What do people have against removing Sadam from power?

Great Debates
61

Does it though?

I’ve been wondering about this whole “Saddam is evil” thing. He has certainly been demonised to a huge extent by the US and other western governments. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he’s not a nice person. I won’t be inviting him round my house for tea and biscuits anytime soon. But is he as evil as we have been lead to believe?

What’s the evidence?

He invaded Kuwait

Ok but you never really hear why he invaded Kuwait. It’s just presented to us as if he just invaded out of the blue. However, there was a dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. Iraq had loaned money to Kuwait and Kuwait had offered it’s oil wells as surity. When they defaulted on the loan, Iraq went in to take it’s surity. Banks do this every day and no one bats an eyelid.

I’m not saying Iraq had a good enough reason to go in, I’m just saying they had a reason - money. Maybe this isn’t a good enough reason to invade a country but it’s probably as good a reason as America had to fight in Vietnam to “stop the spread of communism”.

He used mustard gas against the Kurds

This is bad of course but then the kurds are victimised by other countries in the region as well, not least by Turkey (our NATO ally).

Using chemical warfare is deplorable but then he isn’t the only person to have used chemical warfare. The US used napalm in Vietnam, Pakistan used napalm against Bangladesh in 1971.

He’s an evil dictator who ruthlessly supresses political opposition

Yes, but then there is a long list of countries around the world who do the same including some countries that are our “allies”. Shall we talk about Saudi? Or Zimbabwe?
My point is: He’s a bad muthafucka to be sure but is he any more evil than any of the other evil dictators around the world? Many of the things he’s done are bad but then the US has done similar things. Who’s to say the US has the moral high ground just because they are the stronger country. Might doesn’t equal right.

So if you want to persuade me that we should engage in a war with him (resulting in thousands of civilian deaths) you will need to come up with some reason other than the fact he’s a bit evil.

Your argument is that

  1. he may, at some unspecified time in the future, gain access to long range missiles and

  2. he may threaten neighbouring countries (and Israel) with these missiles

Well North Korea (an axis of evil country) has those long range missiles right now. They could have launched an attack at the west coast of the US by now but they haven’t done this. They haven’t even threatened to do this.

Iraq is the same. Even if they did get a few long range missiles they couldn’t use them because the US would invade. Even if they did try to use them they probably wouldn’t work properly. These hi-tech missiles require a lot of testing etc.

The whole “Iraq may get missiles” argument is paranoid bullshit. America is too paranoid, that’s why everyone wants to own a gun.

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While not disagreeing with a degree of skepticism in re the demonization (although Saddam largely deserves it except for the crazy part. that is simply silly abusive usage. Qadhdhafi is loopy, Saddam is just mean.) there is an error here:

Multiple reasons including debts and old Iraqi claims, plus the probable fact that Kuwait was side-drilling to reach Iraqi oil or at least extracting oil of unclear provenance.

No, Kuwait loaned Iraq money for the Iran-Iraq war. Post-war Iraq was having cash flow problems. Saddam, not without some reason, noted that the Gulfies had supported him because they were scared stiff of the Iranians and so Kuwait should write off or otherwise reduce the debt by some amount. Not entirely unreasonable on its face. Further there were the Iraqi accusations that Kuwait was stealing oil from what were Iraqi fields. Unclear if this was so, but given Kuwait… well it can’t be excluded.

All in all Kuwait rather stupidly took a nasty attitude --they have that rep in the region-- and finally pushed one too many buttons on the mustachioed guy.

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I consider myself corrected, collounsbury, but my point is still valid:

Iraq had some (albeit possibly bogus) reason for invading. There was a history between the two countries.

Iraq may have been wrong in it’s decision to invade but that’s not our call. They had a dispute, they had a war, Iraq won.

The point is - it’s not as clear cut as some (in government) would have us believe. Iraq didn’t just invade out of nowhere. So Saddam isn’t necessarily any more evil just because he invaded Kuwait.

