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Is the world a better place without Saddam Hussein?

Is the world a better place without Saddam Hussein?

  • Total voters
    102
Muhammed said:
Got any proof to back up that contention?
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The affirmative is the claim that they were. There's no evidence they were. So, absence of evidence backs up that contention.
 
Muhammed said:
BS that is simply your strawman.
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No, it isn't. Do you know what a strawman is? With no evidence they were working together, you claim they were. You simply can't. And with as much effort put not trying to find such evidence only to fail, you have to conclude they likely weren't.
 
JC Callender said:
Many influential people world wide believed he was a serious threat, including Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. That's what we knew at the time, and that's what we went off of. Did you know at the time that we or one of our allies wouldn't get attacked with WMD's?....of course you didn't. And how do you know that he didn't bury them in the sand? Is it more important for you to hail some kind of moral victory with the advantage of hindsight rather that to say with humility that we tried our best?
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You would have a valid point if there were no weapons inspectors in Iraq.

But there were. And had Bush let them finish their job, we would know what we know today, but without the high cost of some 35,000 American casualties. At least a trillion dollars, probaby way more. And the moral price of at least 100,000 Iraqi deaths.

Bush did not have to deploy troops to Iraq.
 
JC Callender said:
Many influential people world wide believed he was a serious threat, including Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. That's what we knew at the time, and that's what we went off of. Did you know at the time that we or one of our allies wouldn't get attacked with WMD's?....of course you didn't. And how do you know that he didn't bury them in the sand? Is it more important for you to hail some kind of moral victory with the advantage of hindsight rather that to say with humility that we tried our best?

I've always wondered if much of the PTSD from this war comes from our service people injuring and or killing Iraqi's for the sake of freedom and justice, only to have the case made ad nauseam that it was totally unjustified.
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Of course the response of three you listed we're a little more nuanced. Kerry for example explained his speech in the vote that Saddam's threat didn't warrant an invasion outside the UN. So the word threat is not equal to supporting Bush's actions.
 
ChrisL said:
Well, it was called "The War on Terror." :shrug:
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Yes, it was, which was one of the problems. Fighting a "war on terror" is fighting a strategy of warfare. We didn't really know who our enemy was, at least not specifically. Fighting a war on Al Qaeda would have given us more focus.

Better yet, we could have gone after Bin Laden and his cohorts and gone home.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Yes, it was, which was one of the problems. Fighting a "war on terror" is fighting a strategy of warfare. We didn't really know who our enemy was, at least not specifically. Fighting a war on Al Qaeda would have given us more focus.

Better yet, we could have gone after Bin Laden and his cohorts and gone home.
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The U.S. Navy SEAL team took care of Bin Laden long ago
 
Muhammed said:
Is that why he built all of those mosques?
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Saddam Hussein: Secular or Religious Ruler?

Saddam Hussein's popularity in the Muslim and Arab world varied greatly, depending upon whom one asked and what the political situation at the time was. Because of his repression of the religious Shi'ite minority in Iraq and his long war with Shi'ite Iran, it was difficult for Shi'ite Muslims to find anything good to say about Hussein. In addition, because of his staunch secularism and his secularization of Iraq, it was been difficult for devout and conservative Muslims of any type to think well of him.

Hussein, Saddam
 
JC Callender said:
Many influential people world wide believed he was a serious threat, including Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. That's what we knew at the time, and that's what we went off of. Did you know at the time that we or one of our allies wouldn't get attacked with WMD's?....of course you didn't. And how do you know that he didn't bury them in the sand? Is it more important for you to hail some kind of moral victory with the advantage of hindsight rather that to say with humility that we tried our best?

I've always wondered if much of the PTSD from this war comes from our service people injuring and or killing Iraqi's for the sake of freedom and justice, only to have the case made ad nauseam that it was totally unjustified.
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Argue either way about the validity of the war. Everyone has an opinion. Do not make the mistake of saying "no" WMDs were found. Several of my co-workers were injured by WMDs that supposedly did not exist and still have medical issues because of it. They may not have been a nuclear variety WMD, but a few pounds of the materials that were found could have been smuggled into the U.S. far easier than nuclear material and kill far more than the attack on 9/11.
 
'WHY DID GEORGE W. Bush choose March 19, 2003, to invade Iraq, rather than some day in May, or July, or never? Because he was afraid that further delay would give United Nations arms inspectors time to refute the accusation—his sole pretext for making an unprovoked attack on an independent country—that Saddam Hussein’s regime was working on nuclear weapons.

