re: #392 Cineaste

I don’t disagree that he is not missed but I think there is, perhaps, a critical misread of the modern middle eastern history. I submit that Saddam was our best friend in the region prior to 1991.

1) Saddam was a secularist. He viewed himself as a modern day Salladin. He crushed Islamic extremists in his own country with brutality. In fact, he is the only leader in the region who completely controlled Islamic extremists in his own country. The leaders we support don’t crush extremists, they buy them off by paying for madrassas in Pakistan.

2) Saddam was a valuable check against Iran. Saddam loathed everything the Iranians stand for and fought an eight year war against them. While war is bad and his tactics were horrible. From a cold, hard strategic perspective, we were on the same side re: Iran.

3) Saddam had no historical grievance with Israel and only began supporting Palestinian causes after he was beaten in 1991 as a way to tick off the west. He shared no ideological kinship with Hamas or Hezbollah.

4) Every leader in that region is despicable and supports draconian and reprehensible policies. Bar none. Since we had to back one of them, why not Saddam?

But if you think that status quo could be maintained forever (Saddam keeping the Islamists under control with mass murder and torture), I submit that you’re not being realistic. People will eventually rise up against that kind of domination, and we saw exactly that happen in Iran in the 70s. The clock was ticking.

The idea that we could count on him to continue being our “check” against the Islamists, and not to pursue his own goals of regional domination, strikes me as completely naive. Eventually, this confrontation would have happened anyway even if we hadn’t invaded Iraq — and if Saddam had died first and passed control of the country to his insane sons, all bets were off.

Saddam had no historical grievance with Israel and only began supporting Palestinian causes after he was beaten in 1991 as a way to tick off the west. He shared no ideological kinship with Hamas or Hezbollah.

Maybe not “ideological kinship,” but he WAS funding Hamas and Hezbollah and supporting them in their terror war against Israel — this is indisputable.

Saddam was a very bad actor in the Middle East, and if we hadn’t dealt with him in 2004, we would have had to deal with him later — or with his sons.