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

In a previous naive world intoxicated by dreams of global citizenry and humanism it would be easy to get sanctimonious and posture about evil.

But cultural divides are real and are not going away. And these kind of events and stories simply become opportunities to target other countries weaknesses, reassert a jingoistic sense of superiority and perpetuate existing comfort zones.

Or there would be protests daily in western capitals about the sheer unimaginable scale of destruction, devastation and millions of families destroyed and lives lost in the middle east starting from Iraq to Libya and now Syria done purely to further geo-political and financial interests.

But that is handwaved away as 'necessary' somehow. The fact is people don't even care about the poor and suffering in their own cities and countries, so how can they care about an unknown people in another part of the world? It's posturing, China's problems will be only be fixed by those chinese who truly care for their people and country.

> Or there would be protests daily in western capitals about the sheer unimaginable scale of destruction, devastation and millions of families destroyed and lives lost in the middle east starting from Iraq to Libya and now Syria done purely to further geo-political and financial interests.

My parents and wife were born in Syria. I lived and studied there for 5 years, and spent some time in then-liberated Eastern Aleppo in 2013.

I, and most Syrians I know, despise Obama not because he said Assad should step down; we despise him for not following through, or at least getting out of the way and letting regional players help Syrians get rid of Assad, and kick out Iran's sectarian militias.

Western powers are responsible for a lot of horror and misery around the world. But unlike Iraq in 2003, Libya and Syria in 2011 experienced genuine popular uprisings. Most of the death and destruction was caused not by the West, but by Gaddafi and Assad.

Despite what Noam Chomsky seems to believe, the West is not the source of all evil in the world.