EDIT: I originally wrote this to ask if anyone else is bothered by the hypocrisy. If you're going to downvote this, I would definitely appreciate if you at least write why you disagree. Also if you are bothered by the hypocrisy, I'd appreciate if you said so. Either way, am I just being crazy? I know I'm not the only one, but I also want to understand where I'm wrong.

"What appears to be the position of the Muzychuks seems to be aligned with many international sports federations. FIFA and UEFA (football), the IAAF, Formula 1, UCI (cycling), FIS (skiing) and dozens of other sports have outright banned Russian and Belarussian individuals and teams from participating in sporting events."

I am a libertarian, and I am against invasions, occupations, violence, and certainly against war crimes. I'm also against accepting millions of people's lives being destroyed as "collateral damage" and so on.

But this bothers me because my country, USA, has been on a tear since its founding. It took land from Native Americans and drove them into reservations. Then the entire western third of the country (where Silicon Valley is) from California to Texas was simply taken from Mexico in a war, like the one in Ukraine but far bigger territory. It claimed the entire western hemisphere as its protectorate that "foreign powers" could not intervene in. Reading about its "protection" of some of these areas is to read about literal enslavement of its people, e.g. Haiti (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Ha...)

And having defeated everyone around them (except the Canadians, we tried to invade them but they repelled us), and having a "sphere of influence" that extends in all directions, we then started going halfway around the world and bombing countries that presented no threat to us. Such as Laos, which we bombed more than any country in history... to "send a message" to Viet Nam: https://www.history.com/news/laos-most-bombed-country-vietna...

If you replace "special military operation" with "secret war" and you replace "denazification" with either "domino theory / defeating communism" or "war on terror / islamism" we have justified more invasions, occupations, and regime change wars than anyone else. Just in the last 25 years, USA and NATO bombed Yugoslavia, told them to let Kosovo be independent, then invaded and occupied Afghanistan, invaded and occupied Iraq, destroyed Libya and left it as a failed state, and also armed and trained insurgents in Syria in a civil war.

Now don't get me wrong. Russia is a bad actor. It bombed the crap out of Chechnya. It armed and trained insurgents in Donbas since 2014. It invaded Ukraine. But given that USA has been doing a lot more just in my lifetime, how come not a single athlete from the USA was so much as banned from a sporting event? I'm not even talking about sanctions.

We're the one putting sanctions on countries that present no threat to us like Cuba. More countries in UN vote every year for USA to end their embargo on Cuba, than have condemned Russia, and Obama almost did, but the subsequent presidents put it back... what did they ever do to us: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612

Every year, polls around the world show that USA is regarded as the greatest threat to democracy, far ahead of Russia and China (though maybe in 2022 Russia pulled ahead)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/05/us-threat-demo...

So I think it would be much more accurate to say that Russia, China and USA are "great powers" that meddle in other countries' affairs and they all do bad things, and we the people should keep pushing our governments to elect moderates who listen to each other (at least like Kennedy and Khrustchev did during the Cuban Missile Crisis) and push the UN to strengthen rights of individuals (like Uyghurs in China) the same way they passed the Geneva Conventions. We should push our governments to stop using cluster munitions, and stop doing regime change wars, and maybe recognize the international criminal court. We could de-escalate many conflicts if we simply demanded that our politicians have discussions in good faith and publicly on video (as opposed to behind closed doors, where who knows what they even do). They want to know where we spend $600, I want to know where the Pentagon spends trillions.

The reason this is maddening to me is that many like me around the world see that proxy wars are caused by multiple actors. The war in Yemen is caused by Saudis and Iran, not just one side. Same with the war in Ukraine (NATO and Russia). And the answer should be to make peace agreements - like China just brokered between Iran and Saudis. That's great news for Yemen. Now we need that for Ukraine. But instead, we have rank hypocrisy and everyone is bullied into going along with it like that's normal. What's worse than the hypocrisy is that it removes all the actual political impetus to hold politicians on all sides to account, and to prevent such wars from happening going forward.

Is it just me, or does the hypocrisy of banning all athletes from Russia but zero athletes from USA, and the sheer misplace of focus, bother anyone else?

PS: I should also say that US and China have done a lot of good in the world, too. But if the principle is that any country which invades or bombs another country which presents no threat to it, should have its athletes banned, then USA should have had that happen after Laos, Iraq, Libya, and a number of other countries.

PPS: I thought many sporting competitions like the Olympic Games were explicitly designed to be independent of wars and all the terrible nonsense that politicians do. Instead of taking it out on, say, scientists or philosophers from a country, everyone should realize they should instead focus on voting out own war hawk politicians.