Comment by themgt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by themgt | Hacker News Reader

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Why don't you apply the same reasoning to Gaddafi's regime and Syria/Russia/Al-Qaeda?

What reasoning? First of all I'm an American citizen, so I concern myself more with what my country does with my tax dollars than what other countries do, especially within their own borders or in situations that don't directly affect American citizens. I don't believe America's job is global law enforcement. It's like asking an American "why don't you apply the reasoning that President Trump is corrupt to President Ali Bongo of Niger? Why aren't you calling for President Ali Bongo's arrest? Double standard?"

also a problem that the West exists I suspect

It's fascinating that my criticism of the US/NATO bombing and invading and occupying other countries leads you to suspect I have a problem "that the West exists". In your conception perhaps "the West" would cease to exist as such if it were not the global hegemon?

yet not a peep when these regimes torture and kill people by the thousands

Saudi Arabia tortures and kills people by the thousands. If China or Russia invaded Saudi Arabia and attempted to turn it into a client state using the justification of Saudi misdeeds, would you support them? I suspect not, but we're back to "when the US/NATO does it it's good, when US/NATO adversaries do it it's bad" being the "rules-based order" many believe should exist.

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

> but we're back to "when the US/NATO does it it's good, when US/NATO adversaries do it it's bad"

You're talking about the hypothetical situation when China or Russia would invade a country to stop the regime from torturing and killing people by the thousands. And you proceed to claim that when they would do it, the West would say "it's bad".

There have been plenty of occasions in, say, the last 75 years where China or Russia have invaded some country. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but not one single time was it to stop the regime from torturing and killing people by the thousands.

Otoh there have been, and still are, plenty of regimes that are killing and torturing like that, and which receive the full support from China and Russia.

> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but not one single time was it to stop the regime from torturing and killing people by the thousands.

This is literally one of the arguments put forth by Putin for intervention in Ukraine. The most often-cited example I hear from Russians is the fire in Odessa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/ukraine-dead-o...

And the government was resorting to airstrikes the same month: https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-launches-air-strikes-a...

Can you imagine if the US response to CHAZ/CHOP was to drop JDAMs on Seattle?

Now one can counter-argue "not enough people were dying to justify foreign intervention", to which the obvious retort is "who gets to make that determination?"

Small correction. Bongo is (was) the ruler of Gabon, not Niger.

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