this is a major rhetoric problem and one i've been writing about for yrs & i have no idea how people dont see how prefacing nominal anti-war statements by ACCEPTING THE ENTIRE MORAL PREMISE OF A WAR/BOMBING is a bad idea. It's not "nuance" its helping further PR for US aggression
at the very least if someone insists Bad Guy X "has murdered 1000s" or "has blood on their hands" Im curious if they think the same of US/Saudi/Israeli leaders. If not, why not, if so then how is this moral distinction meaningful in the context of MENA beyond careerist signaling?
US/UK liberals (anecdotally I would argue way more than other countries I've visited) are very quick to create ad hoc moral categories of Bad Actors with little attempt at forming a coherent model for how these categories are arrived at or what their implications will be.
I've said this tongue-in-cheek in the past but I think i'd unironically like all pundits/politicians to fill out a moral scorecard for every global leader and provide a coherent explanation as to why they think those who fail are Beyond the Moral Pail and Worthy of Summary Death
Americans & Brits have, for so long, been unilaterally dishing out death, war & sanctions on the basis of who is and isnt a Bad Actor we don't even think about it. Liberals do it more than anyone. It's a mark of Seriousness. We don't see how obscenely arrogant and arbitrary it is
so then everyone from the NYT to MSNBC to CNN to NPR rushes to accept Soleimani is Hitler 2.0 then the debate becomes "was Trump's summary killing of Hitler 2.0 wise?" This is the scope of debate, and it's a limited scope by design, thus the function of Serious Liberals.
