Western Arrogance and Hypocrisy

Given Western involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Libya and Syria should the West criticize Russia in Ukraine?

In my previous story I championed the West and its values. I don’t want that to be taken as get-out-of-jail-free card. There are a bit too many conservative American patriots which seem to think the US beyond criticism because Americas role in fighting Nazism in WW2.

When I judge the West as better than Russia and China, I don’t view that as a license to rest on our laurels. It does not absolve us of criticism. Quite the contrary the ability to have a public debate about our own failures is a key advantage of Western style democracy.

That there are arrogant hypocrites among us in the West is without a doubt true. There are plenty of people today who are pouring out their sympathy for the plight of Ukrainians who were entirely indifferent to the suffering of Iraqis , Syrians and Afghans. Those people should be called out. But that kind of internal criticism is very different from Russians, Chinese and Middle Easterners pointing fingers and saying the whole West did not care. That is profoundly untrue. The West is not a monolith and that is our strength. We welcomed over a million refugees from Syria with open arms while some of us did not and called them fortune seekers. There are all sorts of people in the West just like there are in Russia, China and the Middle East. There are people in these other areas…