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Comment by throwawayacc2 | Hacker News Reader

> When was the last time a US soldier was called to arms to defend their own country?

I am not american so maybe I am wrong but I believe it was Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 no?

The justification, weather correct or not, was in both cases exactly what you said. To “defend their own country”.

In Afghanistan to prevent further 9/11 style attacks from being committed against the USA and in Iraq to prevent WMDs from being used against the USA. The famous/infamous “do you want the proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud?” bit.

Again, weather the justification was correct or not is not what I am pointing out. I am pointing out in both cases, the USA called soldiers to fight “to arms to defend their own country”

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> in both cases, the USA called soldiers to fight “to arms to defend their own country”

Having a justification doesn't mean it must be a good justification. The WMD that didn't exist? Being the close ally of the country that actually supported 9/11?

Let's not keep going on the same beaten path which will not suddenly give us a different answer. For more than a century the US has been involved in affairs everywhere else in the world long before everyone else in the world was involved in any US affairs. Both 9/11 and the subsequent invasions (or the acts that came before) were just as much terrorist actions but if you creatively draw the line you can arbitrarily erase any inconvenient action that came before. If you draw the line at 2002 the invasions look unprovoked. And if you draw it in the early 1980s then 9/11 looks like soldiers defending their country against further attack. Who would you say first meddled with whom to trigger the chain of escalations that came after? But no need to dig, ask yourself as a decent human being: should you bomb a wedding and call it defense?

If you had heard as often as I have people justifying the unjustifiable (then and now) you'd understand what's the problem with arbitrary lines and pro forma justifications. I apologize if a comment box cannot support any better explanation despite the unshakeable foundation for what I said.

So interesting point of clarification. I was reading up on chemical weapons of WW1 the other day and fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, I found out that technically Iraq did not have WMDs, I think I was reading about Sarin gas and the article explained that it is 80% a certain mixture and 20% of another mixture largely. It then pointed out that Iraq had those two ingredients, in the right quantities, in two separate warehouses across the street from each other. So technically they didn't have WMDs they just had everything they would need to make a WMD on short notice.

OK... so would you call any US farmer with some fertilizer and a tank of diesel a terrorist and rain bombs on them? Or is it arbitrarily reserved for countries on the other side of the world? For defense...

You know, the irony is that as long as the US and the West in general had an interest in keeping an even bigger enemy (Iran) in check, they had no moral objection to providing Iraq with all kinds of assistance, financing, equipment, materials, and training on developing the very same WMDs they later invaded Iraq for having, even if it was known they were destroyed.

But you'll always get exactly the story you need to hear to support the conclusion you should support. And you will support it because people care less and less about critical thinking, collecting available info from both sides. It's so much easier to just get the conclusion in predigested bytes, ideally just a punchline. If this kind of "thinking" is enough to make people storm the Capitol of the US, it's enough to get the to support the invasion of a dusty corner of the world most of them couldn't even point at on the map.

How come US is the only country that needs military bases all over the world to “defend their country”?

With your justification the Russia invasion is actually to prevent a future war with NATO. I am pretty sure one can justify any war that way.

Well, no, the US is most certainly not the only country with military bases all over the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_overs.... I know it’s easy to assume that because you normally only ever hear about the US army, I agree the US does have the largest number of overseas bases around the world, it’s not the _only_.

NATO is a defensive organization. How does going to war with the Ukraine help Russia avoid confrontation with NATO when invading the Ukraine puts NATO members and arms length reach away dramatically increasing the chance of a full scale conflict with NATO? This argument doesn’t make any sense.

Justify != right. Anyone can justify a war from their POV, see Russia -> Ukraine, US -> Iraq. It doesn’t make it any more right.

If you read through that page, a couple countries have bases in ~15 countries, and the US has ~50.

There is a major difference in scale.

NATO is kinda a for ensuring Ukranian independence. Minus NATO, NATO countries could get involved to help Ukraine, whereas they're currently limited by MAD

> weather the justification was correct or not is not what I am pointing out

This is however entirely critical to the whole thing. Pretty much every country which has ever launched an aggressive war has claimed along the way that it was defensive or in response to provocation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai... : yup, that's Hitler claiming that it was in response to US provocation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_declaration_of_war_on... : yes, after history's most famous surprise attack there's a declaration with "Our Empire, for its existence and self-defense has no other recourse but to appeal to arms and to crush every obstacle in its path" on the end.

> Iraq to prevent WMDs from being used against the USA

This is something that was proven to be a lie. There were no WMDs, and Bush knew that there wasn't enough evidence that they existed.

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