The insanity of today's Republican Party

[A Black Falcon]

Poland 1939:

Premeditated attack to attain territory at the expense of a racially inferior people for German colonization. A full and permanent government is established within which the Poles have no de facto voice or representation. The Poles become a subordinate people within Poland, and are ultimately supposed to be relegated to second-class statues, deported, or killed. This is a policy of racial purification. Poland, while not directly annexed, is a permanent satellite state-territory of Germany. Germans have ultimate authority to do as they feel necessary. In this case, Poland is a clear victim of aggressive imperialism.

German objectives: Full, permanent colonial expansion. Erradication of a foreign, inferior race.

Plus they then followed it up by murdering most of the Jewish population of Poland, which had the most Jews of any country except perhaps Russia at that time.

Now most Poles hated Jews so maybe they didn't mind, but still, yeah. You're absolutely right -- there's no comparison between Poland 1939 and Iraq 2003. What Hitler did was incomparably worse and on a completely different level. Still, your depiction of the Iraq war is very deceptive, so I need to correct that... don't think, though, that by any of it I mean that it is in any way comparable to Hitler -- it is absolutely not.

Iraq 2003: A coalition of allied western democracies attack a recalcitrant Iraqi dictator who was suspected as having developed WMDs. Hindsight is 20/20. At the time, a great number of foreign leaders and domestic leaders, including a plurality of Democrats, agreed and voted to go to see (See: Hilary Clinton.)

Not really. That vote said that they could, but not that they would, and wasn't a declaration of war. Bush lied to Congress before that vote by claiming that he'd only use war as a last resort, if he had to, while actually the Neocons were planning on attacking first, at the absolute first opportunity. They did that several months later, forcing the UN weapons inspectors to leave the country with their work (which had found nothing, because there was nothing to find) incomplete.

I mean, the Democrats should not have voted for that bill. It was incredibly stupid that they did; if people like me could see that the Republicans were lying to them, why in the world were they so stupid that they believed them? And yet somehow many Democrats did... only later to admit that yes, they were lied to and deceived. They should definitely have known better, but they trusted that when dealing with such an important issue they'd be told the truth, because that's how it works in the Congress. That didn't happen.

The coalition rather easily outs the old regime, and while rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, for some years is plagued by insurgents, which winded down and mostly fizzled out in 2009.

That is, America sets off a civil war in Iraq which devastates the country and, combined with the constant American military actions that frequently kill civilians as well as insurgents, kill perhaps as much as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis over the course of the war. That civil war would not have happened if we hadn't invaded. We should have seen it coming, but the neocons were too blind to see the obvious.

The Iraqi government is sovereign and held by Iraqis. US, UN and Nato peacekeepers remain there as long as necessary and work hand-in-hand with the local homogenous Iraqi government. Crimes perpetrated by any foreign troops are taken to court.

Not really. Most crimes perpetuated by foreign troops, or by mercenaries such as Blackwater, are never prosecuted. For a long time mercenaries and troops pretty much had free rein. In a few rare cases there was actually a prosecution, but those were very uncommon; most murders, random killings of "suspected insurgents", etc. happened with no consequences for the perpetrators.

That often happens during war, sure, but still, we should have higher standards than that...

American objectives: Eliminate threat to world peace as posed by WMDs, Saddam regime; rebuild and exit a (hopefully) stable Iraq.

Actual American objectives: Secure Mideast oil for the US. Set up a friendly government in the Middle East, so that we can get more Mideast oil without dealing with unfriendly dictatorships. Kill Sadaam Hussein because daddy failed to back in 1991, despite that he hasn't actually been a real threat in years. Follow the Neocon plans to overthrow and kill Sadaam that they had been working on since 1991. Boost ratings at home for greater success in the coming (2004) elections. Start the new crusade and take down one of the Axis of Evil!

WMDs were irrelevant really, they were just the excuse used to try to sell the invasion to the world because the Neocons thought that that was the excuse that'd be more likely to be accurate... but of course even that wasn't.

It does seem that they were planning on being out within a year, and didn't see pretty much any of the things that happened after we took over Iraq coming, but that's just evidence of how horrible their planning job was and their incompetence, not of their original goals... though the fact that their plans were seriously flawed and lacking in much connection to reality certainly is something important to understand when you look at it all.

Now, as I said, hindsight is 20/20. There were no WMDs and this was a huge embarassment. Nobody knew that there were none... it was the casus belli.

Do I need to go on?

Helping to show how lacking the reasons for war actually were, and how obviously illegal the invasion was under international law...