In other words, I was answering to what I was understanding as: "Oh it's okay we invaded Irak, because China had Tiananmen".

The difference is that, in the American system, the political faction that engineered that invasion has lost most of its power through a democratic mechanism. The Bush-era neoconservatives are not the dominant force in the Republican Party anymore. Trumpism is clearly opposed to foreign interventions.

In the Chinese system, a similar reckoning about Tiananmen and other atrocities remains unthinkable. The one true Party must be on the correct path, and faith in that can’t be shaken.

As broken as American democracy is, a two-party system fueled by private money is still much better than a single-party system that also controls the money.

This is absolutely incorrect and proves the OP's point entirely.

The people responsible for the Iraq disaster are also behind the Ukraine disaster. People such as Robert Kagan, the PNAC, the Brookings Institute.

They are still running the show in spite of the vast war crimes, crimes against humanity, and massive violations of human rights at scale committed as a result of their policies, which are still in effect.

You're just not paying attention because you believe your political system is infallible after decades of propaganda designed to inculcate that view.

>In the Chinese system, a similar reckoning about Tiananmen and other atrocities remains unthinkable.

American citizens, reckoning with the criminal oligarch class which directs the resources of their immense military-industrial complex in order to demolish countless other sovereign states around the world in the last twenty years, seems also unthinkable.

Reckon with this: Your hatespew of China is designed to deflect from actual reflection of the crimes of your own state, which are vast and not ignorable - thus, the distraction.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china

The only difference is in America, its quite well understood that no matter what you say with those free speech rights, the capture of both political parties by the real ruling oligarchic elite means that you can say whatever you want, but nothing will change.

The iron grip that Americas' ruling classes have over their state will simply not be altered by individual ideologues exercising their right to free speech - that barn has long left the horse - because the same people manufacturing bombs are manufacturing the news in the USA, and thus dissidence is rendered entirely ineffective through other, totalitarian-authoritarian, means ..

It is the intentionally distractive hatespew of other nations and the utter ignorance of ones own states' heinous crimes that is nuts. And yes, I do it for free - there is nothing worse than seeing ones fellow citizens degrade into Orwell'ian hatespew when there is far, far more work to be done on ones own states war crimes, crimes against humanity, and massive violations of human rights at scale.

Its nuts that we don't have Assange living free, exercising his rights to free speech, but we do have people such as Robert Kagan getting paid to appear on TV, advocating for the murder of millions of innocent people, for the sake of some self-proclaimed, utterly phony moral authority ..

Its nuts that Americans ignore the 34 million refugees from their wars, and the billions and billions of dollars of support from your own government towards known totalitarian-authoritarian, terrorist regimes, while whining about some perceived error in the ways of China, a state which is factually helping more people in the world lift themselves from the poverty states that the American people put them in ..

I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good comments–but we have to moderate based on the worst things an account does, and what you did in this thread is completely not ok.

Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Same for ideological flamewar and the other flavors too—and yes, the rules apply regardless of who you're for or against. If anyone would like confirmation of this, there's a counterparty to this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37746615.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Please elaborate because this sounds delusional to me. Especially, please describe Putin's role in the Iraq invasion.

In a nutshell, the American policy "create the conditions so that they die in war, so we don't have to" has felled many a sovereign nation.

I’m a citizen of Finland. I’m certainly very interested to hear about those vast crimes perpetuated from this nowhere corner of Europe.

If I defend the American system in this context, it’s only because to me it objectively appears fundamentally better than the Chinese one.

I lived in New York for some years and enjoyed it. In contrast, I would never consider moving my family to Shanghai while the CCP rules the country. I wouldn’t feel safe there.