> They also used depleted uranium, which is banned by international law
Uh, no it's not. It's not even covered by one of the treaties banning weapons that the US hasn't signed up to (such as the cluster munition or landmine treaties).
While I strongly disagree with my country's preference to not sign up to international treaties on the basis that it might find itself on trial, as I pointed out, this doesn't even fall under the case of such a treaty.
If you disagree with me, please cite precisely which clause of which treaty prohibits the use of depleted uranium in weapons.
While you're right that depleted uranium specifically isn't covered, it's interesting to me that you focus on the legal status as opposed to the horrific effects of the weapon on the civilian population. There's also a pretty strong case that it falls under existing laws prohibiting superfluous injuries or unnecessary suffering.
He's focusing on the incorrect statement you made. The straightforward thing to do here, if you think the rest of your argument is more important than your mistake, is to concede the point and move on.
While I've already acknowledged that it's not explicitly covered, I've linked an article explaining that it's in a gray area at best and falls under existing laws prohibiting superfluous injuries or unnecessary suffering.
I think this comment is a bit too downvoted for how well-referenced it is. Can people who disagree comment instead of downvoting? I'd be interested to know if some/all of the claims are untrue, but driveby downvoting doesn't help discussion.
A few of them are untrue (I pointed out one claim in my sibling comment), or at the very least, written in such a way as to give an impression that is not true.
The downvoting here is, I assume, largely because it's sanctimonious whataboutism. And in general, you're combining two logical fallacies (both the sanctimonious part and the whataboutism), and many such lists can tend to delve into "I'm cherry-picking only the evidence that I want to see and ignoring anything that disagrees with my viewpoint."
It is amusing to me what is not on this list. I'm surprised there's no mention of Smedley Butler's War is a Racket, or Noah Chomsky's well-known views on the Vietnam War and the US media's involvement with it. I'm especially bemused by the lack of any mention to the drone assassination program, most tied to Obama--perhaps because every media mention of it inevitably criticizes it, so it doesn't work well as a "your government is doing evil stuff that you don't know about" example?
Saying whataboutism is simply trolling and not a form of argument. Claiming a country does X implies that what it's doing is somehow an outlier, and that "good" countries don't use such tactics. Nobody is refuting the points about China, however those have to be seen in context of what other countries, such as US are doing. When it's not in any way abnormal behaviour then singling out China is just pure hypocrisy, and it's a disingenuous argument.
The context of discussion here is the parent comment asking whether there are recent examples of US actions that even compare in scale or scope. So, it's a little weird to screech about whataboutism when those examples are provided.
Meanwhile, it would take multiple books to list all of the known US atrocities, so I just picked a small sample there.
