Are you naive enough to think that the CCP doesn't have a massive and complex surveillance apparatus? Do you expect the US to tie its hands behind its back when competing against the CCP?
All this kind of talk is from a position of not understanding or not accepting the reality of what's at stake. These countries are autocratic and they want control of the world.
The US with all its faults is the better path forward.
I'm sorry, I just don't agree with what you are saying. This discounts the economic and imperial interventions the US has made around the world. By contrast, China has not done any of that and Russia didn't until very recently, but even the Ukraine situation is more defensible in a sense than running halfway around the world to fuck with Iraq for lulz.
Russia (aka the Soviet Union) has done plenty of interventions since the start of the Cold War.
Thinking that Ukraine compares to Iraq is simply incorrect. I didn't support the Iraq War, but as you can see today -- the US's end state there was not control over the country, gov, or people. That's verifyable.
Russia has verifiably ANNEXED land and people, and its public goal is to destroy the democratically elected gov of Ukraine. Even in that regard, Saddam was a dictator.
It's actually pathetic to compare Russia in Ukraine to Iraq. I don't think even 1 Ukranian would agree with you.
The fact that if you ask probably >85% of voting Americans if the Iraq War was a good decision -- they would say no. And they vote with that moving forward.
It's an imperfect system that is still the best available.
Yet you bring forth these US atrocities in war, while Saddam himself killed 10's of thousands of innocents with gas etc. Directed from the top.
That's the kind of stuff that would happen in a power vacuum where your autocrats take control.