That's not the point.
Geopolitics
- Thread starter Mciahel Goodman
- Start date
That's not the point.
I don't care if it was as bad, slightly better, or worse. It was a war-crime and anywhere between 500k-1m people died as a result.
That is literally the point. Reread the exchange again.
Which parts are bullshit and not objective. Your entire (original) premise revolves around this.
Children. While Saddam and his buddies was zero affected by the hard sanctions, they lived like kings. The average salary of the Iraqi employee was 1 dollar a month that was not enough for bread for one day to feed your children. The Sanctions on the Iraqi children were more atrocious than the war itself when you take into consideration they (the coalition forces) helped Saddam to tackle the uprise against him in 1991.
Except it is true. At the point of invasion, anyway. Very few in Iraq in 2003 were happy with life under Saddam. Maybe the small minority who were the right kind of Sunni did ok but the rest hated him. I could point you to opinion polls but you would have been brutally tortured and executed had you tried to collect one during his rule.
What transpired in the days and years afterwards under the occupation is a different argument to the invasion itself. The Iraqi population were let down on all sides, but that wasn't the invasion.
Genuine question, is this like how Cubans in Miami say things were better before Castro?
And add to that the sanctions that were put killed a lot of civilians, especially children.
And coming to the US, they had pretty much meddled everywhere, especially supporting dictators and coups alike in Latin America and other parts of the world.
Can't compare as I don't r ally know the Miami and Castro situation.
All I know is that we suddenly had an influx of people in our locality from certain parts of the world and their reaction wasn't what I thought it would be, when speaking about certain issues.
On the nearest high street/main road to my estate there a a number of businesses and a mosque that has opened up which are Kurdish. From barber shops to shops selling cheap dodgy cigarettes to shawarma places and a restaurant.
The mainly men, young men, are quite pleasant and I've spoken to a few about certain things. They describe life under Saddam and apart from not being able to buy property or businesses (apparently could rent but never own) they simply say life was good. They complained about not being able to have ownership but say in hindsight he was better than what is happening now.
Yeah, invading a sovereign democracy and invading a terror regime responsible for genocide, ethnical suppression and war mongering, pretty much the same.
Well, you should.
No, it doesn't. You argued you can detach the statement from the author but you can't. You don't trust somebody who's provenly biased because you're not omniscient. Evaluate and pick your sources. That's not necessarily about the guy you cited but something general. I wouldn't give a shit on anything that, say, Nigel Farage says because he's provenly manipulative. If everything, agreeing with him would make me question my own stance. That's basic media competence.
By the way, you can manipulate others by staying with the facts as well. Simply by leaving out crucial context or phrasing stuff in a suggestive manner. And if somebodycan't control his own biases or, even worse, has a past of manipulating people, he can't be trusted as a source.
That's not really what he's saying though, is it? He says "The working class should never align itself with its bourgeoisie", which in this case isn't just meant as soldiers being pawns on both sides, but he means regular people in the West one hand and actions supporting Ukraine or sanctioning Russia on the other.
Especially when you factor in the rest of his Twitter feed: he opposes any kind of intervention from the West, wants them to disband and disarm and Ukraine to surrender immediately. Who does that remind us of?
Ok. Well done on missing the point. Tell me, why haven’t the West invaded Saudi who have butchered a journalist in an embassy in Turkey, as well as bombing the feck out of Yemenis, and have an atrocious human rights record?
Not to forget empowering them by doing billion dollar business deals and arming them with latest weapons.
I know but I think @Zehner ’s head might explode once he works this out.
No, you aren't the only one obviously. For me, this is basic self reflection and I'm sure most people have felt that way. Thing is that the usual suspects in this thread see this simply as an opportunity to elevate themselves above what they perceive as the hypocritical masses. It's the same sentiment that drive people into the arms of conspiracy theorists. The will to be "cleverer" than the naive and manipulated majority, usually in combination with being hypocritical themselves.
