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The difference is that when the US invaded Iraq, Germany complained a bit but didn't do much else, but when Russia invaded the Ukraine, Germany decided to cut R

The difference is that when the US invaded Iraq, Germany complained a bit but didn't do much else, but when Russia invaded the Ukraine, Germany decided to cut Russia off economically. The reason why the US is a "reliable partner" is that German politics is willing to accept American wars. And before we hear any cries of, "Iraq was different," recall that it was an illegal war of aggression that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to large scale torture, and generally caused a monumental societal collapse in Iraq.

ramesh31 4y ago
>And before we hear any cries of, "Iraq was different," recall that it was an illegal war of aggression that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to large scale torture, and generally caused a monumental societal collapse in Iraq. I've been trying to come to terms with this since the invasion of Ukraine. Yes, the details on the ground are significantly different. But it doesn't change the legal reality of what occurred. I've come to the same conclusion about Iraq recently. I was an 18 year old US Army infantryman getting ready to deploy to Iraq in 2007. I made the decision back then to not go, because ultimately something just felt completely wrong about it during training. The guilt around that had haunted me ever since. It wasn't until this year that I understood clearly what I did was the right decision, and felt vindicated. The entire last 20 years, our country has been engaged in global terrorism led by the neo-con hawks like Rove, Rumsfeld, and Bolton. It's sickening to truly realize and accept the horrible things we did, but I am forever grateful for having refused to take part.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  You’d definitely made the right decision for yourself, and possibly in the general case. I’d add that while the bursts of hawkishness in US foreign policy are awful, they pale in comparison to the barbarism of other past powers or modern regional powers. That isn’t meant to excuse anything, but look at the Russian invasion and the intentional atrocities being committed. Compare that to the invasion of Iraq and I think any honest reading will reflect governments and societies with very different values.
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    I cannot see how one can claim that the US invasion of Iraq was less barbaric than the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. First of all, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. The US practiced torture, as we all found out when the pictures of Abu Ghraib came out. The US worked with Shiite militias that conducted ethnic cleansing and torture on a massive scale. The US put down uprisings in places like Sadr City, Najaf and Fallujah with full urban ground invasions. As a result of the invasion, Baghdad turned into a warzone for years, and the city's religiously mixed neighborhoods were ethnically cleansed (or however you refer to its religious equivalent). Iraq became a byword for failed state. Finally, I would tell anyone who talks about "values" to take a look at the "Collateral Murder" video, in which helicopter pilots crack jokes while shooting explosive rounds into the windshield of a van full of children.[0] Only two people have gone to jail for that: the soldier who leaked the video (Manning) and the guy who published it (Assange). 0. https://youtu.be/zYTxuW2vmzk https://youtu.be/zYTxuW2vmzk
    - Maursault 4y ago
      > I cannot see how one can claim that the US invasion of Iraq was less barbaric than the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. First of all, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. >> Estimates of the total number of Iraqi war-related deaths are highly disputed. According to Keith Krause of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, "the consensus seems to be that around 150,000 people died violently as a result of the fighting between 2003 and 2006."[1] I am in no way attempting to justify or defend the Iraq War, which I and many believe was both illegal and a Republican political gambit to stay in power by heartlessly leveraging outrage from the 9/11 attacks. I think one can make the argument that both the wars in Iraq and Ukraine were invalidly justified using manufactured and outright false intelligence. But while yours and other comments above are searing, astute and poignant, in essence both it and previous opposing and supporting comments are tu quoque arguments. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Total_Iraqi_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Tot...
      - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
- remarkEon 4y ago
