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Comment by _uhtu | Hacker News Reader

Kissinger's death was where I really started detaching myself from news media entirely. It was extremely hard to find an article or video that didn't say the exact same thing in almost identical wording: "was kissinger a war criminal? well he was certainly controversial but his influence stood large". No, objectively, he was a war criminal. Bombing Cambodia and several other actions were, factually, legally, war crimes. There's no way to two sides it.

Even though I'd firmly disagree with it, I'd much rather read an article that says "yeah, he was a war criminal, but war crimes are okay when America does them because America good." Instead you get this washed out nothingness where we as a society can't reflect on anything.

It Reminds me of the scene in the Big Short where they're trying to convince the reporter to run the story on the obvious pump And dump, and the guys like "hey I've got a family to feed."

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I think it’s hard for an obituary to definitely call someone a war criminal when he was never tried, much less convicted, of a war crime. That’s not to say he shouldn’t have been or his actions don’t qualify, but an obituary is supposed to be somewhat neutral and not an opinion piece, and the facts are that he’s been labeled (perhaps fairly) a war criminal by many, but never actually convicted.

Agreed. For a comparison, the BBC obituary on Bin Laden, whom a lot of people would happily condemn without reservation as a terrorist, shows the same kind of detached neutrality. The second mention is "Saudi-born dissident".

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-10741005

We can thank the United States non-participation in the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court for that. Since they can't convict us of war crimes, by default no American can be a war criminal.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but refuses to accept that it's a duck...it's still a duck.

The US isn't a part of the war crimes part of the ICC, therefore no US citizen will ever be tried there. Thus, by your logic, there can be no US war criminals.

I think the actual nuance here is that, in the words of the West Wing, all war is a crime. Sometimes the term "war criminal" is used fairly, other times it's trotted out to try and tar people/movements. The US knows this and does it, which is why it doesn't submit to the circus. I'm not excusing the horrible stuff the US has done, but I think I agree that humanity hasn't gotten to the point where we can really fairly avoid or judge war crimes.

Were you following the news during the "War on Terror"/"War in Iraq" era? Because the Kissinger coverage, while infuriating, pales in comparison to the horse shit the media was uncritically publishing in the early 2000s. The story that sticks out in my mind the most is the Tora Bora mountain fortress/lair[1], but there are plenty of others. Many of those responsible for this crap failed upwards[2].

[1] https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tora-bora-tunnel-kin...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Frum

Or the 3d visualization of a very similar complex supposedly under a hospital in gaza, that a major US newspaper ran just a few months ago. The exact same institutions are doing the exact same things now.

The US propaganda regime is like a champagne tower. The most self-serving but still superficial plausible narrative is the top glass. Most people are caught here. If you reject this, you will be presented with a choice between several semi-mainstream counterculture narratives some of which are closer to the truth and some of which are more obviously false. If you reject all of those, you will get another set, all of which are more “fringe” and some of which are more obviously false but some of them will be even closer to the truth. If you pick an option that is even more of a lie than the mainstream you become a conspiracy theorist. If you pick the option closest to the truth at every level and discover how even that is a lie, moving on the more fringe level below, you will eventually find yourself with the whole truth, which is indeed quite fringe.

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