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Comment by manimino | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to remember now, but the US's war on Iraq was declared with widespread popular support.

Many people today seem to feel that Taiwan and Ukraine are interests worth using military force to defend. I do wonder how well that support would hold up if either of those potential wars becomes reality.

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I remember it clearly. The support was huge...only a fringe few who were labeled crazy had the audacity to say "wait, so a bunch of Saudi dudes who were trained in Afghanistan by the CIA to fight the Russians, and funded by Saudi royals ended up attacking us, and as a result we're going to invade Iraq? How does that make any sense?"

Yet here we are....

I remember it too, but my memory is that a large portion of the US population opposed it, just not a majority. The majority supported it. Mainstream media was mostly on board, in manufacturing consent mode, though they had some problems navigating Colin Powell's less than convincing presentation at the UN on supposed Iraqi WMD, but they succeeded anyway.

There were very large demonstrations in NYC and DC. These were underreported. The press began loosing credibility after 9/11 but when WP stuck this in "Metro" that was the end of it for me.

"Thousands" buried in "Metro":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2002/10/27/thou...

"A headline in some editions of the Oct. 27 Metro section incorrectly stated that Saturday's antiwar demonstration in the District was the largest since the 1960s. The rally, according to police and estimates of the organizer, was the largest antiwar demonstration in the District since the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975."

< ! >

Honestly, if this demo -- it was huge -- happened in say Cairo, wouldn't it be splashed all over front pages for days?

-- ps --

"Demonstrations in other cities, including Rome, Berlin, Copenhagen, Denmark, Tokyo and Mexico City, were held to coincide with the Washington march, and in San Francisco, thousands marched through downtown."

Do they teach this at Columbia's School of Journalism?

- There were demonstrations in lots of major capitals all over the world. Put it in 'international' section?

- Sister cities. Metro.

I think people forget that the country was still somewhat raw from 9/11 and didn't know how to treat the uncertainty regarding future attacks. This was the timeframe when the "1% doctrine" was proposed, where if a threat was thought to have a 1% probability, it had to be treated as a certainty and response was more important than analysis.[1] In that context it doesn't take much to convince someone, even if in hindsight, Powell's presentation was "less than convincing."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Percent_Doctrine

I'd say the majority of the voting public was pretty uninformed at the time about what was what regarding anything in the middle east. They were trusting that other people knew what they were talking about. Most of the reason most people know anything about it now is because it has been discussed at length as a result of the mistake.

Uninformed in this case really means "mislead".

I remember it also. I remember lots of people speaking out against it, and a lot of hand wringing on CNN about weapons of mass destruction that no one could find.

I think the opposition was huge too, but neither was evenly distributed.

The protests against the Iraq war were international in scope and generally regarded as the largest political demonstrations in history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

As an American I am in favor of us helping Ukraine and Taiwan over something like Iraq/Afghanistan/something-like-Vietnam because it is just as much about preserving self-determination and liberty as it is realpolitik.

Iraq is not really comparable because you can’t separate support for the war there in its early days from 9/11 and the desire to “do something.”

But this is also not a Vietnam situation in which the US is propping up a relatively unpopular government and fighting personally in the conflict at great cost of American lives (maybe Taiwan could go down like that, but I think that makes the prospect of actual conflict unlikely, because neither the US nor China wants to nuke the other).

Ukraine was a bit different because they were not as US-aligned before the conflict. But especially with regards to Taiwan, I’d consider an attack against them the same as an attack against any European or ANZAC ally.

> US's war on Iraq was declared with widespread popular support.

While "widespread" might be accurate generally speaking, it is also accurate to say that it was the least popular war in my life time by a giant margin.

The protests were huge. The House vote for Iraq was extremely one-sided politically. Obama ran, and won, on having voted against it. It was really dependent on your political scene whether Iraq II was normalized or not.

It won’t take many direct attacks and loss of life and the majority will be behind both of those wars. I know I will be.

Ukraine has to be won because a Russian victory means they’re emboldened, and the Kremlin preys on weakness. Eventually Poland is hit, Russia will be crushed by NATO, and then the US and Russia exchange nukes. We can’t allow that. Any financial cost and life lost in Ukraine is worth it. We’re not nearly doing enough for Ukraine. It’s vital to world security.

For China, it’s unclear other than nationalism why they want Taiwan. They think they’ll control the world with it, and theoretically that’s true. They just don’t have the expertise to keep TSMC running on their own. And they’re incredibly vulnerable, China is the world’s #1 importer of energy and food. They got excited with all of the foreign investment, but there’s no possible future where China challenges the west. Their peaceful rise and integration was the only way forward, unfortunately, Xi is a madman.

Putin’s war makes at least some sense, on multiple levels. China’s war will be fought as well, but it’s entirely in vain. The CCP will do as much good for Taiwan as Hong Kong.

Both Ukraine and Taiwan represent the life that the Russians and Chinese could have, and ultimately that’s why they’re targets even when it makes little sense otherwise.

NATO and the Quad have no choice but to fight these respective wars. I’m personally willing to fight and die in either conflict because I know what’s at stake.

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