  > I was an 18 year old US Army infantryman getting ready to deploy to Iraq in 2007. I made the decision back then to not go, because ultimately something just felt completely wrong about it during training. So you went AWOL? I’m a little confused on how an 11B E-2 can “decide“ he’s not deploying.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    > So you went AWOL? I’m a little confused on how an 11B E-2 can “decide“ he’s not deploying. E-3 actually. I was an Eagle Scout, Civil Air Patrol cadet, three years of high school JROTC - the full nine yards. Completely brainwashed. But yes, I ultimately went AWOL. A week before our deployment, I hitchhiked out to the desert and lived in a tent for a month. Turned myself in right before the 30 day desertion mark, took my article 15 and got busted to E-1. I was able to secure an honorable discharge with the help of a few sympathetic commanding officers after explaining everything, but they put me out pretty quickly “in the best interest of the Army”. This was the height of the surge in '07, where we were losing over a hundred guys a month. My mom's best friend had already seen her son come home in a casket. The guys I served with came back as shattered husks. I have zero regrets choosing life over death.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      I’m honestly surprised you were able to secure an honorable discharge, especially at that time. I was an 11A later in the wars and the guy in my platoon who went AWOL to avoid deploying was sent to RCF before being allowed to exit the Army. Anyway, good luck to you.
hnhg 4y ago
I'd add to the list: indirectly creating ISIS, enabling an enormous amounts of ethnic cleaning/genocide of minorities, allowing a takeover of the country by Iran and related militias, and hosing down the place with depleted uranium: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-documents-depleted-uranium-impacts-on-children-in-iraq/ https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-do...
- ch4s3 4y ago
  That has nothing to do with my original comment. As a response to the Iraq war, pivoting to Russia as an energy supplier now looks foolish.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    There was no turn to Russia, the USSR was a reliable gas supplier since the 60s and all the way through the Cold War...
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      It’s a matter of public record that France and Germany were aligning towards Russia and away from the US geopolitically. They referred to it as “the troika”.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        Past tense, I still don't see why this was wrong back the day. Also, I never said Europe didn't form closer ties with Russia. I still think thisbis a, generally, good idea. One that is just impossible in the current situation and under the current Russian leadership. Long term so, it is still a viable strategy. Isolating Russia for good is a bad option, IMHO. That being said, Russia has to end the war in Ukraine, retreat from the occupied territories. And the West has to do some soul searching once this happened, our track record when it comes to invasions and occupations isn't that great in the last 20 odd years.
      - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
ch4s3 4y ago
My point is that Germany chose further reliance on Russian gas as a response to the Iraq war, they didn’t just complain. Making that choice looks pretty naïve in hindsight. I’m not here to justify the Iraq war, and no good faith reading of my post would suggest that.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  Germany imported Russian gas because it was cheap. It had nothing to do with the Iraq War. If you look at a graph of German natural gas imports from Russia by year, you will not see any major changes after 2003. Imports from Russia (back then, the USSR) reached 50% of total imports in the 1980s, and flatlined after that.[0] 0. https://rujec.org/article/55478/zoom/fig/11/ https://rujec.org/article/55478/zoom/fig/11/
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Don't confuse the meme of Germany's "dependence" on Russian gas being "the root" of yhe current "evil inflation" with facts. Not to mention that regardless of all other sanctions, following a war Russia started, the EU, and the West in general, excluded energy. This left a door open for Russia, it also allowed to mitigate the energy markets problems we currently see. Heck, both sides did their best to prevent damage to the gas pipelines in Ukraine. It was Russia, more precisely Putin, that closed that door and caused the clusterfuck on energy markets. I say energy markets, because global availability of gas doesn't seem to be an issue, prices are. Gas shortages have nothing to do with crazy electricity prices lately. And even then there were no shortages or blackouts anywhere in Europe so far. Energy prices did hurt industry and drove inlfatuon, sure, but this is a global issue not sole caused by the war in Ukraine, COVID, Chinese lockdows and the chip shortage all played a role in that. As did the constant injection of money into the global economy since 2008.
megous 4y ago
> but when Russia invaded the Ukraine, Germany decided to cut Russia off economically. Yeah, 8 years after invasion, maybe.

