69 replies to this topic

[Chax]

Agreed. 

 

To reiterate and clarify, Bashar al-Assad is an absolute monster of the worst proportion and is currently responsible for the most deadly conflict on the planet. I'm not a violent person, and in fact would go so far as to say I would be morally opposed to picking up a weapon and fighting ISIS*, but I would happily plant a bullet in that motherfucker's skull. 

 

*: obviously if my life were on the line I'd defend myself, but you get what I mean

[Manoka]

I can understand that. I abhor violence, but, unfortunately even in these days and ages it seems necessary. I wish for a day when it wasn't but, it's not as bad as WWII, even probably during the berlin wall crisis, the cold war, Mao and such. Although, with this new cold war upon us, it might go back to that... 

[Chax]

made another map of current conflicts around the globe, and while it may seem frightening, as Manoka pointed out, we're in one of the most peaceful eras in recorded human history at the moment, and have been since 1945. 

 

[the rebel]

To reiterate and clarify, Bashar al-Assad is an absolute monster of the worst proportion and is currently responsible for the most deadly conflict on the planet.

Any dictatorship has the potential to become an absolute monster, he isn't totally responsible for this situation either and has public support.

You don't survive an armoured coup without it.

[Chax]

To reiterate and clarify, Bashar al-Assad is an absolute monster of the worst proportion and is currently responsible for the most deadly conflict on the planet.

Any dictatorship has the potential to become an absolute monster, he isn't totally responsible for this situation either and has public support.

You don't survive an armoured coup without it.

 

He has plenty of support from the Alawite communities for sure, but even if the uprising were unpopular, it wouldn't justify the use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs on innocent civilians. I'm not stupid enough to say he must step down immediately, though. If he's truly unpopular, establish a ceasefire and allow UN observers to verify the validity of an election, say two months after the end of hostilities (or one month, or three, whatever is agreed upon). If the people vote him out, he must step down. If he remains in office, Assad must agree to some reasonable concessions from the rebel groups, but in all likelihood he will never regain full control of the Kurdish regions. Same story in Iraq. 

 

Assad's a fucking monster, but without a UN mandate it is illegal to remove him with military force. That's the fact of the matter. Whether or not America agrees with that, America needs to respect the laws it signed on to. We can sanction Assad, we can attempt UN resolutions to disarm him, and most importantly we can work with the Iranians and the Russians to bring about reasonable changes the opposition demands (including, in all realistic likelihood, Assad leaving office after being voted out). 

 

Russia's actions elsewhere (Ukraine) mean I am not crazy about the idea of working with them on just about anything, but in this case our duty to mankind as a whole is greater than our need to maintain a political standpoint, because the US doesn't really care about Ukraine. They'll never be in NATO (sans a redrawing of their borders to exclude the DNR/LNR), so making innocent Syrians suffer just to stick it to the Russians seems foolish to me. 

[Chax]

 

 

[the rebel]

He must have plenty of public support to last nearly 5 years against internationally funded and supplied opposition groups.

Given the fact that its coming to light that extreme/moderate groups fighting in Syria are producing and using chemical weapons and employing the use of other equally monstrous actions. I'm confused as to why you're singling out one side.

Assad wanted peace years ago and offered fair elections, the only reason the death toll has risen massively since then is due to the oppositions refusal for peace unless he was removed straight away. When you aren't in the position to make such demands you don't make them.

The situation there is as much the oppositions fault as it is Assad's if not more due to dragging it out and refusing peace.

[Chax]

He must have plenty of public support to last nearly 5 years against internationally funded and supplied opposition groups.

Given the fact that its coming to light that extreme/moderate groups fighting in Syria are producing and using chemical weapons and employing the use of other equally monstrous actions. I'm confused as to why you're singling out one side.

Assad wanted peace years ago and offered fair elections, the only reason the death toll has risen massively since then is due to the oppositions refusal for peace unless he was removed straight away. When you aren't in the position to make such demands you don't make them.

The situation there is as much the oppositions fault as it is Assad's if not more due to dragging it out and refusing peace.

