From my European perspective there's very little difference between the magnitude of terrifying things done by either the US then or Russia now... except maybe that Russia has less reach and power in the bigger scheme of things.
Abduction of people in allied countries to be brought to black sites, torture of inmates at Guantanamo (construction starting 2002), puerile attempts by officials at "downranking" the amount and definitions of torture inflicted upon people, varying degrees of war crimes committed while the highest instances of the world's powers debate vague points or outright lie about the very foundation of why they militarily attack another country, and this continued despite very public outrage at a few strikingly depressing "leaks" (smiling soldiers torturing inmates) or testimonies, and violence inflicted upon specific targets while keeping constant pressure on third parties to remain by the sidelines.
> Both of Thursday’s Al Nashiri and Zubaydah judgments “are striking for their frank and clear declaration that the CIA operated black sites in Lithuania and Romania at which torture took place, with the knowing acquiescence of the host governments,” notes Just Security’s Oona Hathaway. “The Court, relying in significant part on the 2014 US Senate Committee Report, dismissed Romania’s and Lithuania’s claims that, among other things, (a) the applicants lacked credible sources of evidence; (b) the black sites did not exist in their countries, and (c) if the sites did exist in their countries, the government did not agree to them and did not know that torture was taking place at them,” Hathaway said.
> The first of those existing rules came from Department of Justice, which in 2002 wrote a series of memos that gave a new, very narrow definition of torture. (The next year, lawyers at the DOD wrote a report that reiterated these rules.) To qualify as physical torture, the memo said that an act of interrogation would have to cause serious physical injury, "such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death."
> A May 11 article in the Los Angeles Times exposed other methods of torture used by US forces: deliberately inflicting massive and severe burns, the use of electric shocks, and threatening detainees’ female relatives with rape. The Times article also revealed that the ICRC considers that between 70 and 90 percent of Iraqis seized and held by US forces are wrongly detained.
[...]
> After the bombing ended, US Special Forces and Dostum’s troops herded 3,000 surviving prisoners into sealed metal containers and drove them for 20 hours to Sheberghan prison. Most of the prisoners suffocated along the way. When the convoy arrived at its destination, the containers were emptied and the prisoners who had survived the journey were shot. Their remains were buried in a mass grave.
> Eleven soldiers were convicted of various charges relating to the incidents, with all of the convictions including the charge of dereliction of duty. Most soldiers only received minor sentences. Three other soldiers were either cleared of charges or were not charged. No one was convicted for the murders of the detainees.
---
And with all of these things, two full decades after that and with the full "freedom" of access to the internet that one has in Europe or North America, a lot of people still say with a straight face that those situations don't compare?
Talk about successful propaganda. I'm sure Russia is dreaming to continue achieving similarly too.
> After the bombing ended, US Special Forces and Dostum’s troops herded 3,000 surviving prisoners into sealed metal containers and drove them for 20 hours to Sheberghan prison. Most of the prisoners suffocated along the way. When the convoy arrived at its destination, the containers were emptied and the prisoners who had survived the journey were shot. Their remains were buried in a mass grave.
You’re really understating the case. Your post is missing dozens to hundreds or even thousands of human rights violations. That’s also the power of propaganda, it is hard to know and then also present the full breadth of the picture even in a general sense. A comprehensive analysis is almost impossible due to extreme secrecy.
All of this doesn’t change that it is wrong when Russia or anyone else does these things. America could arrest Bush and his entire band of illegal imperial war buddies to show Russia what happens afterwards, but we both know that there will never be accountability. Similarly when Obama said “we tortured some folks” but did not punish the folks responsible for torture, international law says he should be held accountable. This will never happen either - America set rules for everyone else and does not even require public servants to follow them. It is a reflection of the will and the general desire of the American people. They want blood, they want revenge, they do not care for justice for some enemies. Justice for 9/11 would have been to put OBL on trial like we did for the Nazis, but Americans I spoke with said it clearly: why should we risk one more American life? Why should we treat OBL fairly? He didn’t play by the rules after all! Those who hold these views could not see that the reason has almost nothing to do with OBL and everything to do with ourselves. That we even have to explain why a trial is important is a kind of moral decay that sets a terrible example for the rest of the world.
