Arab Socialism or Islamic Fundamentalism?

[Superman Returns]

Saddam: brutal dictator, corrupt, tyrannical, a butcher. But he blocked the advancement of Iranian Shia fundamentalism, he was check against communism in the region, and he maintained a secular regime that embraced secular laws over religious ones, ie. Iraqi woman had more rights than Saudi Arabian ones. Again, not a defense of Saddam, but had he not invaded Kuwait and acted in a certain way, wouldn't he have continued to be our ally like he was in the 80's? After all, Iraq was a modern, secular state under his rule. Why would we want to cede it to Islamists or Iranian allies instead?

[Nutmegger]

1. Today's Iraq is dominated by Al-Sadr

Saddam was contained and not a threat to anybody.

[Selatius]

2. Big problem: Saddam and the Ba'athists nationalized the oil infrastructure.

When they came to power, that was one of the things they did. By the 1970s, Iraq was growing rapidly. Because revenue generated from the oilfields often went to agriculture, infrastructure, education, health care, the military, etc. the 1970s are sort of remembered as a high point in Iraq's short history. Saddam was an ally of convenience for the fact that he was killing Iranians, but the simple truth is he was more of a liability than an asset because he was in the way of privatization programs pushed by the IMF and the World Bank so successfully in other countries.

One victim of the IMF "shock therapy" was Yugoslavia, coincidentally. The economic turmoil the shock program generated was so intense that roughly a quarter of the workforce was laid off when state-run enterprises were privatized or liquidated. Workers were pissed off, and this allowed nationalists like Slobodan to gain traction at the expense of a greater multinational state that Yugoslavia once was.

The result was ethnic cleansing. Something similar is now happening to Iraq now that the logjam Saddam was removed. Saddam only made himself an even bigger target by switching to Euros instead of Dollars in terms of the sale of Iraq's crude oil on the open market. Iran now has the Oil Bourse that sells crude oil in Euros now if you're a prospective nation.

[izzie]

7. Plus they went to the Euro.People for get how important that is to us.

He made more money but with evey dollar of oil money a percent rubs off on us and with the Euro it does not. Banker would not put up with that and I guess banker pretty much say who will go to war and what for. Just wait until China does the Euro thing. Right now is just not the time. A bank my not put the push on the one guy that owns a house but you can be sure they will pull the plug if they can take power on the man who owns 1000 houses.

[KingFlorez]

3. The administration didn't care about any of that

Iraq is now open to radical elements and really is a threat to this country's security.

[lvx35]

4. 9/11 answered that question...

because you know, Osama was one of those secular ones, right??? ;) :sarcasm:

[ngant17]

5. Iraqi communists

"...he was check against communism in the region"

That simplistic phrase doesn't do justice to the large groups of Iraqi communists who were persecuted (i.e. murdered, imprisoned) by Saddam.

That is like justifying Reagan/Bush's reign of terror in Central America because they were against communism, or Kissinger's complicity in the death of Allende and the disappearances of thousands of South American socialists.

I don't understand why Saddam was so tryranncial against the other groups of communists and socialists in Iraq. To that degree, he lost some legitimacy in my view.

[rman]

6. "...if you got an underground nationalist organization and you want to discredit them,

you create your own parallel underground nationalist organization. You send them out - it's got to have the same name, it's got to have a false flag - you send them out, have them commit tremendous atrocities. Those will be blamed on the original relatively benign group, and they'll be discredited, they'll be demonized, and you gain political advantage.
Kitson wrote a book about it; "Low Intensity Operations - Subversion Insurgency & Peacekeeping", and the technique is called the technique of the counter-gang or the pseudo-gang."
- Webster G Tarpley, historian, author

"Oil Smoke and Mirrors"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8677389869548020370&q=Oil%2C+Smoke+and+Mirrors