You'd get called a genocide denier for doubting the wmd story.
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ghost of kiev
snake island
Chinese spy balloon(s)
so many more
If Biden said it, conservatives wouldn't believe it because they're contrarians and they don't have real beliefs outside of owning the libs
If Trump said it, conservatives would believe it and liberals would too because CNN and MSNBC would say shit like "this is the first time Trump has not lied about something."
The issue wasn't chemical weapons, it was nukes. "Yellowcake uranium" and all that shit.
Yeah I think the reason they say “WMDs” instead of nuclear weapons is because it kind of implies it could have been other things they may have actually had
More, I think. There was a lot of pushback against the narrative at the time, but you don't really see that sort of thing any more. There effectively is no American movement, for example, opposing the Uyghur genocide claims.
Definitely more. The propaganda machine with modern technology and the internet has only gotten much much worse
You only need to look at the stuff people believe about DPRK, China, and Russia today to see
On the other hand, I think a larger proportion of people would refuse to believe it purely on partisan lines. So if Biden tried to sell the world on Iraqi WMDs, the Republicans would all refuse to believe it and younger right wingers would call Saddam based for fighting Iran that one time - and if Trump did it then the libs would take the position that he was obviously lying. In neither case would the opinion of the American people affect the actions of the government.
But that somehow only applies to trump. Becasue the libs hate him for asthetic reasons. If it was another goul the libs would eat it up.
One could easily imagine a situation in which fewer people would reject the lies for good reasons (genuine anti-imperialist analysis, critical assessment of facts, that kind of thing) while at the same time more people would reject the lies for stupid reasons (the claims are all Russian manipulation/made up by the deep state to replace white people).
While on the one hand, American bloodlust is running hotter than ever these days... On the other hand, around 95% of Americans believed the "Saddam has WMDs" claim in early 2003, and 80%+ continued to believe this into the summer of '03, when it should have been pretty clear that there were no WMDs... well after the infamous "mission accomplished" speech. We can't even get 95% of Americans to agree that the Earth is round these days.
Can't speak on Europe/"the west"... it seems that they would be reluctant to believe whatever shit the US is cooking up to push regime change though.
Can't speak on Europe/"the west"... it seems that they would be reluctant to believe whatever shit the US is cooking up to push regime change though.
I think the situation in the US would be more or less the same as today. The situation in Europe now is completely and terrifyingly different as in 2001-2003, though. Back in the day, nobody here believed in Iraqi WMDs, everybody called BS on that, even continental European MSM was critical of the US narrative. There were state department shills on German tv discussion panels going "if you don't want to fight Saddam you're supporting the new Hitler" and they were completely bodied for that. I don't think Amerikans are aware how much things have worsened here, and i wasn't aware how completely propagandized the US already was 20 years ago. I was like "well, Green Day and the Beastie Boys and Michael Moore are against this war, they're mainstream af, i guess there must be some sizeable opposition to this war in America" and boy, was i wrong about how the AmeriKKKan publiKKK reacted to these few critical voices.
I think the Bush admin severely overestimated how much goodwill they had left after 9/11. Europeans let Afghanistan slide because it was supposedly about getting Bin Laden, even if that was bullshit not least because the Taliban were willing to hand him over without a fight. Iraq though? That was a step too far outside of Bush's lackey Tony Blair. In retrospect, it was funny how France was 100% right about Iraq and Blair completely tanked his reputation. It was also a major blow for NATO's credibility to have major allies France and Germany not take part, plus Finland could've joined at the same time as the Baltics did, but turned down the offer because the population was so against joining.
It was quite a time to interact with Americans online, since so many of them supported the wars and thought Europe was a bunch of limp-wristed wimps (almost verbatim comment) for not being entirely on board.
yeah I'm torn between "the internet makes people feel as though they are personally witnessing things/a part of the action because they saw it on social media/telegram, so it'd be even more" and "it'd be less because dems and republicans literally cannot bring themselves to agree on anything."
More would believe it, except conspiracy brained types. I think people would believe it but be more apathetic or against involvement. People hate Russia but still dgaf about Ukraine other than performative support. Very few Americans or westerners want to be directly involved in that shit show. Just like folks were happy to mostly pull out of the middle east
Further more I think the American MIC will head the way of (pre-ukraine) Wagner, as gaining popular support for direct wars is getting harder, more of these proxy wars will pop up. I'm surprised America doesn't already have a mercenary army
Yeah, I legit just googled BlackRock (incorrectly, but still terrible) repeatedly til I got to a Wikipedia article that provided the most recent name for BlackWater.
More imo. John Oliver would call Saddam a tankie on his show and liberals would be calling for the use of tactical nukes
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five years ago I would have said less but the mainstream liberal position is to unquestionably support dull-eyed azov brutes wearing a "I love Hitler and this is not a joke" tshirt. There's just a subsection of liberals that will follow the state department unquestionably (or at least until their impending prolertization)
Probably less..I think it's become consensus that there were no WMDs.
However I don't think any lessons have been learned.
Look at the Nord Stream pipeline bombing. I think most people bought the line that "crazy putler blew up his own pipeline"
Specifically about Iraq and
? Not as many. However this is deeply conditional on the fact that we wouldn't have fatigue from a forever war in Iraq among other Alternative History mumbo-jumbo.Are Americans just as ready to jump into the next war on the drop of the News Cycle? Absolutely yes, and in this way nothing has fundamentally changed from
I'm also going to go with more. The internet and the attention economy of seconds has absolutely ravaged people's minds.
I wonder if we are more right wing now than we were back then, relatively speaking - not including LGBT culture wars so much. There's definitely a Starmer/Blair comparison.
In a lot of ways Starmer is somehow to the right even of Blair, who never purged centrists from the party for suggesting tactical votes for the Greens or openly implied that he'd privatise the NHS (maybe he would have if he thought he could get away with it, but still)
Remains to be seen what Keith's foreign policy will be like but given he was watching the World Cup with arms contractors and claimed that he'd try to have Putin arrested for war crimes I'm gonna guess not good.
