Not really.

I'm comparing one major power illegally invading a smaller country for cynical geopolitical reasons to another country doing the exact same thing.

Furthermore, I'm making the point that one of these invasions caused incalculable suffering that has not thus far been eclipsed by the other, and to use the latter to excuse the former and rehabilitate its perpetrators is disgusting.

Reducing this all to a "democracy overthrew a dictator, therefore good" is a facile, act of moral cowardice that assumes:

1. A nation where the president loss the popular vote twice in the past 20 years and where political corruption is regularized and legal (See: Citizen's United) is a democracy rather than a laughable farce of one.

2. The United States' ostensible status as a democracy gives it license to violate international law and commit mass murder in the name of "spreading democracy."

3. US foreign policy is humanitarian and consistently opposed to dictators despite all evidence to the contrary, when it has actually propped an endless series of dictators (including Saddam Hussein for a time, the Saudi royal family, Pinochet, Suharto, etc.)

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