On a serious note though, I'm more than certain that those countries you mention do get the condemnation they deserve. You just have to keep in mind that the internet gives every idiot (see: Luci) a voice, and the few who cry out loud enough will always be heard more than the masses who mumble.

this. OP, you're subject to a certain degree of bias based on what you observe within your limited perspective. try to remember that.

You hear a lot about what the West did because you live in the West. For example in Eastern European countries you will hear a LOT about what the USSR did to fuck them over, especially in Poland for example what the USSR did is still widely condemned.

+We'd expect atrocities to be committed in proportion to a nation's power. We kind of see this, but not really. The West obviously did some horrible things during the era of colonialism and during the Cold War, etc.

I think the question people seem to not ask is "What would've been better?". We're not talking about whether empire or no empire would've been superior, we're talking about whether the British Empire was superior to the most probable counterfactual: a global French (or some other European power) Empire.

something something bias

something something the West is supposed to know better

Simple.

They're not considered more reprehensible.

They kind of are.

People go on and on about the ways we fucked up the Iraq war, without even acknowledging Hussein's prior and genocidal use of chemical weapons, the mass graves and the fact that 88pc of civilian casualties during the war were caused by terrorists. People will talk about how Afghanistan was a second Vietnam and that we never should've gotten involved and how awful we are for bring war to the country, without acknowledging how well Afghanistan is doing today or even considering the fact that the Taliban hanged people from the lampposts of Kabul. Bashing Israel is of course fashionable, yet most of them don't even take into account the fact that Hamas has a history of maintaining a ridiculously anti-Semitic and borderline genocidal opinion and they ignore the fact that it is Israeli casualties which leads to Palestinian casualties and not the other way around.

Fuck, anti-Americanism is so prevalent on the Continent that newspapers which present balanced coverage of foreign affairs--like Norway's VG on the Iraq War, which committed the crime of breaking the silence and printing pictures of Iraqis cheering and welcoming Coalition troops--are considered biased.

They don't find it more reprehensible--they find it more relevant to their lives. "People talk, people talk..." Yeah, and why shouldn't we? We're westerners. Expect westerners to speak about the atrocities that westerners have done.

Except this is a ridiculously stupid way of looking at geopolitical affairs. I don't care if we killed thousands of civilians in Iraq, when the counterfactual is that more civilians would've ultimately been killed had we not invaded. This is exactly what I mean: people considering the actions of the West by either comparing them to unrealistic counterfactuals, which is no way to conduct any kind of policy, or people just not considering the counterfactuals at all and basing their moral judgments on some juvenile deontological premise.

And no, it's not just a case of Westerners talking about the West, not wholly. This cannot explain the utter discrepancy we see in how people judge the Israel-Palestine situation, and it cannot account for the people who so vehemently deride Israel while excusing the atrocities of Hamas as poor oppressed brown people who apparently by virtue of their skin colour have no choice but to be totally reactive agents, and damn the fact that Israeli retaliation has absolutely no predictive power in terms of Palestinian support for Hamas.

And what about the excuses people make for Saddam Hussein? "Oh, well, he kept the country stable". Their definition of stability must be odd, considering it must include the systematic and State-sanctioned murder of 500,000 people.

People do this all the time, including the European establishment when it was utterly passive in the face of Slobodan Milosevic, a genocidal murderer, while the US was militating for NATO to do something. . . And thank God they did. All manner of flaccid defences are brought up in the name of horrible regimes, and the people who make such defences are defined by their timidity and their cowardice in standing up to the evils of the world. It's easy to criticise your own country, especially when it's one which won't hang you for offending the government or torture you for handing out political pamphlets.

Quote from: Fuddy Duddy II on January 03, 2016, 10:28:33 PM

They don't find it more reprehensible--they find it more relevant to their lives. "People talk, people talk..." Yeah, and why shouldn't we? We're westerners. Expect westerners to speak about the atrocities that westerners have done.

Except this is a ridiculously stupid way of looking at geopolitical affairs. I don't care if we killed thousands of civilians in Iraq, when the counterfactual is that more civilians would've ultimately been killed had we not invaded. This is exactly what I mean: people considering the actions of the West by either comparing them to unrealistic counterfactuals, which is no way to conduct any kind of policy, or people just not considering the counterfactuals at all and basing their moral judgments on some juvenile deontological premise.

And no, it's not just a case of Westerners talking about the West, not wholly. This cannot explain the utter discrepancy we see in how people judge the Israel-Palestine situation, and it cannot account for the people who so vehemently deride Israel while excusing the atrocities of Hamas as poor oppressed brown people who apparently by virtue of their skin colour have no choice but to be totally reactive agents, and damn the fact that Israeli retaliation has absolutely no predictive power in terms of Palestinian support for Hamas.

And what about the excuses people make for Saddam Hussein? "Oh, well, he kept the country stable". Their definition of stability must be odd, considering it must include the systematic and State-sanctioned murder of 500,000 people.