 

I hold the Assad government to a higher standard than the various rebel groups because, as you said, some of them are pretty shitty. Two days ago we received a photo from an SAA airbase that fell to some SDF guys who promptly beheaded the SAA commander and posted the images all over social media. Believe me, I'm fully aware of the cruelty and lack of humanity being shown by elements of the SDF/FSA. 

 

He has only survived in a very select part of the country and in the major cities, which the military has managed to keep a grasp on (in most cases). The entire Kurdistan region of the country has fallen and vast swaths of southeast Syria are completely out of government control. Many of the highway corridors in those regions are controlled by daesh, but a lot of it is simply unclaimed (because it's desert, to be honest). 

 

I know Assad has been offering fair elections for years, but I don't really blame the people for not trusting him to follow through or for simply not wanting an election; if your brothers/sisters/neighbors had been blown up by a barrel bomb, you'd probably want him gone too. Not saying that's the most reasonable or realistic approach; it isn't, as my last post indicates. 

 

As much as I dislike daesh, I do not believe the United States should be A: bombing anything in Syria without Syrian permission, or B: be supplying the rebels (not you haha). The Kurds are a different story and honestly an entirely more complicated issue in and of themselves, but I could see Assad granting them more autonomy. Unfortunately, I don't think the YPG is gonna accept that. Full Kurdistan Now is sorta their motto. 

[the rebel]

I still think he is the lesser of two evils, say the war carries on and somehow Assad is removed from power, the country will fall into chaos like Libya.

If you look at the numbers its the extremists wait I mean the "moderates" who would replace him and have relative control, so the citizens will be in the same shit if not worse off.

[Chax]

I still think he is the lesser of two evils, say the war carries on and somehow Assad is removed from power, the country will fall into chaos like Libya.

If you look at the numbers its the extremists wait I mean the "moderates" who would replace him and have relative control, so the citizens will be in the same shit if not worse off.

 

I think most people would prefer another Libya over another Syria. At least Libya isn't hemorrhaging civilians at the rate Syria is.  

[Manoka]

I don't think the U.S. necessarily needs permission from the U.N. to get involved, or any country for that matter. The Iraq war for instance was not officially U.N. sanctioned, but it wasn't illegal, either. The truth is that the U.N. can make decisions to act, but it not acting is not necessarily the same as it not being allowed. Now if the U.N. made a very deliberate call to withdraw American troops, that might make more sense. But countries can still act independently and autonomously without their approval, they do it all the time. 

 

That being said, if we're looking at the lesser of two evils, ISIS has only killed a few thousand, compared to Assad, who's killed hundreds of thousands. There's also little to any evidence that the rebels have a sizable quantity of chemical weapons, unless you're counting something like bleach. Sarin nerve gas is highly unstable and produces hydroflouric acid, one of the most powerful acids known, as a by product; reaction with the atmosphere alone, namely oxygen, is enough to break it down. This means it degrades the nerve gas immediately, and sarin disintegrates within 5 minutes to an hour of it's use. Sarin is deployed by having a binary chemical mixture, or in some cases a trinary mixture, which serves to delay the effects of the hydroflouric acid or even neutralize it. It's mixed minutes or even seconds before it's released in a weapon. Not only do you need a complicated and sophisticated mixing method, but you also need a complicated delivery mechanism, that will start mixing the chemicals at the exact right time before it gets to the target. A sarin nerve gas missile that just crashed in to the ground would mostly be harmless; it also needs to blow up in mid air, to disperse the aerosol, which won't go very far if it just say, crashed in to a building or even the ground. This type of technology and the ability to use it is really outside of the realms of possibility for the Rebels. They may have some "chemical weapons", but nothing on the order of sarin nerve gas, which as of yet is about the only thing documented to have being used.

 

...If you've got a picture of a guy with a molotov cocktail, not only is it not proof that it's a chemical weapon, but the guy would be dead if it was actually mixed together in there. 