Personally, I was in total shock when this war started. Heartbroken by the footage and the atrocities committed. Then I felt guilty because similar stuff happens in Yemen, Syria and so forth right now and they don't get the same attention - and what's even worse that NATO shares a portion of the blame for these tragedies. But I also know that there's time and place to comment on that AND when you really think about it, you also conclude that what Putin is doing right now really is on another level to the atrocities of the West in the past few decades. What we're seeing is a war out of aggression that seeks to annex a sovereign democratic country, thereby not only risking the lifes of the people inhabiting it but effectively the whole world through the nuclear threat. It's not only reckless and evil but also lacks any sense of responsibility. Putin knows fully well that the further he escalates the less he can control the outcome and that one unfortunate accident between NATO and Russian troops could spiral out of control and kill billions of people across the whole globe.
But what you read in here is more like "Putin is evil? Yes but USA did evil things as well!" - yeah, no shit Sherlock.
Jesus, life must be so easy with a complete absence of self reflection
You really do think you're a clever one, don't you? You'd make a great case study for cognitive dissonances.You need to cite the full quote, otherwise you're taking it out of context. It seems a highly uncontroversial quote to me, but if others think it's radical then that's their view.
Why? I should measure conflicts by bodycount and tell you which one is worse? They're all terrible. Vietnam was particularly nasty because of the indiscriminate slaughter via chemical warfare and illegal bombing of countries. Outside of WW1/WW2, the worst war of the twentieth century.
Yes, you can. It's a literal fact with an entire academic sub-discipline more or less dedicated to the premise.
You seem argumentative for the sake of it, which might not be a fair reading, but it's the sense I'm getting. You asked me for an instance when the west had (ever) done something as bad as what is happening in Russia's invasion of Ukraine now and I gave you two examples, with one being worse and the other a shade of grey for some. Then you pivot to maintaining that sentiment is linked to authorial intent (which presupposes objective knowledge of a subjective value), which is completely incorrect. So maybe best left here.
Answer the question and stop deflecting. Here it is -Jesus, life must be so easy with a complete absence of self reflection
Why exactly does this matter again? Mate, you're confused. Maybe try meditating or something like that, you need to get some focus into your thought processes.
Except the West didn’t invade a terror regime. It invaded a sovereign country headed by such a regime. And the truth is the invasion didn’t happen to stop genocide.
The west helped Saddam crush the south Iraq uprising. The West helped saddam commit war crimes both at home and Iran.
The invasion happened 12 years later, after the Saddam regime was no longer capable of genocide or anything… And that invasion started another cycle of relentless violence.
I agree with this.
caught that
So in essence, when the war that Russia started is worse, then you see no reason in comparing them because they're all terrible only to follow up with pointing out that the war in Vietnam was the worst one since the WWs. I think that speaks for itself.
Of course, when you spend ages checking every source and collecting further information, you can. And since everybody on Twitter does that, I'm sure you're no exception to it
That's what I meant with "you're not omniscient". There's literally no human being that's an expert on everything which is why it is most important to know which sources you can trust without double checking everything. And with everything I mean everything. I mean, you can probably spend your whole life studying the conflict between shiits and sunnites and still don't know half of it.The absolute cheek of whitewashing the dreadful massacres NATO soldiers caused to the Iraqi people as some sort of saviour act that was for the good and well being of that population. Shameful.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...aped-14-year-old-girl-killing-her-family.html
Rather than trying your best to fit in a wise crack, try answering the question.
Or do you not know?
Iraq, so far, is worse than Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In terms of bodycount and harm done to civilians and regional devastation. It's an asinine exercise.
Chomsky said:
https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-a-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine-could-unleash-untold-violence/
Half of NATO was against that war. We and the Americans shoulder the majority of blame.
Again it isn’t. You’ve got the ‘village idiots’ celebrating but the rest are battening down the hatches. I’m not trying to paint life as rosy under Saddam, but the idea you’re trying to portray is whitewashing propaganda.
I still can't wrap my head around this being true.
Invade? Let them first stop actually giving them the weapons that are bombing the feck out of Yemen.
