A gun store owner selling an automatic weapon to a known lunatic felon might be a better example.
Well, as I said, its subjective…so YMMV is definitely the case here. I think Bush had a lot more say in all this than people give him credit for. From things I’ve read he really isn’t the puppet some folks attempt to make him out to be.
Regardless, even if he IS an unthinking puppet, he still has responsibility for his actions. He IS the president after all.
I’m willing to concede that some people might not see his actions as ‘evil’…probably because we are all using a different yard stick to measure that quantity. Its subjective, ehe?
Too get back to the OP (which I still think is silly), I think that the case for Saddam’s ‘evil’, while still subjective, is a lot easier to make. He had much more control of his government than Bush did. His actions were also much worse, regardless of body count. Bush ordered an invasion (with the consent of Congress/Senate AND the majority of the people) which certainly resulted in the deaths of many civilians. Only the most rabidly anti-Bush would think, however, that he DELIBERATELY targetted those civilians. While Saddam, on the other hand, directly ordered the deaths of many civilians…and with much more control than Bush could even dream of.
-XT
Well, that comes down to intent, which you dismissed in your OP saying a death is a death. If that’s the case, then all we’re left with is numbers.
I know there are a number of folks who think otherwise, but I don’t think that Bush takes any pleasure at all in knowing that ‘x’ number of Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war. To the contrary, I think Saddam took some amount of sadistic pleasure in killing Kurds and Sunnis. I think that makes a huge difference in determining who is more evil.
Aside from lying his way into an illegal war for the personal gain of his rich cronies?
How about the torture? The illegal wiretaps? The suspension of Habeas Corpus? How about that nasty little thing called rendition?
There is more than incompetence going on with this guy, I think he’s also shown a consistent and depraved indifference to human rights, contempt for the Constitution and a megalomaniacal sense of entitlement which makes him view representative democracy as a nuisance and political opposition as outright treason. I don’t think there is much difference at all between the personality of Bush and of despots like Hussin or Castro. They just have (or had) freer hands than he does. If he wasn’t handcuffed by the Constitution, I think he’d be torturing and killing public dissenters just like Saddam did.
Xtisme, I find it incredible that you wholly blame the 1.5 million deaths from the Iraqi sanctions on Saddam Hussein, and not on Clinton. I might include Bush Senior, but Clinton was the one who really tightened it down to make it the ugliest sanctions regimen in history. He’s also the one who tied it to the removal of Saddam Hussein and not the deconstruction of Iraq’s WMD program, and the majority of destruction went on under his eight year term. The kind of stuff that was labeled “dual use” was obnoxious and laid waste to Iraq’s basic infrastructure and scarred the face of Iraq, far more than our little bombing in 2003 ever did. I know I’ve linked to this before, but…
We could’ve stopped the slow motion trainwreck, but nah, it’s worth it. Sure, history says that economic sanctions will more than likely strengthen a dictator and make the people dependent on him…but hey, we have to look diplomatic here! And if the populace thinks our leader isn’t tough enough he can fire off a couple missiles and kill a couple dozen people here and there. Apparently, nothing makes a President look more manly than bombing Muslims.
Granted and granted. The American people never saw a war they didn’t like, unless we start losing maybe, then they might yell at some pollsters. Other countries had this problem and then transformed into a more peaceful society but the solution is rather grave…it tends to involve some large amount of the civilian population being massacred. I think Japan and Germany lost ~5 and 10% of their populations in WWII, respectively. That seems to do the trick.
And to be fair, Britain was involved too, so going by the numbers we should really apportion out the deaths ian more pro rata fashion.
No, I’m no tbeing serious.
Can you imagine teaching the history of the Iraq War to students born a decade from now?
“So class, in September 2001, 20 Fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, most of them born in Saudi Arabia like their financier and mastermind the Saudi exile bin Laden, found a haven in the Fundamentalist Islamic regime based in Afghanistan, hijacked four U.S. airliners and used them as guided missiles in NYC and DC. The US responded by grounding all air traffic in order to stop planes being hijacked by yet more Saudi Arabians, thus the only planes allowed to fly were those transporting Saudi Arabians.
Later the president decreed that we must make a definitive strike against Fundamentalist Islam, so after a pre-game show in Afghanistan he mounted an all-out offensive on Iraq, the only nation in the region whose leader was not a Fundamentalist Muslim, but under his tyranny hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed or forced to refugee. Therefore, the war on Iraq had three purposes: to remove Hussein from power, to stop Islamic Fundamentalism in the country, and to stop their manufacture of WMDs, after which there would be peace.
After killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and forcing 2 million to refugee, the Bush Administration had not found any evidence of WMDs. In September 2007, 6 years after the hijackings and almost 4 years after Hussein’s capture, the war was still going on and Islamic extremists were in a far better position of taking over Iraq than they had been before and no link had been found to WMDs, but President Bush presented as proof of Iraq-alQaeda linkage the mentioning of Iraq in speech by Osama bin Laden, who was still alive and in- well, we weren’t sure where really, because the manhunt in Afghanistan had long since been called off (though we knew he wasn’t checking out books from the NYC Public Library or making phone calls in the US or trying to tote guns in the form of water bottles into the Smithsonian or other government buildings because the alarms would have gone off) and in fact the Taliban was taking the nation back again because we had far fewer land troops in the nation where we really were hailed as liberators than in the one where the…
Well, in any case, the world was much safer from terrorism, save for the fact that terrorism threat was greater than ever, and… the Shi’ites, who no member of the Bush team could describe really, s…
Wait, where was I? Class, just skip this part and write two essays on Vietnam instead.”
