Is Saddam Our Best Hope in Iraq?
December 7th, 2006 | by Omnipotent Poobah |
When American troops found the gopher hole where Saddam Hussein was hiding, the first thing the disheveled dictator said was, “I am the President of Iraq and I will negotiate.”
We should’ve taken him up on the offer.
We’d have been much better off to fire that combat boot wearing nitwit Paul Bremmer and install Saddam in the offices of the Coalition Provisional Authority instead. Saddam may be a ruthless thug, but he would’ve whipped Iraq into shape and our troops would be home by now. We could be spending our time debating real issues, like flag-burning amendments or which televangelist will be the next one found with a hooker. If we had just hired him instead of Haliburton and Blackwater to clean up the crap typhoon the neocompoops unleashed by invading Iraq, the cost overruns would be over by now and you can bet that with Saddam at the wheel there would be no insurgency.
You see, Saddam knows something that the Crapweasel-in-Chief should’ve known before invading the cesspool that is Iraq. Iraq is one of those unfortunate parts of the world where the populace has been at each other’s throats for centuries. Saddam knows the only way to keep them from killing each other is to put on his best pair of jackboots and apply them liberally to their necks. The moment you lift the boot, they’ll leap up and suicide-bomb the nearest person of a different tribe or sect. Once they start, you’ll have your hands full - just as the US has discovered to its chagrin - just keeping out of their cross fire.
Bush may have been a C-student at Yale, but how he missed the historical lesson of dictatorships in the Third World is beyond me. Dictators are ruthless, evil bastards who make life a living hell for those on the wrong side of them. They squash individuals and visit all sorts of injustices on their people, but they do keep the lights on and food in the stores. And best of all, they don’t tolerate free-fire zones. They squash snipers and bombers like bugs and before you know it, people can actually go outside without fear of being hit by random gunfire. Maybe that’s not as good as going to the Macy’s sale on Veteran’s Day, but it’s not bad given the sorry state of most of the world.
Democracy-dwellers that we are, you or I might say the tradeoff between running water and life with “liberty” is worth it. Accustomed as we are to being able to say or do just about anything we want, we have the luxury to engage in an academic debate over the niceties of a democratic society where the water nearly always runs.
But if you’re a resident of a hellish place embroiled in wars and massacre since that uppity Eve ate the apple, that academic debate doesn’t seem quite as important. You know how thirsty you can get when the water doesn’t run and being able to play with the kids in the front yard while sipping a cool glass and not being attacked for the color of your Koran is pretty nice tradeoff.
Maybe even nicer than the fuzzy concept of liberty in a place that has never known any.
Just ask the ex-Yugoslavians whether they preferred the dictatorship of Tito to the tumultuous ethnic cleansing that followed his death. Or ask the former Soviets, many of whom now live in constant danger where the semantic argument about Civil Wars don’t apply, but “run like hell, the’re shooting at us again,” does.
Of course dictatorships aren’t paradises. They are harsh, repressive places and some dictators are no better at running things than democratic leaders. Look at exhibits A and B, Kim Jong Il and George Bush, who are both incompetent boobs who couldn’t find their asses with help of Mapquest and a GPS receiver. However, some dictatorships have worked after a fashion and Iraq, before we meddled it to pieces, was one that worked.
I hope the Iraq Study Group looked seriously at springing Saddam from jail renditioning him to the Presidential Palace. It might not help, but at this stage, it can’t be any worse.
I’m willing to give it a try.
Cross Posted at The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!
[tag]politics, saddam, iraq, dictators, crapweasels, omnipotent+poobah, bring+it+on[/tag]
9 Responses to “Is Saddam Our Best Hope in Iraq?”
By SteveIL on Dec 7, 2006 | Reply
In a comment on this post from yesterday, I asked for someone to provide serious and rational actions that could be undertaken regarding national security, which would include what’s going on in Iraq. I got crickets chirping. Should I assume this would be a response to my query? If so, this is the best anybody could come up with? I thought “liberal” thinking was “out of the box”, so to speak. This ain’t it.
By the way, the people of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and the recently independent Montenegro have benefitted greatly. So have many of the countries of the former Soviet Union, most notably Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. While there have been very serious and deadly problems in much of these former nations, I don’t believe the peoples of these countries have any inclination that it was better before the breakup of both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union and are glad to be rid of their masters.
By Jersey McJones on Dec 7, 2006 | Reply
SteveIL, Yugoslavia, under Tito, was a peaceful, thriving nation. Unfortunately, it took a “strong man” to keep it that was. The people were happy and proud and one. Without that strong man, Yugoslavia fell to peaces.