Putin appears to be banking on this moral rot being the default case for the world now. There is a fog of war, so we cannot know for absolute certainty but it seems pretty clear from decades of analysis. It seems from the Russian perspective, the West showed Putin and key Russians the way to perpetuate these crimes and walk free afterwards. It’s depressing and terrible, and so predictable.
We set the tone after the Second World War of a moral upper hand with trials for some of the worst Nazis. We, after 9/11 and the assassination wars by drone strikes, no longer maintain even the pretense of this moral superiority through law. This sets a new example for a new world, and the next seventy five years probably won’t be much like the last seventy five years in terms of general (but not absolute) peace.
It should not be like this. It is incredibly sad, impossibly short sighted, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Imagine an America that could find the energy for justice rather than brute force. We have to imagine it, if we can even do so, because the last twenty years have shown us a very different picture in the wider world. There were always exceptions, but now there is simply a new rule.
From my European perspective there's very little difference between the magnitude of terrifying things done by either the US then or Russia now... except maybe that Russia has less reach and power in the bigger scheme of things.
Abduction of people in allied countries to be brought to black sites, torture of inmates at Guantanamo (construction starting 2002), puerile attempts by officials at "downranking" the amount and definitions of torture inflicted upon people, varying degrees of war crimes committed while the highest instances of the world's powers debate vague points or outright lie about the very foundation of why they militarily attack another country, and this continued despite very public outrage at a few strikingly depressing "leaks" (smiling soldiers torturing inmates) or testimonies, and violence inflicted upon specific targets while keeping constant pressure on third parties to remain by the sidelines.
https://www.justsecurity.org/57301/policy-legal-implications...
> Both of Thursday’s Al Nashiri and Zubaydah judgments “are striking for their frank and clear declaration that the CIA operated black sites in Lithuania and Romania at which torture took place, with the knowing acquiescence of the host governments,” notes Just Security’s Oona Hathaway. “The Court, relying in significant part on the 2014 US Senate Committee Report, dismissed Romania’s and Lithuania’s claims that, among other things, (a) the applicants lacked credible sources of evidence; (b) the black sites did not exist in their countries, and (c) if the sites did exist in their countries, the government did not agree to them and did not know that torture was taking place at them,” Hathaway said.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210525025654/https://www.wired...
> The first of those existing rules came from Department of Justice, which in 2002 wrote a series of memos that gave a new, very narrow definition of torture. (The next year, lawyers at the DOD wrote a report that reiterated these rules.) To qualify as physical torture, the memo said that an act of interrogation would have to cause serious physical injury, "such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/05/iraq-m12.html
> A May 11 article in the Los Angeles Times exposed other methods of torture used by US forces: deliberately inflicting massive and severe burns, the use of electric shocks, and threatening detainees’ female relatives with rape. The Times article also revealed that the ICRC considers that between 70 and 90 percent of Iraqis seized and held by US forces are wrongly detained.
[...]
> After the bombing ended, US Special Forces and Dostum’s troops herded 3,000 surviving prisoners into sealed metal containers and drove them for 20 hours to Sheberghan prison. Most of the prisoners suffocated along the way. When the convoy arrived at its destination, the containers were emptied and the prisoners who had survived the journey were shot. Their remains were buried in a mass grave.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_...
> Eleven soldiers were convicted of various charges relating to the incidents, with all of the convictions including the charge of dereliction of duty. Most soldiers only received minor sentences. Three other soldiers were either cleared of charges or were not charged. No one was convicted for the murders of the detainees.
---
And with all of these things, two full decades after that and with the full "freedom" of access to the internet that one has in Europe or North America, a lot of people still say with a straight face that those situations don't compare?
Talk about successful propaganda. I'm sure Russia is dreaming to continue achieving similarly too.