People do this all the time, including the European establishment when it was utterly passive in the face of Slobodan Milosevic, a genocidal murderer, while the US was militating for NATO to do something. . . And thank God they did. All manner of flaccid defences are brought up in the name of horrible regimes, and the people who make such defences are defined by their timidity and their cowardice in standing up to the evils of the world. It's easy to criticise your own country, especially when it's one which won't hang you for offending the government or torture you for handing out political pamphlets.

Um, he gave you the answer...?

Quote from: Kupoop on January 03, 2016, 11:26:40 PM

Um, he gave you the answer...?

No, he didn't. His answer was "Westerners talk about Western things".

Because they do. I can't think of anybody outside the West who actually thinks that way.

Quote from: Kupoop on January 03, 2016, 11:37:03 PM

Quote from: M8A-ORD on January 03, 2016, 11:32:29 PM

Quote from: Kupoop on January 03, 2016, 11:26:40 PM

Um, he gave you the answer...?

No, he didn't. His answer was "Westerners talk about Western things".

Because they do. I can't think of anybody outside the West who actually thinks that way.

I normally don't mind partial quotes, because usually the person doesn't ignore what remained unquoted. This is exactly what you have done. I conceded that, yes, Westerners will talk about Western actions more than non-Western actions (although not by a particularly wide margin, in terms of foreign affairs). What this doesn't account for is Western defence of clearly reprehensible non-Western regimes, when it serves some Westerners agenda of bashing our foreign policy.

Do some of them do it reasonably? Sure. Many do not.

I'm having a difficult time figuring out what's considered a valid answer here. I'll refer to the OP:

everyone shat the bed.

Who is 'everyone'?

The target of your ire seems to be some vaguely defined category of people who talk about the entire world equally and place an undue blame on the West.

In case you haven't figured it out, those people don't exist because humans are stupid creatures. They think about what's relevant to themselves first. Through that narrow worldview, the West does awful stuff. They don't know any better because they're ignorant, or just plain dumb.

Quote from: Kupoop on January 03, 2016, 11:52:26 PM

I'm having a difficult time figuring out what's considered a valid answer here.

My point is not unclear.

Westerners talking more about Western atrocities =/= Westerners offering up timid defences of reprehensible foreign regimes.

I'm pretty sure most people see that the two are not equivocal.

I'm pretty sure nobody sees it that way.

Quote from: Kupoop on January 03, 2016, 11:54:32 PM

Quote from: M8A-ORD on January 03, 2016, 11:53:48 PM

Quote from: Kupoop on January 03, 2016, 11:52:26 PM

I'm having a difficult time figuring out what's considered a valid answer here.

My point is not unclear.

Westerners talking more about Western atrocities =/= Westerners offering up timid defences of reprehensible foreign regimes.

I'm pretty sure most people see that the two are not equivocal.

I'm pretty sure nobody sees it that way.

. . .

Yeah, that's my point. Verbatim's explanation doesn't account for at least some of the behaviour we see.

I tl;dr'd it

I'm 99% certain his explanation counts for the vast majority of that behavior, and he's absolutely right about unfounded generalizations on display here.

and he's absolutely right about unfounded generalizations on display here.

Where?

Do people opposed to the Iraq War not usually argue that Hussein "preserved stability", despite the only stability existing in Iraq was for himself and his crime syndicate of a family? Do people who are anti-Israel not usually excuse the actions of Hamas as what is essentially a response ot colonialism? Do people who tend to be progressive not usually blame the current state of many African countries despite the overwhelming evidence that domestic institutions combined with geography and not foreign intervention are primarily to blame?

To be fair, Saddam and his ilk did more to protect religious (not ethnic) minorities than democratic, theocratic, or monarchist leaders in the region have.

>100,000 dead Shi'ites.
>2,000 Iraqi Christians dead during the al-Anfal Campaign.

Quote from: M8A-ORD on January 04, 2016, 01:11:23 AM

Quote from: † on January 04, 2016, 01:01:09 AM

To be fair, Saddam and his ilk did more to protect religious (not ethnic) minorities than democratic, theocratic, or monarchist leaders in the region have.

>100,000 dead Shi'ites.
>2,000 Iraqi Christians dead during the al-Anfal Campaign.

Like I said, not ethnic. Many Iraqi Christians are Assyrian. They'll pretty much never be safe until they have a state of their own.

Sure, but there's also a cultural dimension. They're language and naming traditions were suppressed by the State, and it's incredibly difficult to disentangle religion and culture, especially in a population whose culture is essentially defined by their religion.

The reason Christians are usually safe under Arab regimes is that they are a very small segment of the population, and that Sunnis and Shi'ites are more interested in fighting each other than in fighting Christians (when they are interested in fighting in the first place). After all, the Koran teaches that non-Muslims are dhimmis, or property of the caliphate. As it is with women, you only hit them when you feel there has been some slight. The only situation in which Arab strongmen have a vested interest in proactively protecting the Christian population is usually because they're less of a nuisance if they're on-side when you're waging some other, much more devastating, campaign against another section of the population.