Ok , but what does Chretien mean ? 
What Putin is doing is far worse, and a lot more brazen.
Where I can get close to agreement is in saying that since 9/11 the west has not covered itself in glory, and I havenât seen any just wars in light of it. Because of that the sense of having any moral high ground has largely gone.
15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, and what did we do? Sell the Saudis arms, forge numerous business arrangements, and let them wield soft power while we turned a blind eye and took it out on tangential nations, stripping them of resources in the process.
It means Christian, but in this case, Jean Chretien, PM of Canada from 1993 to 2003. Notable because the Martin faction of the Liberal Party (Chretien also Liberal) was largely in favour of supporting the US, and Chretienâs decision created just one more line of attack for Martin. It was a somewhat unpopular decision in âeliteâ circles of politics and business, and seen as making no sense given we were already involved in Afghanistan.
My friendâs counterpart in Blairâs office clearly took a different view.
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aha ! ⌠I really was scratching my head trying to figure it out. I knew Chretien meant Christian but couldnât imagine there being a âChristianâ party in power. Thanks for clearing it up.
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9/11 was a horrible thing at the time. I remember that day very clearly, but in my humble opinion, it doesnât justify Iraqâs invasion. You only need to look at the death toll to see how disproportionate it was.
Also, Iraq was a war for the control of oil and gas, nothing else. 9/11 proved merely to be the perfect excuse for GW Bush and his gang of war criminals to push forward their invasion.
Yeah, Afghanistan is another kettle of fish. It was a big mistake to wade in there, but oil isnât involved, obviously not.
However, regarding Iraq, to call the Bush administration naive is far too lenient on them. More than half a million deaths according to most accounts, near to a million according to others, isnât just the feat of some naive lads who want to instore democracy and free trade. It was evil, brutal and destructive. Itâs well-documented enough that greed was the driving factor behind it, just as greed is driving Putin today. (edit: just saw your answer to @anon27364116 
).
As for attacks from Gaddafi, I donât know about that. He was a serial provocator, but was he ever involved in serious attacks against the west? He attacked Lybian rebels (who were of course armed and supported by the west), but beyond that, did he pose any serious threat to the western states previously to Lybia being clattered by NATO? If yes, Iâd be happy to know more about that.
He was behind those who blew up the PanAm flight over Lockerbie, so yes he was
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It wasnât an isolated incident, either. There was a bombing in Berlin in the mid 80s and a bombing of at least one French plane.
Iraq and 9/11 were a decade apartâŚIraq invaded Kuwait in 1990⌠Bush Sr as president. Operation âDesert Stormâ
9/11 was Afghanistan, not Iraq. 2001, Bush Jr as President.
The first invasion of Iraq under Bush Père was justified, invasion and annexation of Kuwait was unacceptable aggression. The second invasion under Junior was not. The pretext was two fold, weapons of mass destruction and links to Al-Qaeda and the attack on the World Trade Centre.
The links to al-Qaeda were nonsense. Saddam had hundreds of Islamic militants in prison at the time of the invasion. His Baathist party had generations of mutual hostility with the Islamists, fundamental differences of opinion about the direction of the Arab world. Every scrap of evidence pointing to a connection to the 9/11 fell apart with the least scrutiny. To the extent that there was any al-Qaeda presence in Iraq, it was working to overthrow the Baathist regime, and we saw that with ISIS not long after.
The WMDs were a little more complicated, because it is pretty clear that Iraq was going through the motions keeping some sort of vestige of their UN-banned program alive. But it was all smoke and mirrors, and under scrutiny it was clear that there was no real threat there. The programs were maintained for internal political reasons, they were never going to produce any real capacity in the state they were in. The intel provided supported that conclusion far more readily than the imminent threat that the Bush administration shopped around NATO and the West.
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The first Iraq war was Bush Snr in 91.
But Jnr went in as well in 2003 to finish the job his old man couldnât
I was just glad that Canada didnât get involved in Iraq, did peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan and that was it.
Ît had credible and moral justification but that wasnât Bushâs motive. Oil reserves and price were at stake. Thatâs what mattered most.
His idiot son, on the other hand, invaded in 2003 after being led down the garden path by the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
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Afghanistan wasnât a peacekeeping mission. There was no peace to keep, nothing to do with keeping two parties from restarting conflict. It was a combat/counter-insurgency operation with active engagement by Canadian forces focusing on the Kandahar region.
When it comes to a state like Kuwait, you canât really separate the two. Would it have been imperative to intervene for some oil-less African state? I think we know the answer by observation.
Have a friend who spent 4 years there. their orders were peacekeeping and support. now does JTF
This would be pretty big if confirmed on both sides, no? But I havenât seen anything yet about that on more official news websites.