Of course the historical details are different, Teribus. You and I both know our WWII history well enough that there's no need to run through it blow by blow...not for your benefit or mine.

But the general principle is the same. The general principle is to make a pre-emptive attack on someone who has not militarily attacked you, but whom you claim is "a threat".

If the Japanese thought the USA was a threat to their position in Asia in the early 40's, they were dead right! The USA, however, was dead wrong in feeling Iraq was a serious threat to anyone any longer except various of its own citizens.

The reasons the Japanese moved in secret to attack the USA in '41 were embarrassingly simple: it was the only way that could be hoped to be effective in producing a major victory for them. ;-)

The reasons the USA openly persecuted Iraq for years, and said it would attack Iraq if certain conditions weren't met, and openly prepared for that attack in front of the entire world were equally simple: The USA had such crushingly superior military power available that it could do that...or anything it wanted to do...with confidence and absolute impunity.

So...both the Americans and the Japanese launched pre-emptive attacks in the manner that they could plainly see was feasible at the time...with equally self-interested motives, and with an equal lack of concern for either international law or morality.

And I regard both attacks as morally equivalent in that sense.

The reason you can't see it is, you are just convinced in your heart that the USA must always be "the good guys" and anyone they fight must always be "the bad guys". Sorry. That's not a principle you necessarily can rely on.

Sometimes both sides are "bad guys". In the case of the Iraq war, that was the case...but the Iraqis were not the people who attacked in 2003, they were not the aggressor, they were the victim of aggression. Brazen aggression. Pre-planned and pre-publicized aggression. Aggression announced before it was undertaken. Aggression launched without U.N. approval, and in the face of massive protest on the part of the majority of most populations, including that of the UK.

I think the only countries with a majority of citizens in favour of launching that war in 2003 were the USA and Israel. Which figures... ;-) They are both so sure that they are "the good guys" that it amounts to a pathological mental illness, and it keeps losing them friends around the world whom they cannot afford to lose.

You're rooting for an arrogant, preening aggressor, Teribus. One that attacks small countries who cannot fight back with any hope of winning, and attacks them with overwhelming technological weaponry. This is arrogance on the level of Adolf Hitler in 1939 when he attacked Poland. It's equally blatant, it's equally unjustifiable.