Sadly I think most people’s moral reasoning here is TV man says Russia is the bad guys and USA is the good guys. Bad guys always bad good guys always good.
I think Iraq and Ukraine are both examples of a (military) superpower curbstomping a smaller nation under a flimsy, false, pretext.
I think Ukraine is also different because it's a democracy, and they're outright bombing hospitals and leveling cities, and Putin is threatening to nuke the world if he doesn't get his way.
So they're both bad, but I see Ukraine as genuinely worse.
I'm trying to steel-man here, but this reads to me as "I am mostly morally unprincipled" in the sense that you do not require consistency in your own moral meaning, whatever that is. Most people probably aren't satisfied with a moral system that's "whatever sterlind feels like today."
Here's a thought experiment: imagine if the powers that be in the West were fully aligned with Russia for whatever reason. As a result they deploy the full force of traditional and social media message control along with all the other measures taken to sway public opinion in favor of Ukraine. In that scenario, do you believe the vast majority of people in the West would be just as enthusiastic about the "special military operation" as they are about Ukrainian resistance today? Do you think your opinion would be different? Why or why not?
I don't have an ultimate basis for those principles other than they "feel right." I'm not Kant. I don't think Kant was on the right track. That's what I meant by not believing in absolute morality - I just follow my heart, and admittedly judge others against what my heart says.
One major difference is the motivation for the war. Putin wants to return to USSR borders, which is a motivation of conquest. The US did not want to conquer Iraq. It is not the 51st state.
Another is the regime that existed. Ukraine was a peaceful democracy. Iraq was not. Hussein killed many thousands of Iraqis, too.
The invasion of Iraq was a series of war crimes that should never have happened, but Bush was not nearly as authoritarian as Putin and Hussein is not Zelensky.
It's kinda funny that you used the term straw man and than immediately created another one
(Also, that's not what a straw man argument is.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26769481
https://cepa.org/putin-is-determined-to-rebuild-the-russian-...
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-12-01/vladim...
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/russian-media-essay-celebra...