The U.S. president couldn’t say that, of course, and so instead his administration’s spokesmen mumbled about the need to get the war over and done with before the summer heat made fighting impossible. Yet American soldiers proved perfectly capable of operating in that summer heat during the ensuing seven years of fighting, in which over 4,000 of them were killed.

That was nothing compared to the number of Iraqi deaths. At least five times as many Iraqis have died violently in the decade since the U.S. invasion as were killed by Saddam’s regime in the 10 years before the invasion. The exact number is unknown, but Saddam’s secret police were probably killing less than 2,000 people a year from 1993 to 2003. An estimated 121,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the military and political struggles of the past 10 years.

Iraq’s infrastructure has still not recovered to its prewar level. More than a million Iraqis still live in internal exile, unable to return to the homes from which they were “cleansed” during the Sunni-Shia sectarian war of 2006–2007. Another million have fled the country for good, including a large proportion of the country’s intellectual and professional elite.

Iraq ranks eighth from the bottom on Transparency International’s corruption index, ahead of Somalia and North Korea but below Haiti and Equatorial Guinea. The government in Baghdad, though dominated by sectarian Shia politicians, does little for the impoverished Shia majority. The Sunni minority fears and hates it. And the Kurdish ethnic minority in the north just ignores Baghdad and runs a state that is independent in all but name.

Iraq’s courts do the regime’s will, torture is endemic, and the swollen army and “security” forces (used almost exclusively for internal repression) eat up a huge share of the budget. And from the perspective of American grand strategy, the main result of the war has been to weaken the position of the U.S. in the Gulf region and strengthen that of its perceived opponent, Iran.

The United States spent about $800 billion on the Iraq war, and will eventually spend at least another trillion dollars on military pensions, disability payments, and debt service. Yet it achieved less than nothing. Why on earth did it invade in the first place?

Even the defenders of the invasion have stopped claiming that Saddam Hussein was cooperating with al-Qaeda terrorists who were plotting to attack the United States. They were also plotting to overthrow and kill Saddam, as everyone with any knowledge of the Middle East already knew.

The UN weapons inspectors never found the slightest evidence that Saddam had revived the nuclear weapons program that had been dismantled under UN supervision in the early 1990s. The people in the White House who took the decision to invade must have known that there was no such program: the way they carefully worded their propaganda in order to avoid explicit lying is ample evidence of that.

The strategist Edward Luttwak once suggested that the real reason was that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had been too easy. After 9/11 the American people really wanted to punish somebody, and Afghanistan had not provided enough catharsis. So another invasion was an emotional necessity, and, given the American public’s ignorance about the Middle East, almost any Arab country would do.

There was certainly a parallel desire among the neo-conservatives in the Bush White House to restore American power to unchallenged dominance after what they saw as the fecklessness of Bill Clinton’s administrations in the 1990s. That required a short and successful war that would put everyone else in awe and fear of American military might—but, once again, any weak and unpopular country would have done. Why Iraq?

The closest we can come to a rational answer is the argument, common in Washington a decade ago, that permanent military bases in Iraq would give America strategic control over the entire Gulf region.

The role of those bases would not be to ensure prompt delivery of the region’s oil to the United States at a low price: only 11 percent of U.S. oil imports come from there. The bases would instead enable the United States to block Gulf exports of oil to China if the United States found itself in a confrontation with that country. (Geostrategic arguments are often frivolous.)

None of these explanations can justify what was done, and we haven’t even gone into the damage done to international law by this blatantly criminal act. But can we at least conclude that the world, or even just the United Nations, has learned a lesson from all this?

Probably yes for the United States, at least until memories fade. (Give it 10 more years.) Not so much for the rest of the world, but then most other countries are less prone to invade faraway places anyway.'

Gwynne Dyer: Decade-old lessons from George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq | Georgia Straight
 
It wasn't just Bush, it was Hillary, John Kerry, Joe Biden.....but you knew, in hindsight, there were no weapons and that's what counts.

Sheik Yerbuti said:
You would have a valid point if there were no weapons inspectors in Iraq.

But there were. And had Bush let them finish their job, we would know what we know today, but without the high cost of some 35,000 American casualties. At least a trillion dollars, probaby way more. And the moral price of at least 100,000 Iraqi deaths.

