Everything You‘ve Always Wanted To Know About: ‘Good’ Wars, ‘Good’ War Criminals, ‘Good’ Dictators, ‘Good’ Separatists, ‘Good’ Oligarchs, and ‘Good’ Money Launderers

[Source: reddit.com][Source: mobile.twitter.com]Saddam’s Western-backed “good” invasion of Iran (left) versus Putin’s “evil,” bloodthirsty Ukraine invasion (right) as interpreted by The Economist, an opinion-leading magazine in the West

By Felix Abt

Covert Action Magazine

When Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s president, invaded Iran on September 22, 1980, he was a “good” dictator. His invasion of the neighboring country was not only approved by the United States and its Western satellites, but also universally supported by them. Unlike secular Iraq, Iran was led by so-called vicious Islamic clerics.

They had committed the crime of spearheading a popular movement to overthrow Shah Reza Pahlavi, who had been swept into power by the Americans and the British but was abhorred by the Iranians. In the eyes of the American and British governments, however, Pahlavi was a “good” dictator.

His predecessor Mohammed Mossadegh, a democratically elected president, who they hounded out of office, was regarded as “very bad” because he defended the interests of his own country and tried to nationalize its oil. Saddam’s “good,” eight-year war against “evil” Iran was the deserved punishment for the misdeed of the insurgent Iranian clerics.

Even the use of chemical weapons, with their horrendous consequences, against Iran did not cross any “American red line” because Saddam was a “good” guy at the time. Unlike, say, Syria, with “evil” dictator Assad in charge, which was bombed by America because of chemical weapons use by someone else.

Unlike the Iranian theocrats, the Afghan Taliban were God’s Warriors for many years, doing good according to the name: Thanks to more than $2 billion in weapons, logistical support and training the CIA channeled to the mujahideen between 1979 and 1989, they defeated the “evil empire” (according to U.S. President Reagan), i.e., the Soviet Union (Russia from 1991), in Afghanistan.

The fact that in the process they also overthrew and murdered the Afghan president, who advocated a multi-party system and built schools for girls throughout the country, had not bothered governments and media figures in the West. After all, he was a “bad” guy because he did not turn down material support from the “evil empire.”

The tide turned for the formerly “good” Taliban after the 9/11 terrorist attack. Washington condemned them as irresponsible and evil, although they were not involved in the terrorist attack themselves and even offered the U.S. government extradition of those al-Qaeda terrorists who were in Afghanistan. The U.S. government and its Western aides did not accept the offer, preferring to carry out an undoubtedly “good” NATO invasion of Afghanistan, albeit one that violated international law, because of the Taliban, now perceived as entirely evil.

Even the formerly “good” dictator Saddam was amazed when his status metamorphose into “evil” dictator almost overnight—after he invaded Kuwait, with U.S. encouragement!

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Wars, including proxy wars, are not “evil” per se; they can be “very good” and useful. This is universally true if they are led or supported by the West, and for which Washington and its allies always put forward good reasons. Since 2015, for example, “good” Saudi Arabia has been waging a “good,” albeit very dirty, proxy war in neighboring Yemen against its regional rival Iran (still “very bad”!). Saudi Arabia, which is far less democratic and a lot more inhumane than Iran, has been massively armed by the self-proclaimed bulwarks of democracy and human rights, the U.S., UK and France.

According to the UN, this war is the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of this century. It has already claimed hundreds of thousands of victims and 20 of the 30 million Yemeni inhabitants are starving in the war-ravaged country.

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Of course, the U.S. has always been in favor of “good,” overt invasions and wars, such as in Vietnam, and “good,” covert ones, such as in East Africa, regardless of how many millions of innocent lives are lost.

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Of course, there have always been “good” and “bad” dictatorships since World War II, even in Europe. The “good” ones were helped, the “bad” ones were contested. The former dictatorships in Salazar’s Portugal, Franco’s Spain and the military junta’s in Greece, which were perceived by their citizens as brutal and bloodthirsty, enjoyed support and sympathy from Western democratic governments because they were good and a bulwark against the “evil empire.”

Then, of course, there were the “evil” dictatorships, especially in Eastern Europe, as in contemporary Russia, which is being oppressed by “Vladimir the Terrible.” In the latter case, there is also the fact that Putin’s Russia represents its own interests, independent of those of the United States, which Washington regards as genuinely evil and therefore worth combatting.

There are also “good” and “bad” independence movements

It is not only the separatists in Tibet or in China’s Xinjiang province, but also the glorious independence fighters in Taiwan, a Chinese province also recognized by the United States and the rest of the West, that are supported by the West in every plausible way.

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The West and the U.S.-led NATO alliance also supported another “good” secession, that of Kosovo from Serbia, with a uniquely “good” war that they even called “humanitarian.” The territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the legal successor, was guaranteed by a UN resolution, but the otherwise “good” international order based on the rule of law, which is so highly praised by the USA and which it decisively coined, was in this case rather a hindrance and therefore somewhat “evil.” It is clear that the Serbs were not choirboys and did not shy away from atrocities. But the West behaved not only in violation of international law, but also in a war-criminal manner: NATO planes bombed infrastructures, schools, hospitals and even the embassy of China, which resisted the secession.

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In addition to the “good” independence movements in Serbia, China and elsewhere, there are also the vicious ones: The People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, founded in 2014 by Russian-speaking Ukrainians seeking autonomy from the UKrainian government, have been considered particularly brutal as they were portrayed in the West as a bad, Russia-instigated conspiracy.

Yet this comes with a caveat: Jacques Baud, a former colonel and Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations and a former NATO official, participated in programs to assist the new government in Ukraine that rose to power after a Western-supported regime-change operation in 2014, explains: “The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in May 2014, were not referendums of ‘independence’ (независимость), as unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of ‘self-determination’ or ‘autonomy’ (самостоятельность).”

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Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/07/19/everything-youve-always-wanted-to-know-about-good-wars-good-war-criminals-good-dictators-good-separatists/