::walks away whistling hoping you don’t notice Iraq and Afghanistan’s blown up weddings::
Feel free to start a discussion on US aggression, if you honestly feel strongly about it.
Otherwise you're blatantly trying to whitewash decades of systematic oppression from totalitarian bloodthirsty regimes, and in the process support all the human rights violations they're continuously subjecting their population to.
How do sanctions help an average Joe stuck living under such a regime?
Now they are even poorer, have worse nutrition and medicine.
Think about it, Soviet Union was not just knowing what you did last summer; it knew what you would be doing a summer 40 years from back then.
...except they weren't criticizing. Much like in this case, their intention was to divert the attention on their cruel and inhumane practices by picking any distraction they could find out, with the goal of perpetuating their abuse without being subjected to criticism.
It's the same reason why nowadays you have Putin's regime posting bullshit about how the people of the UK and Germany are somehow suffering from hardship to deflect the attention from the impact that international sanctions is having in it's economy. The target and substance of their attacks is immaterial, and their goal is to divert attention.
It is supposed to mean the rhetorical trick of using other’s faults to distract from and normalize one’s own wrongdoing.
It is not a general defense against accusations of hypocrisy leveled by a third party.
The US has zero moral authority to impose sanctions based on violations of human rights while simultaneously violating human rights on a global scale.
Additionally, we have seen the effects of sanctions, the average people suffer even more, and the regime stays the same.
Arguably the people of Cuba are worse off after sanctions than before.
