Difficult question - Ukraine vs Iraq

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The_Walrus
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03 Mar 2022, 6:56 am

RetroGamer87 wrote:

The_Walrus wrote:

Iraq was an absolute dictatorship with state-sanctioned persecution of ethnic minorities, led by a genocidal war criminal who had already led invasions of two neighbouring countries. The only hope for a change of direction was violent.

So we're going to invade every dictatorship and remove their dictator, right? /s

The fact that many other dictatorships get left alone (or sometimes even get supported) leads me to believe that the motivation for invading Iraq was not to topple the dictator.

The motivation for invading Iraq was that it was deemed to be a threat to global security.

Which currently existent dictatorships have:

- invaded two neighbouring countries, and
- committed ethnic cleansing, and
- used chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons?

I’m pretty sure there’s only one - Russia.

kraftiekortie
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03 Mar 2022, 7:07 am

Iraq came close….the only difference is that they only invaded ONE country.

They used biological weapons to seek to get rid of the Kurds and a mountain ethnic group whose name escapes me at the moment.

slam_thunderhide
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03 Mar 2022, 7:27 am

RetroGamer87 wrote:

The_Walrus wrote:

So we're going to invade every dictatorship and remove their dictator, right? /s

Walrus really should join the army since he's so keen on foreign interventionism.

slam_thunderhide
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03 Mar 2022, 7:50 am

MaxE wrote:

I'm serious. I have a hard time understanding how the US invasion of Iraq 19 years ago was less atrocious than what Russia is doing today in Ukraine. I don't remember anybody sanctioning the US at the time. Considering how much support for Ukraine is being expressed in the US today, I am trying to get some perspective. BTW I consider myself a mainstream to moderately left Democrat. Not given to extreme views. I don't hate Biden.

Good question. I consider the US invasion of Iraq to be worse.

Russia has been begging the West for years to cease the expansion of NATO, explaining (justifiably) that they saw it as an act of aggression against Russia, and for years they have just been ignored. They wanted Ukraine to remain neutral, and the US responded to Ukranian neutrality by sponsoring the 2014 coup against Ukraine's elected government. So after years of provocation, Russia decided enough was enough.

Iraq on the other hand was no conceivable threat to the US whatsoever. The justification given about WMDs was nonsense, as we all now know.

The childish urge to divide the world in “good democracies” and “bad dictatorships” that some people on this thread are falling for is part of the problem. The fact that the US has a long-standing record of invading other countries and taking out foreign governments they don’t like – regardless of any threat they posed to the US – is why so many countries feel threatened by them, and the fact that so many pampered Westerners are unable to see this is largely down to this childish belief that the US are always ‘the good guys’.

Even now we have people in the West who want to prolong this war and prolong Ukraine’s suffering because they can’t bear the idea of granting ‘big bad Russia’ any concessions whatsoever.

magz
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03 Mar 2022, 8:02 am

NATO is a defence alliance. Whenever a member goes to a war other than self-defence (like US sometimes does), NATO leaves them on their own.
So how would NATO be a threat? It would have protected against things that happened in 2008, 2014 and 2022. Using armed forces when your neighbours decide to exercise their formal independence.
A bully feels threatned that his victims may get protection, that's what it is.

Ukrainian suffering won't end until they successfully defend their independence. You've probably never lived in a Russian satellite, have you?

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kraftiekortie
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03 Mar 2022, 10:00 am

My barbarian aspect wishes Putin could be eliminated through drastic means.

All Putin is doing is severe harm based upon delusional and untrue premises.

He’s harming his own people, as well as the Ukrainians (who, paradoxically, are considered by him to be his “own people.”)

slam_thunderhide
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03 Mar 2022, 10:20 am

magz wrote:

In recent decades NATO has bombed Serbia, and aided the overthrown of Libya's government - both aggressive actions that had nothing to do with protecting NATO members. Instead of focusing on how NATO describe themselves, how about focusing on how they actually behave.

magz wrote:

Ukrainian suffering won't end until they successfully defend their independence.

It seems highly likely that Putin would settle for independence for the Russian-speaking regions of Donbas and Luhansk, and the guaranteed neutrality of the rest of Ukraine along similar lines to that of Finland (and in fact similar to how Ukraine was prior to 2014). If people say that's not 'true independence', then one could just reply that being a satellite of Washington / Brussels wouldn't be true independence either. Also, it's interesting how liberals are all in support of 'self-determination' when it suits them, but they don't seem to care about the self-determination of the Russian-speakers of Donbas and Luhansk.

magz wrote:

You've probably never lived in a Russian satellite, have you?

No. What actual Russian satellites are there? Belarus? Satellites of the modern-day Russian state I mean, not countries that were once satellites of the former Soviet Union. People on this thread do realise that the Soviet Union no longer exists, right?

kraftiekortie
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03 Mar 2022, 10:36 am

Serbia was committing well-documented genocide against Bosnians.

There should have been intervention within the Rwandan Genocide, too.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 03 Mar 2022, 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

aghogday
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03 Mar 2022, 10:43 am

Ukraine Vs Iraq:

One Clear Message;
It Doesn't Seem Many
Americans Understand Yet:

ELECTIONS COUNT:

Lots of Body Bags Over
the Gore And Bush Jr.
Razor Thin Margin For Iraq;
Yes, in A WAR THAT WAS NOT
JUSTIFIED Internationally Legally; AT LEAST,
KILLING WAY OVER 100 THOUSAND IRAQI FOLKS
WITH SOME ESTIMATES, OVER A MILLION FOLKS THEN.

