Interesting comparison, except thousands of soldiers don't die assisting our nation's poor. Trillions are not poured out on barren lands far from home not helping our citizens past a few defense contractor's bottomline... oh speaking of those guys, so too has simple 'national defense' turned into a huge mess of lobbyists, contractors, and thousands of handouts.
I refrained from posting in this thread mainly because they are rather liberal artsy. Is the 'world' better off without one less brutal dictator? Is the world better when a new butterfly spreads it's wings? :roll:
The World is neither better or worse off. Iran has new found power and position as two sunni rivals have been knocked down a rung or two, the huge cost and distraction caused by Afghanistan and Iraq gave Iran plenty of room to start a regionally destabilizing nuclear program- we swapped a rather caged tiger for an on the loose one... greeeeeat.
Compared to many other past ruthless dictators and mass killers of their own people Saddam is a light wieght. We seem to forget how much assistance we gave him and the blind eye we turned when he slaughtered so many Kurds before we hated him. Doesn't anyone remember Special Envoy for President Reagan, Ronald Rumsfeld classic neo-con, shaking Saddam's hand in 1983? That year is imporatant because according to kurds and iranians thats the year Iraq started using chemical weapons. Two years later Ambassador to the UN Kirkpatrick worked to 'downplay' the UN sanctions against Iraq over the use of 'annihilation insecticides'.
So this newly found disgust and outrage over Saddam doing Saddam seems a bit fake, or at the VERY least ignorant of history.
Those who substituted Iraq for the World in the original question...
Given the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi have died in the war and upheaval since we decided we knew what was best for Iraq, the infiltration of iranian group in the majority Shia population, the tenuous cobbled together government that looks more like the nation of Lebanon rather than Lebanon, Pa....
Ignore the Kurds are basically outside national controls and policies, the Sunni minority is being bribed to play ball and the ****te majority can't govern any better than we did...
I'd say the sham elections that were held are more like a communist staged event than even Chicago elections...
More negotiating went on behind closed doors to determine the outcome of the 'free and open' elections than any brokered convention we ever had in this country.
Iraq better off???? Not enough time has passed to be able to say it is.