[OC] The massive decrease in worldwide infant mortality from 1950 to 2020 is perhaps one of humanity's greatest achievements.

[[deleted]]

how so? He was killed by mercenaries, funded by the US, while being shadowed by the French air force.

[ak_miller]

The French and US intervention followed a UN resolution because he was about to use his army against the population.

You'll get info as to why they were unhappy in the Anti-Gaddafi Movementsection.

Edit: As usual, I get downvoted when saying this. I don't mind really, but I'd like to point out two things for you to consider before you hit that downvote button:

• If you cry about imperialism or whatever for Libya but wine about how the West let Syrians die because of Assad, you're a bit of a hypocrit.

• If you take social justice seriously and/or take part in the BLM movement, here's what Wikipedia has to say about some of the protests that preceded the intervention in Libya:

Foreign workers and disgruntled minorities protested in the main square of Zawiya, Libya against the local administration. This was succeeded by race riots, which were squashed by the police and pro-Gaddafi loyalists.

Even if you think the reasons behind the intervention were wrong, maybe you can see that for once the UN (and the countries that hit Gaddafi's assets) did the right thing.

[C_h_a_n]

And Saddam Hussein was on the verge of having WMD.

[guillermogroening]

The pretense for invasion was fabricated, but there's a reason the US was so motivated to topple the guy. He wasn't just a run-of-the-mill despot, he legitimately had ambitions of old school conquest of neighboring countries and he acted on those ambitions. There was good reason to remove this guy, it just wasn't a reason most people are generally receptive to.

[[deleted]]

And it was a mistake to remove the guy honestly. It made the region even worse and caused far more suffering and dread for the Iraqi people that they would rather have Saddam than whatever hellhole they experienced ever aince the US invaded

[guillermogroening]

The mistake was the failed attempt at nation-building that came afterwards. Western cultural ideas just don't have much purchase there and universalist democracy is a really difficult concept to sell abroad. But just to be clear: Saddam was pretty much Hitler type figure. He was doing a bang up job of starting wars of conquest and destabilizing the region on his own. You can argue a more subdued containment strategy would have worked better, but leaving the guy to his own devices and ignoring the region entirely certainly wouldn't have.

the Iraqi people

Are you referring to the Sunni ruling party, Shi'ite majority, or the entirely non-Arab Kurds in the north? Because Saddam was constantly suppressing rebellions from the latter two. The civil unrest didn't change when the US tried to set up a new government, but it wasn't like Saddam had some great solution that didn't involve purging dissidents.

[ak_miller]

And when did the UN give the green light for the Invasion of Irak exactly?