I live in the balkans...

The main sentiment here, especially amongst the older people is, "russia is strong enough, that they can do the stuff america has been doing for decades now", but due to media influences, it's not a "war for democracy" and "saving the locals", as the americans would paint eg. attacking afghanistan after a few saudis flew a few planes into a few buildings.

My personal and very contraversial opinion is, that every country that currently has soldiers as a part of an occupying force in any country, should just shut the fuck up, and clean up their own messes first.

Whataboutism isn't an argument and these are also false equivalencies.

Hundreds of thousands of us were out in the streets protesting when western countries attacked Iraq. Most of us are the same people angry about Russia in Ukraine.

Did it make a difference either time?

Yes, my country (Canada) did not participate in the invasion of Iraq. And in large part to the vociferous opposition and protests against it in the days leading up to the decision.

Glad to hear it! Here in the US, the ‘wag the dog’ was pretty obvious almost immediately (Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but that didn’t stop anything), and the protests didn’t seem to do much either.

Difference is here we have more than two parties. The "centrist" Liberals are always in fear of losing voters to the left wing NDP, which is always anti-militarist. The size of the protests were indicative that a bunch of Liberal ridings would have been under threat if the Liberals had joined what was clearly going to be an unpopular war.

In the US, with only two parties to choose from, so-called "centrists" and "liberals" in the US almost all fell in line and nobody could do anything to punish them. "Who else are you going to vote for?"

Similar dynamic in the UK. Labour ("New Labour") was in power and supported the invasion for god knows what reason. Hugely unpopular move, but what were voters on the left going to do about it?

Whataboutery.