Tags:

In the run up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, all you could hear about was how Saddam had “gassed his own people” — a reference to up to 5,000 Iraqi Kurds killed in the 1988 Halabja chemical attack when Saddam was still being propped up by the Empire.

I guess that was meant to evoke parallels to Hitler, as well as focus attention specifically on crimes against own populace. Sure, the US had strangled to death 1 million Iraqis, but that Saddam had done it to his own citizens is what made his much more modest body count uniquely evil.

The morality of assigning lesser weight to mass murder of foreigners aside, it is true that by 2003 it seemed the time of governments inflicting truly massive mortality on their own populations, which left such a terrible mark on the 20th century, was behind us.