Newsweek reports United States is the 2nd most hated country in the world

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January said:
I do think the gun laws and gun death situation here is much better.

Regardless of 'context' or other factors.
The biggest factor is the difference in gun laws and gun culture not umpteen other variables you are trying to pin it on. That is the one unique difference, not just to Australia but to every other western country.
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Where do all the Australians at SO's play dates train then? And those from 17 non US nations recently.
 

oslooskar said:
Fair enough, and yes, the political and UN leadership that issued those rules of engagement deserve serious blame. But we can’t absolve the Australian soldiers on the ground either. They weren’t helpless, and they weren’t ignorant. The Kibeho massacre unfolded in front of them over many hours. They knew what was happening. They were trained, armed, and capable of stopping it—or at the very least, of intervening in some way. Instead, they obeyed orders to stand down and watched thousands of unarmed civilians be gunned down. That wasn’t just morally indefensible. By the legal standards set at the Nuremberg Trials, following such orders is criminal. The principle established there is clear, you do not escape responsibility by obeying unlawful orders, especially when those orders involve turning your back on crimes against humanity. So yes, this is an indictment. Maybe not of every individual’s intent, but of the collective failure to act when it mattered most. And that failure wasn’t just a stain on their conscience. It meets the legal threshold of complicity in atrocity.
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Good point and I will not argue.

But I will ask the question -- who was held accountable for the Aussies' failure to address the genocide developing in front of them?

Without digging further, my bet is: NOBODY. If that is true, that speaks toward the power of the political/elite class. Put simply, a cover-up.

Question -- were the Aussie soldiers part and parcel of the U.N.? I can look that up myself and will do so, but I'm curious as to where their orders emanated.
 

hollydolly said:
Oooh nasty attitude..:mad:. if you don't want to believe figures or listen to anyone else who has figures then don't you post them on this forum
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Yes your majesty!!! Except I am not one of your subjects.
hollydolly said:
if we saw children doing something wrong we would let them know and hope they would stop it.. we wouldn't HATE children.. because of it...
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Aaah!! You view us a children, doing your bidding and all the chores, without garnering any respect.

Gotcha!
 
Eupher said:
Good point and I will not argue. But I will ask the question -- who was held accountable for the Aussies' failure to address the genocide developing in front of them? Without digging further, my bet is: NOBODY. If that is true, that speaks toward the power of the political/elite class. Put simply, a cover-up. Question -- were the Aussie soldiers part and parcel of the U.N.? I can look that up myself and will do so, but I'm curious as to where their orders emanated.
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Yes, that's true, nobody was held accountable. Not a single Australian soldier, commander, or politician faced consequences for what happened at Kibeho. The Australian troops were there as part of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, operating under a UN mandate. However, that does not absolve them from taking responsibility for allowing that massacre to happen. Orders may have come from above, but those Australians on the ground still had eyes, ears, weapons and the choice to help. But, sadly, they chose to stand down and do nothing and thus failed to protect the defenseless. So, if we are being honest, it was a massacre enabled by Australian inaction. That being said, I have no tolerance for people who refuse to help others.
 
oslooskar said:
Fair enough, and yes, the political and UN leadership that issued those rules of engagement deserve serious blame. But we can’t absolve the Australian soldiers on the ground either. They weren’t helpless, and they weren’t ignorant. The Kibeho massacre unfolded in front of them over many hours. They knew what was happening. They were trained, armed, and capable of stopping it—or at the very least, of intervening in some way. Instead, they obeyed orders to stand down and watched thousands of unarmed civilians be gunned down. That wasn’t just morally indefensible. By the legal standards set at the Nuremberg Trials, following such orders is criminal. The principle established there is clear, you do not escape responsibility by obeying unlawful orders, especially when those orders involve turning your back on crimes against humanity. So yes, this is an indictment. Maybe not of every individual’s intent, but of the collective failure to act when it mattered most. And that failure wasn’t just a stain on their conscience. It meets the legal threshold of complicity in atrocity.
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I do not know how many troops Australia had as far combat troops be it Infantry , MP , etc but many of the personnel were logistics and that was a problem.

Peace keeping troops are ALWAYS in a no win and often out gunned .

The first people killed were Belgian peace keepers and later Belgian entertains the idea of giving Ntuyahaga a visa .


Fury over asylum application by Rwandan who killed 10 Belgians​

A reported application for asylum by a former Rwandan major sentenced to 20 years in jail for his role in the deaths of 10 Belgian soldiers has caused fury in Belgium.

