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I think they're actually right within their own frame of how the world works.
Oppressed peoples consist of men, women, children, marginalized peoples, LGBTQWERTYUOIP, students, artists, activists, etc etc. It's never okay to go full-throttle attacking oppressed peoples. Why would you? Do you support maming children and murdering promising young art students? What kind of monster are you?
Oppressors consist of
men, women, chilEVIL. And you don't negotiate with EVIL, you burn it to the ground, you destroy EVIL root and branch, you cleanse EVIL from the river to the sea.Bombing the Axis powers and punching 21st century "nazis" are cases where the attacker had the will to get the job done. Someone also recently pointed out the example of Sri Lanka, where brutal reprisals against fanatical rebels... actually worked extremely well, because the attackers were merciless and willing to shed any amount of enemy (and perhaps their own) blood to win. The Allies were willing to do anything to win in WW2. "Nazi" Punchers get a slap on the wrist while alleged "nazis" get named, shamed, and humiliated.
Bombing random revolutionary SEA farmers makes them stronger because the U.S. was unwilling to follow up with whatever Geneva-convention-violating weaponry and/or hideous casualty numbers would've been required to grind the VC to dust. There were women and children at My Lai! (Unlike Dresden or Tokyo). Attacking Palestinians makes them stronger because the U.S. keeps Israel on a short enough leash that they can't fully eradicate the next generation of angry Gazan men raised without fathers. You can't go HAM on Gaza, there are women and children in there! (Unlike those towns at the Israeli border).
When I put it this way, the contrast is stark, but I don't think the people I'm describing see much inconsistency. Oppressors deserve what's coming to them after all.
I mostly agree with your point, but this isn't a great description of Vietnam. The Viet Cong weren't just rebels; a lot of them were actual North Vietnamese soldiers sent through tunnels from North Vietnam, and the rest were getting weapons and supplies that way. The usual prescription for putting an end to "hostile nation sending soldiers at you" is to knock over the hostile nation. And frankly, that would probably have worked, "willing" or not, assuming it could be done.
The problem there was that Mao Zedong, never exactly a pacifist, had made it very clear that US boots in North Vietnam would mean the PLA coming in guns blazing. So the USA never cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail at its source.
It wasn't strictly an optics/"willingness" problem; there was a large chunk of "do we want a great-power war" involved as well.
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