MrJonno wrote:There are humantarian grounds to intefere in another country but factors that need to be considered are
1) are you likely to succeed in stopping the oppression
2) are you likely to cause more damage than you prevent
3) are you replacing one oppressive regime with another
4) do you have the support of at least the majority of other countries (preferable the entire UN security council)
On those grounds intervention in Yugoslavia was justified as there was a nasty war/genoicde taking place there which was stopped.
It wasnt justified in Iraq which while a nasty regime was stable , wasnt involved currently in mass killings (it was in the past but that was when it should have been prevented) , had little chance of succeeding and left a country falling apart and actually caused a civil war.
Iraq was about oil and personal revenge it was nothing to do with spreading democracy
This is all ex post facto. The Left opposed, in general, the intervention in Yugoslavia, as it did the intervention in the Falklands, and as it did the intervention in Kuwait in 1991. The humanitarian reasons were never deemed sufficient.
Iraq WAS involved, under Hussein, in mass killings every year, up through 2002, by the way, certainly more killings than in Libya. Under Saddam Huseein, the regime engaged in killing, torturing and raping of political opponents and their wives and daughters and the disappearance of 300,000 people, the remains of many of whom have been found in mass graves following Iraq's liberation in 2003. Approximately 400,000 Iraqi civilians were seized by Saddam Hussein's various "security" organizations and simply never heard from again.
http://iraq.usaid.gov/ In the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein drained the southern marshes, which deprived over 100,000 people of their livelihood and their ability to live on land their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years. In 1991, when the United Nations failed to approve the actual removal of Saddam Hussein from power, from 30,000 to 60,000 Iraqi civilians, mostly Kurds and Shiites were killed. And, Hussein engaged in the systematic ethnic cleansing of Persians and other non-Arabs from Iraq. Hussein averaged about 50,000 civilian deaths per year.According to The New York Times, "he [Saddam] murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein created a nation of informants — friends on friends, circles within circles — making an entire population complicit in his rule".[9] Others have estimated 800,000 deaths caused by Saddam not counting the Iran-Iraq war.[10] Estimates as to the number of Iraqis executed by Saddam's regime vary from 300-500,000[11] to over 600,000,[12] estimates as to the number of Kurds he massacred vary from 70,000 to 300,000,[13] and estimates as to the number killed in the put-down of the 1991 rebellion vary from 60,000[14] to 200,000.[12] Estimates for the number of dead in the Iran-Iraq war range upwards from 300,000.[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_righ ... ein's_Iraq
And, point of fact, we have succeeded in Iraq. Democratic elections,and relative stability. Growing pains now, but relative stability.
You're right it was difficult. But, nobody said it would be easy (other than the actual military invasion to topple Hussein, which actually was easy as far as invasions go, relatively speaking).
