I'll cop to (a), but only out of laziness, not for any of the broader motives you are attempting to impute. And definitely not to (b), which definitely does not follow from what you (falsely) think to be my position, at all.

Frankly -- to every extent you think we're busily trying to "dial up" America's innate evilness, it seems you're definitely trying to divert/deflect blame for its actions, also. For example, spinning the torture/murder of Dilawar as a matter of his being framed by locals (as if that were the primary cause of what happened to him); without focusing on the infinitely bigger circumstances behind his death, which is the simple fact of the occupying soldiers choosing to beat the guy to a bloody pulp in the first place.

There's also the weird way you describe his death as "sad and tragic", as if it were a car accident, or something similar fateful. It was nothing of the sort of course - it was a war crime, straight up.

Someone makes a hyperbolic "America is evil" claim.

They said nothing of the sort. The initial commenter made some serious (and in my view perfectly justified) criticisms of the fact that the US never seems to have undergone a genuine moral reckoning for the moral disaster that was the 2003 Iraq invasion.

But this is very different from an essentializing, moralistic statement like "America is evil". So for all your concerns about hyperbolicizing over small details such as why exactly so-and-so got picked up before they were tortured, you're clearly doing some serious hyperbolicizing yourself in this case, and in a much intentional, top-down way.

>not for any of the broader motives you are attempting to impute

Why do the errors of your "laziness" all point in the same direction? Motivated reasoning is the obvious explanation.

>spinning the torture/murder of Dilawar as a matter of his being framed by locals (as if that were the primary cause of what happened to him)

Yet again I will emphasize that I was responding to the claim "The kidnapping of random civilians to get tortured". Way up in this thread I stated:

>Can you provide a citation for the claim that these were literally random civilians (as opposed to people suspected of committing a crime or plotting to commit a crime)?

Perhaps you were too lazy to read that part?

The question here is not how gruesome the crime is. Repeating myself yet again: The question is the degree to which this crime reflects on the entire US nation, vs specific culpable individuals. Insofar as it reflects on the entire US nation, that's where the implication that we should withdraw from NATO is straightforward.

>There's also the weird way you describe his death as "sad and tragic", as if it were a car accident, or something similar fateful. It was nothing of the sort of course - it was a war crime, straight up.

I already stated in this thread: "I think you are correct that the US service members committed some fucked up war crimes in Iraq."

I won't respond to you further in this thread. It's increasingly clear based on your responses that you simply aren't reading what I'm writing, and aren't thinking very hard about this topic.

And, I don't think my nation should be defending yours. You're not an ally. An "alliance" means mutual benefit. But there's no benefit to me from partnering with you. Defending you is charity, and considered as charity, it is frankly terrible. I don't believe in charity for wealthy, self-righteous, entitled, smug, thankless people -- especially not when it entails significant personal risk.

You haven't remotely justified why my tax dollars should pay for your defense, given the risk of US service members committing more gruesome war crimes in the course of defending you, same way they did in WW2.