Reply #23: Well, I think the bad effects greatly outweigh the good. [View All]

In general, it appears that the Iraqis are a good deal worse off then they were before the invasion. For example, severe childhood malnutrition has doubled. Iraq is heading into civil war, and could very well end up with a dictatorship that will be much worse than Saddam's was.

Even if that weren't the case, removing him in a way that violates international law would be a bad thing in itself that would outweigh any positive effects IMO. Just ask yourself what they do to people in this country who take the law into their own hands and practice vigilante justice. If I took it upon myself to extrajucially kill a person, I would go to prison. Even if it were a very very bad person.

In any even, the world is full of petty tyrants, many of them much worse than Saddam was. And as I said, our outrage is highly selective. We support many of them, in fact we installed many of them. We supported Saddam in his rise to power. We strongly supported his aggression against Iran, even to the extent of giving him chemical weapons whose use is against international law. He could do whatever he wanted as long as he was acting in our interests.

Our motives in this were not noble, "the liberation of an opressed people from an evil tyrant". The motives of our leaders were greed, and lust for power. Making up noble sounding excuses for evil acts is nothing new for powerful countries and leaders.

I realize that I'm not going to change your mind on this, and I respect the fact that you have a different opinion than me. I just wanted to give you a different perspective.

Edited to add, imminent threat of aggression has always been seen as a valid reason for military action, but the notion that Iraq, one of the weakest nations on earth could possibly have represented an imminent threat to the U.S. is absolutely absurd. We might just as well invade Iceland and then use the excuse that they might hypothetically have been planning to attack us.