Would ISIS exist today if Saddam Hussein was still in power?

No
Yes
Other

Good question. Most likely not. Kind of makes you wonder if it was done on purpose. "Overthrowing Saddam to Help Islam Usher in The 12th Imam" by George Bush. Makes for a great title.

No because Saddam had a secular regime and hated extremist groups such as Al Qaeda. He would've put his foot so far up their asses it wouldn't even have been funny. There would be no ISIS whatsoever.

Here's a better and more relevant question.

Would ISIS exist if Obama had not pulled every last remnant of American Military personnel out of Iraq ?

You mean the wonderful Saddam Hussein, pro-American man of peace and human rights justice? :roll:

Fenton said:

Here's a better and more relevant question.

Would ISIS exist if Obama had not pulled every last remnant of American Military personnel out of Iraq ?

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In Syria, they would exist. So whose side were we supposed to take, Assad allied with Iran or with ISIS?

The poll also is worded wrongly. It should read would ISIS still control large areas of Iraq if Hussein was still in power?

ISIS isn't just in Iraq, is it? AQ, the origins of ISIS, absolutely did exist while Hussein was in power.

joko104 said:

You mean the wonderful Saddam Hussein, pro-American man of peace and human rights justice? :roll:

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Actually Saddam, howbeit evil, was very cooperative with American powers and under his regime Christians were allowed to live in peace. Other than that he was a p.o.s.

joko104 said:

The poll also is worded wrongly. It should read would ISIS still control large areas of Iraq if Hussein was still in power?

ISIS isn't just in Iraq, is it? AQ, the origins of ISIS, absolutely did exist while Hussein was in power.

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I don't think it would as large as it is now.

Fenton said:

Here's a better and more relevant question.

Would ISIS exist if Obama had not pulled every last remnant of American Military personnel out of Iraq ?

Click to expand...

My view is we potentially could have delayed their ascendance indefinitely, but an uprising of this sort was inevitable whenever we left.

Voted "other" as it is more complicated than that.

But I might be willing to say that ISIS would not have the numbers today if Saddam was still in power *and* al-Assad had better control over his nation as well *and* other nations in the region also had better control over their respective nations. Like Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and a handful of others.

As sad as this is going to sound most in that region seem to be better off under a military and/or religious dictator than otherwise.

There is something about that culture and ideology suggests that western world leaning concepts of freedoms and tolerances are simply incompatible with most of that region. That does not mean I think Saddam, or al-Assad, or leaders of these other nations are peaceful people. Just saying that for this culture when absent of a clear and definitive ruler we have issues with pockets of the culture turning on each other and everyone else with horrific results. Terrorism, Islamic Fundamentalism, whatever you want to call it... all seems to have a direct correlation to region instability. Sometimes our interventionism seems to be a core cause, other times the mix is too complex to blame on any one party.

But in this case for ISIS, we seem to have a group that capitalized on a multiple way civil war in one nation and a weak government and military in another. The latter we are directly responsible for. As much as I am against all of this, leaving a residual force to handle Iraq might have slowed down ISIS being able to flood from Syria into Iraq and mobilize just enough people that have been in Iraq for generations anyway thinking along the lines ISIS demands.

And if you objectively look at the region and when problems come into power, US and European hands tend to be involved. Hard to judge otherwise, we seem to cause a significant number of our own problems. Seems to me it is because we continually go into the region expecting people look at ideology the same way we do, only to find there region by majority does not have the aptitude for such ideology. For instance, democracy means little to a group that looks to a religion where the text itself has a baked in ideology for government authority. And that authority has nothing to do with freedoms or tolerances.

A better question would be: would Saddam Hussein have prevented ISIS from coming into existence and the answer is, no. There's no way he could have prevented a rebellion in Syria. There's no way he could have stopped an ISIS invasion of Iraq, since he couldn't move his forces into the no-fly zone to engage them.

On a side note: the feverish effort to blame Bush is becoming embarrassing for the Libbos.

ISIS specifically? Who knows.
But what ISIS represents certainly would.

apdst said:

A better question would be: would Saddam Hussein have prevented ISIS from coming into existence and the answer is, no. There's no way he could have prevented a rebellion in Syria. There's no way he could have stopped an ISIS invasion of Iraq, since he couldn't move his forces into the no-fly zone to engage them.

On a side note: the feverish effort to blame Bush is becoming embarrassing for the Libbos.

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Do you realize that Saddam, ISIS and the largest population in Syria are Sunni.

the answer is, and can only be... I don't know.

pbrauer said:

Do you realize that Saddam, ISIS and the largest population in Syria are Sunni.

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That most probably means that Saddam would have allied with ISIS.

Thrilla said:

the answer is, and can only be... I don't know.

