Iraqis prefer dictator to anarchy?

Great Debates
1

Conventional (American) wisdom would seem to indicate that almost anything would be preferable to a cruel dictatorship. Life could not be worse than living under the oppressive regime of a harsh ruler, right?

Well, apparently not living under an American-enforced anarchy.

Polls have indicated throughout Iraq that they feel confident in their own army and police forces could keep order, with 2/3rds expecting things to get better after America leaves.

92% consider us occupiers.

2% of Iraqis consider us liberators.

Half feel unsafe in their neighborhoods.

More than half would feel safer if we left.

Our confidence rating is 11%.

After the good times and the bad, the overthrow of Saddam, the prison abuse, the bombings of weddings and families, it seems the Iraqis have decided that we are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Our “police methods” of dropping bombs onto suspected terrorist safe houses are seemingly ineffective a week before the handover of power:

We seem to have misplaced our troops:

And the end result is decidedly not American flag waving:

(( above quotes from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5225026/ ))

A week before the “handover” of power, all hell breaks loose across Iraq. It appears that the Iraqis are simultaneously unable to defend themselves and unwilling to allow the Americans to stay any longer. Most of them, I am thinking, are sick of the fighting, the terrorism, and the instability that was brought to them by Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Forecasts expect this to be a dark week in Iraq, and Iraqi media is advising all Iraqis to stay indoors.

Do the Iraqis truly prefer the stable yet dictatorial Saddam to a “free” but anarchy-ridden Iraq? How can an American-backed government that is going to invite our military to stay keep power against so many insurgents? The government could have been toppled today.

Do the Iraqis really want democracy, or do they want the status quo back?

2

Rather than answer the actual question at hand, I offer the perspective of an Iraqi friend of mine.

(Paraphrased)

“After a major change of any sort, people do and say things that do not necessarily reflect what is in their heart. People in America realize that better than anyone, for if you were calm and collected, things would not be the same way they are here. Expect the same from us for years to come. That’s not a threat, but disruption of order does not just fix itself. It takes time. America, it seems, is unwilling to allow that.”

It put things in perspective for me, at least.

– Imran

3

I would prefer to live under a dictator than to live under anarchy. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Iraqis consider us to be occupiers-- we are.

Can you substantiate your claim that the Iraqi government came close to being “overthrown” today? What percentage of the governing authority across the country was in direct threat of being toppled?

4

My frustration from the very beginning was that we (or at least I) didn’t have a clear picture of how oppressive and cruel Saddam’s regime really was. The Bush administration did a good job of convincing the American public that all Iraqi citizens were living under the constant threat of being captured and tortured by their own government, but I suspect it was nowhere as bad. Admittedly the only basis of my suspicion is that the administration had a motive for painting a biased picture (that’s why it’s just a suspicion and not a conviction).

In any case, it’s not a simple question of “is anarchy better than a dictatorship?” There are degrees of both. The question is, is is the current state of anarchy in Iraq worse than Saddam’s dictatorship? It’s not difficult for me to believe that the answer may be “yes.”

5

The answer to that is “very”, but it was still probably fairly easy for the average Iraqi to stay out the regime’s way and live with it. Most (although certainly not all) of the atrocities committed by Saddam weren’t random acts of terror, they were targetted against his real or percieved enemies.

In the short term, I believe it is worse for most Iraqis. The real test will be whether Iraq is able to form a long-term stable government after the US troops have left. I’m very pessimistic, but hopefully I’m wrong.

6

Who wouldn’t? With an anarchy, everywhere you go and everything you do is fraught with risk. At least with a dictator, if you keep a low profile and avoid pissing him off, odds are he’ll just leave you alone.

Neither choice is particularly attractive, of course, but “anarchy vs. dictatorship” is a rather lopsided choice.

7

That’s not really true. You can’t stay out of the way of a totalitarian police state - you either accept that you will be monitored etc and try to get on with your life, or rebel and perhaps get killed. Whether or not you keep your head down, the Mukhabarat / Amn would still their eye on you.

Similarly, it isn’t always possible to escape violence, even if you’re on the regime’s side. In Saddam’s Iraq, you might be imprisoned or killed just because a family member or associate was a rebel. Worse, you might be imprisoned or killed just because you were a member of an oppressed group eg a Kurd. Especially in the case of the Kurds, there were a great number of random acts of terror aimed at keeping them in line.

8

<whisper> Some of the Kurds were revolutionary terrorists, that’s why they were attacked</whisper>

I’m kinda curious, now, how terribly brutal Iraq was in the past 10 years.

