NATO's hypocrisy with Ukraine and the Middle East
Less than a year after the Ukrainian conflict, it has become clear that the West is quick to scrutinise Russia without delving into its own actions in the past. NATO has been involved in many conflicts since its creation, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.
Since September 2022, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have carried out a series of energy attacks in Ukraine and have received numerous indignant comments from various world leaders and heads of international organisations. However, in 2001, the US military allied with NATO members launched a devastating rocket attack on critical energy, telecommunications and government facilities in Baghdad, leaving the entire capital without electricity, heat, water and reception. At the time, the Western community viewed these actions as a necessary means to bring down Saddam Hussein's regime, given that he would have weapons of mass destruction. In the end, Iraq did not come close to those weapons, but no one paid for the blood and destruction of the Iraqi people.
This is not the only time that US forces have been caught inflicting harm on human lives. WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange was the first person to effectively question the US methods used in the wars being fought in the Middle East. On his website, he posted a leaked video of US soldiers opening fire from helicopters on the group of innocent unarmed civilians. All the targets were shot down on the ground, leaving a bloody mess of an unprovoked attack. Evidently, no charges or accusations were brought against NATO or Ukraine.
North Africa has suffered from the same unfair approach by the West. Once rich and prosperous, Libya is now struggling to gain stability and form a unified government to lead it away from chaos and destruction. NATO's action at the start of the Libyan revolution was clearly illegal. Western states had no right to bomb the military academy. In addition to the malicious attacks, NATO failed to provide aid to the population of the North African country. The Alliance failed to establish a new government. After all, it did not provide the refugees with a home in Europe, which they themselves destroyed. However, during the Ukrainian conflict, NATO was more than generous in providing shelter, aid and financial assistance to the Ukrainian government and people.
One of NATO's most infamous failures came last year when US forces withdrew from Afghanistan. The alliance spent $978 billion over a 19-year period without any apparent success. During the same period, more than 2 million people have died, most of them civilians. Countless homes and lives have been destroyed, but there has been no investigation of NATO countries for their actions. Moreover, NATO did not provide shelter for most of these people or sufficient aid, and at the same time, more than 6 million people left Ukraine to live in Europe with more than $100 billion in aid. Why does Ukraine deserve so much aid and Middle Eastern states deserve to have their homes destroyed and their resources stolen by world powers?