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MichaelTDoyle
Guest
Lots of Iraqis did want Saddam deposed, almost certainly most of them. After all, between the two phases of the war, he gassed Kurds and strafed Shiites with helicopter gunships. They hated him.
“Justifiable” is a complex thing. He started two wars, one being practically a world war if one counts the participants. He killed about a million people. His intention to conquer the Middle East could not have been more obvious. Between the phases, he didn’t have the power to do it, but only because of Phase I. Did that mean he could never regain the strength to give it another try?
Just because he intended to be the “Hitler of the Middle East” instead of Europe, it made him no less a vicious aggressor. He paid parents to induce their children to suicide bomb Israelis. He shot at American and Brit planes in violation of the truce after Phase I. He violated the “no fly zone” agreement when he went after the Shiites.
If deposing him wasn’t “justifiable” then nothing ever was or ever will be.
The present chaos there is entirely due to Obama’s decision to abandon Iraq. The Kurds, Sunni tribal leaders and Sistani Shia all begged us to stay awhile longer in force. The Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense and the CIA all advised Obama not to pull out, and predicted exactly what has happened if we did.
But having made it a campaign promise, Obama declared a “victory” he knew needed further guarding to be real, and pulled out.
Call it “Bush’s war” if you wish, but you have to also call what we have now “Obama’s senseless betrayal”.
And Iraq was certainly not stable under Saddam Hussein. Hated as he was by the majority, his rule was no more “stable” than that of Assad.
Thanks for taking the time to go through the history. I wear myself out against the memes trying to rewrite history into the equivalent of bumper stickers. I salute your fortitude. Keep at it.First question: Probably they would have. 165,000 or so casualties, including combatants on both sides and an anticipated end to Saddam’s rule does not equal a million killed and no end to it. After all, all sorts of people are dying in Syria (and not just at the hands of ISIS) under Assad, because Assad is hated by the majority. In the American Revolutionary War, there were about 50,000 casualties, a massively larger percentage of the whole than those suffered in Iraq. Sometimes an oppressed people are willing to take casualties to rid themselves of a hated dictator.
And the current refugees are not related to the Iraq war. They are the product of the war between ISIS and other rebel groups and the Iran/Russia/Alawite alliance.
One is not surprised at Kofi Anan’s statement, given that his son was bribed in terms of millions of dollars by Saddam Hussein. So were many others in the UN, by money that was supposed to feed the Iraqi people, but didn’t.
WMD were part of the basis for the war. Repeatedly broken terms of the truce were as well. In any event, Saddam did have WMD. Americans disposed of the last known chemical weapons just this year. In 2013 the Brits did as well. Probably they’ll be found for years. Saddam’s crimes against humanity were not limited to WMD.
There was a good chance of stability in Iraq, but we left too early to ensure it.
Although, I’d amend that there was stability in Iraq and more to come before it was thrown away. The reason I don’t support such actions in the future is not because their unjust, but because we cannot guarantee a feckless leader will be elected and ruin any stability achieved through force of arms or diplomacy. The US has become a world leader who cannot lead and that’s a problem for all freedom loving people around the world.