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.
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.