Yes, I think concerning the first Iraq (not much of a) War that's true. That's not the Iraq War I'm referring to though. However, on a personal note, while I was living in Kuwait (I lived and worked there for an Egyptian company for a year) I eventually started having the thought that the Kuwaitis, most of whom are fabulously wealthy, didn't deserve to be rescued because they are largely an arrogant, boorish lot of scumbags. They treat those "beneath" them like crap, they treat Filipinos, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans like slaves (literally) and they flash their bling and money like low-rent, inner-city American thugs. I heard story after story, a few of which I heard first hand, of Kuwaitis raping their Filipino and Sri Lankan house slaves, their wives beating the crap out of them and Kuwaiti employers stiffing their "underlings" out of their slave-like wages;(something I had to rather forcefully remedy numerous times). I did not care - in the least - for most of the Kuwaitis I personally knew.
On the other hand, the Egyptian, Syrian, Pakistani, Punjabi and Sri Lankan guys I directed were overwhelmingly good people.
Sometimes a people deserves getting thrashed. . . In spite of that sentiment I abhor the thought of innocents being maimed and killed for the sins of others, and especially for sins and/or stupidity of a few.
Bush made a good, pragmatic call keeping that oil wealth out of Saddam's hands. I'd have done the same thing, even after my Kuwait experience. But it would have left a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm not buying your opinion that the thug Putin's driving intent is to invade and conquer other countries. Let's be honest, yes, he's a vicious sociopath and has always been one, but he didn't invade Ukraine simply because he was bored, he didn't do it on a whim or for no reason and like I said before, there are plenty of other players, including the US, NATO,and the many antagonistic, agenda-driven leftist/globalist and corporate totalitarians and Western "Color Revolutionaries" who helped instigate the situation between Russia and Ukraine, pushing Putin to respond as he did. Given the leftist scumbags who now control and direct every institution in America (and have since around 2009) there's no way this thing ends to the advantage of America and its taxpaying citizens, because those dirtbags loathe the traditional West, America included.
Speaking of leaders who are vicious sociopaths I say that instead of focusing on Russia/Ukraine we direct focus on ridding America of the monstrous thugs who control our major institutions and now use them to persecute, imprison and destroy people like us. Whether Putin rolls over Ukraine or not has no bearing or effect on the existential, domestic nightmare America is facing - at the hands of its own leaders; the same ones directing the nightmare in Russia/Ukraine and other "projects' around the world.
I’ve worked in the Middle East too. You can say the same of many places; Qatar’s Sidra complex is an astonishing development but the conditions of the foreigners who built it are awful. Dubai isn’t much better.
Abu Dhabi, out of the three, comes across as the better place to live in the region. I know several teams of guys from Pune and Mumbai working in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, how a country treats its own people or its foreign labor is its problem until it becomes genocide and is creating a humanitarian crisis.
Invading a country to fix its internal messes is never the right answer, but if thousands of people are fleeing death squads or foreign invaders, creating problems for other countries, that’s where the UN is meant to step in.
Russia could’ve stuck to the peacekeeping narrative between 2014 and 2022, admitted it had forces in Ukraine, and cooperated with OCSE and UN... but instead it did nothing to end the civil war in the Donbas, it denied putting anyone into Ukraine (when Minsk required that acknowledgement), and its broadcast media, diplomats, Duma, and press, keep changing the story.
Today it’s NATO expansion. Yesterday it was biolabs. The day before, it’s Putin’s vision of a “reunification” of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia that only Russia has a hard-on for, last week it was Russkyi Mir and the week before that it was Nazis.
My car’s indicators go on and off slower than Rossiya 1 switches from “we love the Ukrainian people, language and culture really, we’re BROTHERS” to “Wipe out the dirty khokols” and”let’s nuke London, Paris, Berlin and a few American cities”.
If that’s not in line with Putin’s intention then a good critical thinking step is to ask, why he’s not exactly bending over backwards to tell the Duginist Chauvinist extremists to dial down the genocide enthusiasm.
He’s got an iron grip on the Kremlin narrative and people can be thrown in jail for holding up an anti war placard. But a Duma deputy calling repeatedly for mass genocide on live TV and attributing his rants to what the Dear Leader wants, doesn’t even merit a mild bollocking from the Kremlin.
One might be inclined to think, Putin really doesn’t mind the Russian people thinking he’s genocidal, and likes them thinking he is showing Ukraine and the West great munificence by not preemptively nuking anybody.