> Russians rape, torture, steal, destroy. Just for the sake of it. Just because they can. Targeting civilians en masse. Did any other nation do that during the last century? Not the U.S. if so.

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

That's exactly what they did, actually.

Ahh, good old whatabutism.

I'm literally answering a comment claiming the US has never done anything of the like.

It's not whataboutism to bring up a counterexample in this case and calling it such is nothing less than jingoist propaganda.

Any military force will have such incidents. What separates them is the extent they try to prevent and punish such things. The US is certainly not perfect, but there have been attempts to curb such behaviour.

Meanwhile, a UN envoy collects extensive evidence that the torture and murder of Ukrainian (civilian and military) prisoners held by Russia is not only widespread, but shows clear signs of being coordinated in method and promoted from above in command.

Blatant imperialism apologia lol. You lose your entire credibility of being against an invader when you then downplay what the US did. I guess the one million deaths was fine since it was just an oopsie and the Americans didn't mean it.

I don't downplay what the US did, in fact I frequently complain to anyone who will listen and some who won't how absoletely butchered the occupation of Iraq was and what huge ramifications it had. Paul Bremer is not a favourite of mine. I marched in protests against the invasion.

As a sibling comment points out, the US has also done so, so what might matter here are the relative rates. And good luck finding those out through the chaos, propaganda and fog of war...

We'll probably only have half decent numbers a decade from now, if that.

Excuse me, what the actual duck are you saying? A blatant whataboutism targeted at teenagers, don’t you?

What relative rates are you talking about? I literally live in Ukraine and you tell me the Russian ‘U.S. bad’ narrative, ‘propaganda and fog of war’.

What fog of war? It’s unclear to you who is the aggressor, isn’t it? Is that the fog of war you are talking about?

Do you personally know anyone who was murdered by the U.S.? No? Well, I do know people that were murdered by Russians. For no ducking reason. Some of them were protecting their country from an aggressive invaders, others were just peacefully sleeping in their beds.

I think this ‘U.S. is also bad’ take is irrelevant and inappropriate, especially in this very timeframe of ongoing war.

> Do you personally know anyone who was murdered by the U.S.? No? Well, I do know people that were murdered by Russians. For no ducking reason. Some of them were protecting their country from an aggressive invaders, others were just peacefully sleeping in their beds.

This is nothing but personal bias. An Iraqi could say the same thing, but with the roles swapped.

> I think this ‘U.S. is also bad’ take is irrelevant and inappropriate, especially in this very timeframe of ongoing war.

Again, that is your personal bias showing.

Two things can be bad at the same time. We can acknowledge that Russia is doing bad things in Ukraine and that the US is helping defend the country. That doesn't absolve the US from its sins committed elsewhere, however.

I have Iraqi friends that lost multiple family members due to bombings in the 2003 war. I think most Iraqis know lost someone due to the war. Your argument is weird, do you not think that the staggering death toll from the Iraq war affected people there? I know they are just statistics when you don't actually live through it. But considering that you seem to be affected by the Russian invasion I'd think you'd reflect on that and realize that all those numbers also represent actual suffering, loss and death?

It's so weird that considering your experience, you are blatantly dismissing and downplaying what the US did. You can talk about how bad Russia is without white washing the Iraq war. Iraqis also died fighting against invaders, by the way

It’s irrelevant to the current topic. Considering everything you tell about Iraq is true, and not just a biased way to tell that story, it doesn’t change a thing about the current ongoing war Russia placed on Ukrainian heads.

It is super relevant to the current topic, which is that not using something just because it's made by Russian citizens (not corporations or the state) is ridiculous unprecedented. That's the point, even if you seem to somehow doubt that what happened in Iraq... happened? It doesn't change the fact that there's no precedent for that.

There kind of is precedent for that - the Japanese internment camps that were built in the US during WW2.

Not necessary something we should try to repeat, though.

Yes and if you lived in Iraq you would probably have said the same. Whats your point? You are basically saying that it's worse because it's closer to you?

The difference is actually quite stark. Iraq didn't need a massive reconstruction effort at the end of the war.

Russia, on the other hand has levelled whole cities to dust, de-populated them and forced millions to flee as refugees because they deliberately target civilians as a matter of policy. They also torture and execute important local political figures where they occupy and immediately start their sinister policy of 'Russification'.

We see this in the west (and most of the rest of the world), and naturally despise the perpetrators.

You have got to be joking. I'm sorry but what? Iraq has barely recovered as we speak. The infrastructure still hasn't recovered. Compare Kyiv to Baghdad or even Kherson to Fallujah and yeah, Iraq got pretty destroyed all right.

By the way the US sure did target civilians, they just labeled them militants. Drone strike collateral damage etc. Do you think Russians also don't use euphemisms? Again, even if Iraq was not destroyed or civilians weren't deliberately and openly targeted, it has nothing to do with my point.

We saw a war caused by literal lies and imperialism lead to 1 million total deaths and we don't despise the citizens of the invading country. And you obviously downplay the war in Iraq because you were far removed from it (from the perspective of the Iraqis I mean). Obviously you feel more connected to Ukraine and Ukrainians but it's no reason to downplay or white wash the Iraq war by rationalizing and giving the benefit of the doubt to "our side"

How does this whataboutism exactly help Ukrainians, again? I missed where the ‘U.S. bad’ narrative gives Russia permission to do whatever they want. You are basically changing subject here and say ‘Russia can do whatever they want because (yada yada) [someone did something somewhere as well]’.

Irrelevant.

Nobody is saying that. We are just capable of acknowledging more than one bad thing existing in the world. It doesn't mean either of them are right.

You are basically repeating the same tired paragraphs without even reading what I said. Who is talking about whataboutism here? I was replying to a comment that repeatedly downplayed the Iraq war. Maybe don't do that? You aren't "owning the Russians" by asserting ridiculous and false narratives (like that Iraq wasn't somehow destroyed). I never changed subject, I just called out white washing of the Iraq invasion.

You posted almost a dozen flamewar comments to this thread. That's not allowed here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are—and yes, I totally get that you have good reasons to feel the way you do.

Nonetheless, taking HN threads into hellish flamewars does nothing except make things worse, and it's not allowed here (for anybody, regardless of nation).

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.