2 posts tagged “saddam hussein”

Yup, it's official.  The folks in charge of the US occupation in Iraq have started to suggest that maybe, just maybe, after all, we're not going to be able to bring democracy to Iraq.  Nice.  So, no weapons of mass destruction, no link to 9/11, and now we're not even going to democratize Iraq.  Exactly what are we doing over there?

It's what I've said all along.  Everyone was so eager to trash-talk Saddam Hussein, but nobody had any idea how hard his job was.  Sure, he killed people, but do you have a clue how hard it is to hold together an artificially created country where three different groups of people want to kill each other?  Do you?  Suddenly, we're looking around and thinking, "Dang, this is really hard." 

Right up until they dropped the trapdoor under him, I thought we'd keep Saddam in reserve, in case we needed to reinstall him as dictator in Iraq.  I thought that was an evil and stupid idea, but killing him was a mistake.  I mean, we've killed the one guy who knew how to run the country.  You don't have to like him, or name your kids after him, but just admit it: he was killing fewer people than we have been on an annual basis.  (Not that I think governments ought to be killing any of their people, but I'm always going to prefer fewer dead to more dead.  The numbers don't look good for the US occupation.)  Plus, under Saddam, Iraqis had schools, electricity, clean water.

Sounds like we've just imported democrazy to Iraq.

So, if Iraq isn't going to have a democracy, does that mean that the US just destroyed the country's entire infrastructure, invited terrorists in, killed an estimated 500,000 civilians, plus 3600 US soldiers, all to topple one evil dictator and replace him with another evil dictator?  (Trust me, my people, there is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.)  All at a cost of one trill-i-on of dollars?

A bargain at twice the price.  If you've got stock in the oil industry or the military industrial complex.

[walks through the living room, where the drunken celebrants in the Scooter Libby Guilty! Conga Line collapsed in a stupor last night, into the kitchen / begins to brew the coffee of harsh reality]

On the walk to work this morning, I listend to a Democracy now interview with Wes Clark that depressed me.  As much as I think we committed a terrible crime in invading Iraq, and as much as I wish we could remove American troops from Iraq as soon as possible, Gen. Clark makes an observation that I suspect will cause me to lose sleep tonight:

...let's say we did follow the desires of some people who say, “Just pull out, and pull out now.” Well, yeah. We could mechanically do that. It would be ugly, and it might take three or four months, but you could line up the battalions on the road one by one, and you could put the gunners in the Humvees and load and cock their weapons and shoot their way out of Iraq....You’d probably get safely out of there. But when you leave, the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the Shias. Who are they going to find? Al-Qaeda, because the groups of Sunnis who would be extremists and willing to fight would probably be the groups connected to al-Qaeda. So one of the weird inconsistencies in this is that were we to get out early, we’d be intensifying the threat against us of a super powerful Sunni extremist group, which was now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in an effort to hang onto a toehold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.

In short, the American Monster Machine that created Al-Qaeda in the first place, by giving money to Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, has created a whole new monster in Iraq.  Thanks to Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, and that lying bastard Colin Powell, we have created a situation that is a thousand times more threatening to our national security than Saddam Hussein was.  Sure, Saddam was a murderous creep, but 1.) we created him, 2.) his job wasn't easy, and 3.) we're not exactly succeeding as his replacement.

Clark also mentions in the interview that a friend of his in the Pentagon, who shall remain nameless, told him about "a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”  The only thing that has apparently held this goal in check is our absolute failure to get a handle on Iraq.

I can't help but cast the Bush Administration as a group of kids, celebrating at a birthday party.  Someone has strung up a Middle East piñata from the tree in the front yard and everyone is clamoring to take a swing at it.  They're greedy for the candy inside (or in this case, oil and power), and the first blow has released a little trickle of treats.  But the Bush kids are milling around, eager for the blow that will break open the piñata's belly.  When the Middle East bursts open and spills all over the front lawn, they want to rush in and grab up as much as they can.  Some will come away with their pockets full of ill-gotten gains, some will come away with bruises and scratches from the melee, and at the end of the day, the piñata will still be lying on the front lawn, its papier mâché entrails hanging out.  As dusk falls, the sprinkler will kick on.