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Well that’s a big dose of whataboutism!


It is not at all whataboutism if the existance and behavior of other actors in the system influence each other, and removing one actor has a big negative effect on the whole system.

It is not at all whataboutism to say that we must tackle problems holistically.


>Both boogeymans have issues that they need to work out, but banning only one boogeyman doesn't make the world better

It does when is one is orders of magnitude worse than the other. eg. China's 1989 vs Trump's "sent the army to suppress protesters against racism".


If we're going to talk about orders of magnitude, nothing remotely compares to killed civilians in the middle east. But I'm not going to advocate removing only the party responsible for that event, while preserving the other. We're much better off if they can keep each other in check.


> nothing remotely compares to killed civilians in the middle east

The US didn't kill millions of civilians in the Middle East as you've been attempting to claim. It did attempt to prevent the Iraq civil war however, an inevitable result of the fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. I'm curious if your premise is that Saddam, or his family, was going to rule as a dictator forever - denying all human rights to the Iraqi people - so as to prevent that civil war from ever happening.

And if you really want to talk orders of magnitude: Mao genocided 45 million people in just four years from 1958 to 1962.

Washington Post: "Remembering the biggest mass murder in the history of the world"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

https://archive.is/50HBS


> the fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

Brought about by an unprovoked invasion, in violation of international law.

> Mao genocided 45 million people in just four years from 1958 to 1962.

Mao seriously mismanaged the economy, leading to famine. Life expectancy also increased from 40 years at the time of the revolution to 60 years at the time of his death. A lot of Chinese people have mixed feelings about him.


Are you sure? How many civilians have US vs China police/military killed since 1988?


Why cherrypick numbers? Why ignore the famines (caused by CCP's poor planning) that killed millions?


It's a fair criticism, but I also think it's fair to say that China after Mao is a different entity in practise.


The US is supplying weapons to Saudi-Arabia which they use to fight in Yemen. The US has helped replace democratic governments to military / authoritarian regimes in Latin America (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...), leading to countless deaths and the very same refugee crisis that Trump is so worried about.

The US does NOT have the moral high ground here. At least acknowledge that the US sucks. China sucks too. Everybody sucks.


> and which has killed millions of civilians in the middle east

The US didn't kill millions of people in the Middle East. In fact it lost thousands of soldiers and a trillion dollars trying to keep the Iraqis from killing eachother. The US stepped inbetween two warring factions that have been killing eachother for hundreds of years and tried to stop it.

> and which is sterilizing women in border camps

The US doesn't have border camps, it has detention facilities for illegal immigrants, which most every nation with a border possesses. Trying illegally sneaking into Canada (or Australia, or most any nice country), you will be detained at a facility until they can remove you from their country for violating their immigration laws.

The US Government doesn't force sterilize women at the border or at non-existent border camps.

There is one specific doctor - Mahendra Amin - at one facility that has performed eight surgeries over three years, with wide debate still on-going as to whether all or none of those surgeries were requested. From that basis you're attempting to proclaim the US Government is broadly doing something, which is obviously exceptionally misleading.

I'd suggest reading more about the subject:

https://apnews.com/article/georgia-archive-only-on-ap-immigr...


> The US didn't kill millions of people in the Middle East. In fact it lost thousands of soldiers and a trillion dollars trying to keep the Iraqis from killing eachother. The US stepped inbetween two warring factions that have been killing eachother for hundreds of years and tried to stop it.

This must be one of the most apologist takes I have ever read. Deeply disturbing that people can actually convince themselves this for something that's relatively recent.


> sent the army to suppress protesters against racism

Trump did not send the army. He sent federal law enforcement agencies to defend federal property against rioters when local governments failed to do so.

> sterilizing women in border camps

The allegations of forced hysterectomies were not supported by the evidence, which is why the story dropped out of the news so quickly.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/ice-detainee-hyst...




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