afghanistan was a huge mistake. Most of my friends who didn't like the US acting as world police have said they were mistaken.

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Lots of people in EU, not to mention worlds two main technology hubs: China and India. Yes, US is the good guys this time, let’s hope it stays like this, but we can’t forget Middle East, same way we can’t forget Trump and resulting deterioration of human rights.

China did take anti-Russian stance. Their strategic investments were redirected to other countries. They are complying with embargoes, differently from Germany (https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1563534129534500874 for a somewhat related story) and some other western countries. Of course you won’t find it mentioned in mainstream western media.

Invading Afghanistan was a mistake, but most of all it was a crime against humanity. And the worldview that got US into that - same as worldview of Putin, essentially the belief that their country has god-given right to invade others - is still there. There are more similarities, like protecting their war criminals from justice. Or ideologically-motivated oppression: https://twitter.com/erininthemorn/status/1563223736681381888.

China or India are not "the West".

My local mainstream media is reporting about Germany correctly and in full, btw. But yeah, we like to shit on Germans, other nations might not be alike in that.

> but we can’t forget Middle East, same way we can’t forget Trump and resulting deterioration of human rights.

Agreed.

> same as worldview of Putin, essentially the belief that their country has god-given right to invade others

Crimes against humanity are happening in Afghanistan now in much greater number than when the US Army was there.

I think that coming to resolve problems such as were/are in Afghanistan is the correct thing to do (not saying the practice worked out perfectly and that there weren't problems). That's absolutely incomparable to Putin who's there to take children, gas/oil fields and access to Black Sea, not to help.

You can really claim with a straight face that invading Afghanistan and killing two hundred thousand random people was to help?

Because, well, that’s exactly what Rashists say about invading Ukraine. Once again: same mentality.

#whataboutism

"invading Afghanistan and killing two hundred thousand random people"

there's that word "random" again. You disqualify yourself from any serious discussions when you keep using that. You're throwing around crazy numbers like someone on The View.

>there's that word "random" again.

So you are saying all those droned kids were combatants, not random victims?

>You're throwing around crazy numbers like someone on The View.

Those are official statistics, you’ll find them quoted on Wikipedia. Let me guess: they look weird to you, because your media only reports loses on the invading side.

What Russians/Putin said doesn't really matter to me, there are no (significant amount of) fascists in Ukraine and no persecution of Russians was happening. Meanwhile, Taliban is very much real and their crimes against humanity are real too.

Taliban was just an excuse, some as “Ukrainian Nazis” are to Rashists. If US really wanted to hunt terrorists, they would invade Saudi Arabia instead.

Also - you really believe those two hundred thousand people killed, as “US aid to Afghanistan”, were Taliban?

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