Why wasn't the USA sanctioned over it's war with Iraq?

You don't need to ask us, you can just read about it.

I should say upfront that while everyone today considers the US-led intervention a huge blunder for many reasons including humanitarian, Iraq gov at the time was not at all something people sympathized with, and was widely considered to be corrupt, bullying, aggressive to neighbors, etc. Iraq invading Kuwait in the 90s is a closer parallel to Russia invading Ukraine than anything involving the US. (Iraq literally claimed that Kuwait had always been an integral part of Iraq and only became an independent nation due to the interference of the British gov)

At the time there were sanctions on Iraq, that had been there since the 1990s because of that invasion, and for perceived human rights violations. The US at the time considered these sanctions no longer particularly effective.

The US (well, coalition led by the US) invasion was based on faulty/fraudulent premises, but the goals were still ostensibly humanitarian, and the nature of the WMD talk was not proved to be faulty until years later. At the time by failing to disarm and submit to weapons inspections, Iraq was in violation of U.N. Resolutions 660 and 678, and the U.S. could legally (whatever that means) compel Iraq's compliance through military means.

If you are actually interested, you should probably read at least:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing

I participated in anti-war protests against the 2nd Iraq War. The whole world was extremely angry with the Bush regime and their war crimes. It's an absolute shame that e.g. Rumsfeld and Cheney have never been prosecuted for ordering torture, and the Bush jr. regime shattered the reputation of the US like no other US government before. Sanctions were not imposed for various geopolitical reasons, many EU governments acted cowardly. The EU was split between supporters of the war and governments against it. That being said, Saddam Hussein was an absolutely atrocious dictator and the idea of removing him from power was essentially good. The 2nd Iraq War is not remotely comparable with Russia's war on the Ukraine in that respect. The means were very wrong, though, ill-conceived without an exit strategy, and based on an illicit aggression. That's why we were protesting.

This is why I'm very happy that Russia is hit with maximum sanctions now. The world's unity against Russia's aggression is unprecedented, and my hope is that this firm response will also make future wars by other countries (including the US) less likely.

This video predates the Iraq war by a few years but is a critical look into how this sort of thing works with world powers.

Noam Chomsky "Sovereignty & World Order"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtBQ7iTyfBQ

Also regarding the other comments about WMDs (from Vox):

"To some extent, this is beside the point; even if they had been totally cautious and careful in characterizing the intelligence, the war still would’ve been a catastrophic mistake that took an immense human toll. But the truth also matters, and the truth is that there were numerous occasions when Bush and his advisers made statements that intelligence agencies knew to be false, both about WMDs and about Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent links to al-Qaeda. The term commonly used for making statements that one knows to be false is "lying.""

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/9/12123022/george-w-bush-lies-ira...

Sanctions can exist against USA, but you’d only hear about them buried in the subject matter of tariffs. There’s no technical disqualifier.

In 2003, there were protests for sure. But the background on why Iraq was invaded is different than Ukraine.

Gulf 1 was a United Nations mission ending in 1991 with a ceasefire. Breaking the terms of that ceasefire could happen if:

- no-fly zone violated

- weapons inspectors denied access anywhere

- material support for attacks outside the country

Saddam violated the first two and confessed to world media about having WMDs. It was a lie, but it wasn’t hard for W to keep it going.

- regime change became USA policy under Ws predecessor, allowing him to say this is not simply an oil play.

A better Saddam could have admitted he lied about WMDs and surrendered in order to spare his people.

I’m flagging this topic and wanted to be accountable for doing so: I don’t think there is anything about the HN community that makes it especially/uniquely well placed to answer this question. There is plenty to read about it online and a dozen subreddits that would be a better fit.

Thats why there was the dancing before the US invasions; getting "Security Council Resolutions" which we could then enforce as a legal agent of the UN. Those were "Legal wars".

I do not understand the skeins of justifications and circumlocutions around it; it seems very similar to "Might makes Right" with a (tall) froth of persiflage atop it to me. But there are people who hold faith with that fluff and find it a source of righteousness, and I don't say they're utterly wrong and disconnected from reality, either.

The US controls the world. It is above any regulation or international law. Other countries have to comply with UN and other agencies... not the US. US will always find an excuse to do whatever is best for their oligarchies (AKA Transnational Corporations).

I notice Hacker News keeps flagging legitimate concerns people have about our government and large tech companies. My last post about YouTube suppressing independent news was also flagged.

I’m paraphrasing Chomsky here, but basically the bodies that determine what is and isn’t a war crime are deferential to power.

So if you’re the most powerful country on earth and you do something heinous, it’s unlikely to be considered a war crime, and definitely won’t be punished in any substantial way.

Pretty bleak!

The purpose of sanctions is not to punish, but to apply pressure aimed at obtaining compliance, or at least compromise. The US doesn’t depend all that much on other countries for trade, and no other countries can orchestrate big international collective actions the way the US can. Imposing ineffective sanctions is, at best, a demonstration of impotence.

So there are two questions: who could have imposed meaningful sanctions on the US? The answer is probably nothing short of a concerted international effort amongst many nations. And then, the more important question, who would have imposed sanctions? Nobody, because the Iraq war had a substantial amount of international support, at least within Europe.