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Invading Kuwait is just one of his many sins, Jojo. And most analysts believe that the reasons Saddam offered for the invasion (the main one being side-drilling from Kuwait, as Collounsbury said) were really little more than shallow excuses to allow him to invade. Kuwait had two things he wanted desperately - another huge supply of oil, and a warm-water port. Saddam has near-megalomaniacal ambitions to become the head of a great power, and that means a blue water navy. It would also have given Saddam more control over distribution of his oil.

Saddam also launched SCUD missiles against Israel during the Gulf war, for no other reason than to try to draw them into the fight which he hoped in turn would draw other Arab nations closer to him.

And yes, there are other crazy dictators around. But there is one key difference - Saddam Hussein is a crazy dictator who is hellbent on building an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, which he has been proven more than willing to use in the past. That alone makes him too dangerous to stay in power. Don’t forget - he violated a number of U.N. resolutions when he kicked weapons inspectors out of the country, and has suffered billions of dollars in losses through embargoes simply because he won’t give up his chemical and biological weapons.

His pursuit of nuclear weapons is astounding. When weapons inspectors first went into Iraq after the Gulf war, they discovered remnants of a nuclear research program far bigger than any of the other Arab countries were attempting. Most analysts believe that Saddam would have had nuclear weapons by the mid 1990’s or even earlier if Israel hadn’t done the world a favor and bombed his nuclear plant.

Saddam is probably not crazy enough to just launch a nuke at someone for the hell of it, but he would if his regime was coming down and he could strike a last blow at Israel or the U.S. But more to the point, he’s crazy enough that if he had the bomb he’d be waving it at us like a six-shooter, and it might embolden him into trying to invade another country, thinking that the threat of a nuclear bomb would keep the U.S. away that time. It would just be a horribly destabilizing thing.

ElvisL1ves: What, no apology? No mea culpas for being so ignorant about the war that you didn’t realize that Canada was fighting in it? I figured as much. As for your big expose’ about the relative lack of strength of the INC, I guess you haven’t been reading the thread, either. Because a few messages before yours I conceded the point and admitted that my sources (ex-Iraqis) were being gung-ho to suit their own purposes. Unlike you, I’m more than willing to admit when I am wrong.

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Ok, here’s the plan. First, we smart bomb Baghdad. Saddam goes, the government collapses, anarchy ensues. Out of the rubble emerge 3 countries. Call the southern one “The Moderate and Democratic Republic of Iran”. The northern province goes to Turkey. As for the middle one (hmmmmmm); let’s call it “US Central Command”. If anyone objects, we just toss 'em a couple of franklins.

The SDMB. Keeping Coullounsbury hypercaffeinated since 6/2000.

Seriously gang, flowbark is way over his head here. Thus, I really can’t determine whether W has done a piss-poor job or not. (I can make an observation though. Since 9/11, I can’t think of a single case where W has used a decent chunk of the substantial political capital that national disaster endowed him with. That’s not necessarily a criticism; it is an oddity.)

While a regime change in Iraq would certainly be nice, it is still not clear to me how much of a priority it is. Permit me to present a number of scenarios. (If anybody can think of a better way to sort these issues out, let me know).

Status Quo

  1. Saddam is a royal pain in the ass, until he dies in 2025 and is replaced by his son, Uday, also a royal pain in the ass. Iraq continues to be internet-free (and impoverished) as the rest of the world becomes bored with virtual reality (it’s so 2020.).

  2. Saddam acquires a nuke or another weapon of mass destruction in 5-15 years and launches it at Tel Aviv. Israeli and Arab carnage ensues: 6 figures of death.

  3. Agents of Arab descent are caught installing a WMD 20 miles outside of Albuquerque. Saddam denies everything but privately lets it be known that he has a total of 17 WMDs planted in or near various US metropolitan areas.

  4. Saddam’s conventional military remains weak, but he has the capability of implementing limited WMD blackmail. (To do what?)

