Hi Andrew -

I could address all your points but I’ll keep this pithy and on the nose. The reason and objectives of any military involvement matters. Is it being done for good or evil? With more than a basic understanding of the Ukraine in 2022 and Putin’s objectives there and Iraq in 2003 and the coalitions’ objectives there, would keep you from repeating the same comparison Putin made in his speech. You wrote, “what we did in Iraq is similar to what Russia is doing in Ukraine.” The only similarity I see is that Putin is quite like Saddam Hussein in 1991.

Putin’s objectives are:

1) to annex Ukraine, not occupy it and definitely not help it have its own democratically elected form of self-government (which it already has). He wants the resources the Ukraine has and to be remembered for rebuilding Russia, regardless of the human costs.

2) to “de-Nazify” the Ukraine which is absurd given how Putin is acting much more like Hitler and the Nazis and Ukraine’s President Zylensky is Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust. Putin is using this language to justify purging the Ukraine of its current leaders and anyone who resists or dissents with Russian rule. Putin has already thrown thousands of Russians in jail for protesting the invasion. These are the seeds of genocide Putin is planting.

3) Ukraine is to Putin as Poland was to Hitler. It is the first step in a broader plan he has to annex other parts of free, sovereign Eastern European countries and force them under Russian rule. This rebuilding of Russia is a clear plan Putin has communicated and that has existed for some time.

P.S. if Russia had supported Iraq in 2003, then they would have been in violation of numerous UN Resolutions and Security Council Agreements. They would have chosen the side of a dictator who was an anti-Semitic state supporter of terrorism and had used chemical weapons against his own people.

P.P.S. Go back and read about FDR and World War II. Even just read the fireside chat I linked to which was all about making the case to the American people for increased US involvement and support. Right after Hitler invaded Poland, FDR got Congress to relax the neutrality laws to allow France and Great Britain to continue getting “cash-and-carry” arms from the US.