Originally Posted by
Omegstrat6
As liquidator quite rightly alluded to, there are very few -if any?- countries that have not acted shamefully in the past and, regrettably, some continue to do so. Despite it's post war anti-colonial stance the US was certainly no paragon of virtue during the Cold War and employed various dirty tricks to influence regimes in other countries for many years (and to think Kissenger still got a Nobel Prize! )but if we are to talk about regimes now, surely there is little comparison between the vast majority of Western democratic countries today and the autocratic regimes of, say, Russia, China, Iran or North Korea.
There are no two ways about it, Western actions in the Middle East for example were never all squeaky clean nor arguably justified but I think there is a world of difference between the ethos of say the US or UK and the Russian Federation under Putin when it comes to warfare. Putin is very clearly deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and cares little for civilian lives but this is the same playbook he used in Chechnya and Syria so should not be any real surprise. Did the US kill innocent civilians during its war in Iraq? Certainly. Were some individuals amongst Coalition forces -including some from the UK- guilty of war crimes during the War on Terror? Undoubtedly-but it was not official policy and was not condoned so I do not think you can compare the two. Russia, after all, used mercenaries and regiments made up of convicts (including rapists and murderers) when launching its attack on Ukraine which surely says something.