[Manoka]

ISIS's territory has been exaggerated a bit, but it's still roughly the same area. They've taken over small slivers, and in reality they don't have the ability to enforce their laws. It's apparently illegal to smoke and such in these areas, but, for the most part they don't have the numbers to enforce it. They execute people as warnings, but that really doesn't stop people from carrying on. 

 

[the rebel]

I think most people would prefer another Libya over another Syria. At least Libya isn't hemorrhaging civilians at the rate Syria is.

I'm sure most would, as most don't hear of the shit happening there as the main stream media is ignoring it for better gossip.

[AlexanderRM]

I hold the Assad government to a higher standard than the various rebel groups because, as you said, some of them are pretty shitty. Two days ago we received a photo from an SAA airbase that fell to some SDF guys who promptly beheaded the SAA commander and posted the images all over social media. Believe me, I'm fully aware of the cruelty and lack of humanity being shown by elements of the SDF/FSA. 

 

I'm going to avoid getting into discussing all the details (the average person here is probably more informed than I am anyway), but one thing I want to mention on this:

 

http://time.com/3880...y-wwii-memento/

 

To be clear, what makes this example stand out (among all the other examples of American soldiers taking skulls as trophies) is that it was published as picture of the week in LIFE magazine. So this wasn't just a few disorderly guys doing horrible things: The editors liked this and thought the average American reader would like to see it. Also I don't know the details but given there was wartime censorship in the US, I'd assume some sort of government representative approved it.

 

(also I feel like one example really doesn't convey the full sense I have on this. It's really hard to convey without repeating the entire contents of War Without Mercy, assuming you aren't interesting in a 300-page book on American and Japanese propaganda. One thing to note is that a lot of American official propaganda was explicitly racist, and the idea that the entire population of Japan had to be "exterminated" outright wasn't entirely discouraged, although I believe the poll numbers on public opinion only went up to about 25% of Americans believing that at the peak.)

 

 

 

Now I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this; certainly not a binary one. I don't think this sort of thing is OK, but it's important to keep in mind that atrocities are done by every side in war; every side in war has some bad people and nearly all of them some good people as well. So they aren't a very useful way to determine which side to back- especially since most of the time you'll get a very one-sided report on atrocities from any given source.

Edited by AlexanderRM, 10 November 2015 - 06:40 PM.

[Chax]

I hold the Assad government to a higher standard than the various rebel groups because, as you said, some of them are pretty shitty. Two days ago we received a photo from an SAA airbase that fell to some SDF guys who promptly beheaded the SAA commander and posted the images all over social media. Believe me, I'm fully aware of the cruelty and lack of humanity being shown by elements of the SDF/FSA. 

 

I'm going to avoid getting into discussing all the details (the average person here is probably more informed than I am anyway), but one thing I want to mention on this:

 

http://time.com/3880...y-wwii-memento/

 

To be clear, what makes this example stand out (among all the other examples of American soldiers taking skulls as trophies) is that it was published as picture of the week in LIFE magazine. So this wasn't just a few disorderly guys doing horrible things: The editors liked this and thought the average American reader would like to see it. Also I don't know the details but given there was wartime censorship in the US, I'd assume some sort of government representative approved it.

 

(also I feel like one example really doesn't convey the full sense I have on this. It's really hard to convey without repeating the entire contents of War Without Mercy, assuming you aren't interesting in a 300-page book on American and Japanese propaganda. One thing to note is that a lot of American official propaganda was explicitly racist, and the idea that the entire population of Japan had to be "exterminated" outright wasn't entirely discouraged, although I believe the poll numbers on public opinion only went up to about 25% of Americans believing that at the peak.)

 

 

 

Now I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this; certainly not a binary one. I don't think this sort of thing is OK, but it's important to keep in mind that atrocities are done by every side in war; every side in war has some bad people and nearly all of them some good people as well. So they aren't a very useful way to determine which side to back- especially since most of the time you'll get a very one-sided report on atrocities from any given source.

 

Agreed. War is pretty awful in general. My point is that, while both sides are committing heinous acts, only one side has the means and the capability to kill mass numbers of people, and that side is the Syrian Arab Army. I have no doubt that ISIS would do similar shit if they had the power, but they don't. I'm a strong proponent of international law, and Assad is obviously guilty of some serious crimes against humanity. 