ramesh31 4y ago

>And before we hear any cries of, "Iraq was different," recall that it was an illegal war of aggression that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to large scale torture, and generally caused a monumental societal collapse in Iraq. I've been trying to come to terms with this since the invasion of Ukraine. Yes, the details on the ground are significantly different. But it doesn't change the legal reality of what occurred. I've come to the same conclusion about Iraq recently. I was an 18 year old US Army infantryman getting ready to deploy to Iraq in 2007. I made the decision back then to not go, because ultimately something just felt completely wrong about it during training. The guilt around that had haunted me ever since. It wasn't until this year that I understood clearly what I did was the right decision, and felt vindicated. The entire last 20 years, our country has been engaged in global terrorism led by the neo-con hawks like Rove, Rumsfeld, and Bolton. It's sickening to truly realize and accept the horrible things we did, but I am forever grateful for having refused to take part.

ch4s3 4y ago
You’d definitely made the right decision for yourself, and possibly in the general case. I’d add that while the bursts of hawkishness in US foreign policy are awful, they pale in comparison to the barbarism of other past powers or modern regional powers. That isn’t meant to excuse anything, but look at the Russian invasion and the intentional atrocities being committed. Compare that to the invasion of Iraq and I think any honest reading will reflect governments and societies with very different values.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  I cannot see how one can claim that the US invasion of Iraq was less barbaric than the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. First of all, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. The US practiced torture, as we all found out when the pictures of Abu Ghraib came out. The US worked with Shiite militias that conducted ethnic cleansing and torture on a massive scale. The US put down uprisings in places like Sadr City, Najaf and Fallujah with full urban ground invasions. As a result of the invasion, Baghdad turned into a warzone for years, and the city's religiously mixed neighborhoods were ethnically cleansed (or however you refer to its religious equivalent). Iraq became a byword for failed state. Finally, I would tell anyone who talks about "values" to take a look at the "Collateral Murder" video, in which helicopter pilots crack jokes while shooting explosive rounds into the windshield of a van full of children.[0] Only two people have gone to jail for that: the soldier who leaked the video (Manning) and the guy who published it (Assange). 0. https://youtu.be/zYTxuW2vmzk https://youtu.be/zYTxuW2vmzk
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > I cannot see how one can claim that the US invasion of Iraq was less barbaric than the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. First of all, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. >> Estimates of the total number of Iraqi war-related deaths are highly disputed. According to Keith Krause of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, "the consensus seems to be that around 150,000 people died violently as a result of the fighting between 2003 and 2006."[1] I am in no way attempting to justify or defend the Iraq War, which I and many believe was both illegal and a Republican political gambit to stay in power by heartlessly leveraging outrage from the 9/11 attacks. I think one can make the argument that both the wars in Iraq and Ukraine were invalidly justified using manufactured and outright false intelligence. But while yours and other comments above are searing, astute and poignant, in essence both it and previous opposing and supporting comments are tu quoque arguments. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Total_Iraqi_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Tot...
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
remarkEon 4y ago
> I was an 18 year old US Army infantryman getting ready to deploy to Iraq in 2007. I made the decision back then to not go, because ultimately something just felt completely wrong about it during training. So you went AWOL? I’m a little confused on how an 11B E-2 can “decide“ he’s not deploying.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  > So you went AWOL? I’m a little confused on how an 11B E-2 can “decide“ he’s not deploying. E-3 actually. I was an Eagle Scout, Civil Air Patrol cadet, three years of high school JROTC - the full nine yards. Completely brainwashed. But yes, I ultimately went AWOL. A week before our deployment, I hitchhiked out to the desert and lived in a tent for a month. Turned myself in right before the 30 day desertion mark, took my article 15 and got busted to E-1. I was able to secure an honorable discharge with the help of a few sympathetic commanding officers after explaining everything, but they put me out pretty quickly “in the best interest of the Army”. This was the height of the surge in '07, where we were losing over a hundred guys a month. My mom's best friend had already seen her son come home in a casket. The guys I served with came back as shattered husks. I have zero regrets choosing life over death.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    I’m honestly surprised you were able to secure an honorable discharge, especially at that time. I was an 11A later in the wars and the guy in my platoon who went AWOL to avoid deploying was sent to RCF before being allowed to exit the Army. Anyway, good luck to you.

hnhg 4y ago

I'd add to the list: indirectly creating ISIS, enabling an enormous amounts of ethnic cleaning/genocide of minorities, allowing a takeover of the country by Iran and related militias, and hosing down the place with depleted uranium: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-documents-depleted-uranium-impacts-on-children-in-iraq/ https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-do...

ch4s3 4y ago
That has nothing to do with my original comment. As a response to the Iraq war, pivoting to Russia as an energy supplier now looks foolish.
- hef19898 4y ago
  There was no turn to Russia, the USSR was a reliable gas supplier since the 60s and all the way through the Cold War...
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    It’s a matter of public record that France and Germany were aligning towards Russia and away from the US geopolitically. They referred to it as “the troika”.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Past tense, I still don't see why this was wrong back the day. Also, I never said Europe didn't form closer ties with Russia. I still think thisbis a, generally, good idea. One that is just impossible in the current situation and under the current Russian leadership. Long term so, it is still a viable strategy. Isolating Russia for good is a bad option, IMHO. That being said, Russia has to end the war in Ukraine, retreat from the occupied territories. And the West has to do some soul searching once this happened, our track record when it comes to invasions and occupations isn't that great in the last 20 odd years.
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago

ch4s3 4y ago

My point is that Germany chose further reliance on Russian gas as a response to the Iraq war, they didn’t just complain. Making that choice looks pretty naïve in hindsight. I’m not here to justify the Iraq war, and no good faith reading of my post would suggest that.

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
Germany imported Russian gas because it was cheap. It had nothing to do with the Iraq War. If you look at a graph of German natural gas imports from Russia by year, you will not see any major changes after 2003. Imports from Russia (back then, the USSR) reached 50% of total imports in the 1980s, and flatlined after that.[0] 0. https://rujec.org/article/55478/zoom/fig/11/ https://rujec.org/article/55478/zoom/fig/11/
- hef19898 4y ago
  Don't confuse the meme of Germany's "dependence" on Russian gas being "the root" of yhe current "evil inflation" with facts. Not to mention that regardless of all other sanctions, following a war Russia started, the EU, and the West in general, excluded energy. This left a door open for Russia, it also allowed to mitigate the energy markets problems we currently see. Heck, both sides did their best to prevent damage to the gas pipelines in Ukraine. It was Russia, more precisely Putin, that closed that door and caused the clusterfuck on energy markets. I say energy markets, because global availability of gas doesn't seem to be an issue, prices are. Gas shortages have nothing to do with crazy electricity prices lately. And even then there were no shortages or blackouts anywhere in Europe so far. Energy prices did hurt industry and drove inlfatuon, sure, but this is a global issue not sole caused by the war in Ukraine, COVID, Chinese lockdows and the chip shortage all played a role in that. As did the constant injection of money into the global economy since 2008.

megous 4y ago

> but when Russia invaded the Ukraine, Germany decided to cut Russia off economically. Yeah, 8 years after invasion, maybe.