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Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 11th, 2023
  • metic@lemmy.worldtoHistory@lemmy.world•Did the world see the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 like it sees the Russian invasion of Ukraine over the last ~1.25 years?English
    2·
    3 years ago

    It makes me feel old that this is a c/history question.

    I think the situations in both of the invader countries is comparable. A small minority of us actively stood up against the obvious propaganda used to justify the Iraq War. We faced some repression from the state, particularly given all of the power-grabbing under the Patriot Act and similar legislation and Bush’s executive orders. But the US still has notional free speech, balance of powers, and rule of law, so most US protesters didn’t face nearly the level of repression as Russian dissidents do.

    The responses abroad I think were pretty different. This can largely be chalked up to the US being the sole superpower after 89-91. There were huge protests around the world to the Iraq War. I remember the one in Berlin was particularly large. But despite the massive unpopularity in Western Europe, those governments still joined the “coalition of the willing”. Sanctioning the US would have been unthinkable given its economic status. Russia is far less essential to the world economy. The main thing they have going for them is natural gas exports.

    Western views of Iraq and Ukraine were also quite different. Nobody really liked the Saddam Hussein regime (though the US was willing to work with him in the 80’s!). But that didn’t make regime change a good idea. Ukraine has been viewed more favorably as a fledgling liberal democracy. No one would deny it hasn’t had its problems, but it’s preposterous to claim Ukraine is beholden to Neo-Nazis when they have a Jewish president.

    The responses of the global left have also been markedly different. In 2003 we were all united in opposing what was clearly an unjustified war of aggression. These days a lot of the Anglophone left has been captured by Russian soft power/ psy ops, despite Russia not even pretending to be communist at this stage. I’ve had to call out a lot of people for repeating Russian talking points that were used to justify the war. The German Linke (Left) party is currently split over their positions on the war. Even weirder is that the far right in the US and Europe are also claiming the title of “anti-war” by tacitly or openly supporting Russia’s actions.

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