During a press conference with foreign reporters, the spokeswoman for the Russia Foreign Ministry, Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova, had a heated exchange with a CNN reporter over their invasion of Ukraine.
When the US-based reporter commented that taking the territory of other countries was a violation of international law, she shot back with a worthy retort.
"Was there a legal basis to invade Iraq?"
Of course, Zakharova was clearly trying to divert attention away from Russia’s actions, the press conference was not about the actions of the US after all. But she could not have picked a better issue. The elephant in the room; the United States’ illegal invasion of another sovereign country.
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003, cleverly called Operation Iraqi Freedom, can never be justified. The US was invading on the reasoning that it felt Iraq was becoming a threat to them, more importantly on the pretenses that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was willing to use them.
Later on it would be proven that the US, under the administration of then President George W. Bush, knew that Iraq didn’t have any nuclear weapons at all.
We say Operation Iraqi Freedom was illegal because the Bush administration didn’t have the backing of a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force by member states. Some political observers even say the invasion constituted the crime of war of aggression
In the long run, instead of “freeing” Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom would destabilize the region further. The resulting hot mess gave rise to ISIS. The rest is history.
Don’t get us wrong, this is not to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one nation invading another sovereign nation because it feels threatened can never be justified. What Russia is doing now needs to stop.
But no matter how much the US gives support and weapons to Ukraine and encourages their allies to do the same --which is actually the right thing to do right now-- it can never live down the fact that at one point in time it acted like how Russia is acting now.
It should also be prepared just in case other countries cite Operation Iraqi Freedom as a justification for invading other sovereign nations.