Comment by 1a527dd5
3 hours ago
I wonder how old the rest of the commentators are. I watched the Shock and Awe campaign. I watched Saddam fall. I remember thinking this is great.
Years later, I understand it was a complete folly. Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.
Every new generation in America learns this same lesson the hard way.
You and your children will be paying the bill for this war for the rest of your life.
Oil and defense companies will get richer.
Nothing will change in the middle east.
> Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.
I believe this is the legacy of leaders like Saddam. They build a very messy future for their countries. Whenever such a leader is gone, somebody has to take over power. Dictators tend to concentrate as much power in their hands as possible. Forced removal of such a leader might accelerate and / or destabilize power transition. Which might end up in a very messy scenario.
Absolute power transition worked well with monarchy in the past, cause everybody knew who would be the next guy, there were rules and procedures. With dictatorship often times there are no rules. So power transition might turn into a complete chaos even with a natural death of a dictator.
There are endless amounts of hasbara going around. Unit 8200 is sending their best elements out right now.
I'd be careful of what I read and choose to believe.
Taking out Saddam allowed the Taliban to get right back to the raping of the Opium farmers wives and children. Not saying I approved of Saddam but I did enjoy the way he had originally curtailed the risk to his Opium revenue.
You seriously don’t think Iraq is in a better place today than it has ever been? You miss Saddam?
Iraq right now is in roughly the same position as it was when Saddam Hussein was there but in the meantime a few million people died and the country went through a pretty traumatic period.
Plenty of people died under Saddam, too. Do you think the average Iraqi would choose to go back and live under Saddam?
lol lmao
is the civilian population being gassed in Iraq now? how about a brutal repressive regime backed by a secret police that tortured and disappeared thousands? is Iraq really the same as it was under Saddam?!!?!?!?!?!??!?!
You seem to forget that Irak instability was a big part of the reason why we got to deal with ISIS in the first place.
I say that ISIS was worst than Saddam.
ISIS also broke out of countries like Syria, which nobody messed with until after their civil war and the ISIS takeover. Which is to say that the problem isn’t the Iraq war - but Islam. It’s literally called ISIS - and you blame the US for it?
2 replies →
No one misses Saddam.
Parts of Iraq are much better off, like Kurdistan. Other parts were utterly devastated by our operations, insurgency, sectarian violence, ISIS, and so on. Some people had religious freedom and now live in areas under theocratic control.
One thing I notice on here is very few people understand counter intuitive stuff.
As you said.. plenty of evidence where on the surface it seems good. But in reality it turns out to make the people in the region worse off.
I turned 18 about 6 months after 9-11.
Going to take a night off from worrying about forever wars and celebrate the end of the Ayatollah and Ali Khamenei.
This will be the start of something that never ends
Yes, whether these strikes are a good idea in general depends on whether they make life better for the regular people of Iran imo.
That said, fuck Khamenei.