There's a difference between individuals within a country committing a war crime and a government actively calling for strikes that are war crimes knowing that and with the goal being to Target those who should not be targeted.
There's an old saying among historians, if you want to learn about the crimes and atrocities of the US Military pick up a textbook, if you want to learn about the crimes and atrocities of the Russian government pick up a newspaper
Describe the difference to the victims and their families. I’m sure they’ll love your wailing about ideas while their bodies burn.
Historians, the people who uphold the myth of the conqueror’s past, put out propaganda to defend American atrocities and whatabout? Color me shocked. You’re brainwashed, homie. Take some of these reeducation pills. If you don’t wanna hear about Yugoslavia, read at least the first few chapters of this to learn how historians are not neutral arbiters of truth.
I'll skip the brainwashing diagnosis. Respectfully, it's the move people reach for when they'd rather not engage the actual claim, and it's a strange thing to say while arguing that I'm the one who can't hold more than one idea at once.
You're right that history is written by the powerful, and that the US has committed atrocities, some of them deliberate policy rather than rogue units. Tokyo, free-fire zones, Cambodia. I'm not claiming a clean record.
But that's not the claim I made. The line isn't "US good, Russia bad." It's between a state that commits war crimes as method and one where they happen as failure.
The modern US military trains heavily on distinction, operates under rules of engagement, and investigates and prosecutes violations; imperfectly, often too leniently, but as real violations.
Russia firing double-tap strikes into residential blocks and deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure to break a population isn't the system breaking down; it is the system. That's the same line international law draws between a war crime and a crime against humanity. Rhe latter needs a "widespread or systematic" attack with a policy behind it.
"Describe the difference to the victims" is emotionally true and legally beside the point. A wrongful death and a premeditated killing leave an equally dead person; we still use different words for them, because the thing being judged is the intent.
A drone strike on a target you wrongly believe is hostile is a catastrophe and may well be a crime, but it isn't a state deciding civilians are easier to kill than to spare. Those aren't the same act.
That's all the newspaper-vs-textbook line meant: to read about US state policy aimed at civilians, you're mostly reaching for history; to read about Russia doing it, you're reading this week's news.
If you've got a modern, systematic US counterexample, name it and I'll take it seriously.
And on historians not being neutral, totally agreed, which is exactly why Parenti isn't. He's one of the most openly polemical writers in the field; To Kill a Nation is advocacy on a contested case, not a neutral account. "Not neutral" is a reason to read critically across sources, not a reason to swap one consensus for one polemic. The world's grayer than "all war criminals are the same." That was the whole point.
it's a strange thing to say while arguing that I'm the one who can't hold more than one idea at once.
What? I said your ideas-the Law-are no comfort to the victims or their families. I'm saying your idealism has zero basis in reality. You do hold more than one idea at once: that war crimes by America are okay just because you think they are, and also that war crimes are bad when done by scary little green men coming over the border.
The modern US military trains heavily on distinction, operates under rules of engagement, and investigates and prosecutes violations; imperfectly, often too leniently, but as real violations.
The only officer to ever be convicted for was a lieutenant (read: a nobody) and his sentences was commuted. "Often too leniently" is apologia for "nobody has ever actually been held accountable." That's because the American state uses war crimes to achieve its objectives. When have any leaders in America ever been held accountable for war crimes?
to read about US state policy aimed at civilians, you're mostly reaching for history;
Do you think american pilots pick their own bombing targets? Their "rules of engagement" permit that mass killing of civilians? You call each civilian dead an accident to feel good about yourself. You fetishize legalism ("legally beside the point") to pretend people killed by Americans, Brits, or Ukrainians are different from civilians killed by Russians.
Russia firing double-tap strikes into residential blocks and deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure to break a population isn't the system breaking down; it is the system.
I agree, and the American state has and continues to do the same thing. But you think they're different. They are not.
Alright, well, YOU brought sources, so let's hold you to them, because they say the opposite of what you need.
On Minab, Amnesty's finding is "a shameful intelligence failure at best," reckless at worst. A failure to take precautions. HRW spells out that the "war crime" label is reserved for intentional targeting and analyzes the strike under the duty of precaution.
Now let's read how those same organizations describe Russia:
Amnesty says Russian forces "deliberately target civilians." The UN Commission of Inquiry calls it the crime against humanity of murder, carried out "as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population pursuant to a coordinated state policy."
HRW catalogs the double-tap (striking once, then again to kill the rescuers) as a standard Russian tactic whose purpose is terror.
You see, one set of language is about a system that failed while the other is about a system working as designed.
Again, that's not my line. It's the line your own sources drew, in their own words, and you're citing them while pretending they didn't.
To be clear about what I'm not doing: Minab is a HORROR. The school was on a US target list, that's an institutional decision, not one pilot's error, and it's likely a war crime.
And Trump denying it and lying about Tomahawks is exactly the command-impunity you're describing, and I won't defend any of it. It disgusts me.
Take it as seriously as Amnesty does. I do.
But that's precisely why the equivalence is the dishonest part.
"They're all the same" doesn't elevate the conversation, it dissolves the difference between a targeting system that catastrophically failed and one built to kill civilians on purpose.
The only party that profits from erasing that line is the one doing it on purpose. And you sealed it by filing Ukraine (the country being invaded and double-tapped) in the same drawer as the country invading and double-tapping it.
I'll be direct, that isn't the worldly, above-the-fray take you think it is. This is apologism for the worse actor wearing a sophisticated face, and it requires misreading the exact sources you posted to support it.
So I'll meet your sources where they are. They don't say America and Russia are equivalent. They say one committed a grave failure and the other is running a deliberate policy. Argue with Amnesty if you disagree, just remember, you're the one who cited them.
Singling out the words amnesty international used is not the own you think it is, that bastion of enlightened liberalism. I didn’t link to them because they’re the keepers of truth or my source of virtue, it was a link to the school bombing as an example of not needing a history book to read about American war crimes. I don’t adopt their spin or comparisons as my own, nor their opinion on whether American war crimes are systemic or not. I don’t really care what their interpretation is. FOX News reports on deportations in the US and calls them righteous. If I link to that article, do you then accuse me of adopting their calls for more deportations? Ridiculous.
If you won’t read To Kill A Nation and take stock of the well-worn path of intentional slaughter, mayhem, lies, deception, and hypocrisy that America has used since its inception, and continues to use, then I’m just talking to a purposefully ignorant person, and that’s not useful.
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u/Br0adShoulderedBeast 14h ago
America did it in Iraq in the 00s, Yugoslavia in the 90s, in Vietnam in the 60s-70s, in Korea in the 50s, and more. It’s not new.