Your scenario suggests that the friend ‘just started’ to act out, but this breaks the analogy because the US has been doing war crimes for decades.

This isn’t a friend that just started acting out, it’s a friend that has a history of talking behind your back, stealing your stuff, crashing your car, sleeping with your SO, killing your pet, and offering you a cash bribe in return.

Why is this person still your friend? Why didn’t people reach their limit when the friend killed a million innocent Iraqis?

You’re mostly right about the benefits of college, but this idea of a transition into functional adulthood is outdated. It reflects a bygone era of the job market.

After graduating college and being unable to find a job, I am much less functional and significantly less adult.

Think about all the oil you use as a regular person- for heating, transportation, fertilizer for your foods, etc.

Now say the price goes up by 20%. Would you, in response, consume 20% less? Would you heat your home 20% less and eat 20% less and go to work 20% less? Of course not.

The estimated 20% reduction in worldwide crude production means, somehow, somewhere, as a world we have to use 20% less oil. Then the question is, how high does the price have to rise to force people to consume 20% less?

How expensive will it have to get to force people to heat 20% less and eat 20% less and drive 20% less? I don’t know, but it’s going to get worse, because we aren’t there yet.

I would be a confident criminal too, if the most powerful army in the world pledged to invade as a response to any criminal charges against me.

Hague Invasion Act - Wikipedia

I’m guessing this is a reference to unexploded ordnance in Cambodia, which has killed 20,000 and caused 45,000 amputations since the war ended in 1979.

That war ended 50 years ago, and there is still 700 square miles of land contaminated by unexploded bombs.

At least one child will lose their hand to a US bomb this month in Cambodia, you can bet on it. And next month too.

Yes, I was never attempting to steelman OP’s argument. I was pointing out the flaws of the argument as it is given.

Steelmanning is a tool that is helpful in many situations, but that does not mean it is useful in every situation. Perhaps there is an ideal version of OP’s argument, a steelman, that I would agree with. But the actual argument that OP laid out is not ideal, it is hypocritical, and I am pointing that out.

A student who gets a poor grade on a paper does not get to go to the professor and ask them to “steelman” their argument for a better grade. The paper is judged as it is written.

This whole post is about OP taking issue with criticism.

OP’s snarky reference to free speech is hypocritical on its face. The entire thesis of their post is to attack criticism, and criticism is a form of free speech.

Pointing out hypocrisy is not a strawman.

Did you like it when he bombed hospitals?

Did you like it when he promised to pull out, but instead surged troops?

Did you like it when he supported the rise of ISIS in Syria?

Did you like it when he betrayed the Kurds?

Did you like it when he abandoned Egypt’s Mubarek, leading to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Did you like it when he expanded drone warfare, killing hundreds of innocent people?

Yeah he’s better than trump/Republicans, but his failed policies have normalized the Bush-era crimes and have enabled the Trump-era crimes.

Whitewashing Obama’s disgusting, bloodstained legacy only serves to further degrade our national morality and enable the worst excesses of American fascism.

Yes I agree.

If you use context instead of cherry picking a half-sentence then maybe you would understand that is part of the broader point I am trying to get across to a western, chauvinism-brained audience.

America already tried to save the North Koreans once. It was called the “Korean War”.

We bombed them back to the stone age, then permanently isolated them from most of the world. Despite having good reasons for the start of the war, America treated NK like Israel currently treats Gaza.

Even if North Koreans tried to forget that America bombed every hospital, every water purification plant, all the electricity production, etc; the Kim regime’s propaganda will make sure they never forget.

If we actually wanted to help those people, the first step would be removal of economic sanctions. There is no clean way to remove dictatorship, but the “Arab Spring” model is much more effective and humane than the “Afghanistan War” model.