Bernard Ntuyahaga was found guilty of manslaughter in 2007 over the killing of the Belgian paratroopers who were on UN duty in Rwanda when they were seized and hacked to death with machetes.

Ntuyahaga was accused by prosecutors of spreading rumours that the Belgian peacekeepers were responsible for shooting down a plane and killing President Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994.

The day after the death of the president, Ntuyahaga took the peacekeepers from the residence of the prime minister, whom they had been tasked with protecting, and transported them to a military camp in the capital, Kigali, where they were beaten to death, shot or killed with machetes. In the following three months, about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.

Ntuyahaga was released from a Belgian jail in June but has been in a closed asylum centre since.

Belgium is obliged to check whether he is at risk of inhuman and degrading treatment in Rwanda, where experts say he likely be arrested on arrival.

Ntuyahaga’s wife and child live in Denmark. The Het Nieusblad newspaper had reported he had tried to join them but that Danish authorities refused. With a successful asylum application in Belgium he could travel to join his family.

Fury over asylum application by Rwandan who killed 10 Belgians
 
oslooskar said:
Ah yes, the noble tale of Australia learning its lesson from domestic massacres and rising above it all with wise legislation and gun control. Inspiring stuff. But let’s rewind to Kibeho, Rwanda, 1995, where Australian troops stood inside a refugee camp while thousands of unarmed civilians were gunned down by the Rwandan Patriotic Army. Men, women, and children were cut down with automatic weapons, and the Australians, fully armed and trained, were under strict orders to do nothing. Not intervene. Not return fire. Just watch. Afterward, they counted the bodies and patched up the survivors. So forgive me if I don’t buy the narrative of moral superiority. Passing laws back home is easy when you’re not the one standing in front of a real massacre and being told to stay quiet. That’s not a triumph of values, it’s a tragedy of timidity.
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I haven't checked, but I think they were there as part of a UN peace keeping mission. UN peacekeepers are not permitted to fire on either side. Their firearms are permitted for self defence only.

Australian troops also served the same role in Cyprus, standing between the Greek and Turkish sides but not interfering. It is a hard ask, but that is international law.

Now I'm going to do some checking. Feel free to do the same.
 
Eupher said:
I'm not here to defend Australia -- there are plenty of Aussies here who will do that. But in this instance involving Rwanda, let's please consider that soldiers will do as they're ordered. I'm sure it works that way as it (mostly) works that way in the US.

This is a failure of political leadership, and I'll say that even with the risk that my post will be deleted for crossing that "no politics!" line. (We've kinda been dancing around that for several pages anyway, but I digress...)
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Australia has sent troops and even civilian police overseas to serve as peace keepers since 1947. Please note that there is a difference between peacekeeping and peace enforcement.

Full list of all the peace keeping missions where Australia has committed personnel to peacekeeping mission can be found at this website - the Australian War Museum in Canberra - Australians and Peacekeeping | Australian War Memorial

A relevant portion of the history -

Since the 1970s, Australian contributions to peacekeeping operations have increased in size and scope. RAAF helicopters operated in the Sinai in the 1970s and 1980s, as Egypt and Israel ended three decades of hostilities. At the end of the 1970s, an Australian infantry force of 150 soldiers took part in a British Commonwealth operation as Zimbabwe achieved independence. In 1989, a larger contingent, composed largely of engineers, assisted the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) in Namibia.

Peacekeeping in the 1990s
With the end of the Cold War, the 1990s proved to be the busiest decade in the history of multinational peacekeeping. For the first time, RAN ships took part in a peacekeeping operation, enforcing UN-imposed sanctions against Iraq both before and after the Gulf War.

For a period in 1993, Australia had over 2,000 peacekeepers in the field, with large contingents in Cambodia and Somalia. In Cambodia, Australia had taken a leading diplomatic role in the search for a settlement to factional strife in a country still suffering the effects of the genocidal Pol Pot regime of the 1970s. The Australian contribution to the resulting UN operation included the force commander and the operation's communications component. In Somalia, where the international effort resulted largely in failure, a battalion-level Australian contingent was nevertheless successful in allowing the delivery of humanitarian aid in the Baidoa area.

A year later, Australians were in Rwanda, another country to fall victim to genocidal civil violence. This time, the Australian contingent centred on medical staff who were able to treat many of the local people, in addition to members of the UN force. (Their mission was to protect medical staff, not to take part in the turmoil. Peace keepers have rules of engagement that must be followed.)