Bush did not have to deploy troops to Iraq.
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pbrauer said:
Saddam Hussein: Secular or Religious Ruler?
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From the 90's on, most definitely religious.

The canard that Saddam Hussein was secular is just another huge lie being foisted on the ignorant by traitorous Democrat Saddam Hussein apologists in the USA. The fact of the matter is that Saddam Hussein declared jihad (holy war) against the USA, claimed to be the direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammed and institutionalized a return to faith campaign in Iraq. This included the banning of alcohol, painting huge murals of Saddam praying, religious lessons in public schools, religious programs on government operated radio stations and building mosques, including one that featured a Quran written in Saddam Hussein's own blood.

Secular my ass!
 
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Muhammed said:
From the 90's on, most definitely religious.

The canard that Saddam Hussein was secular is just another huge lie being foisted on the ignorant by traitorous Democrat Saddam Hussein apologists in the USA. The fact of the matter is that Saddam Hussein declared jihad (holy war) against the USA, claimed to be the direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammed and institutionalized a return to faith campaign in Iraq. This included the banning of alcohol, painting huge murals of Saddam praying, religious lessons in public schools and building mosques, including one that featured a Quran written in Saddam Hussein's own blood.

Secular my ass!
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maybe the desert climate in mecca makes you think this way
 
ecofarm said:
Look, it's very simple:

When those directly affected by environmental degradation have NO VOICE in its authority and management, things are bad and get worse. The "education" and "awareness" comes from the fact that these people must LIVE with the degradation and are, in fact, acutely aware of it.

Simple. Logic. Reason. Fact.

I'm not gonna find the thousands of academic references to such.

Good luck and good day.
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Reality demonstrates that for many, "democracy" is synonymous with having what the west has - ie rampant consumerism.

Does the larger environmental footprint of the average American/Canadian/Australian/brit demonstrate that democracy is good for ecology?

does the reliance of people in democratic countries on the destruction of rainforests and other habitats around the world to meet their consumer demands provide evidence?

how about the destruction of environments within the world's largest "democracy" - India?

Is rampant consum,erism goof
 
ecofarm said:
Do you have any idea how little violence was recorded under Saddam? Or has that factor completely escaped your analysis? Could someone really be that blindly committed to a position.
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are you seriously suggesting that Iraq is safer for the average Iraqi now than what it was under Saddam?
 
MSgt said:
First you have to understand the world.

Our terrorist problem was that we were facing an exponentially growing and festering religious cess pool of radicals tat were breeding extremists between Cairo and Islamabad. This is why the hundreds of terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East held members from all countries. Your argumentative response here will be to point out that the 9/11 terrorists held no Iraqis. This is true, but it avoids the issue. Hussein did fund terrorist organizations in an attempt to call religious fanatics to his side and he did represent everything that is wrong in the Middle East. The degree of oppression and brutality that ditators like Mubarak, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad created the environment that left religious people only one avenue to effect change and bring about the social justice they have always wanted. That avenue was God. And in that avenue we know from history in every single culture on earth that fanaticism and extremism is manifested. The fact that Hussein's brand of oppression and brutality maintained good behavior within his borders is not something we should celebrate. This is, however, exactly what people do when they bring up that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Regional change menas regional change. Starting with the very dictator that constantly caused us to maintain a UN mission of starvation and a never ending escallation of troops in Saudi Arabia (among Osama's excuses for 9/11) was necessary. A better complaint was how the White House handled it and made it messier than it had to be.

This Arab Spring, where Muslims rose up against their dictators throughout the Sunni world (Iranian protests were brief and useless in Iran), hasn't cried out for a new dictator. Not a religious theocracy. They cried out for Democracy. This is exactly what needs to happen throughout the region if we are to use the word "peace" more sincerely than we did when we celebrated Saddam Husein's talent fo forcing good behavior amonst his population. What you see in Iraq today is a direct result of a people struggling between the past the inevitable future. Why else do you think fighter from Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt rushed to thwart Iraqi Democracy in those "civil war" years? Why else do you think those governments did nothing to seal their own borders to prohibit Muslims from traveling to slaughter other Muslims? This is a historical changing of a region for the better before your very eyes and you can't see nothing except a bomb in Baghdad that the American invasion is to blame?

