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I remember being a junior in highschool when 9/11 happened. In the ramp up to the war in Iraq, closer to when I went or was already off to college, anti war protesters were a common object of mockery. I'll never completely forget this one clip. The details are fuzzy. He was holding some sign like "Arrest Bush" or "Bush is a War Criminal", you know the type. He had a slight speech impediment, accent, or both. And some conservative was asking him loaded questions like "Don't you think Iraq is the most dangerous country to world peace?" and the protester, in his weird mush mouth way of speaking went "I think the United States is the most dangerous country to world peace."
Like I said, something to all that effect. I doubtlessly have the details wrong. It was 25 years ago, and some throw away clip on cable news. But I remember my mind exploded. How could this guy be that fucking stupid? What the fuck. What a moron. What a rube. How delusional.
I'm sorry unwashed protester with a slight speech impediment on the TV. I didn't know better.
Well, funny enough, in that moment, they were both right! Iraq was sitting there, dangerously tempting the US into taking an action that disrupted world peace, just by existing. For a period of time around 2003, at least as far as big conflicts went, the existence of the US and Iraq both were but-for causes of no world peace, in the sense that if one of those two countries poofed out of existence there would have been peace.
Not really. The US had a list of countries it wanted to go after at the time. Iraq was just on the top of that list. If the US didn’t exist, on the other hand, Iraq would barely be a small regional power.
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