I just wish we'd apply this rule slightly more widely and didn't let countries get away with say - just as example - killing 20k children in Gaza. I guess you did say "generally".
Neither the US nor Europe would have cared about Hitler's mass murder as long as he kept it in Germany and didn't disrupt business, his antisemitism was not unusual, and he was generally popular in the US. Stalin got away with it. Mao Zedong got away with it, and his authoritarian regime is a nascent superpower. Pol Pot more or less got away with it. He was deposed by his own people and died in his sleep. Israel has killed tens of thousands Palestinians and the world did nothing to stop it, America funded it. Idi Amin murdered hundreds of thousands of people and died in luxury. How many Russians and Ukrainians has Putin and his invasion of Ukraine sent to the slaughterhouse? Do you think anything is going to happen to him? How many North Koreans have the Kims starved to death or executed? Repercussions for the Armenian genocide? None. History is replete leaders whom the "civilized world" let "get away with it."