Iraq, being another arbitrary creation like Yugoslavia, might well have to be broken apart. But this will be a lot more painful than it was in Yugoslavia. In Iraq, like the former Yugoslavia, the ethnic grouups are nor neatly divided geographically. They’re all mixed up. In order to break apart, the people had to relocate - and that’s a painful proces. Yugoslavia is smaller geographically than Iraq and was far more developed, and even then, the transition was a bloody mess. In Iraq it would be worse. This is why keeping Iraq together is a goal shared by almost every international player interested in this scene. It’s a really tough call.
Even mildly intelligent people, like myself, understaood this from the beginning and it was one of the reasons we wanted to avoid the invasion. Idiots didn’t understand any of this - and idiots happened to be who made the decision to invade. It will take intelligent people to resolve this somehow, which means, as Bush said, the next president will get stuck with cleaning up the mess the idiot cons created.
JMJ
By SteveIL on Dec 7, 2006 | Reply
Jersey said,
First off, you wouldn’t have known what was going on in Yugoslavia under Tito because the only information you would have gotten about it would have come the Tito-controlled media, not an open one. Even though Tito was a benevolent despot (especially compared to Saddam), there would be no license for his media to criticize him. So you really have no idea what you are saying on this.
Second, you didn’t answer my question. All you did was reiterate the same noise, blah, blah, blah, and provided no solution.
By Jersey McJones on Dec 7, 2006 | Reply
SteveIL, you idiot. My uncle travelled there regularly. Yugoslavia was an open country. He often told me that Belgrade and Sarajevo were his favorite cities in the world. He covered the Olympics there as a big exec in TV.
And yes, THERE IS NO GOOD SOLUTION, DAMMIT - THAT’S WHAT WE WERE TRYING TO YOU GOOFBALL CONS BEFORE YOU WENT BLINDLY AND STUPIDLY INTO IT LIKE YOU DO WITH EVERYTHING!!!!
JMJ
By SteveIL on Dec 7, 2006 | Reply
Jersey,
Fine. Yugoslavia was wonderful. Except it wasn’t so wonderful. Your uncle only visited it, he didn’t have to live there. It still broke up. And most of the nations that used to be part of it are doing just fine on their own.
My question was,
And you said:
OK, I’m a stupid goofball con. I’ve been hearing it for years. Again, you didn’t answer my question. Or should we do nothing in every situation, because you’re so damn smart?
By Jersey McJones on Dec 8, 2006 | Reply
SteveIL, He didn’t just visit. He spent months and months there over the course of years. Sorry, but you accidently stuck your foot in your mouth on that one.
I can’t even begin to imagine how to clean up that mess over there in Iraq. There seem to be few realistic solutions. Up the troops to half a mil, pacify and disarm the entire populace, and occupy the country for decades? Break it up into three nations and relocate millions of people? Sit back and let them kill each other?
I mean, there are obviously things we shouldn’t be doing, like contracting non-Iraqis to do the rebuilding work, experimenting with stupid, failed, sleazy con schemes like the Flat Tax, or allowing the existence of militias. But it’s a lot easier to nay-say with this utterly stupid decision to invade than it is to be positive.
There is no good answer, SteveIL. Again, that’s why smart, rational people told the stupid cons not to go in.
JMJ
By SteveIL on Dec 8, 2006 | Reply
Jersey,
I didn’t say there would be easy solutions, nor would there be only one. I’ll tell you something; you actually came up with some. After two days, at least somebody did.
Not Contracting non-Iraqis to do the rebuilding work - this is good, and I wish the US government had been doing this as well
No flat tax - this has never been tried, so it cannot be seen as failed; I’m not sure how well this would work either; although, I don’t see where this has anything to do with Iraq
Not allowing existence of militias - I agree, but I don’t see how we could have stopped this; I also see no way to get rid of them without being forceful
I agree that nay-saying is a lot easier (heh, I’m not immune from it). But that’s not what I asked. I wanted people to think, to do the hard thing, not the easy thing. And those smart, rational people aren’t always to be trusted, although what they say should be factored.
By Jersey McJones on Dec 8, 2006 | Reply
SteveIL, under US pressure the Iraqi givernment instituted a flat income tax. Thus far, it’s produced hardly any revenues. Getting rid of the militias would require force. Again, though, it looks like there’s no good answers. Just trouble. We should never have made this terrible mistake. I serious doubt it will work out any better than just plain awful.
JMJ
By SteveIL on Dec 8, 2006 | Reply
Jersey said:
Didn’t know that. Thanks for the update.