I know but @Zehner seems to think the Iraqi invasion was done for purely moral reasons. He’s not answering my above question because he’s tied himself in knots, bless him.
My bad, I thought it was clear what I meant. It's distraction tactics, you jump from one topic to another and pretend a few sentences are enough to sum up incredbly complex geopolitical relationships. What do you expect me to do? Research a few hours, write an essay (which still would most likely be far too superficial) in here only for you to throw the next "okay so what about...?" one liner into the mix? Seriously, nothing you post has any substance to it. All you do is ripping stuff out of context, jump from one topic to another and post an occasional laughing emoji here and there and now you're butt hurt that somebody calls you out for it?
So you think invading a sovereign democracy is comparable to invading a state that's ruled by a dictator commiting genocide, discriminating minorities and attacking neighboring states, thereby responsible for 100.000 of deaths?
Thing is, I get that one can argue that Saddam Hussein was the smaller evil in a broader sense and even if he was terrible, what the US did fail to improve the situation. But Ukraine was a democratic country at peace that was developing very well. Literally it's only wrong doing was that it functioned too well and could thereby pose a threat to the legitimacy of the autocracy in which Putin ruled over the Russians though close relations between both populations.
I think the US has killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever dreamt of (at least a million over a fifteen to twenty year period). But forget about Iraq and focus instead on the democratic states the US has overthrown if killing people who have a dictator over them is somehow not a problem for you. That's the very recent history of Latin and South America, in case you're interested.
There's a very simple distinction here. I don't defend the Iraq War or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You defend the first but condemn the second. It's hypocrisy.
Strangely enough in that particular case, it's fairly easy to imagine the motives of the West. The majority of these countries are friendly with Saudi Arabia which were opposed to Saddam. I should look into that topic more seriously because there are some interesting angles regarding secularism, baathism and the perception of danger that may have been felt by the people with power in Saudi Arabia. Their opposition to Irak, Syria and Qatar don't look like a coincidence.
yes, of course I believe that
Jesus, how can anybody be that dishonest, false and manipulative. You really have issues. Hope you double down and get banned, would be better for everybody on this board. And now welcome to ignore.Not from the Russian perspective. For them what Ukraine has been doing to Crimea (cutting water access) and Donbas justifies the invasion.
Ukraine is much more democratic than Iraq was but it is not yet a full democracy. Some parts of the army in Ukraine doesn’t really follow the orders of the civilian government. And the US has been blocking military support partially because of those “problematic” fractions of the UA army.
If you think Iraqi kids deserved to be butchered by our drones because Saddam is evil, you are just inventing more excuses for what Putin is doing.
They’re friendly because of trade. It’s a self serving interest for the West, and it’s a hypocritical relationship. But the point I’m trying to illustrate is that this idea that we invaded Iraq for moral reasons is a fallacy. If that were the case we would have invaded Saudi, N Korea, Syria when Assad started using chemical warfare on his own civilians. The fact is we invaded Iraq on a fabrication.
You’re really struggling to make a coherent point here other than deflecting and coming out with trite. It’s fine - you’re unable to answer.yes, of course I believe that
Protesting in the political sphere means feck all, it's equivalent to thoughts and prayers.
There's a big difference between saying words of condemnation and taking actual action, like perhaps even 10% of the sanctions and diplomatic isolation that Russia is rightfully recieving now. Nothing but the equivalent of the south park "we're sorry" video.
I was agreeing with you and adding a layer to your point. We are friendly due to energy and weapons trade. And Saudi Arabia's regional geopolitics strangely aligns with how many countries act, for example which conflict should be ignored and which leaders are the devil.
Oh sorry - I misread. I think what sticks in the craw re Saudi is that they literally qualify for all of the tick boxes we have against Russia.
- Power concentrated in 1 person / 1 family? Check
- No freedom of press? Check
- Butchering their neighbour? Check
- Killing of rivals on foreign soil? Check
But very little is said or done about it. I’m hoping we’ll see a reappraisal of foreign relations post the Ukraine conflict.