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1. Is it possible that an invasion of Iraq would slightly increase the possibility of Ethiopia invading Eritrea, China invading Nepal, Colombia invading Venezuela? Does there exist a principle of sovereignty that slightly increases the possibility that an invasion will be punished by the rest of the world? 2. Invasion is based on either (a) stopping being hurt in the future, and/or (b) serving the interests of Iraqis. (a) What's the likelihood of being hurt in the future if Iraq is invaded, vis-a-vis the likelihood if Iraq is not invaded? (b) Here's my 'never-invade' circularity: the only way you can be confident that an invasion to overthrow a despot is in the interests of the oppressed people, is if the despotism is so bad as to create an opposition of a size and force such that this opposition overthrows the despot without foreign assistance. In other words, if a despot is bad enough to invade, he's bad enough to have been overthrown by internal opposition. So there is no compassionate reason to invade anyone. Sure the opposition in Iraq is weak because Saddam is a prick, but it may also be weak because Iraqis don't see that alternative regimes would be sufficiently less despotic, or because Iraqis don't think their loss of lives in getting rid of Saddam would be worth it (in which case, would a small loss of Western soldiers be worth it).
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