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by dmantis 1 day ago
Apparently, looking at Iraq and Vietnam, US citizens only believe in "personal freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the value of human life" when it comes to US citizens, not to humans in general.

Even on HN, I saw a lot, that when people discuss surveillance topics, they argue whether ie NSA can spy on Americans, not on everyone. Mostly, nobody even question the human rights of those inferior humans abroad.

That's a very long wiki page, I must say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

So the question stays open.

1 comments

Vietnam and Iraq were both unpopular wars in their own ways, so they don't seem like good examples if you're trying to find examples of what US citizens support.

Also, a country surveilling its own citizens has unique and different implications compared to surveilling other countries. Citizens need to be able to influence their own government, but mass control can nullify citizen power entirely which becomes its own problem.

Then, on a US website, you link to another US website which keeps track of various war crimes. Try finding an equivalent website for China in China, or for Iran in Iran. This is part of the asymmetric freedom issue on the internet that many people ignore. There are a lot of lies and propaganda spread within other countries that censor and deny some types of information from even existing, then they use that as a springboard to spread it around the world.

In the US, we can criticize ourselves which is important, since it helps us improve.