if literally all your arguments and all your discussions depend on your use of whataboutism, the problem and solution lie within yourself: conceive of affirmative arguments supporting your position which aren't logical fallacies, like whataboutism is
It is my father having a love child with the neighbour's wife while I get a ass whopping for sleeping with the maid.
All jokes aside; I believe the western world set a dangerous precedent with the war on terror and the chickens are coming home to roost. Am fearful of what is to come in the future.
Russia's war on Ukraine may end up emboldening nations to act as they please with regards to dissidents wherever they might be and this is a scary world that we moving into.
Distraction from the relevant point by bringing up cases where the accusee might be construed as having performed the same act as the accused. It's a distraction because it detracts from whether the accused did or didn't do the act. And the matter here is whether India did it; distractions away from this question are either implying that they did it ("so what if I did, you did too"), or an attempt to throw off and confuse the conversations about it.
It is important here because it takes away the moral high ground. It is also important because those who did it previously have not faced any repercussions, so why would anybody hesitate to do this.
I think people who use the word whataboutism do not understand the more difficult concept of hypocrisy. It's more difficult because it requires contextual reasoning.
"Whataboutism" is easy because it's purely syntactic, every time someone says "What about ...", you are allowed to accuse them of it--instead of having to confront, in good faith, an implied accusation of hypocrisy.
It's like Orwellian newspeak, but the new word is less expressive and more likely to confuse the disagreement.
I think people who engage in whataboutism and defend it with cries of "hypocrisy" do not understand the even more difficult concept that, even if you personally think that someone else is a hypocrite, it doesn't make you any less wrong.
Indeed, whataboutism itself is easy because it's purely distractional: "but Y is a hypocrite!" a defender of X may shout, when the topic is not Y, or their hypocrisy, but X, and what X did.
If your argument is that it was okay for X to do the thing, then you should be able to affirmatively say outright "I think it was okay for X to do the thing", and convincingly explain why, on a moral basis, it was okay for X to do the thing, without bringing anyone else into it.
Otherwise, it's like a child whining "but Stevie took a candy bar!" – maybe, maybe not, but that doesn't mean it's okay for you to take one, even if you think that makes someone a hypocrite
Explain this in more details. The outline I gather of your position is that "the US killed Ben Laden on Pakistani territory so India killed someone on Canadian territory, Canada had it coming for what they did to Ben Laden". Fill in the details.
If you harbour terrorists who are wanted by your ostensible partners, don't be surprised if they lose patience and decide to take matters into their own hands.
I don't care how you were raised, but two wrongs don't make a right, and unilateral, extrajudicial, extraterritorial assassinations of political opponents are wrong, even if you shout "terrorist!" while murdering
imagine if such shouting made murder okay, like a secret, magical incantation any arbitrary thug could recite to immunize oneself from guilt - it's a ridiculous concept when you think about it!
I'd say this is different from the trolley problem, because, again, unilateral, extrajudicial, extraterritorial assassinations of political opponents are wrong, even if you shout "terrorist!" while murdering
they are always wrong
it doesn't matter if you also did a good thing, it doesn't even matter if the good thing was related: you aren't allowed to do the wrong thing, period, even if you really, really, really want to, even if you think you have a good reason to break the rules and do wrong
and as to your first question, eh, could be for some examples, but it'd be a distraction, as the answer doesn't matter, because the case we're discussing definitely wasn't either one
