C/C++ is the "default" language they are/were trying to replace with Rust. So I think it's fair to point out that Rust made design decisions explicitly contrary to design decisions of C/C++ style languages even though Rust is meant to replace it. That's going to (and does cause) problems.
> design decisions explicitly contrary to design decisions of C/C++ style languages even though Rust is meant to replace it
Yes, but that doesn't have to do with whether they "like" C++ or not. What they "liked" is a programming model that could possibly be theoretically proven safe by any sort of tractable static analysis, and that inevitably means making decisions contrary to C/C++. Achieving their design goals was more important than adhering to C++'s mistakes for sentimental reasons.
You are confusing problem 1 (memory / thread safety) with problem 2 (being distinct from C/C++). I'm not here to argue about changes made that are necessary to solve problem 1, but I'm also not here to pretend that all the differences Rust has compared to a C-style language like C/C++/C# is largely due to supporting memory / thread safety.
