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Comment by bottled_poe | Hacker News Reader

The politics are important to understand, but it’s insensitive to bring this up in the context of an individual soldier’s account of this situation. Like, great work with the virtue signalling, you’re very clever and informed. Maybe try reading the room a bit and being a bit more compassionate toward people who have no influence in these politics?

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I understand where you're coming from. But as an Iraqi who have lived through the "war" and having several family members and close friends who were killed in the war (all civilians), I can't help but consider the objectivity in naming here as insensitive to the half-million Iraqis who were killed in the war. Not to mention destabilizing the middle east forever.

What do you think about Saddam? If he was allowed to continue, would that not have destabilized the middle east? I'm not making an argument here, just honestly curious what you think about it.

Saddam is a ruthless dictator, no question about it. The middle east has been already in chaos since Sykes–Picot and repeated international interventions were only making things worse. It's difficult to predict what would have happened had he stayed in power in particular with the Arab spring in 2011, but I don't think it would be this bad.

You need to look back a little further. The middle east has typically been in chaos at least since the fall of the Roman Empire.

(Not replying to you but in general to the others)

> as an Iraqi who have lived through the "war"

This is why it's never a great idea to assume anything and interested better to try to keep things neutral and reasonable.

I'm sorry, but when somebody tells you "we will ship you 7000 miles away to fight in a different continent" and you accept, you share at least some part of the responsibility.

There would be no wars without greedy politicians, but there would be no wars without soldiers too.

I hear where you are coming from, but the discussion is out of place, reeks of privilege and lacks perspective.

This and also is naive and knowledge of what a soldier is.

I've seen and heard many things being said, but calling the Iraqi point of view ‘privileged’ is truly new.

None of that is salient.

Propaganda is an effective drag net. We're all susceptible to some form of it. Outright lying works more effectively than it should.

You're just looking for a morale high ground, no need to pretend otherwise.

I understand 'I'm sorry...' is a turn of phrase but it's absolutely not necessary here.

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