me_irl

But keep shouting your Kremlin talking points.

Sorry, I thought you wanted me to "read history, idiot." Well I did and it turns out there's a lot more to it than the one conflict in the past 80 years that was justified.

They said that too about each and every one of the conflicts I mentioned. What, you think they didn't say that about Vietnam? The revolutionaries started it by attacking France, we had to go "defend" it.

Oh, but when I, "read history, idiot," I also discovered that, lo and behold, it's not limited to the US. You can go all the way back to the Roman Empire. See, the Romans didn't just say, "we're going to go invade Gaul," what they did was they found two tribes in Gaul that were fighting, designated one as an ally and the other as the aggressor, and went out and counquered the aggressor. They expanded across the whole of Europe by "defending." So too did people say that the British Empire was "accidental" or "formed in a fit of absentmindedness."

I'd be hard pressed to find a single example in literally all of history in which both sides did not justify their involvement in a conflict by framing it as defensive. Ghenghis Khan, I suppose, but that's about it.