 

I think most people would prefer another Libya over another Syria. At least Libya isn't hemorrhaging civilians at the rate Syria is.

I'm sure most would, as most don't hear of the shit happening there as the main stream media is ignoring it for better gossip.

 

The situation in Libya isn't getting as much media attention because it's not nearly the horror show that the Syrian civil war is. That's the simple fact of the matter. 

 

I don't think the U.S. necessarily needs permission from the U.N. to get involved, or any country for that matter. The Iraq war for instance was not officially U.N. sanctioned, but it wasn't illegal, either. The truth is that the U.N. can make decisions to act, but it not acting is not necessarily the same as it not being allowed. Now if the U.N. made a very deliberate call to withdraw American troops, that might make more sense. But countries can still act independently and autonomously without their approval, they do it all the time. 

 

That being said, if we're looking at the lesser of two evils, ISIS has only killed a few thousand, compared to Assad, who's killed hundreds of thousands. There's also little to any evidence that the rebels have a sizable quantity of chemical weapons, unless you're counting something like bleach. Sarin nerve gas is highly unstable and produces hydroflouric acid, one of the most powerful acids known, as a by product; reaction with the atmosphere alone, namely oxygen, is enough to break it down. This means it degrades the nerve gas immediately, and sarin disintegrates within 5 minutes to an hour of it's use. Sarin is deployed by having a binary chemical mixture, or in some cases a trinary mixture, which serves to delay the effects of the hydroflouric acid or even neutralize it. It's mixed minutes or even seconds before it's released in a weapon. Not only do you need a complicated and sophisticated mixing method, but you also need a complicated delivery mechanism, that will start mixing the chemicals at the exact right time before it gets to the target. A sarin nerve gas missile that just crashed in to the ground would mostly be harmless; it also needs to blow up in mid air, to disperse the aerosol, which won't go very far if it just say, crashed in to a building or even the ground. This type of technology and the ability to use it is really outside of the realms of possibility for the Rebels. They may have some "chemical weapons", but nothing on the order of sarin nerve gas, which as of yet is about the only thing documented to have being used.

 

...If you've got a picture of a guy with a molotov cocktail, not only is it not proof that it's a chemical weapon, but the guy would be dead if it was actually mixed together in there. 

 

As per the UN Charter, which the US is a party to, 

1. "All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
2. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

But don't take my word for it, take the word of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan: http://www.theguardi...ep/16/iraq.iraq

 

Or, as stated at the Nuremberg trials, "[aggressive war is] essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." 

 

The US invasion of Iraq flew in the face of international law and resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis along with the destabilization of the country itself. 

Edited by Cappin' Pissflapps, 10 November 2015 - 07:07 PM.

[Manoka]

 

I hold the Assad government to a higher standard than the various rebel groups because, as you said, some of them are pretty shitty. Two days ago we received a photo from an SAA airbase that fell to some SDF guys who promptly beheaded the SAA commander and posted the images all over social media. Believe me, I'm fully aware of the cruelty and lack of humanity being shown by elements of the SDF/FSA. 

 

I'm going to avoid getting into discussing all the details (the average person here is probably more informed than I am anyway), but one thing I want to mention on this:

 

http://time.com/3880...y-wwii-memento/

 

To be clear, what makes this example stand out (among all the other examples of American soldiers taking skulls as trophies) is that it was published as picture of the week in LIFE magazine. So this wasn't just a few disorderly guys doing horrible things: The editors liked this and thought the average American reader would like to see it. Also I don't know the details but given there was wartime censorship in the US, I'd assume some sort of government representative approved it.

 

(also I feel like one example really doesn't convey the full sense I have on this. It's really hard to convey without repeating the entire contents of War Without Mercy, assuming you aren't interesting in a 300-page book on American and Japanese propaganda. One thing to note is that a lot of American official propaganda was explicitly racist, and the idea that the entire population of Japan had to be "exterminated" outright wasn't entirely discouraged, although I believe the poll numbers on public opinion only went up to about 25% of Americans believing that at the peak.)

