What exactly was wrong about overthrowing Saddam?

smash wrote: »

Freedom. They unloaded rounds freedom in to so many people!

Depleted Uranium Freedom for all the children, happy leukemia kids! USA! USA! USA!

conorhal wrote: »

That's an interesting read alright, but the reality is simply this, had America backed the intefada they encouraged, we'd only be where we are today except a little faster.
We saw in the wake of the Arab Spring how quickly shady Islamists, ethnic and religious tensions caused any filcker of optimism to be quashed and the reality of civil war amongst these parties errupt as they all vied for power.
The reality was that an 'outbreak of Jeffersonian democracy' was never going to happen in states where tribal, religious and ethnic tensions had been simmering under the surface for decades if not hundreds of years, it was always going to come to this sooner or later.

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My post is in response to the OP question, 'What exactly was wrong about overthrowing Saddam?"

The OP states a number of things , re 'liberation of the oppressed'.(my quote)

My post illustrates some part of the historical background.

The west divided the Ottoman Empire, creating much of the current issues.

The west used 'strong arm' leaders like the Shah of Iran and Saddam, to further their own aims, irrespective of the cost to the inhabitants of the region.

When Saddam stopped playing ball the way the US liked, he became a liability. Bush initially asked for a citizen's rebellion, but then changed his mind, at the cost of many lives. Saddam was seen as 'the devil we know', despite the knowledge of his brutality. As time went on, his liability exceeded his usefulness.

In short, the myth that the West's intentions were to rescue the 'oppressed' is just that. A myth. The objective is control over other peoples for gain, irrespective of the welfare of those people. The consequence of those actions by the West is IS etc.

The opinion that 'all these individual factions inevitably will bring about chaos (due to their nature), so the West needs to step in', is at best, an opinion. Such an opinion has been offered re the Irish at different junctures - el Paddy just can't sort things out, they need an Imperial presence.

There's never a need for invasion to bring about democracy. Such thinking is by definition, faulty.

rjpf1980 wrote: »

Killed by Sunni and Shia terrorists backed by Saudi Arabia and Iran if you would care to research the figures.

wrong. killed by coalition forces.

rjpf1980 wrote: »

When has the end of a dictatorship not been accompanied by bloodshed?

it hasn't, but strangely enough countries in the middle east who have had dictators fall have never become free and democratic either.

rjpf1980 wrote: »

Violence and chaos follow and then things settle down.

again, wrong. the facts don't back you up. all of the middle east countries who have had dictators fall are still effectively at war, as sectarian tentions have come to the fore along with extremists.

rjpf1980 wrote: »

It's a risk and sacrifice worth it in the end.

it's a risk that doesn't pay off. centuries of bloodshed for nothing in return is how things will be.

rjpf1980 wrote: »

And why not? America would be on the road to Third World status if it didn't defend it's vital interests. If that means blood then so be it.

where would isis be if it didn't defend it's vital interests. If that means blood then so be it. you see, that doesn't have the same ring to it now does it? blood is blood at the end of the day, if it's wrong for one it's wrong for all. america has plenty of money to dig up it's own resources or invent an alternative.

rjpf1980 wrote: »

I don't have to because rough men and women protect me and you while we sleep.

protect you from what?

smash wrote: »

Because either that 8,000 tonnes that you claim they have will need to be melted down and converted to dinar so they can buy the oil, or they'll have to buy dinar from Gaddafi so they can give it back to him to buy the oil. Either way, all the gold ends up in Libya.

Because the only seller of oil in the world is Libya?

The problem with removing Saddam by invasion is that it was like deciding to get rid of a rat living in a house by burning the house to the ground.
Saddam killed an average of about 5000 of his own citizens per year. That was horrible. However some estimates place the number of iraqi's killed since then at three quarters of a million. That's before the millions who were displaced or fled. That's before we include the hundreds of thousands who have been killed in Syria by Islamist groups like ISIS who were created because of the war.

So yeah, the invasion of Iraq. Very smart decision.

smash wrote: »

Can you seriously not see how a monetary system backed by something of worth would trigger a global economic crises? Paying for oil would just be the start. Diamonds would follow and so on and so on.