9

That was my point, if it wasn’t clear.

10

I mean, besides all the people dying from the sanctions and all.

11

I don’t consider anarchy all that different from dictatorship. In a dictatorship, you live under the force of one. In an anarchy, you live under the force of many. In both cases there isn’t a uniform and fair application of law, there isn’t any freedom; and whoever garners the most power choose who lives, who dies, and who gets to do what and when. So the two are more similar than different.

Now is one better than other? It’s kind of like asking whether dog shit tastes better than cat shit?!

12

You’re missing an important option: active co-operation. You can reasonably expect to escape the abuses (though not the scrutiny) if you side with the dictator. Of course at that point, you also become entrenched in the current state of affairs, whether you really liked it or not, and even a change you would support may end up being a kick in the balls. Over time, and as the brutality grows, more and more people will take this approach to some degree or another. It’s one of the many reasons totalitarian states tend to collapse rather than transition.

13

Hey lookie, I happen to have a Amnesty International Report 2001 sittign next to me.

“Hundreds of people… executed… hundreds of suspected political opponents… arrested and their fate and whereabouts unknown… Torture and ill-treatment… beheading… amputation of the tongue… Non-Arabs, mostly Kurds… expelled from their homes in the Kirkurk region…”

And a few pages on the details. Let’s compare to America, for shits and giggles…

“Police brutality… disputed shootings and ill-treatment in prisons… UN Commission Against Torture… prisoners were executed… bringing to 683 the total executed since 1976… those executed… included the mentally impaired… In December it was announced that George W. Bush had won the November presidential election.” (Not shitting you on the last line, it actually says that in the human rights report summary)

So, obviously Iraq is worse than America by a few fold (hundreds of executions compared to 86 or so), but not the most horrible place on the planet (Turkey oppressed the Kurds far more than Iraq, according to the same 2001 Report) by a long shot. I’m guessing a place where you kept your tongue guarded, but it not so bad for the Average Mohammed. Flipping through this book, I certainly can point out a dozen other countries EASILY more evil than Saddam’s Iraq. The question would come in what would happen when Saddam died, but that’s another story.

14

No shit, Sherlock. Does that in any way justify genocide? The death of more than 100,000 and the forced resettlement of hundreds of thousands more?

That is a profoundly stupid argument. I sure hope you’re making some kind of tasteless joke.

15

Yes, the threat of violence was always there, and it would have been impossible for anyone to guarantee their safety. However, if you were lucky enough not to be part of a targetted group, and did nothing to draw attention to yourself you would probably be OK. This is what I meant by average Iraqi. God help you if Saddam’s people had their eye on you.

Probably most Iraqi’s feel more uncertain about their future now than they did under Saddam. At least they had some idea of what the ‘rules’ were then, no-one knows how the country is going to turn out now.

16

Dunno, does terrorism merit the invasion of Iraq? 10,000 people died there, ya know.

How many is genocide again?

17

By the way, Holmes, the reason I brought it up is because I’ve been challenged on several threads by people who firmly believed the Kurds were innocent angels beset upon by Saddam for no reason whatsoever. Your mention of them as “an oppressed group” reflected their sheer innocence, so I thought I’d comment. I’m sorry if it was an affront to your good tastes.

Now, are you going to go post a thread about how we should invade Sudan, or do you want to stop playing Human Rights Advocate for the weekend?

18

Well, since Iraq had no real connection to terrorism, of course it doesn’t merit invasion. I’ve been against this phoney war from the start and have posted things to that effect repeatedly.

Genocide’s the attempted extermination of an entire race / group of people, as you know very well. Saddam attempted to kill off as many Kurds as possible and shove the rest into camps, awaiting more killing or at least the disappearance of Iraqi Kurds as a cohesive group. That’s genocide.

And where did I say the Kurds are all angels? I merely believe, that like all groups in the world, they do not deserve genocide. Besides which:

  • a great deal of their militancy (and it’s been more of a guerilla war than a terrorist campaign) stems from their repression by Saddam.
  • there’s been a hell of a lot of ‘peace’ attempts, all of which were broken by Saddam when it suited him.

Various Palestinian groups have been responsible for a great deal of terrorism / freedom fighting (take your pick) against Israel. Would you support a similar campaign of mass killings and concentration camps against the Palestinians, for example?

19

Jeezis Christ, Zagadka, give it a rest, would’ja? This one-trick pony shtick is getting really tiresome.

bizz.

20

Which pony?