My point is that an intervention in Iraq 15 years after a genocidal attack which killed thousands of Kurds really didn't save any lives or improve conditions for Iraqis. IN fact, the US led invasion of Iraq created a humanitarian problem. After the invasion, Iraq fell into a state of lawlessness. Thousands of people were murdered and raped, while roving street gangs looted stores, banks and museums. Eventually the situation evolved into a religious war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims which killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.
Whereas a UN intervention in the DRC in March 2003 using 1/100 of the resources used to invade Iraq could have saved millions of lives. Yet at the time, all we heard in the news was how bad the situation used to be in Iraq (portrayed in a way that it sounded like an ongoing problem) while the DRC's ongoing genocidal war rarely made the news.
Oh please, I do know better.
Please tell me, how many violent deaths in Iraq were attributable to Hussein or the Iraqi government from January 2000 until March 2003? Give me an estimate based on your perceptions. Dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands... Seriously how many people were dying in Iraq at the time of the invasion while tens of thousands were dying in the DRC every month?
You seem insistent on arguing a point I'm not making. This is typical among people who hold strong opinions on this topic. You only want to argue one thing and deviations are ignored to reiterate your point.
I can summarize your post in two points.
1. Saddam Hussein was genocidal and brutalized his people, but was worse in the past than he was just before the invasion.
2. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein wasn't as urgent as the ongoing genocide in the Congo.
You fail to realize that neither of these points has any bearing on my point, nor do I buy that those points follow logically towards non-intervention. For starters, I'm not saying that Iraq was more urgent than the Congo. That's the second time I've made that clear. More importantly, Saddam Hussein isn't redeemed for refraining from mass murdering people for 10 years. You said yourself that you would have supported humanitarian intervention at the time of Hussein's worst crimes. In my opinion, the idea that a man should be punished for a heinous crime becomes more urgent and the injustice more egregious the longer he is allowed to move freely in luxury and adoration. I'm not following your logic that Hussein was alright because he wasn't mass murdering Kurds between some arbitrary date before the war.
I suspect your argument can be more explained with this analogy: a friend of mine always tells this story about her time at university. In 2000, a protest banner demanded foreign intervention in Afghanistan to stop the Taliban. A year later, after September 11, the banner was changed to demand the US get out of Afghanistan. You supported intervention in Iraq when certain Western powers were against it and went against intervention when those same powers supported it. I don't buy the flimsy logic that things weren't as bad in Iraq in 2003 and that's why you don't support invasion. I don't believe you are that irrational to believe such a thing, but I do believe that you have a knee jerk propensity to oppose American foreign policy even if it contradicts your previous opinions.
I could be mischaracterizing you though. I do think that your intellectual integrity is stronger than most around here, you're just sometimes wrong for the right reasons