If you want a really good answer, read George W. Bush's memoir: Decision Points. (It's worth a read even if you hate GWB.)

To Summarize GWB's explanation: Saddam Hussain was threatening to orchestrate a terrorist attack on the US, similar to 9-11. Saddam was a dangerous dictator and orchestrating genocide. George W. Bush built an international coalition that all agreed that invasion was the appropriate response.

(Remember that the political climate at the time was that the US and the international community did not want another 9-11. Also remember that a lot of politicians panicked after 9-11.)

Bush's comments about the informant who passed us (the US) information about the weapons of mass destruction leaves a lot open for interpretation. He had to scrub confidential information out of the book. Remember, a lot of "defense" also means passing misinformation to your enemy, and if you are the recipient of misinformation, you want your enemy to think you believe it. Keep this in mind as you read Bush's explanation about the intelligence passed to us regarding the WMDs in Iraq.

(Edit: GWB gave Saddam ample time to voluntarily leave Iraq. There were arrangements made for him to have a large sum of money and protection if he stepped down.)

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Decision-Points-George-W-Bush-ebook/d...

Was the war the right thing to do? I'll listen to historians who have full access to classified information.

> Why wasn't the USA sanctioned over it's war with Iraq?

Because the USA has the strongest army and the dollar is the world's reserve currency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci... specifically. Note the unanimous resolution. It was a mistake that almost every country was involved in, that did considerable damage to the whole international legal order.

To be fair, the US should've been sanctioned and taken to the ICC for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.

The US government actually threatened to sanction the International Criminal Court if they proceeded with any investigation of war crimes and the matter was dropped.

If you'd like to understand better the whole deal with Iraq, from the early days until the rise of ISIS, check out the Blowback podcast [0], Season 1.

[0] https://blowback.show/

The US actually never installed a puppet regime, held free elections and got BTFO by Iranian backed Iraqi politicians.

It was in an amusing sense textbook democracy.

When peace is a possibility all deaths in war are "unnecessary".

But I think your question is really about the asymmetry and apparent hypocrisy of sanctions.

Sanctions run both ways so they require a power relationship to make sense.

If one guy whose ball it is, decides the game is unfair he can "sanction" the other 10 players by taking his ball home. If I sanction you by not coming to your party, it's probably me who loses out by cutting off my nose to spite my face.

Iraq II was s shitshow, utterly unfair and a result of the most awful foreign policy. But the USA has more to _offer_ the world, so it made no sense for international sanctions. Much as I like Russians as people, I'm quite good for vodka right now thank you. We will take a hit in fuel prices next winter for sure. Putin created an oligarchy that turned Russia into a relatively unproductive country unless you're in the luxury yacht or novelty poisons business.

I'm sure OP is asking this in good faith. It's a reasonable question. But I want to remind everyone here, and really stress, that "What about Iraq and Afghanistan" is literally reasoning Vladimir Putin is using to invade Ukraine.

I would like to ask people not to amplify that message while Europe is at war with Putin. Talk about it after all you like, it's a very reasonable question, but distracting the discourse while everybody is united over support for Ukraine is what he wants.

Do not signal boost him.

At least at the government-executive level, other nations did not hate the US as much as we now hate Putin. And no one was going to stick their neck out for Saddam Hussein, who was after all, a monster who massacred his own people and invaded a neighboring country. No one would miss him when he was gone. Did that justify the war? No.

the US has murdered well over 6 million innocent civilians in the middle east since 2001. so i would say that makes the US just as evil as Hitler, right?

Is nazis in ukraine the same as wmds in iraq? Not really?

This is all just history repeating really.

Iraq did invade Kuwait of their own accord and fully annexed. UN security council fully condemned and demanded they leave kuwait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

Gulf war starts and Iraq was defeated. They had to agree to stop being douches.

UN security council was defied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

The videos showing the aftermath of the nerve agent wmds used by Iraq against civilians were crazy frightening. literally entire towns were laying on the ground unable to breath. Not dead yet, just unable to breath. While technically nobody knows if Iraq fired them or not... it pretty much is the case they are the only ones who would. Iraq terminated their relationship with the UN and ejected all the UN observers.

In super hindsight, those sarin and vx bombs ended up being used in syria. It's not really a question whether or not Iraq had these weapons. The whole yellow cake nuclear stuff was unclear but that wasn't really confirmed that Iraq ever got nukes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

Everyone voted for this. China, France, Russia, UK, and USA supported stopping Iraq.

Russia on the otherhand? What UN security council resolutions have they got to back up this invasion of Ukraine? Nazis?

They went and made good friends with China to use them as a shield for their invasion. Even Pakistan who hates Russia suddenly becoming their friends. Over what? Fear of the USA? The USA isnt even involved in this besides just being united with Europe's approach.

More like they are afraid Russia is going to nuke them if they dont comply. I dont know. Looks to me like they are surrounding India.

Really though. The USA's war exhaustion is maxed out. They've been at war for over 20 years. They need to withdraw from all their wars and focus back at home. Start talking about peace and the need to only help where the UN and their allies agree.

The US was enforcing the UN no-fly zone with its air force. The Iraqi government routinely tried to shoot down these planes with anti-aircraft weapons. This alone was an act of war that justified removing the Iraqi government with force.