Actually it's more the case that I can't see how Gaddaffi was going to wrangle Algeria and Nigeria (who recalled their ambassador in 2010 after Gaddaffi suggest partitioning the country) into a currency union, and then how a new currency based on a slim margin of the worlds gold and oil production was going to trigger some economic revolution. This is more the realm of fantasy than likely counter factual, surely you can see that? You don't need to go further than the aforementioned bilateral difficulties.

Grayson wrote: »

The problem with removing Saddam by invasion is that it was like deciding to get rid of a rat living in a house by burning the house to the ground.
Saddam killed an average of about 5000 of his own citizens per year. That was horrible. However some estimates place the number of iraqi's killed since then at three quarters of a million. That's before the millions who were displaced or fled. That's before we include the hundreds of thousands who have been killed in Syria by Islamist groups like ISIS who were created because of the war.

So yeah, the invasion of Iraq. Very smart decision.

...and your figures don't even include the estimated more than 500.000 Iraqi children who died due to the sanctions imposed before the actual invasion.

Enzokk wrote: »

The plan to withdraw all the troops were in motion already by the time Obama came to office. The US people wanted their troops out of there and Bush started this process. You make it sound as if this was a policy of Obama when it was a policy of Bush.

The question is, why only Saddam Hussein? There are many other dictators that have killed many of their own citizens and pose no threat (as we know now, no WMD founds in Iraq) to the UK or US, why Iraq? Why not Zimbabwe?

That's because it was a policy of Obama. Bush embarked on the 'surge', greatly increasing the number of US troops to pacify large parts of Iraq. People assumed this would fail. It did not fail. The 'surge' drawdown began, but in 2008 McCain ran on a ticket where he openly stated US troops would have to remain in Iraq for 50 years (i.e. a smaller/peacetime garrison as in Germany from the 1940s up to the present day) to support the Iraqi government and US interests. His logic (like Bush before him when announcing the surge) was that the Iraqi government was too weak to stand by itself, and if US troops left prematurely the situation would get worse and result in the return of US forces later. However what people heard was US troops in Iraq for 50 years and completely lost their minds.

Obama on the other hand rode to the White House (crushing the presumed Democrat nominee Clinton) by committing to a complete US withdrawal at any cost. There was a very popular idea at the time that the presence of US troops was *causing* the violence, and if US troops withdrew, peace would breakout. Obama disagreed with the logic of McCain and went ahead with the withdrawal.

As predicted, the violence didn't end with the withdrawal of US troops. Instead things went rapidly downhill to the point that the Iraqi government was unable to hold the country together without the US vetoing its sectarian tendencies and the Iraqi army was unable to resist a few thousand jihadists in pickup trucks from taking over half of Iraq without US troops to lead and support them. Now US troops are back in Iraq to retrieve a situation that probably wouldn't have got so far out of hand if they hadn't been withdrawn prematurely.

rjpf1980 wrote: »

Thousands of people were tortured and executed by Saddam's regime every year. In the region of Iraq still controlled by the Shia led government thousands of people are NOT tortured and executed every year and prior to the withdrawal of American troops at the end of the surge which brought a brief end to violence in Iraq thousands of people were NOT being tortured and executed every year. In regions surrendered to Isis thousands ARE tortured and murdered. It is no accident that leading members of the insurgency during the American occupation were former Saddam commanders and it is no accident these same commanders are in control of Islamic State.

Isn't it wonderful how the very people who praise dictators don't have to live for a minute or an hour or a day or a year under their brutal rule?

1) No-one's praising him

2) I lived there during Saddam's rule.

It wasn't a paradise. There was oppression. Even as a kid I had to keep my mouth shut. Everyone knew that if anyone said anything bad about him you could (Or in my case, my parents) could be carted off in the middle of the night.

But the fact is that the figures speak for themselves. hundreds of thousands have died. As I said before removing Saddam through the invasion was like burning a house down to kill a rat. The invasion did far more damage than the Baath party did.