The mentality behind it was certainly different from Putin’s. The invasion of Iraq was born of an overwhelming desire to do something in the face of a new enemy that couldn’t be fought on a battlefield. It wasn’t evil that drove it, it was frustration, stupidity, anger and misplaced aggression.
Putin is straight up trying to grab land To extend his power and fortune. The most base of reasons.
The invasion if Iraq was clear as day to many of us. I was fresh out of uni, and not at all onboard with the miniature American flag waving and bullshit eating that was going on among my friends.
I'd already assessed the situation as an oil grab. Iraq was sitting on a dying fleet of ancient Russian tanks. They had no means of building out a capable war machine, much less a WMD program. People were in a very much anti-Arab feeding frenzy, which was honestly alarming to me as a black man, as we're clearly next in line after the Arabs get theirs. So I was fully invested in stopping the anti-Arab sentiments at the time, as I didn't see anything good at the end of that road.
But not long after whipping people into a frenzy, by completely ignoring the gang if Saudis on the plane, did we get Powell shaking his glass tube of yellow cake at the UN. So, the whole thing looked staged to some of us, at the time. Too bad we didn't have social media, or we'd have hashtagged the shit out of that.
Post-9/11 America is one of the worst places I've ever lived. I was in upstate NY for much of it. Just a lot of anti-Arab sentiments clouding the judgment of otherwise good people. I had a big argument with my best friend prior to Bush's SotU speech, because I told him that we were going to declare war on a country that didn't deserve it, and that there's no way Iraq had WMDs. We didn't speak for years, but he messaged me on FB a decade later to tell me I was right, and we've been cool since.
Not everyone drank the Koolaid back then. It was very much a war campaign spurred on by xenophobia. I got a lot of shit for actively discouraging many of my students, at the time, from enlisting, because I told them they were going to be sent to fight an unjust war. I wonder how people like me are getting along in Russia right now. It's not easy being the voice of reason when everyone around you is actively being brainwashed.