After this there was a lull in Australian peacekeeping, though long-running operations continued in the Middle East and Cyprus and Australians were still involved with Iraq, inspecting weapons-manufacturing facilities and policing sanctions.

Since 1997, however, Australians have also served on Bougainville, where a settlement at last appears possible in the long-running conflict between the Papua New Guinea government and the separatist Bougainville Revolutionary Army.

Then in 1999, Australia led a peace enforcement operation which dwarfed all its previous peacekeeping efforts, as East Timor achieved independence from Indonesia. (Note the difference in terminology. The rules of engagement were not the same as those imposed on the peace keepers in Rwanda.)
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oslooskar said:
“just following orders” might seem like a reasonable defense at first glance, but history disagrees. The judges at the Nuremberg Trials made it absolutely clear: obeying orders is not a valid excuse when those orders result in crimes against humanity or in standing by while they happen.
In fact, the legal precedent set at Nuremberg establishes that willful inaction in the face of atrocity, even under orders, can itself be criminal. Soldiers are not absolved of moral responsibility simply because they were told to look the other way. What happened at Kibeho wasn't a moment of foggy confusion. It was a sustained massacre, unfolding in front of armed peacekeepers who had the training, the means, and arguably the moral obligation to intervene. So no “they were just following orders” doesn’t clear the air. If anything, it clouds it with cowardice wrapped in bureaucracy.
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It wasn't orders that they were following. Peace keepers have rules of engagement that are very different to those of combat troops. They cannot take sides, no matter what takes place. It is a very difficult mission.
 
hollydolly said:
Oooh nasty attitude..:mad:. if you don't want to believe figures or listen to anyone else who has figures then don't you post them on this forum

I have aboslutely no hatred for the USA.. and it's people...NONE..just the opposite... people like you who won't face up to a problem the rest of the world sees, pull that Haters will be Haters card every single time...extremely childish !

if we saw children doing something wrong we would let them know and hope they would stop it.. we wouldn't HATE children.. because of it...
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qft For the record, I don't hate Americans either.
 
oslooskar said:
You’re mistaking correlation for causation. You say gun laws are the “one unique difference,” brushing aside all other variables as if urban gang dynamics, demographics, geography, and socioeconomic stratification don’t matter. But that’s not analysis—it’s narrative. The U.S. isn’t just an outlier in gun laws. It’s an outlier in gang warfare, inner-city poverty, broken policing in major cities, and a border that feeds organized drug trafficking into urban zones. You’re comparing a continent-sized country with over 330 million people—many of them living in segregated, decaying metro areas—with a population smaller than California’s and nowhere near the same crime pressures. Australia didn’t need to “fix” Chicago, Baltimore, or St. Louis. You never had those problems to begin with. So yes, different gun culture—granted. But let’s not pretend it exists in a vacuum. The idea that gun laws alone explain everything is tidy, but lazy.
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yes there are other differences - but the main one is different gun laws and different gun culture - not just to Australia but to every other western country. Other countries have inner city poverty etc - those things arent unique to US

No other thing about US is unique compared to other western countries - and consequently you have massively higher per capita gun death rate - homicides, suicides, accidents
 
Harry Le Hermit said:
I realize that you and others have a particular hatred of the US and have demonstrated it, with snide remarks and asides, with the current situation giving you cover to come out into the open with your hatred. I don't care... got it!
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Nobody has a hatred of the US - but gosh, some american posters get very defensive about any criticism or any suggestion that everyone else doesn't see US as the best place i n the world 😵‍💫 🙄

strange response from people who don't care. :unsure:
 
January said:
Nobody has a hatred of the US - but gosh, some american posters get very defensive about any criticism or any suggestion that everyone else doesn't see US as the best place i n the world 😵‍💫 🙄

strange response from people who don't care. :unsure:
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Though I am an American I always saw myself more like an extraterrestrial living among these Yanks and humans period so yes I concur .
They are a sensitive species .

However looking at China , Russia , N,K and others I have my doubts about this Newsweek report .
 
Rossana said:
You make a good point. While travelling through Brazil, I came across very unruly drunken German tourists behaving very poorly. The same happened with drunken Swedish tourists while I was visiting Greece.
Perhaps away from their native country some people feel they can behave as they please.
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Too bad people can't lay off the booze no matter where they're from..:(
 
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