 

 

 

Now I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this; certainly not a binary one. I don't think this sort of thing is OK, but it's important to keep in mind that atrocities are done by every side in war; every side in war has some bad people and nearly all of them some good people as well. So they aren't a very useful way to determine which side to back- especially since most of the time you'll get a very one-sided report on atrocities from any given source.

 

Agreed. War is pretty awful in general. My point is that, while both sides are committing heinous acts, only one side has the means and the capability to kill mass numbers of people, and that side is the Syrian Arab Army. I have no doubt that ISIS would do similar shit if they had the power, but they don't. I'm a strong proponent of international law, and Assad is obviously guilty of some serious crimes against humanity. 

 

/>/>/>/>/>/>/>/>

> 

I think most people would prefer another Libya over another Syria. At least Libya isn't hemorrhaging civilians at the rate Syria is.

I'm sure most would, as most don't hear of the shit happening there as the main stream media is ignoring it for better gossip.

 

The situation in Libya isn't getting as much media attention because it's not nearly the horror show that the Syrian civil war is. That's the simple fact of the matter. 

 

I don't think the U.S. necessarily needs permission from the U.N. to get involved, or any country for that matter. The Iraq war for instance was not officially U.N. sanctioned, but it wasn't illegal, either. The truth is that the U.N. can make decisions to act, but it not acting is not necessarily the same as it not being allowed. Now if the U.N. made a very deliberate call to withdraw American troops, that might make more sense. But countries can still act independently and autonomously without their approval, they do it all the time. 

 

That being said, if we're looking at the lesser of two evils, ISIS has only killed a few thousand, compared to Assad, who's killed hundreds of thousands. There's also little to any evidence that the rebels have a sizable quantity of chemical weapons, unless you're counting something like bleach. Sarin nerve gas is highly unstable and produces hydroflouric acid, one of the most powerful acids known, as a by product; reaction with the atmosphere alone, namely oxygen, is enough to break it down. This means it degrades the nerve gas immediately, and sarin disintegrates within 5 minutes to an hour of it's use. Sarin is deployed by having a binary chemical mixture, or in some cases a trinary mixture, which serves to delay the effects of the hydroflouric acid or even neutralize it. It's mixed minutes or even seconds before it's released in a weapon. Not only do you need a complicated and sophisticated mixing method, but you also need a complicated delivery mechanism, that will start mixing the chemicals at the exact right time before it gets to the target. A sarin nerve gas missile that just crashed in to the ground would mostly be harmless; it also needs to blow up in mid air, to disperse the aerosol, which won't go very far if it just say, crashed in to a building or even the ground. This type of technology and the ability to use it is really outside of the realms of possibility for the Rebels. They may have some "chemical weapons", but nothing on the order of sarin nerve gas, which as of yet is about the only thing documented to have being used.

 

...If you've got a picture of a guy with a molotov cocktail, not only is it not proof that it's a chemical weapon, but the guy would be dead if it was actually mixed together in there. 

 

As per the UN Charter, which the US is a party to, 

1. "All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
2.  
3. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
4.  

But don't take my word for it, take the word of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan: http://www.theguardi...ep/16/iraq.iraq

 

Or, as stated at the Nuremberg trials, "[aggressive war is] essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." 

 

The US invasion of Iraq flew in the face of international law and resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis along with the destabilization of the country itself. 

It says they can't start a war, but the war then would be started by Assad and Saddam. Saddam Hussein was already killing hundreds of thousands of people. The American and allied coalition invasion didn't cause Saddam to suddenly start massacring Kurdish people, we invaded because of that. Of course some casualties would continue as we tried to bring down his military and regime. But you can't blame the invasion for the deaths considering, Saddam killed those people, and had been killing those people long before we invaded. The same is true with Syria. 

