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Comment by pvg | Hacker News Reader

The sanctions on Iraq after the first Gulf War were approved by the UN and the bulk of their practical problems had to do with Iraqi non-compliance. There's a decent argument to be made they strengthened Saddam Hussein's regime but the 'human consequences' were themselves direct consequences of the regime's cruelty and intransigence.

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I guess 9/11 was a just direct consequence of the US government's cruelty and intransigence given that OBL's stated reason for the attacks were the sanctions. That's a hot take, not one you'd want to say out loud around NYC.

In any case, performing literal siege against a group -- exclusively chosen for political reasons -- and then blaming powerless besieged people for their own suffering is a special type of reasoning that only seems to pop up whenever brown people are mentioned.

The 'political reasons' in question were the unprovoked attack on a sovereign state. The responses were, again, approved through the global legal framework we have for adjudicating such matters - one that typically has so many checks it's almost never used. None of this can be said of either terrorism or the responses to that so I don't really follow this analogy at all.

If your framework enables you to kill million random civilians, I’d say it’s a shitty framework.

Yes, it would be if it had done that. But it didn't.

What global legal approval was granted for the Iraq war in 2003, or even the Afghanistan war in 2001? Can you clarify what "responses" you're talking about in these clauses?

> The responses were, again, approved through the global legal framework [...]. None of this can be said of either terrorism or the responses [...]

Edit: I think I understand now, the first responses are the sanctions post-Kuwait invasion, the second responses are the Afghan and Iraq wars.

Madeline Albright was US Secretary of State from 1997 to January 2001. Previously she was US Ambassador to the UN, starting in 1993.

I know that. Are you implying that my "Edit" is incorrect, and you weren't referring to those events? If so, what were you referring to?

I don't get the sense that this conversation is locked down to the specifics of Albright, as plenty of people (and according to my understanding in the "Edit", you yourself) have made reasonable reference and analogies to events outside her time in office.

I'm not implying anything about your edit, although I tweaked the verbiage of the original comment to be clearer, thanks.

Stating the timeline of her positions hasn't clarified anything for me. To me, your point is now even less clear.

> The sanctions on Iraq after the first Gulf War were approved by the UN

It was not approved by the UN, it was approved by the UNSC.

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