  5. Boom.

Go Get 'im

  1. Saddam is replaced by a democratic and moderate regime. Best-case scenario, but I wouldn’t count on it.

  2. Saddam is replaced by General Khrushchev, who makes a secret speech to all the other generals. “We’ll be tough, but less nutso.”

  3. Saddam is replaced by a meaner or more wacko general. (How does that work?)

  4. Iraq is divided up by its neighbors. (And why is this a problem?)

  5. The Arab world gets more and more pissed at the US and one or more Islamic regimes spring up somewhere. (Then what?)

Frankly, I’m still not any closer to deciding what to do about Iraq. It’s not clear to me even in a general sense how an invasion would play out. But I’m not convinced that the WMD is in the bottle, as it were.

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None of us knows how soon the Iraqi nuclear program will be successful. However, this story about the al Qaeda nukes is sobering.

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Doing a quick scan of this thread, skipping past ones from the usual suspects who rarely have anything useful to say, I happened to see my name here:

Probably a different thread, but there ain’t no apology from this guy. Canada is engaging in its usual tokenism militarily, to keep the pressure off from those who are carrying their own weight, and to massage its own feelings of self-righteousness. But consider: It’s one of the world’s leading industrial powers, with a population (and roughly GDP) fully a tenth of the US’s, but spends only 2% as much on defense. The entire Canadian military would fit inside a college basketball arena. Few of them constitute effective combat forces. Yes, tokenism is the best word.

In short, the average American spends 5 times as much to defend Canada as the average Canadian. The average American uniformed soldier is far more likely to risk his life in defense of Canada as the average Canadian soldier.

Not to pick on Canada especially except for the fact that we get the loudest and most self-righteous yapping about what we should do from up there; the same criticism applies to France and Germany and Italy and basically the rest of NATO and the other G-8, and even to a lesser extent Britain; all of whose idea of being “allies” is to allow us to use their airfields when it isn’t too inconvenient.

That’ll be the day. And it will come right after you explain how much you’re doing as a responsible citizen to convince your own nation to carry its own share of the burden. At the very least it would require quintupling the Canadian defense budget to reach per capita equity.

Meanwhile, you may kindly fuck off.

68

Elvis, you REALLY have to stop displaying your ignorance like this.

First of all, if you’re not sure what you are supposed to be apologizing for, it was this comment, regarding who is actually fighting this war:

Besides using inappropriate language for this forum and being personally offensive, you were simply dead wrong. The ‘Few Brits’ is about 6000 men, for God’s sake. I believe it’s a bigger ground force than what the Americans currently have there.

I’ve got news for you - the Canadian armed forces regularly kicks the U.S.'s ass when it comes to military exercises. Canada’s military is ranked as an ‘elite’ force. Because we don’t have much money to maintain a huge military, we take the one that we have and make it the best possible. As a result, our regular forces are trained more like American special forces. And we may not have a lot of hardware, but what we have is very modern. And yes, it is under serious threat of losing its combat effectiveness because our disgraceful liberal government won’t give them even enough money for uniforms and maintenance, but that’s a political issue.

In the last joint Canadian-U.S. fighter competitions, Canada took away 6 of the top 10 awards, including Top Gun, best team, best operations, and best fighter element, despite having only one team in the competition vs 11 for the U.S.

As for Canada’s military fitting into a basketball stadium, let’s see… We have 71,000 soldiers, 38,000 reserves, 1858 infantry vehicles, 485 aircraft, 146 helicopters, and 23 major warships along with 10 support vessels.

Of course this is nowhere near the U.S. budget, but then, no one’s is. The U.S. military budget is greater than the next five biggest military budgets combined. The United States simply has a unique role in the world. And I for one am damned grateful for that. Canada was assigned a role in NATO, which was northern patrol, early warning, and anti-submarine warfare. And Canada excels at all of those.