If you shake up a can of soda for a few minutes and then pop the top, what do you think will happen? This regin has been shaken from colonization to dictator for so long that popping the top caused the inevitable explosion that was always going to happen. Focusing on Iraq as if it is some floating island where "our" dictator was doing his job apart from the region does not help to understand the world.

This Middle Eastern issue will settle down eventually. However, the sooner peope accept that this has always been generational the better. This isn't as simple as having Japan and Germany fall to their kees in surrender. This is bigger, yet we treat it like its a small inconvenience and only about a single country. Even Afghanistan has proven to be about more than a single country. See what Pakistan's feelings are on the matter, where Al-Queda found support. This region reeks of confusion because of bad European made borders that carved up tribes or forced tribes together. With nuclear power on the way and finding its way into religious hands, how much time did you think we had to address this escallating problem?

The events since the Iraqi invasion througout the region (women driving in Saudi, Arab Spring, Syrians rebelling, etc) shows that the world is headed to a better place. It was the one region on earth left unhealthy after World War II. It also happens to be the one region on earth where religious fanaticism was becoming an art form.
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you need to understand people too.

I don't disagree that there had been a rise in Islamic fundamentalism - which had begun in the fifties, but you also need to look what factors have contributed to the spread of this.


I agree that old colonial carve ups of borders have had an impact on a number of countries, and western interference has also shaped the lie of the political/religious landscape in other ways.

are you aware that women were allowed to drive in KSA in the sixties?

the changes in the ME landscape now and the directions these will take are not all that clear ...

we may not like the direction it heads in.
 
MSgt said:
No...no. That is not what happened. Most of the Iraqi army didn't even see an American tank when we took down Baghdad. This was yet another Rumsfeld blunder who insisted that we avoid cities. Upon reaching Baghdad, the immediate American forces (1st Marine Division) witnessed an orgy of violence from the citizenry. There was great celebration for a couple weeks as people pulled down statues of Hussein, walked on paintings of him in the sidewalks, and even had cars run over artful reminders of Hussein in the highways. At the same time, people were burning every single building that had anything to do with the former government (to include the Olympic training Building). Amongst these people were former criminals that Hussein released before we got to Baghdad. There was looting, rapes, and murders for which the military was ill equiped or trained to deal with. Once again, the military found itself in a situation it was not prepared for (Bosnia, Somalia, Cuba). There was no plan from the Rumsfeld coven after taking Baghdad apart. Shortly after the Marines left. The Army rolled in with an extreme minimum of numbers (as permitted by Rumsfeld). Within months Islamic warriors from all over the region began swarming in on a mission to support the Al-Queda's mission to disrupt any sense of peace and democracy as they ignited the tribal hatred between the Sunni and the Shia. This was inevitable without Al-Queda's and the rest of the region's support. They merely sped it up. Baghdad was a caliphate seat of Sunni power for over six hundred years in the past and seeing it fall to the majority of voters (Shia) was unnacceptable then as it is now. The reason the tribes are so screwed up in these countries (Iraq being the worst because of the distinct separation between Sunni/Shia/Kurd) is historical and is another post - thank Europe though.

The simple fact of this region is that religious fanaticism and extremism cannot find salvation in an enviroment where people have a choice. Without oppression, brutality, economic disaster, and a lack of social justice, religious fanaticism cannot take root. It cannot grow into a festering reality where hundreds of thousands of people now see violence as their only means to an end as they blame the Jews in their midst, the foriegn devils in the West, or the Muslim in a different tribe instead of looking in the mirror. This is why Al-Queda (to name one organization) has shifted from Sudan to Afghanistan to Iraq (where the lack of Hussein's brand of brutality offered opportnuity) to Pakistan to Yemen and finally to Mali until it finds a new home when chased out of there.

Anyway, this is what happened to Iraq. It wasn't as simple as some Iraqis missing their beloved dictator. The only thing local Sunni Iraqis miss was the power they held over the majority (which democracy exposed). The overwhelming rest of the violence was and is from foreign Muslims frou around the region that see Iraq as the pivotal point between the past they want and the future they are going to get.
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it really is more complex than that.
 
ChrisL said:
No one is disregarding the suffering. Acknowledging that there will be suffering after war is not disregarding the suffering. Your statements make no sense.
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justifying the invasion of a country under false pretenses and then claiming that there will be suffering afterwards IS callousness
 
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