 

You can't just say, after this date, all of those deaths must have been a result of the allied involvement in the war. He was killing those people and continued long before and after we invaded. Presumably, the same would be true in Syria. The Iraq war was never considered illegal, either. If the U.S. and the rest of the countries had invaded, claimed it as their own countries,taken territory, or had started the conflict all together, most of this would be true, regardless of what we see the enemy as. Invading just because he's a dictator or a socialist or what have you, even if it's wrong, isn't justified. But we didn't start the attacks, the massacres, the thousands of people dying. Thus we didn't start the war, we just got involved in it. The war between the Kurds, the war between the Syrians has been going on long before our involvement.

 

If your argument is that by the clause "All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered." violence is never allowed, than the war in Afghanistan, the Gulf war, the Korean war are all examples of the U.N. agreeing to go to war. This clause isn't to mean that force is unanimously off the table. This is to uphold Article 1 "To maintain international peace and security, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace". To maintain the peace isn't necessarily done by peaceful means; as in, war is a method to achieve piece, or it can be. "Removal of threats to peace" doesn't sound so peaceful.
 

 

 

Basically, by international disputes, they don't mean all scenarios can't include violence. This evidenced by the numerous conflicts they've endorsed that were violent, and participated in themselves. 

 

EDIT: "Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll."

 

Within it are enumerated various situations in which violence is justified. The purpose of peace is not necessarily that war is never justified. 

[Chax]

We did not invade Iraq (in 2003) because of the genocide against the Kurds. We invaded for WMDs or to bring democracy, take your pick. Either way, somebody else owning certain weapons or wanting to change somebody's government does not equate an attack, and as such does not give valid grounds as per the UN charter for an invasion. This has been verified by the literal authorities on this subject, including the UN and the ICC. 

[Manoka]

We did not invade Iraq (in 2003) because of the genocide against the Kurds. We invaded for WMDs or to bring democracy, take your pick. Either way, somebody else owning certain weapons or wanting to change somebody's government does not equate an attack, and as such does not give valid grounds as per the UN charter for an invasion. This has been verified by the literal authorities on this subject, including the UN and the ICC. 

Um... we did invade for Saddam's Brutal repression of his own people. 

 

It even said so, in the Iraq Resolution. It was one of the many reasons listed, also the defense of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, in particular. Now, if we hadn't of acted in the defense of these people and the surrounding countries, that could potentially be determined by the U.N., but this was never seen to be the case. 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia...lution#Contents

 

Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."

 

 

You could however argue that all of this was just a pretext for an invasion, as in a way to justify it even if they wanted other things, but that's an entirely different conversation in and of itself.

[Chax]

Just because Congress makes a bunch of words into a law doesn't mean they're true statements. I mean right off the bat I can tell you that while Turkey and KSA weren't fond of Saddam, they also condemned the American invasion, so using them in that resolution is silly at best, deliberately misleading at worst. 

 

We cited past incidents of brutality against Iraqi citizens, but in 2003 Saddam Hussein was not actively embarking on a genocide. He was doing loads of fucked up things to his people, but nothing on the scale of the gassing of the Kurds. 

 

To cite human rights abuses as our pretext for war is ridiculous. If the United States truly believes in standing up for people being abused by their own governments regardless of the UN's call, I'd like to know why we sat there with our thumbs up our asses while the Rwandan genocide raged on. Or why we allowed the Darfur conflict to continue. 

 

The bottom line is that going to war with another country when that country has not directly attacked you is a violation of international law. Citing past offenses from the early 1990s is weak. PNAC and the Neocons wanted to remove Saddam in 1998 and petitioned Clinton to do so. When they got their man in office, they went to town. A lot of this is detailed in the Downing Street Memo that came out in '05. 

 

The UN secretary general came out against the war and condemned it as illegal. Again, he was basically the authority on whether or not a war is legal, and he said it was an illegal invasion. It doesn't matter if we say it was legal, because it's not up to us to decide whether or not it's legal. We agreed to the rules of international law when we helped found the UN, and we pissed away the ones we didn't like when it fit us because who was gonna stop us? 

[Manoka]

Again, it's not illegal, and he's not dictator of the U.N. It's a coalition of multiple countries, and they have to decide, as a group, if it's illegal or not. One man's opinion is irrelevant. No more than if the president said that he felt letting people have healthcare is wrong, or what have you. 