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Perhaps, but I would counter that we have enough history in the region to make fairly accurate assumptions and observations of how ISIS came into such quick power. As such, we can then evaluate what we could have handled a bit differently to mitigate those things. I agree we cannot be totally accurate here, but we have to do some evaluations else we will set ourselves up to make the same mistake time and time again.

pbrauer said:

No
Yes
Other

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It's a good question, and I respond yes. Seems to me that ISIS had its origins out of the conflict in Syria and there's no evidence I know of that would indicate the "Arab Spring" actions in Syria and other countries wouldn't have happened if Saddam was around. It's also possible, although only speculation, that Saddam whose government was minority Sunni would have been funding and supplying ISIS willingly, without ISIS having to take what it needs/wants. It's also possible, however, that Saddam would have been smart enough to resist the temptation and see the danger and be a better foil than the current and recent past leadership of Iraq has been.

An equally valid question, from my perspective, would be "Would ISIS exist today if Bashar al-Assad had been removed from power quickly?" And my answer to that question would be no.

OrphanSlug said:

Perhaps, but I would counter that we have enough history in the region to make fairly accurate assumptions and observations of how ISIS came into such quick power. As such, we can then evaluate what we could have handled a bit differently to mitigate those things. I agree we cannot be totally accurate here, but we have to do some evaluations else we will set ourselves up to make the same mistake time and time again.

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that's true as well... my response was more to point out the false choices of the poll than anything else.

if had to guess if they would exist if Saddam was still around... I would say yes.. they would exist.
primarily because existed while Saddam was alive and in power, albeit under a different name.

ISIS is the latest version of Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.... all that **** started back in 1999, in Jordan.


would they be able to control wide swaths of Iraq?... that i don't know..
too many variables to really put together an accurate guess on that particular question.

Moot said:

In Syria, they would exist. So whose side were we supposed to take, Assad allied with Iran or with ISIS?

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But prior to Obama's failure to negotiate a SOFA with Iraq who knew about them ?

And where they a threat ?

apdst said:

A better question would be: would Saddam Hussein have prevented ISIS from coming into existence and the answer is, no. There's no way he could have prevented a rebellion in Syria. There's no way he could have stopped an ISIS invasion of Iraq, since he couldn't move his forces into the no-fly zone to engage them.

On a side note: the feverish effort to blame Bush is becoming embarrassing for the Libbos.

Click to expand...

One of many embarrassing moments stemming from the election of a Jr Senator with radical underpinnings.

In some respects, the Islamic State is a new name on an old face, with a bit more extremism. But clearly, this group of organised criminals would not be going about the Middle East conducting the campaign that they are. Obviously though, this poll is another attempt to blame this very real problem completely on the Bush administration when the last few decades of USFP in the region has been contributing to the radicalisation and emboldenment of these groups, and the last 7 years in particular have undoubtedly been the most damaging to security and stability in the region. With Hussein, Mubarak Gaddafi and Assad, we had containment. Those figures are absent, and with that is the direct correlation in the rise of Islamic extremism.

Moot said:

In Syria, they would exist. So whose side were we supposed to take, Assad allied with Iran or with ISIS?

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My thoughts exactly. SH would have crushed ISIS if they had invaded Iraq and made pyramids out of their skulls. That's the advantage of an autocratic gov't, you get to set the rules of engagement, so if it took slaughtering a handful of towns for supporting ISIS to stop them, that's what SH would have done. While I hate the idea of an autocracy, in certain situations, it has it's advantages over more civilized forms of gov't. Yugoslavia under Tito is probably the best example of the up side to an autocracy. HE was able to keep a nation that could have been in a full blown civil war in a state of relative peace. His tactics were deplorable, but the results were undeniable. Given another generation or two of an autocracy and Yugoslavia probably would still exist and we would have avoided the civil war that came about when Yugoslavia fell apart. SH was able to do something similar in Iraq, keeping the Sunnis and Shiites from killing each other in the streets using the same kind of cruel and vicious tactics.

Before ANYONE accuses me of admiring or supporting these kind of tactics, keep in mind that I HATE them, but I also recognize that they can produce positive results for the short term that can lead to a stable nation. If I was put into one of these kind of States, I'd be one of the guys looking to remove the autocrats.

Nope, dictators don't like competition.

They would have been brutally suppressed, and in time, eradicated before gaining any sort of international infamy.

These Islamic autocrats were good at dealing with these brutes, especially since they don't/didn't have any rules to play by.

Van Basten said:

Nope, dictators don't like competition.

They would have been brutally suppressed, and in time, eradicated before gaining any sort of international infamy.

These Islamic autocrats were good at dealing with these brutes, especially since they don't/didn't have any rules to play by.

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Yep yep!