Watch the video below. It’s allegedly of a Russian cluster bomb strike in the heart of Aleppo, Syria. Cluster bombs are by nature indiscriminate, area-of-effect weapons, and their use is particularly problematic in built-up, urban areas where insurgents are mixed with the civilian population. Moreover, the bomblets from the cluster bomb itself can linger for months, blowing up unsuspecting civilians (including children) who pick them up, step on them, or are otherwise close by when they go off. While cluster bombs have their military uses, if the U.S. or Israel attempted a strike like the one below, the international outrage would be instantaneous. But this is Russia so, yawn:

Commenting on this video in the Jolt, my colleague Jim Geraghty asks, “Where are all the people protesting in the streets of Europe and the United States? Where are the giant paper-mâché heads?” I recognized long ago that the beating heart of the anti-war Left isn’t pacifism but deep hatred for America, Israel, and — to a lesser extent — our British and French allies. It long ago abandoned any sense of proportion and now holds the U.S. strictly liable for any and all civilian casualties — no matter how often jihadists violate the laws of war by deliberately mixing with civilians. Yet the Pentagon still tries to appease this bad-faith critique, and the Obama administration even adopts the anti-war Left’s bad-faith logic.

The sad reality is that our own weapons and targeting are so precise that we would rarely need to resort to cluster bombing — especially in urban areas. But even our precision firepower is too indiscriminate for international activists. Indeed, one gets the feeling that any use of firepower is too indiscriminate for the zealots. For the Russians, however, it’s bombs-away, and its allies reap the benefits without paying any meaningful international price.