We supported him when he did that. And during the 90s, we instituted sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. That's 100 children for every single person who died in Halabja. If the question is would you rather be a modern country ruled by the iron will of a belligerent despot, or bombed into medieval times with every cultural institution shattered and orders of magnitude more body count than your dictator ever generated, spawning ISIS...
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/10/are-1-million-ch...
And that's irrelevant to whether taking him down was a good decision. Either before or after. Once again, I didn't support the war at the time, and I think the casualties are horrifying. However, it's not even close to the same thing.
> And during the 90s, we instituted sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. That's 100 children for every single person who died in Halabja.
You don't really weigh moral wars this way. For instance, the Nazis killed 6 million in the concentration camps. However, an estimated total of 70–85 million people perished in World War 2, or about 3% of the 1940 world population. However, nobody frames World War 2 as "costing 10 lives for everyone who died in the camps" and therefore a bad idea.
Your framework allows for invasions over fake WMDs and fake Nazis alike. Russia didn't sanction the US over Iraq, in the spirit of peace and cooperation between nuclear states the US could afford them the same courtesy.
If you can justify Iraq you can justify Ukraine. Personally I don't agree with invasions anywhere for any reason not do I believe in the concept of "world police". That's just forcing one people's will upon another and denying them the right to destroy their own tyrants and seize their own destiny.
Absolutely, unequivocally not.
My framework does no such thing.
Also it's pretty apparent that you view a white life is greater than a brown life and you view invading middle eastern countries as something that's okay and are going to justify no matter what, so there really is no point in this discussion.
Re: your source, go do some more digging, it was the CIA that helped Saddam deploy those chemical weapons.
You have no idea what my positions are, and you're doing a bunch of wild finger pointing.
US invasion: For Democracy, Freedom and Kumbaya!, Millions died for the Greater Good. (hugs & kisses)
You could make the argument that the world could have stood up and sanctioned the US - but likely they did not because they probably agreed with the action, whether they could say so directly or not. 'Should' is not the bar. The fact it took a lie to convince folks to go in is neither here nor there, IMO. Again, I was against the war.
> Jeez, it's that easy for you to say that eh. Say that to a person who lost his family in that invasion.
Say that to someone in Kurdistan who suffered life-long debilitating injuries due to the sarin and VX gas attacks that were then followed by a Napalm run. [1] Saddam launched some of the worst chemical attacks in history against his own citizens. We can go back and forth on this all day.
If your argument is "ah but Saddam wasn't that bad" my guy, you've already lost. He really wasn't great.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre#Chemical_atta...