Less than 5,000 Americans Lives Gone, Pennies Worth it for
the 'Cheney And Military Contractor Cronies Administration'

to Profit off of
Rebuilding the
Country We Tore
Down With So Many
Lives in Tow 6 Feet Below...

It Wasn't the American People Who Did that;
It Was A Very Corrupt Administration, Ignorantly Voted-
in that DID THAT. My Muslim FRiEnDS Don't Blame 'Our People' for
That; They See the Evil in the Leaders, no Different than their Countries too...

There is No Doubt That Leaders in Our Government Have Been Corrupt Before;
And Down Right Wrong Evil, if There is Evil in this World; Yet STiLL WHere THere is

REPRESENTATIVE

DEMOCRACY, ThERE
IS ROOM TO IMPROVE;

Where THere are Human Beings,
THeirs is Fallibility, For as Science
Shows at Core, Humans Are Emotional
Beings and Far from Rational Now Alone;

So What Do We KNow; We KNow the Republican
Leadership of this Country, Admitted That Donald J. Trump
Was Practically Responsible for Inciting A Deadly Insurrection to
Over-Throw Part of the Process of Our Representative Democracy;

So What Do We Know; In A Recent 'Straw Poll' From CPAC, Trump is still
A Leader by 59 Percent of that Majority to Run For President Again in 2024;

So What Have
We Learned
From Our Own
Mistakes as Recently
as the Last President
Who Attempted to Become
A Dictator to Incite A Deadly
Insurrection to Overthrow our
Representative Democracy Process;

Not Much; Not Much at All; At Least
Among the Majority of the Republican
Leadership, and Sadly Still the Majority
of the Folks of 'We the People' Who Support the Republican Party...

Hopefully, We Can Help Save Ukraine By the Most Peaceful Means from
the Destruction of a Truly Evil Autocratic Leader in Russia; Even Better

Yet May We
Learn the

Value of

Our Freedoms
that Our Representative
Democracy Brings And Not
Elect the Evil That Some of US
at Least Already Know Best Over Here Now....

Yes, THere has to be a Silver Lining Somewhere...

It's STill the FaCT THAT WE ARE A REPRESENTATIVE
DEMOCRACY AND WE HAVE THE POTENTIAL STILL

FOR A GREATER PEACEFUL
FREE LOVING UNION FOR ALL...

MAY WE LeARN THE LESSON OF THE
BLOOD AND BONES WE TOO STAND

UPON THE COUNTRY OF UKRAINE

FOR FREEDOM TO
CONTINUE TO
RING HERE AND NOT GO MUTE;

IT'S WHAT YOU (WE) CALL A WAKE UP CALL FOR #U.S.TOO...

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magz
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03 Mar 2022, 11:08 am

slam_thunderhide wrote:

By shelling Kiev, bombing Zhytomyr and blocking Mariupol? Get a map. If things were contained to the "republics", the West would have likely just send a note - like it did over Crimea or Abhasia.

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magz
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03 Mar 2022, 11:21 am

slam_thunderhide wrote:

People on this thread do realise that the Soviet Union no longer exists, right?

Putin is just showing that while the name might have changed, the methods haven't.

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VegetableMan
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03 Mar 2022, 11:49 am

The U.S. certainty doesn't have any moral ground to stand on, at this point. Iraq was morally wrong and violated international law. We're occupying a third of Syria ar the moment and still funding a,genocide in Yemen.

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magz
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03 Mar 2022, 11:52 am

VegetableMan wrote:

And the British probably had no moral right to fight Nazis because of their own colonial abuse.
But someone had to.

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slam_thunderhide
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03 Mar 2022, 11:56 am

magz wrote:

slam_thunderhide wrote:

By shelling Kiev, bombing Zhytomyr and blocking Mariupol? Get a map. If things were contained to the "republics", the West would have likely just send a note - like it did over Crimea or Abhasia.

Yes - Putin could not get a guarantee of Ukranian neutrality via diplomatic means after years of trying, so he decided to force the issue by invading the entire country. I'm not saying I support it; I'm saying it's understandable, and the West shares a large amount of the blame. And to anyone who thinks the Russians want to waste their resources occupying Ukraine indefinitely, I would suggest they are mistakenly projecting America's behaviour in Afghanistan onto a different conflict.

slam_thunderhide
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03 Mar 2022, 12:02 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:

Serbia was committing well-documented genocide against Bosnians.

There should have been intervention within the Rwandan Genocide, too.

I was referring more to NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999 during the Kosovan conflict, but it's true they also bombed the Bosnian Serbs in 1995. Your comment is just further evidence of how so many people seem to believe that the 'good guys' in every conflict are whoever the US government declares them to be. Are we really supposed to believe that the Bosnian Muslims or Croats never did anything bad in that war?

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03 Mar 2022, 12:07 pm

magz wrote:

VegetableMan wrote:

And the British probably had no moral right to fight Nazis because of their own colonial abuse.
But someone had to.

Exactly, the allies all were deeply flawed and yet notwithstanding the very valid criticisms of the British Empire, France, Soviet Union and the US it's hard to say that the defeat of the Axis powers wasn't overall a good thing.

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