[realjohng]

Actions like these damage American moral authority in the region, and frankly within the American populace as well.

I often wonder where passionate distrust of the government has emerged from in recent years, and it is probably things like this which disillusion readers.

[wonder_er]

I was born/raised in the USA, and it's obvious that this OP is an American.

> Actions like these damage American moral authority in the region

America (well, technically, the federal government of the United States of America) has not had an ounce of credibility in 15 years, at least.

It's laughable to assume otherwise.

The USA has 5% of the global population. The rest of the 95% of the globe's population harbors no illusions about "American moral authority".

This article, and the story it contains, is abhorrent. Disgusting. Saddening. America is breeding, and paying, war criminals.

I have friends/family in the military. I don't talk to most of them anymore.

How can I pretend to be friends with people who are part of a system of global oppression, murder, and violence?

[cbozeman]

Please get rid of all your cobalt-containing electronics.

You're part of a system of African child slave labor.

[Fnoord]

Most cobalt is from DRC and almost all cobalt from there is derived from child labor. It isn't slave labor; they get paid, though low wage. However child labor is bad as it is. It isn't as simple as boycotting though; families depend on the income. They shouldn't; children should go to school.

That's why the Fair Cobalt Alliance (FCA) [1] was initiated.

[1] https://www.theimpactfacility.com/commodities/cobalt/fair-co...

[ahelwer]

American moral authority has been dead since the Vietnam war, if not the Korean war. The sheer quantity of war crimes committed was astonishing. Most people know about My Lai, but that was just an incident which managed to break through into American awareness - it wasn't unusual, it was more like the norm.

Nobody ever faced consequences for any of it.

I gotta be honest, the idea that things like this "damage American moral authority" is just such a purely America-centric view. Americans truly have no idea how they are perceived by the rest of the world. Across the globe, polls consistently show America is viewed as the greatest threat to world peace.

[eplanit]

And yet more than a million people migrate here every year. They must not be good students of history.

[jacquesm]

That has nothing to do with it. Economic migration does not say anything about the moral authority of the USA, it mainly says that the USA is better off economically than many other places in the world (not in the least because of the mess the USA is creating in some of those countries).

[ahelwer]

Which side of a gun do you want pointed at you?

[jacquesm]

American moral authority is mostly an American thing. The rest of the world has not believed in that concept since the end of World War II, because that's when America was seen as having it, and after that they did what they could to get rid of it with a small 'up' during the Berlin airbridge period.