I’m also very critical of our government’s military spending priorities. You can read some of my comments here:

http://happyfunpundit.blogspot.com/?/2002_03_24_happyfunpundit_archive.html#11144216

http://happyfunpundit.blogspot.com/?/2002_03_17_happyfunpundit_archive.html#10948766

http://happyfunpundit.blogspot.com/?/2002_02_03_happyfunpundit_archive.html#9370949

As you can see, I’ve been very supportive of our military, and very critical of the government for not raising our military budget substantially. Looks like you picked the wrong guy to attack.

But where you are most offensive is in your characterization of our support in Afghanistan as ‘token’. There are THREE THOUSAND Canadian troops involved in the Afghanistan effort, and we’re doing some of the toughest, bloodiest work. More than any other country besides the United States and Britain, despite having a small military budget. And as I said, Canadian soldiers have the highest kill ratio in the theater, and have earned the respect of everyone over there.

One of the deadliest battles so far, “Operation Harpoon”, involves rooting Al-Qaida out of caves and going into caves on search and destroy missions. As an example of Canada’s “Token” effort, that particular military force consists of ONE hundred Americans, and FIVE hundred Canadians.

Canada was not attacked on Sept. 11. Canada is not a major terrorist target. Canada could stay out of this fight if it wanted to. But no, we are there fighting and dying beside our good friends the Americans. And while we may have a couple of idiotic back-benchers in the government, support for the war among the people of Canada is almost as high as it is in the United States.

At a time when just about every country in the world is starting to pull away from the U.S., Canada inches closer and forges closer ties.

But it’s ungrateful little assholes like you that make me wonder sometimes whether it’s worth it.

I also find it strange that you choose ME as the focal point for attacks against Canadians for not supporting the war, when your last message told me to ‘Fuck off’ because as a Canadian I apparently had no right to support it.

In conclusion, you were wrong about Canada’s military, you were wrong about our presence in Afghanistan, you were wrong about my not supporting increases in the military budget, and you were a hypocrite for telling me to ‘Fuck Off’ for being gung-ho about the war and then telling me to ‘Fuck off’ because Canadians weren’t supporting the war enough. You managed to be wrong about everything, and also be an obnoxious jerk at the same time. That’s quite a talent you have.

By the way, where are the moderators these days? I’ve now been told to ‘Fuck Off’ twice in a debate forum.

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Moderator’s Note: Telling someone to “fuck off” is indeed not a refutation of their argument, and does not belong in this forum. ElvisL1ves, do not do that again.

70

Sam that is the most stirring paen to Canada’s Armed Forces as I’ve ever read! Of course, it might well be the only such.

And, of course, if Britain is America’s mighty right arm in the alliance against Bad Things, surely Canada is the Big Toe, Right Foot. Not to mention the strategicly crucial reserves of whale blubber and pissy beer.

When evil doers world wide hear that First Cav is on their case, they are no doubt concerned. But once they hear that Canada has politely placed the gauntlet, they scurry for the darkness like the vermin they are!

I say we reduce Canada’s rent! C’mon, we’re America, we can afford it!

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Moderator’s Note: Incidentally, Sam Stone, please don’t call other posters “ungrateful little assholes” in GD either.

72

MEBuckner: It was intentional. I’m getting a little tired of being personally attacked in these forums. It’s been happening a lot lately, and not just by Elvis.

73

Sam,

For what it’s worth I sincerely apologize for losing my temper with you. Not that I did not mean my criticisms in full or think that your statements didn’t deserve a harsh critiquing, but I should have rewritten them to bring them into line. I won’t make excuses for that, my job stress is not something that should enter into debating you or others. You’re a good man to hone an argument on, above all when you step away and engage. But that is probably true of us all. Stick around man and I hope Elvis comes round and apologizes too.

Coll.

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Awww, what the heck, Sam You and me, we’ve seen a bit of that personal stuff. And yeah, the world gets ruder. Not like in the old days, when kids were respectful of thier elders, and good pot was 10 dollars an ounce.

Life is tough, we’re tougher. It works.

