StrykerFSU wrote:Laxfan, with all due respect and acknowledging that you are entitled to your opinion but your post nearly made me fall out of my chair. Regardless of your opinion of the war, I refuse to believe that any Iraqi would be happier under the torturous regime of Saddam Hussein (except for maybe his sons who raped and killed at will). You don't even need to read real journalism to learn of the atrocities committed by those sadists, even Maxim published an article on the torture of the Iraqi national soccer players.
Saddam was a threat to his people, his neighbors, and the world. He violated 17 UN security resolutions since the last Gulf War. He gassed thousands of Kurds and Iranians. He invaded Kuwait. He murdered political rivals and ruled as an absolute dictator on a platform of fear. People can argue all day about the justification for the US involvement but please do not tell me that the Iraqi people were happier in 2002.
Stryker, I agree with your assertions about how bad Saddam was. What I was saying is that for the vast majority of ordinary citizens, who weren't Kurds, Iranians, Kuwaitis or political opponents, the repressive nature of his regime had little impact on their daily lives, and the country was very crime-free, because if you were caught, or even accused - it was going to be a bad time for you. For Joe Six-Packi, he could live his life in dull anonymity, with cheap gas to boot.
Now, daily life in Iraq is a total mess. People are afraid to leave their houses, neighbors are being set upon neighbors, whole groups of people are relocating to get into areas of their "own" kind, kidnappings and murder by the dozens are a daily occurence.
What I was saying, is given the choice between the current insecure nature of life there, and what it was like under Saddam, more people would choose totalitarian security over democratic anarchy. In this regard, Iraq is no different than any other country, including the US.
That is why there is not a larger uproar about the government listening in on phone conversations - "I've got nothing to hide, and it's keeping the country safe from another attack."
Remember also, before the Kuwait war, Saddam was a friend of the US, and was helped into power to a large extent by the US. After all, he was helping to keep the Iranians busy with a war with Iraq, and the Iranians were very bad, having overthrown the Shah, taking over our embassy and holding all those hostages for many, many months.
International politics make for strange bedfellows, that can turn quite ugly when bedpartners fall out, i.e. - our support for the Taliban in their resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. A lot of the weapons used against us there were supplied by us.
One of my concerns, what happens when Musharraf is eliminated in Pakistan?
