My taxes have frequently paid for US Gov led torture. If we ever hold China accountable in a meaningful way, it won't be due to authentic moral outrage.
Interestingly your premise is a form of forever torture that forever punishes and condemns entire nations of people even if they weren't directly (or even indirectly) responsible for the actions of a small group of people.
Every American is denied the ability to have authentic moral outrage because of what a very small number of people did eg at Abu Ghraib? I disagree. That's an absurd premise and it means a nation can never change its behavior or move beyond past mistakes. In fact, your premise encourages a nation to never change, because you're forever condemned no matter what you do.
It's a collectivist punishment system. The kind of thing that has been used to apply inherited or associative morality based on nation, group or race for thousands of years. It's straight out of the old testament.
Let's examine that however. So because of things that happened in the past, or things outside of your direct control, a person or government decades or centuries later can never hold a position of "authentic moral outrage." How about people that were disgusted by acts of US torture and voted their conscience accordingly (electing Obama instead of the war hawk McCain, for example), do they get to have authentic moral outrage? Can you clarify how your all-powerful god-like moral ruling works in practice?
The French can never have authentic moral outrage because Napoleon murdered millions of people and the French did horrible things in Vietnam? Is there an expiration timer on any of this?
The Russians can never have authentic moral outrage because of what happened under the USSR and because of what Putin is doing currently?
The people of Belgium are forever condemned to never possess authentic moral outrage because of King Leopold II?
The people of Cambodia can possess no authentic moral outrage, regardless of their involvement in the genocide and that condemnation shall last an eternity.
The Germans....
Shall I continue? These are all intentionally extreme examples to make a very obvious point.
The world found out about Abu Ghraib, and the US was shamed, humiliated, and Obama issued an executive order specifically banning the CIA's torture techniques in 2009 in response. The NDAA of 2016 also further restricted abusive interrogations. The people of the US were widely disgusted. It was very public as a matter, it was broadcast to the American people 24/7 for months. Culturally we had a large, very public debate over it as a nation. That was for a few dozen cases of torture. The world's superpower - which needed to have zero concern for the world's opinion - was very clearly humiliated by it and took action to prevent torture in the future (and yes, one can be reasonably skeptical of that being successful; as time goes on the US should be judged by its actions and not words on the matter).
Why should a nation of people or its large government/s be comprehensively denied "authentic moral outrage" because of the actions of an exceptionally small part of the population? A plainly absurd position to take on how morality should work.
The only reason we got mad about Vietnam, Cuba, South America is not because of "Communism" as an abstract concept. It's because the government seized or threatened to seize assets. See also Pinochet. We had no problem with him.
The reason why this is relevant to China is that China has made a lot of people a lot of money. So they commit a genocide every so often. As long as it doesn't cost American capital money, we'll ignore it.
Why were people so up in arms about Cuba, but not Ethiopia? Well, Cuba is much closer, true. But the real issue was that people owned stuff in Cuba. There was no significant interest in Ethiopia.
Ok, then convince your side to submit to the UN-appointed war crimes tribunal in The Hague. As long as the The Hague Invasion Act is still in force, that claim is hollow.
This goes back to the debate between Augustine, a former good vs evil Manichean, and Pelagius. One believed that "everyone is bad" and warned against excessive hubris, while the other believed that those who choose to do evil do so out of their own free will.
In the pre-9/11 world, there was the idea that torture was a relic of the past, and we had made moral progress beyond such barbarities. But it was the leading liberal democracy in the world, rather than some third world dictatorship, that reintroduced the practice.
The United States trained the guerillas that eventually became the Vietcong in Vietnam, and the country went to war under the Gulf of Tonkin false flag. Similarly, the United States invaded Iraq under the WMD charade. In Afghanistan, it promoted the Islamist fundamentalism of the mujahideen, in order to fight the USSR friendly government that the Afghans themselves elected. The mujahideen became the Taliban, and a similar story of is true of ISIS and al-qaeda (US trained them to do their dirty work then lost control of them)
I don't think the United States is the root of all evil. But it's important to realise that the Chinese don't think of their country as an evil dictatorship, the same way that you don't view your country as "the bad guys". Rather, as St Augustine put it in his doctrine of original sin, we are all "the bad guys" and we need to reflect on the worse demons of our nature.
