> Ukraine is not only bigger but some 50 percent more populous than Iraq, and the Iraqi population included many millions—Kurds, Christians, Yezidis, Shabak, and many of the Shia—who broadly supported the coalition forces throughout our time there. Only a minority of the Iraqi population comprised or supported the Sunni extremists and insurgents and Iranian-supported Shia militia. Though they did, to be sure, prove to be very formidable enemies.
> "Iraq, today, 10 years on from the war, from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is not what the Iraqi people hoped for and expected. We hoped for an inclusive democracy, an Iraq that is at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbors," Salih said. "To be blunt, we are far from that."
> "But," he added, "it's important to understand where we started from. ... Literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were sent to mass graves. Ten years on from the demise of Saddam Hussein, we're still discovering mass graves across Iraq. And Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein—the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein."
Glad you mentioned the goalpost moving. If we come back to whether wars of aggression are justified or not. Does a happy outcome justify them?
One interesting example here is in the 80's people could say "South Korea might be a brutal military dictatorship, but it is doing well economically, and therefore that justifies the Korean war"
Which is interesting of course, because in the 1960's, when North Korea was ahead economically, I'm sure North Koreans had the same post-hoc justification.
And if you look in to how US support for the Ba'ath party was justified... Strikingly similar but with the added dimension of US security interests vis a vis maintaining or restoring the Iranian dictatorship.
That all that brings us full circle to whether the Iranian revolution is justified by having got rid of a regime at similarly torturous as Saddam's.
The Iraqi insurgent demands were for the US to promptly leave (not occupy the nation for over a decade) and they were also happy to have Saddam Hussein's regime gone. The mass population of Iraq was very clearly not against the US removing the regime either. The primary disastrous mistake the US made was the very poorly planned occupation and dismantling of most of the existing government structures (amplifying the chaos and civil war risks).
Edit: but I will add that an insurgent is somebody who is fighting against a legitimately constituted government, which did not exist in Iraq, so technically they are resisters.
In 1988 the US Navy entered the war on the Iraqi side.
And I think we have different definitions of "welcome"