I absolutely agree about leading from the moral high ground. It's been frustrating talking with ordinary Russians who are reluctant to condemn (even anonymously) that their invasion of Ukraine (including the targeted murder of civilians) is an atrocity because the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses and without UN approval. Of course, it's a significant error of degree to conflate these anomalies in US behavior with the standard behavior of Russia or China or whomever, but by behaving above-board we make it harder for bad faith people to conflate American behavior with that of various dictatorships.

EDIT: On the subject of dictatorships and the UN, there's a brief but insightful essay I recently came across recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30687498

> So many member states are themselves dictatorships that engage in horrible human rights violations—and they stick together. The latter point is key: the worst countries are far more united in protecting human rights abuses than the democracies are in protecting human rights.

> Of course, it's a significant error of degree to conflate these anomalies in US behavior with the standard behavior of Russia or China or whomever,

Why so? Perhaps for Iraq you've forgot about the fact that VP Cheney's former company made significant gains from that lie?

The idea that one side's lies and unjustified violence are better than the other side's is why the wars and hypocrisy continue.

Either we - the ones being served cake - call all BS or we don't. But ongoing mediocre excuses for mediocrity aren't working.

/rant

> The idea that one side's lies and unjustified violence are better than the other side's is why the wars and hypocrisy continue.

First of all, I'm advocating for American behavior to remain beyond reproach and I favor prosecuting the American officials who misled the American public in the case of the Iraq war.

That said, I heartily reject the binary categorization between unblemished and blemished countries because all countries fall into the latter group. Of course there are differences in the quantity and degree of lying and unjustified violence that your scheme glosses over--the idea that no country is better than say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia or Maoist China serves only gives rhetorical cover to the worst offenders/offenses: "who is Canada to criticize Nazi Germany considering its track record of unjustified violence against its own native population?". This is the worst kind of race-to-the bottom rhetoric.

Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc. are what happens when we start putting a rating on lies, justice, murder, etc. Yes, these are the extremes. But that doesn't justify a slippery slope that isn't - yet? - one of these historical extremes.

"Oh. Our lies and murders aren't as bad as {insert culture panic button here}" continue to work well for the elites, not so much so for the rest of us.

How about we put a cultural / sociopolitical price on say the USA's three-quarters of a trillion DoD budget? Certainly there's plenty of injustice that could be addressed with that type of $. But instead we buy into the status quo narrative?

That's not working. The point is, let's get our own house in order, instead of manufacturing a narrative that is bold-faced, shameless, hyprocricy.

You're framing this as a dichotomy between slippery slopes. We must either pretend that all sins are equivalent and thus give cover to the worst sins or we must use the fact that some sins are worse than others to allow the "better" side to backslide. The obvious alternative is to hold all parties account according to the severity of their guilt, and demand that everyone does better. In other words, the guilt of one party doesn't absolve the other or (as children understand) "two wrongs don't make a right".

> 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.

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.

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

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

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

No, it's called pointing out hypocrisy

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.

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

One can be a hypocrite and also be correct. Either a nation is committing war crimes, or they aren't. Either it's morally justified to oppose war crimes, or it isn't. You can't argue that the US should be punished for war crimes without also arguing that the US and NATO are correct to oppose Russian war crimes.

Otherwise, the argument is that Russia should be allowed to commit war crimes because the US gets to, which is at best an extremely childish way of viewing the world, wholly separated from morality.

Well the US isn't a party to the ICC so it can't be sued by it over war crimes in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute

The Rome Statute is tied to territory, so any US citizens that find themselves in a country that has signed the Rome Statute can find themselves facing war crimes tribunals, hence the Hague invasion act. Even with that act in place there's a swath of western countries that former US statesmen like Cheney and Kissinger won't go anymore.

It doesn’t need a treaty for something to be clearly wrong… and like wrong at any level.

I mean the poster at the top of this thread immediately tries to make some justification…

> This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization.

No! It’s just wrong! We should never do this to other human beings. Period. But you want a GOOD reason why not ?

Because the people you trained to torture abroad one day return home and get jobs like security outside the nightclub your teenage kids are going to. You’re literally training psychopaths which later get unleashed on the public at home.

Also we know torture doesn’t work for information gathering. It’s only useful as a tool of oppression. Which is why we’re actually using it.

But seriously. I can’t believe I need to make the case against torture. It’s just wrong.

The show "24" was an advertisement for torture. I got sucked in at first because it was a bit of a twist and exciting, but soon stopped out of disgust when I realized what was going on.

Exactly. And it came out Nov 6th 2001... not even a month after 9/11. Probably did a lot to shape an angry publics willingness to use torture as a tool in retribution. The writers of 24 (and later Homeland) talk about it here https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/magazine/the-creators-of-...

Do you really think they finished all of the casting calls, set design, filming, and editing from Sept 12 2001 to Nov 6th 2001?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_(TV_series)#Conception

No and I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy. They were opportunistic. I remember back then hearing an interview with the writers who were describing writing each episode of 24 on a weekly basis between episodes. And the article I linked to describes how they tried to use Homeland to reflect more seriously on the ideas around torture that first appeared in 24.

Ultimately they created a show that fed into the publics desire for revenge, post 9/11, and made a big success out of it.

What it leads to is the point I already made - the goal torture is oppression; to create fear and thereby obedience, not gathering information.

"Okay. But That's Worse. You, You Do Get How That's Worse, Right?" — NBC, The Good Place

Russia is basically stating the justification for the invasion of Ukraine by saying the US did it first in Iraq. The US has already proven how toothless the UN Security Council is and Russia is reinforcing that idea.

Wasn't that the point? That no country inside it could be acted against (veto), as otherwise neither China, Russia, nor the US would have agreed to join?

The US is friends with the regime that has the war crime tribunal, and Russia is not. In the end such things are disappointingly simple.

Neither the US nor Russia (nor China) recognize Den Haag as having authority over them. The US even has a law authorizing the president to use military force to prevent it from prosecuting US service members. It's pretty much irrelevant when it comes to any of those countries. And even outside of that, has ever anyone been prosecuted that didn't comprehensively loose the respective war?

The US is not a friend of the country as it made a law saying they would invade the Netherlands if required.

"The new law authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court, which is located in The Hague. This provision, dubbed the "Hague invasion clause," has caused a strong reaction from U.S. allies around the world, particularly in the Netherlands. "

"U.S.: 'Hague Invasion Act' Becomes Law"

https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...