Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine significantly morally different than America’s invasion of Iraq?

[TheReckoning]

Obviously not.

[Damocles]

Ah yes. We *totally* denied that Iraqis are a separate and distinct people from America. We also instigated a man-made famine that killed tens of millions of Iraqis. We also foisted on them an authoritarian government hellbent on destroying their language and culture, and shot anyone and everyone who dared oppose us.

I never liked the bait threads you create, but this is low even for you. The bar is on the floor.

[Mr. Smith]

Two wrongs =/= a right.

[dead0man]

Two wrongs =/= a right.

I used to think that, then people started defending the college loan bailout, now I'm not so sure.

[PSOL]

No

[LAKISYLVANIA]

It's a different war, different context and so on so i went with yes.

But it doesn't change that what USA did in Iraq is and always will be evil.

[TheReckoning]

We also foisted on them an authoritarian government hellbent on destroying their language and culture, and shot anyone and everyone who dared oppose us.

I mean…

[OSR stands with Israel]

No :

1. We didn’t intend to annex Iraq

2. Iraq was a dictatorship and run by a complete monster . Zelensky is a Democratically elected leader so he actually represents the people of Ukraine unlike Saddam . If Ukraine was as bad as Saddam’s Iraq , I doubt Ukraine would get anywhere near the support it has today .

[OSR stands with Israel]

We also foisted on them an authoritarian government hellbent on destroying their language and culture, and shot anyone and everyone who dared oppose us.

I mean…

The current Iraqi government is no where near as authoritarian as Saddam’s Iraq was . In fact while the invasion did lead to the Insurgency and later ISIS you have to also realize that much of the insurgency and ISIS were led by former members of Saddam’s Republican guard .


Frankly while it’s true the Insurgency or ISIS don’t happen under Saddam, a large reason for that is many of the people who led those groups wouldn’t want to start a civil war to seize  power  because they already held complete power over the nation .

[darklordoftech]

Yes, it’s much worse.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Ah yes. We *totally* denied that Iraqis are a separate and distinct people from America. We also instigated a man-made famine that killed tens of millions of Iraqis. We also foisted on them an authoritarian government hellbent on destroying their language and culture, and shot anyone and everyone who dared oppose us.

I never liked the bait threads you create, but this is low even for you. The bar is on the floor.

Are you combining the current war and things the Soviets did a hundred years ago?

[Ferguson97]

They're both morally wrong, but they're wrong for completely different reasons.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is genuinely worse, yes, but also, I opposed and continue to oppose both, as do most leftists of principle and character.

[Antonio the Sixth]

America's invasion of Iraq was about replacing a brutal, borderline-genocidal dictator with an at least somewhat democratic and pluralistic regime. It was a wildly misguided idea for a whole host of reasons and was pursued in downright abhorrent ways, but it had at least one defensible rationale.

Putin's war has the exactly opposite rationale. Spreading democracy at gunpoint might have been a fool's errand, but spreading authoritarianism at gunpoint it something that can succeed and has succeeded across history - and that's why it's so dangerous and must be stopped at all costs.

[Pericles]

A war of conquest is much worse than a war of regime change.

[American2020]

And we're going to pay for this stupid war in Ukraine, eg the inflation.
I'll be worse than the Iraq War.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A war of conquest is much worse than a war of regime change.

The war in Ukraine can be correctly be identified as a war of conquest, but, confusingly, it can also be described as intended to be a war of national defense, given how Putin fears the capabilities of NATO more broadly. Of course, intention and reality are very different things and this is among the best examples of that.

[Damocles]

The war in Ukraine can be correctly be identified as a war of conquest, but, confusingly, it can also be described as intended to be a war of national defense, given how Putin fears the capabilities of NATO more broadly. Of course, intention and reality are very different things and this is among the best examples of that.

“Look what she made me do! She left me for some Chad! What a f#%king SLUT! She deserves to be putin her place!”

This is what Putin sounds like. What a loser.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The war in Ukraine can be correctly be identified as a war of conquest, but, confusingly, it can also be described as intended to be a war of national defense, given how Putin fears the capabilities of NATO more broadly. Of course, intention and reality are very different things and this is among the best examples of that.

“Look what she made me do! She left me for some Chad! What a f#%king SLUT! She deserves to be putin her place!”

This is what Putin sounds like. What a loser.

Well, if it weren't for American intelligence stopping Russia's plans to take Kiev, Putin would likely be quite a bit more successful and that is far more relevant in deciding if someone is a loser. It's a lot easier to look like a loser if you are, well, losing.

[dead0man]

why is the voting this close?  Is the wording a little confusing?  If your political biases are so strong that they eff up your morals, sure, vote no you edgy guy you.  But the other 80% of us?

[TheReckoning]

A war of conquest is much worse than a war of regime change.

Is there proof Russia literally wants to annex all of Ukraine instead of install some puppet pro-Russia dictator?

Y’know, kinda what the USA did with Iraq?

[GeneralMacArthur]

You could literally compare the Iraq War to Hitler's invasion of Poland and ask if the two are morally equivalent and 40% of Atlas would say yes.

For people who don't actually remember the Iraq War, and even many who do, it's just become some great historical American evil on par with chattel slavery and the massacres of Native Americans.  Anything bad someone says about the Iraq War is by default true, and any attempt to reconcile this with reality makes you a neoconservative jingoistic shill who refuses to admit America's great wrongdoing.

[TheReckoning]

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is genuinely worse, yes, but also, I opposed and continue to oppose both, as do most leftists of principle and character.

My point wasn’t what was worse. Russia’s invasion was worse, due to conduct of Russian soldiers, trying to impose an inferior version of Ukraine onto the Ukrainian people, etc. It’s rather about if they were fundamentally different. Both the USA and Russia were willing to do immense destruction to a non-offensive country and its people in order to expand their international influence. That’s what makes them not significantly different, even if the Russian invasion is still morally worse.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

And we're going to pay for this stupid war in Ukraine, eg the inflation.
I'll be worse than the Iraq War.

No it will not. The Iraq War killed thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, fed a domestic atmosphere of rightist cancel culture and crass jingoism unparalleled in living memory, and propped up an incompetent administration that was putting in place policies that were harmful in all sorts of not-directly-related ways. All of this was part of an American war of choice, not an American reaction to a geopolitical adversary's war of choice. The American invasion of Iraq is in almost as a different a moral and political universe from American support for Ukraine as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is from the American invasion of Iraq.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is genuinely worse, yes, but also, I opposed and continue to oppose both, as do most leftists of principle and character.

My point wasn’t what was worse. Russia’s invasion was worse, due to conduct of Russian soldiers, trying to impose an inferior version of Ukraine onto the Ukrainian people, etc. It’s rather its fundamentally different. Both the USA and Russia were willing to do immense destruction to a country and its people in order to expand their international influence. That’s what makes them not significantly different, even if the Russian invasion is still morally worse.

You didn't specify this as a question of kind rather than of degree until this post. Please don't move the goalposts.

Regardless, even if we do take it as a question of kind, there is still a morally relevant difference for the reason Antonio gives.

[TheReckoning]

Regardless, even if we do take it as a question of kind, there is still a morally relevant difference for the reason Antonio gives.

I didn’t move the goalpost. I used the word “different”, and not “worse”, in the title for a reason.

Regardless, I don’t consider causing unnecessary death, destruction, and disruption in the name of spreading democracy (especially when spreading democracy was not the main goal of Iraq) to be fundamentally morally different than causing death, destruction, and disruption when spreading autocracy. Sure, democracy is better than autocracy, but that doesn’t mean we need to stop the world from rotating on its axis to achieve it.