Does that mean that from your perspective, the US shouldn’t have attacked and defeated the Nazis in WW2 and should have allowed them to stay in power and do their thing instead?
This kinda seems like preferring to sacrifice the human rights of the innocent, to protect the human rights of their murderers.
Welcome to the uncomfortable morality of international relations, where you may be able to stop some evil people, but the costs may involve extreme human suffering and you may not be able to stop them.
Attacking nazi Germany is one end of the spectrum, in retrospect it was an easy choice. The Iraq war is on the other end, it went quite poorly and the internal motivations were tainted. The US war in Afghanistan is up there with it. And there’s a lot of gray areas, like theoretically attacking Myanmar today or the bombing campaign that contributed to the fall of Ghaddafi.
At the time people were absolutely trying to frame it partially in moral terms. It’s the other end of the spectrum, an intervention with some intended moral aim (to stop the attacks on the Iraqi Kurds) that’s now nearly universally understood to not have been moral.
Does that mean that from your perspective, the US shouldn’t have attacked and defeated the Nazis in WW2 and should have allowed them to stay in power and do their thing instead?
This kinda seems like preferring to sacrifice the human rights of the innocent, to protect the human rights of their murderers.
Welcome to the uncomfortable morality of international relations, where you may be able to stop some evil people, but the costs may involve extreme human suffering and you may not be able to stop them.
Attacking nazi Germany is one end of the spectrum, in retrospect it was an easy choice. The Iraq war is on the other end, it went quite poorly and the internal motivations were tainted. The US war in Afghanistan is up there with it. And there’s a lot of gray areas, like theoretically attacking Myanmar today or the bombing campaign that contributed to the fall of Ghaddafi.
I don’t think anybody is actually suggesting that the Iraq war for example was moral so I’m not quite sure what your point is.
At the time people were absolutely trying to frame it partially in moral terms. It’s the other end of the spectrum, an intervention with some intended moral aim (to stop the attacks on the Iraqi Kurds) that’s now nearly universally understood to not have been moral.