We have forgotten the Augustinian lessons, indulging in excessive pride and hubris, and failing to reflect on the same pattern that has been occurring cyclically for millennia.
I don't support China either - I don't believe in the "good vs evil" narrative that was alien to the Ancient Romans and Greek pagans. The idea that there's historical moral progress culminating in the values of the United States is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. In Hegel's philosophy of right, which was fashionable in Germany, he believed that history culminated in the values of the Prussian constitutional monarchy.
It's unlikely that China will become a superpower. The United States, in the next few years, will no longer hold world wide hegemony, as it seems to be distancing itself from Europe among other countries. It's also unlikely that we'll return to a bipolar world, similarly to the period of the Cold War. It's more likely that we're moving towards a multi-polar world.
The US certainly doesn't have a stellar Human Rights record in wars or other; but it's mostly because of incompetence and not as an agenda to keep one race only.
I am curious what would happen should you face those countless victims of "incompetence" and explain it to them.
They are the ones who turned a blind eye to Rwanda and gave the guy who sold the guns a top job, aren't they?
> You're black. You're not even a nier. You're an African.
On 11 January 1994, General Roméo Dallaire, commander of UNAMIR, sent his "Genocide Fax" to UN Headquarters.[108] The fax stated that Dallaire was in contact with "a top level trainer in the cadre of Interhamwe-armed [sic] militia of MRND." The informant—now known to be Mathieu Ngirumpatse's chauffeur, Kassim Turatsinze,[109] a.k.a. "Jean-Pierre"—claimed to have been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. According to the memo, Turatsinze suspected that a genocide against the Tutsis was being planned, and he said that "in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis".[110] Dallaire's request to protect the informant and his family and to raid the weapons caches he revealed was denied.[110]
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/parliamentary-committee-uig...
My kingdom for a little perspective.
Which might be your goal.
Also China has gone to war with and enslaved as many people as they had the capacity for. Pretending otherwise is weird.
I have no goals. I am on HN just to exchange opinions when I need a 5 min rest from a programming.
>"Also China has gone to war with and enslaved as many people as they had the capacity for. Pretending otherwise is weird."
Oh. I am sure thy did. But the end result is what counts. They sure treated their own citizens like crap. But in business of f..g up other countries I think they're bit behind comparatively. Might change in a future so we will see / or not.
It should be obvious to you that something that effects millions of people is much worse than the CIA thing that only effected a couple hundred.
I'm unclear why you or anyone else might be creating analogies in your heads. It's even less clear why you want me to have made them.
Intervening in another's country internal affairs leads to a war. UN is a nice idea, though it doesn't work in reality. To apply for an asylum, you need to leave the country. Low likelyhood of happening.
I explain why its wrong to my kids. What then?
As sad as it is, we can't do much if anything.
This isn't a problem that will just go away by wishful thinking or by being ignored.
Not necessarily. Anti apartheid campaigns for South Africa kinda worked for example.
1/ « Keep an eye on » is different than « Intervene ». We have to have satellites out there mapping this stuff in excruciating detail, and spies tracking who is responsible for what, and special forces hit them if they step out in a zone where they can be hit. The people who perpetrate this must live in fear.
2/ The UN is full of problems, but if a resolution grants universal asylum to Uighurs anywhere in the world, then at least those people will know there is somewhere they can escape to. That’s something.
3/ Your kids might one day be in a position to do something about it. Telling them why this is wrong, and why they should care, might just be the most important thing you do in your life.
I don’t want to start a big argument. I just want to say that we can all do little things that do matter collectively.