But this explanation for that phenomenon is nonsense:
The modern humanitarian conscience is often cited as one of the West’s proudest achievements, but its indifference to Russia’s crimes reveals an underlying ideology that is essentially an artifact of the Cold War. Born in a period in which the fate of the world was being determined by the bipolar contest of the United States and the Soviet Union, the humanitarian critique is configured to accommodate two easily recognizable characters and a straightforward narrative. Its tolerance for ambiguity is correspondingly low. As such, Ukraine’s fragile, corruption-plagued democracy and the bewildering array of Syrian rebels are not the uncomplicated “good guys” the Western imagination demands. [emphasis added]
So the reason that so many American and Europeans protested the Iraq War was because Saddam Hussein was an "uncomplicated good guy?" That monster and his monster sons were what the "Western imagination" demanded to march, chant slogans that require the brain power to count to eight, and make giant papier-mâché puppets?
Maybe the explanation is that communists are often behind organizing the protests and that Russia has inherited the mantle of Soviet immunity to Leftist outrage (note Green Party Candidate Jill Stein's regurgitation of Russian talking points on Ukraine for where the leftist mind--Greens are just socialists who enjoy recycling--naturally gravitates).
Maybe the explanation is that nobody fears President Obama will send thugs to rough them up or kill them with radioactive poison as Putin might.
Maybe the explanation is that too many in the West are bizarrely convinced that the America is uniquely evil and deserving of mistrust or hate despite the great advances in liberty and prosperity that the American-led West has achieved.
But do remember that America intervened in Iraq to destroy a thug Baathist minority regime that used chemical weapons that had destabilized the region through direct military aggression and support for terrorism, replaced it with a fledgling democracy, and then withdrew (however unwisely) without "stealing" the oil; while Russia has seized territory and killed people in sovereign members of the United Nations (Ukraine and Georgia) and intervened to prop up a thug Baathist minority regime that supported terrorism, committed aggression in the region, and has used chemical weapons (Syria).
Yet the "modern humanitarian conscience" was only moved to protest in the streets by America's intervention and not Russia's. Odd, isn't it?
