Comment by worik
1 year ago
True
Nation states are often immoral and hypocritical
The outrage from the USA at the invasion of Ukraine, when the invasion of Iraq is a crime of the same magnitude - both dreadful stains on humanity
Most recently the international support for the actions of the IDF whilst condemning Russian actions in Ukraine
SA is just normal in this regard
From a narrow, legalistic perspective Iraq was in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 in 2003 and so the invasion was justified on that basis. I am not arguing that the invasion was right (or even remotely a good idea), just that it was never firmly established as illegal under any treaty in force at the time. By contrast, there was never even a fig leaf of a legal justification for Russia's invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/478123?ln=en
>"so the invasion was justified on that basis"
Bullshit. There was nothing in the resolution that called for war. The most it had said was in tune of - you must comply and if you don't we will report you. No particular enforcement.
the resolution is here - https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N02/682/26/PDF...
>"it was never firmly established as illegal"
Really? It was an act of aggression. It is illegal by definition unless the UN had explicitly decided otherwise which I believe it did not.
> The outrage from the USA at the invasion of Ukraine, when the invasion of Iraq is a crime of the same magnitude.
I was certainly against it in 2003. The WMDs were bullshit. A war on "terror" is farcical. The profiteering and the industrial military complex, etc.
But I did later come around to the idea of getting Saddam and his government to stop genociding the Kurds.
Of course you should always assume a country like the US to be self-serving in its actions, but it's not as if it was taking additional land as its own, as is the case with Russia and Israel. Iraq was never going to be the 51st state.
Yeah, they invaded Iraq, destabilized the country, and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. No biggie.