On Iraq, the U.S., and invasions in general...?

I provide this as a serious answer.

The US believes itself the supreme law of the planet. We have convinced ourselves that we have rights above all others.

It is an arrogance that rises beyond mere imperialism.

What you point out is too true for most Americans to even comprehehnd. They will blink once, refuse to consider it even as irony, and turn their attention to something else.

Iran and Iraq (as well as the US) are all signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty of 1968. The terms of the treaty, in brief, are that nuclear weapons states (like the US) agree not to give out nuclear weapons technology, and non-nuclear weapons states (like Iran and Iraq) agree not to try to produce them.

All three countries have also ratified the Biological Weapons Convention (1975), which bans the development or use of biological weapons, and Iran is a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention (1997), although Iraq is not. The Chemical Weapons Convention has a schedule for dismantling all production facilities (which has been pretty much completed) and destroying all stockpiles (which is about 1/3 completed). Iraq and Iran are both signatories of the Geneva Protocol, which bans the use of chemical and biological weapons.

And just how would Iraq invade the US?

The US is a huge country of 260,000,000 people spread across a landmass approximately three and half million square miles, bordered by friendly neighbours and easily defensible coasts.

It's the richest nation in the world, and has more military power than the rest of the world put together. Plus, its citizens own more guns than the armies of most other countries in the world.

Iraq, on the other hand is a country of 170,000 square miles, mostly landlocked, populated by 27 million people, and is among the poorest nations in the world.

Its citizens are too busy fighting a war in their own country to invade other places.

Even if Iraq wanted to invade the US, which is beyond belief given the absolute impossibility of making a dent in the US militarily, just when would they find the time to do it? between mortar attacks?

A war on the part of a leader is only ever justified if there is a possibility of victory ~ otherwise who would do something so monstrous as to ask one's citizens to lay down their lives for nothing, which would be what Iraq would do if it wanted to invade the US.

So, no, it would NOT be morally justified.

~*~*~

Interesting point ~ there are more US citizens living below the official US set poverty line (37,000,000) than there are people in Iraq (27,000,000 and going down).

Cheers :-)

Iraq threatened it's neighbors as did Iran. We have never used weapons of mass destruction as an offensive weapon. We have never taken territory and kept it like Iraq did in Kuwait. We never threatened to wipe a country off the face of the earth like Iran has with Israel and we don't sponsor terrorism.

WMD's were the public explanation for the Iraq invasion, but the real reason is far more sinister. Read the position papers of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) to see how neo-cons dreamed up a way to establish a permanent American military presence in the region to stabilize the oil supply necessary to our economy.

What's so sad is that the invasion has cost $500 billion so far, money that could have been spent to outfit every home in America with solar panels. The invasion as doubled the price of oil, raising the cost of everything we buy. The invasion has greatly increased the national debt, raising interest rates - and the cost of everything we buy or borrow.

Very short-sighted.

As for Iran, they're years from developing a weapon they should not be allowed to possess. I'm sure we can get them to abandon their program before it's necessary to bomb or invade them. I just hope the impatient war-mongers that influence our elected officials are aware of this.

Using this logic, Iran could justify invading the US.

The US has lost it's moral authority by lying about why it invaded Iraq, imprisoning people without trial at Guantanamo, ill-treating prisoners at Abhu Graid, allowing the Blackwater cowboys to kill civilians and so on.

This does allow leaders like Ahmadinejad to claim with some justification that they are no worse than George Bush.

This cannot be a serious question because it has to many falsehoods in it. The fact that all your opinions went through the UN and the body agreed with all the actions taken negates your final solution. Peace

Uh, no. Your logic doesn't make any sense because the U.S. is a known superpower. One of those responsibilities as a superpower is to not let known dangerous, unstable nations like Iraq own weapons of mass destruction. And it wasn't necessarily nuclear weapons either, it was mostly biological.

If Iran thought the way Bush does, they would attack the U.S. as they would consider the U.S. to be an imminent threat to Iran. Of course, Bush was wrong about Iraq, but Iran would be right about the U.S.

Even if you assume that all countries are equal in every regard, the answer would then have to be subjective in that if we have a right to attack them, then they have a right to attack us, but in the same respect, I live in the US, I want to come out on top, and thank God we usually do. Someone has to be the loser and someone has to be the winner.

I'd rather see the other guy be the loser.