Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

Yes, comparing the entire history of American war crimes against one domestic incident in China will give you a much bigger American death toll number.

A fairer comparison would include Mao's killing of 45 million of his citizens.

Tu quoque?

Most of these were during wartime. Criminal and regrettable, of course. However, attacking your own citizens while protesting in your own cities somehow seems a bit different.

yup?

The difference is that we're trying to do something about it. Kids learn about many of the bad things America did (slavery, extermination of the native Americans, Vietnam war atrocities, nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc.). They're taking down civil war monuments all over the country. The same will happen with Columbus soon--Los Angeles has already renamed Columbus Day in favor of the indigenous people he exterminated, and there are proposals to do the same/take down Columbus monuments in Baltimore, D.C., New York, etc.

A couple things to unpack here:

Firstly, I'm not sure we're reading the same article, but by my summary count, the total death toll for all combined US war crimes detailed in that article isn't much more than 10,000.

Next, the veracity of some of those claims is questionable at best.

Finally, it should be noted that the Tiananmen Square protests, were, in fact, protests. This was not an action against civilians during war time, this was an action taken by a government against it's own citizens who were protesting.

Is killing unarmed soldiers or civilians in war time justified? Generally no. But it's a different type of crime when you're in the middle of a war zone. Humans don't deal well with the insane nature of war, and so they do horrible things. That's not an excuse, mind you. But I think collateral damage in a war and civilian casualties in a war zone are very different scenarios than Tiananmen Square.

Still not fair comparison, as these were also "their own". Not saying "us vs. them" is something to aspire to, but I think we can all agree that a military's responsibility to their own populace is a bit larger than their responsibility to an enemy populace.

Oh, for sure.

If the poster's gonna compare apples to oranges, though, they should at least compare the full apple instead of a tiny sliver of it.

You ever see the shock and awe videos of Baghdad? That our government approvingly worked with cable news to make sure everyone saw it? For an operation very much not endorsed by the UN or international community?

Good thing that's not a war crime, though.

Shock and awe was a brief bombing campaign that hit military and administrative buildings late at night when they were empty. I saw the buildings. They were not apartment blocks. If anyone died in that campaign it was purely by accident.

> You ever see the shock and awe videos of Baghdad?

The ones using precision munitions on generally evacuated government buildings?

You're really going to try comparing that to massacring unarmed protesters?

Yeah, those. Watch the video and tell me how bloodless it was. Or how it's not a massacre.

I'm not defending a thing about Tiananmen square, I'm just marvelling at the power of nationalism to excuse anything.

Bunch of snakes in suits with American flag pins declare a war for no reason, knowing that hundreds of thousands will die, but it's all Legitimate State Behavior. I'm sure it's a huge comfort to the orphans.

The crimes of one country don’t lessen the crimes of another. A government ordering the wholesale slaughter of its own citizens should be roundly condemned by all no matter what.

It's not as if the US ever killed off a bunch of innocent people outside of war, and still ignores them when it doesn't suit their interests (see keystone XL pipeline):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigeno...

Exactly - part of America's heritage of a free, unusually aggressive, and intellectually combative free press (on both sides of the political spectrum) is that criticism of our government, history, and society is widely studied and disseminated, both domestically and abroad. Knowledge of American human rights injustices, ranging from slavery to Guantanamo Bay, is promoted, shared, taught in schools.

Looks pretty bloodless. Are there specific videos you're looking for me to peruse?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yr-LaMhvro

Now, the Iraq War and it's aftermath as a whole weren't bloodless, for sure. The "they'll greet us as liberators and there'll be a Western-style democracy in 90 days!" stuff was transparent bullshit.

Shock and awe was a specific bombing campaign, hitting palaces, military HQs, communications nexuses, etc. The targets chosen made it easy to avoid large numbers of civilian casualties, and trying to compare it to stuff like Tiananmen Square is just silly.

It should be noted that American schools teach plenty of revisionist history or gloss over the worst excesses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/opinion/how-texas-teaches...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/150-years-lat...

https://jezebel.com/heres-how-new-texas-public-school-textbo...

not just America. growing up in Canada, exactly 0 minutes were dedicated to discussing treatment of First Nations peoples...noteworthy given that government's exceptionally awful history in that regard

Go ahead, downvote me. I was there mother fuckers.

It's interesting that you were there, but please don't break the site rules here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm more interested in hearing your story than downvoting you.

Huh. I went to public school in Ontario between 1987 and 2000 and all I ever learned about first nations people was how shitty they were treated. It was so often the point of our geography and canadian history lessons that I feel like the only thing I know about Canada's history is that they treated first nations poorly. It was so heavily reenforced that a lot of my schoolmates got empathy fatigue.

Where and when did you go to school in Canada?