The United States charged four members of the Russian military with war crimes on Wednesday for the abduction and torture of an American citizen in Ukraine.
It’s so prevalent in Russian propaganda, an almost Pavlovian response any time Russia’s criticised, that anyone still using it when Russia comes up, is either an idiot or pro-Russian.
It’s not whataboutism … There’s a reason we have the word hypocrisy.
It literally is. Wikipedia:
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in “what about…?”) denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin ‘you too’, term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument. … The communication intent is often to distract from the content of a topic (red herring). The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified. Common accusations include double standards, and hypocrisy
You may not have expressively said that, but literally in every post or news article about Russian war crimes, there’s always at least one person pointing at NATO and in particular US war crimes.
No doubt did that happen, yet you don’t see Russian state attorneys trying the US in court. And they can, international criminal law can be ruled in in any country of the world. Now why don’t they or the Chinese do it? For one, because they don’t want to poke the US too much. But if that isn’t the case, the only explanation left is that they don’t want to be open to the possible repercussions of being held to whataboutism themselves.
No why does it happen in the US or NATO countries? Simply because the executive power holds very little sway on the legal proceedings of the attorney General offices, at least when compared to Authotarian countries such as Russia or China.
No one expects Russia to accept any foreign rulings. However as the Nuremberg trials proved, acceptance can be enforced by the stronger party.
And in the likely case this doesn’t happen, the court ruling can mean a lot less foreign diplomacy leeway for the US government when it comes to dealing with Russia. Also a US ruling would extend to every country that has extradition treaties with the US. So anyone proven guilty would effectively be a fugitive in a third and the most powerful and influential third of the world.
Look at what the international criminal courts ruling already caused. Putin didn’t attend the meeting of the BRICS+ countries in South-Africa. The same would go for Brazil who also accept den-Haag.
Even if the leadership of a country would like for any proven criminal to appear in their country and would like the justice department to not move, in any and every democratic country, they couldn’t without causing a major breach of constitution.
Anyhow, trials like these must, without fault, be spotless examples of correct rulings, for there to be any resemblance of unpolitical justice
More specifically whataboutism.
It’s so prevalent in Russian propaganda, an almost Pavlovian response any time Russia’s criticised, that anyone still using it when Russia comes up, is either an idiot or pro-Russian.
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It literally is. Wikipedia:
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They aren’t trying to hold those 4 Russians accountable in international courts, they’re charging them in American courts
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Cool, so it’s okay to just condone torture then.
The worst bit wasn’t the Russian war crimes. It was the American hypocrisy! /s
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You may not have expressively said that, but literally in every post or news article about Russian war crimes, there’s always at least one person pointing at NATO and in particular US war crimes.
No doubt did that happen, yet you don’t see Russian state attorneys trying the US in court. And they can, international criminal law can be ruled in in any country of the world. Now why don’t they or the Chinese do it? For one, because they don’t want to poke the US too much. But if that isn’t the case, the only explanation left is that they don’t want to be open to the possible repercussions of being held to whataboutism themselves.
No why does it happen in the US or NATO countries? Simply because the executive power holds very little sway on the legal proceedings of the attorney General offices, at least when compared to Authotarian countries such as Russia or China.
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No one expects Russia to accept any foreign rulings. However as the Nuremberg trials proved, acceptance can be enforced by the stronger party. And in the likely case this doesn’t happen, the court ruling can mean a lot less foreign diplomacy leeway for the US government when it comes to dealing with Russia. Also a US ruling would extend to every country that has extradition treaties with the US. So anyone proven guilty would effectively be a fugitive in a third and the most powerful and influential third of the world. Look at what the international criminal courts ruling already caused. Putin didn’t attend the meeting of the BRICS+ countries in South-Africa. The same would go for Brazil who also accept den-Haag.
Even if the leadership of a country would like for any proven criminal to appear in their country and would like the justice department to not move, in any and every democratic country, they couldn’t without causing a major breach of constitution.
Anyhow, trials like these must, without fault, be spotless examples of correct rulings, for there to be any resemblance of unpolitical justice
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