 

Furthermore, he was committing atrocities against his people up to and leading to the invasion. Other than killing at least 500,000 people [1][2][3], he committed numerous human rights abuses, including torturing people in the hundreds of thousands, repressing journalists, U.N. inspectors and numerous citizens based on nothing more than ethnicity or geological location, and other heinous acts. Considering the Halajba poison gas attacks for a moment, which were tragic, they killed between 10,000 and 40,000 people, maximum. His numerous other attacks, his other genocides, killed hundreds of thousands, not 10's of thousands. He produced millions of refugees and internally displaced people, and then stole the humanitarian aid, which meant without boots on the ground, these millions of innocent people likely would have flat out starved to death. His atrocities did not simply stop after 1988, 1991, or 1994. They continued well on until we deposed of him. In 2002, a resolution sponsored by the European Union was adopted by the Commission for Human Rights, which stated that there had been no improvement in the human rights crisis in Iraq. The statement condemned President Saddam Hussein's government for its "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law". The resolution demanded that Iraq immediately put an end to its "summary and arbitrary executions... and the use of rape as a political tool and all enforced and involuntary disappearances". He didn't just gas the kurds, with conventional weapons alone the violent repression of the Kurdish, both those opposed to his regime and those supportive, continued. [1]

 

 

If you want to speculate whether or not we are good or not, that's an entirely different conversation in and of itself; again, you can personally hold the opinion that the U.S. only got involved for specific reasons. But it did have alternative stated reasons, which would be justifiable, and thus would have justified the invasion.

 

Furthermore, it is not a violation of international law to go to war with a country that has not directly attacked you. Time and time again, the U.N. has acted in an official capacity to go to war against countries. [1][2] To name a few, the Korean war, Gulf 1, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kosovo etc. So the idea that force is never justified unless personally attacked, is more or less obviously wrong. The U.N. charter also mentions the use of "collective self-defence", which implies that you can defend someone else, not just yourself. If say, France was attacked, the United Nation's could join in to defend France, or the U.S., or Britain etc. You don't just have to defend yourself. You're allowed to help others. 

 

 

The U.S., by the way, did get involved in the Rwandan genocide. The problem was that the worst problems occurred in about 3 months, between April 7th and July 15th, or exactly 101 days, the time it took to get approval to act. If we had acted earlier, it probably would have been better, but that's life for you. Although they shut them down quickly, it didn't really matter, since they killed nearly 2 million people in 3 months. 

 

No-one "allows" a conflict to continue, actually fighting in a conflict is a very difficult thing to do. By that argument, all of Europe "allowed" it to continue, as did China, as did Brazil, since, they didn't get involved. You can't attack just the U.S. for not getting involved, or not successfully stopping an attack, especially considering the difficulty of engaging in a conflict given international law. However, the U.S. was involved in the Darfur conflict. A hell of a lot more than any other U.N. country, with only two more, Chad and Eritrea providing any assistance. We were stretched thin by two key conflicts, and several other at the same time, so the military response wasn't as great. 

 

 

 

If you want to sit here and tell me that you condemn the U.S. for not controlling the entire world, and stopping every single conflict that exists, solving every crime, that's fine. It took us years to get involved with the Iraq war, it took months to step in and help stop the Rwandan genocide. How evil are we for waiting to wage war?

 

But you can't ignore the fact that they did have a good reason to act, which was the defense of the local people. If you want to claim that they had alternative motives, that's great, but that doesn't change the fact it would still be in defense of the people. Hell, maybe Mother Teresa just did it for the publicity, or maybe the Iraq War was about getting potatoes, all in secret. Anyone can project on to someone and say that they must have done it for evil reasons "he only donated to Charity because he wants to feel self-righteous!". Why didn't you donate to every Charity in existence, huh, Jack-ass? You think Cancer is the only problem in the world?! But even if it was secretly motivated by other means, it was justified, and the only thing you have to disprove it is conjecture and vague opinions.