this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Sorry, you're right. In the absence of specific genocidal intent, the US and UK are only guilty of crimes against humanity, the crime of aggression, and various sundry war crimes.
Yes, correct. Now Saddam Hussein on the other hand..
Edit: oh you're one of the hexbear people, jesus you people are insufferable
I agree with you and you resort to whataboutism in response. Somehow I'm the insufferable one?
Yikes.
Literally justifying the Iraq war while acting like we're the assholes here, right
Saddam Hussein didn't literally genocide kurdish people? Not saying that justifies a country halfway across the world to brutally occupy them, but it's not like that didn't happen.
He did. He was also supported by the CIA during his times as a torturer of communists and as a dictator launching gas attacks.
You're agreeing with my comment and have 10 upvotes but mine has 2? Curious
It's because you've been a petulant, condescending little fancylad while
your watering down of the term genocide and accusing the people with actual documentation on their side of doing what you're doing. To paraphrase someone else, you guys have your Wrong and Smug sliders completely maxed out, to the point where you (not you personally, at least yet) quickly get solipsistic and start dehumaizing people with different opinions as bots as soon as the notion that your views are obviously correct, good and widespread is even slightly challenged.
That’s because you refuse to acknowledge the US’ role in genocides in the Middle East, then bring up Saddam’s genocide as if he was the sole architect
Holy fucking shit.
After hand wringing the word in context of the US killing millions of people.
And we're insufferable.
In the former instance there was an actual concerted effort to specifically murder people of a certain minority. In the latter there was a misguided attempt to squash an insurgency and build a new government at all costs. This is documented history and I can only assume you've been drooling on some communist furry subs for the past decade and just left adolescence. You can't just change word's definitions for your own childish deranged goals.
whoopsies i did yet another imperialism killing millions in the process
golly we are so misguided why does this keep happening to all of our totally genuine attempts at peacekeeping
The fucking nerve of you to invoke the idea of 'documented history' when you're as ignorant as a fucking toddler about that very history is absolutely fucking infuriating. And for someone who puts so much goddamned effort into your affectation of intelligence you have absolutely no fucking critical thinking. The US, this hapless buffoon of a country. Accidentally murdering several million people over the course of three decades. Whoopsie! I deleted the only pharmaceutical factory in the region. D'oh! I bombed a baby food factory and all the civilian power and water infrastructure! How does this keep happening??
And the fucking chauvinism. It's genocide when our enemy uses chemical weapons during wartime in an area with a lot of insurgent fighting (compare us killing another several million people in Vietnam with our own chemical weapons for the exact same reasons except deliberately targeting their food supply but that's not considered a genocide somehow). They killed about 3k people but they did it with animal bloodlust. But we're good. We killed A THOUSAND TIMES THAT MANY PEOPLE but with good intentions. Promise.
People like you are mathematical proof that the west needs to be fucking destroyed.
Honestly writing off America's involvement in the Iraq war as just "misguided" has me fucking FUMING.
You see the double standard you're using here, right? Awful things done by natos geopolitical enemies are genocides, war crimes,... Yet when nato does it it's at most a misguided atempt at doing the right thing?
Awwww poor Bush and his administration, just poor misguided rubes with no ill intent at all. :(
Not saying that
Then why did you use the word misguided
Yes, but that is not a valid reason to justify the war because an autonomous Kurdish zone had already been set up after the Anfal in 1992. The only way Iraqi troops got in there is when the KDP invited them in during the Kurdish Civil War from 1994-7. Then once that was mediated and the KRG was split into two the Iraqi Army was no longer allowed in. The only real change 2003 brought was the legalising and formal institutionalisation of the KRG such that foreign capital was more willing to invest in it (encouraged, in fact, as the US tried to rebuild Iraq to stabilise things) and it had a big shiny "legal" sticker on it. The realities on the ground didn't change though, especially as the constitutional articles surrounding referendums on Kirkuk and other disputed areas never came to fruition.
So by 2003 the Kurdish Question in Iraq had not been solved, but it had certainly been pacified in intensity, because a de facto independent KRG already existed!
I get what you're saying, though. Yes, Saddam was an abhorrent and awful leader who was a genocidaire. However, the war was still an illegal catastrophe based on falsehoods that made things drastically worse for the Iraqi people. It is unjustifiable even when you take Saddam's terrible-ness into account.
I don't think the war was justified.
Yeah killing millions of people was totally worth getting one man!
Now let's bomb Washington DC to rubble and kill your family so we can get to Bush, the even bigger war criminal.
Did I say I think we should have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan?
Nah you just pearl clutched when we called Western Powers bad names.
I'm loosely in favor of restricting the use of the word genocide to when it's definitionally appropriate myself, but that's in the context of effective communication and clarity. So long as "genocide" is going to be used exclusively to refer to US State Department desginated enemies only, then it's perfectly reasonable to liken the US/France/UK's horrific foreign interventions genocide as well. Western interventions, both formal and clandestine, have killed many more than anyone else those imperialist fucks have accused of the word, so in the interest of showing just how absurd their usage is yes, we should and can call Western powers genocidal too.