One of the ways that Saddham kept in power was by murdering associates he suspected of disloyalty.
I’m using the same logic as the OP marshmallow. If Bush is responsible for every death that has occured in Iraq due to the US invasion (650,000 all attributed to Bush, many of them dead from things other than violence according to Lancet) then Saddam would be wholely responsible for every death that occured as a result of his attempted anexation of Kuait. Right?
Personally I was making a point. I don’t actually believe in this absolutist outlook. I think that there are levels of responsibility. In MY world view certainly Clinton, Bush I, even our Euro buddies get some level of responsibility for the deaths due to sanctions. Many of the very people who are against the current war in Iraq get a measure of responsibility for the deaths due to sanctions based on their support of those sanctions. However, if the OP is going to attribute every death in Iraq to Bush then its only fair to attribute every death due to the attempted anexation to Saddam. Just like every death in the Iran/Iraq war would be attributed to Saddam (the aggressor), if we are going to use this logic…despite the fact that the US and the Iranians (and our Euro buddies) ALSO have responsibility for what transpired and the lives lost.
Anything else is doing an apples to oranges comparison…hell, its doing an apples to whales comparison. But then I figured…thats the whole point. People WANT to do an unfair comparison because they WANT the desired result. That Bush is more ‘evil’ than Saddam, blah blah blah.
-XT
Another way was by getting propped up by Reagan.
There’s no ‘h’ in Saddam, by the way.
Well, it’s not like he asked the UN to reprimand Israel for destroying Saddam’s WMD capability or anything.
I suppose that makes him more evil in your book?
There was a government that was capable of preventing Iraqis from killing their own neighbors at holy sites and marketplaces and everywhere else. That would still be the case today if George W Bush hadn’t decided to destroy that government. Hence, since Bush took the action that lead to all of the current violence, it’s his fault.
Firstly, it was Germany and Japan who were the agressors in WWII and the allies only invaded because it was the most legitimate way of ensuring their own safety. Hence there was a rational reason for the people of Germany and Japan to accept the temporary rule of the allies. In Iraq, the United States is the agressor, so there’s no reason why any Iraqis should accept American rule.
Secondly, Allied control of Germany and Japan was temporary; occupying forces left as soon as possible. In Iraq, Bush has declared his intention to maintain the occupying forces idefinitely. This eliminates any legitimacy that the government America imposed on Iraq might have otherwise had.
In any case, even if it’s possible in certain circumstances to overthrow a dictatorship and replace it with a democracy, there was never any chance that Iraq was one of those cases. You can’t defend Bush by saying that no one could ever have predicted the disastrous results of his attack on Iraq. Almost everyone did predict the disastrous results of his attack on Iraq.
To state the obvious, there have been a number of times in the past 50 years when America has decided that it would help the people of a certain third-world country by invading the country and killing some of the people that the Americans supposedly wanted to help. It’s never worked. Therefore, there’s no way that any intelligent person could possibly have believed that it would work in Iraq in 2003 after failing so many times before. Bush was either a total idiot or else he knew that his nation-building project would fail disastrously. In fact, Bush, Cheney, and other big Republican names had spoken out against nation-building in the past, so they knew full well that nation-building is a recipe for disaster. Consequently, when they decided to do a big nation-building project in Iraq, they knew perfectly well that they were bringing a major disaster to Iraq. Bush specifically said as much in the 2000 presidential debates. Cheny had signed a report explaining that trying to depose Saddam would lead to massive civilian casualties. They both knew perfectly well what the consequences would be after they invaded Iraq. Consequently, they can’t claim innocence on the ground that they were too stupid to know what would happen.
Saddam, no, Reagan, yes.
Then I suggest you start a thread about Reagan.
Use the “search: function.” They’ve been done to death --Reagan threads I mean. “The Champion Of The Right” and one of the most duplicitous and conniving US Presidents (the rare times he was awake to make decisions of course).
Having said that, Dio’s post stands on its own – no additional thread required as he’s quoting historical facts. If you can’t see that, 'fraid it’s on you, not Dio.
It called “knowing a bit of recent US history from non-Repubs and/or independent historians.”
Welcome to the SDMB, anyway. Sure seems you’ll get a lot out of it – if only you have an open mind. Huge IF, mind you.
Yeah, 'cause it was such a well crafted and insightful post on his part. I’m sure it had a lot of subtle and deep meaning for you Red. Certainly much more insight than you could have brought to the thread. Hats off to DtC! Well, and you for your crafty followup! You’ve brought a lot to the discussion, as always.
-XT
Yeah, agreed. No idea what possible relevance Dio could see in the history of US involvement with Iraq when we’re talking about the present US involvement with Iraq. And Reagan and all was over 20 years ago, who ever heard of events that far back affecting current policy and world order? (It’s exactly because of that kind of trivial stuff that Dio will never get a cabinet appointment; Shi’ite Sunni smee-ite Moonie, all you really got to know is they don’t love Jesus.)
My point was that Dio’s response was a non sequitur.
One can only hope.