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They're all horrible. We know that. But this is about one particular country in context.
It can be a useful tool for figuring out your own feelings.
There is also the emotional aspect that you dismiss. Using somebody's products, and especially paying for them, can be constructed as helping the company and thus indirectly helping the company's country. Not everyone wants to support the country they see as an aggressor. That's not contradictory too - many people in western countries are OK with helping the US, but very uneasy with helping Russia (reasons for this are a different topic).
It just goes to show that Europeans/westerners don't care about Iraqis, and they care about Ukrainians. Almost every other justification for the discrepancy between how Europeans reacted back in 2003 and how they did now is just rationalization or lack of perspective. Though maybe it's because I'm Muslim and arab so I'm pretty biased here. :)
(And no I'm not saying that the US is just like Russia or whatever. I'm just saying that Westerners are completely sheltered from the effects of their own foreign policy. There's no consequence from wars, interventionism etc and the effects are far away. America is a paradise compared to Russia, but it is still a superpower.)
>If you don't mind supporting an aggressor and an invader as long as they are not invading or attacking you (...)
I do mind, but sadly I (my country) has to support someone and the US is (IMO) the "least bad" option. More about that later.
I'm not ashamed to say that I care about the war in Russia more than other wars for mostly selfish reasons [1]:
* It's much easier for me to connect and empathise with people from another European country then with people from a distant culture (irrational reason)
* It impacts me and my country much more directly (rational reason)
* Countries need allies. Unfortunately it's necessary to side with at least one superpower. And it's politically wise to overlook friendly superpower crimes while loudly criticising enemy's. To clarify: in my opinion US is the "least evil" option, and the Russian state is the most harmful - but I'm obviously biased here as an European.
>It just goes to show that Europeans/westerners don't care about Iraqis, and they care about Ukrainians
100%. Funny you mention that, I wanted to bring it up as an example for my previous paragraph and then noticed the second part of your message. I understand the frustration of all the victims of recent wars and aggressions who suffered the same and the world largely stood back (at best, loudly condemned the attack and the news cycle moved on). No point in gaslighting them that their suffering was less important or less significant then Ukrainians.
[1] Of course I won't say this publicly. It's easy to misunderstand or intentionally misrepresent my message as a support for Russian invasion or worse. No point in harming my future career by saying one word too much.