BTW, who is “ungrateful”? and for what? I think I missed that part.

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Coolounsbury m’lad, when you post something for which you should apologize I will shave my head, join Hare Krishna and go annoy folks at the airport.

Now I’m not saying that your relentlessly civil expositions of facts and information is lacking in any respect…

But when you decide to bite! Lordy. Hallelujah!

You sure you’re not a Texan?

76

No, I am not relentlessly civil, I am one mean fucker. Now that works well in what I do, but that does not excuse me busting on Sam when if I took a moment I can achieve my point w/o quite going so far.

I ain’t apologiizing for me style or my content or anything, but I’ve let my style get in the way of the content. I ain’t apologizing for the content, only for going too far.

New York boy, New York.

77

Oh, don’t worry guys, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not particuarly angry or anything. It’s just that sometimes you’ve gotta stand up and tell the kids that they’re out of line, or they’ll just follow you around taking cheap shots whenever they can.

It’s very difficult to maintain a reasonable tone in a discussion board when you don’t have body language to read, which is why it’s important to work hard at it.

78

Man I do not take cheap shots, mean ones but not cheap.

But Sam, I still say I was wrong in the extent, not content, extent. My frustration on the issues is genuine but one has to step back.

79

**Sam[/]

If Canada’s is an “elite force,” what does that make the U.S.'s?
There’s a world of difference between war games and ferreting baddies out of Afghan caves versus the ability to simultaneously project withering air, land, and sea forces in two major combat theaters across the globe. (Not that your pro-US stance needs shoring up, Sam, but millions of Americans would agree with much of Elvis1Lives’s position, as do you as long as Canada ain’t rhetorically attacked.)

Europe and Canada have largely abdicated their global responsibilities, thus making America a target today because we choose to shoulder the load for them. I think what Elvis1Lives should have said is that our partners do little on a day-to-day basis. In the grand scheme of things, the U.S. does the lion’s share of the drudgery while many of our partners get to do occasional “photo ops” that play well at home.

Re: your quote: “Canada was assigned a role in NATO, which was northern patrol, early warning, and anti-submarine warfare. And Canada excels at all of those.”

I recently heard a Public Radio International report detailing how run-down and ineffectual the Canadian navy really is. The report made it abundantly clear that the Canadian navy certainly is not up to the task of fulfulling the mission you detail above. Sam, when are you going to snap out of it and finally apply for U.S. citizenship?

As for Collounsbury, every day I pray that he will learn how to curb his Yankee tongue. He may think himself a NY-street tough, but those blood-thirsty lads over in Oman, Egypt, or Somalia would just love to cut out his tongue and have it for breakfast, a bottle of Chianti be damned. Hope you’re packing heat, Collie.

80

I’m not sure that Canada is still rated an ‘elite’ force, but it certainly was for quite some time. But certainly the liberal party is hellbent on destroying our military effectiveness. Recently, the military said that it needed a budget increase of 5 billion a year just to maintain the current force size and prevent a deterioration of our fighting ability. The Chretien government responded by raising the military budget by 1.1 billion over five years.

In the meantime, our beloved Prime Minister can’t account for over 3 billion dollars missing in the public works department (imagine the U.S. losing 30 billion dollars that no one can find), and he bypassed government procurement procedures and bought two new executive Challenger jets to fly him and his staff around, for 101 million dollars. And worse, he took the money for them out of the Defense Budget, because the military supports and flies them for him. He made the purchase personally with a phone call to Bombardier, a company with which he has an intimite relationship. The man is a crook, he doesn’t give a shit about Canada, he spends most of his time flying to vacation spots to golf, and he’s letting our military go to hell.

Canada is a 1st world country with a 3rd world government, thanks to the immense amount of corruption in the Chretien government. But our opposition parties are too incompetant and stupid to be able to mount an effective challenge even to a slimeball like Chretien. And our governmental system doesn’t allow members of his own party to break ranks and criticise him. So basically, until we get an effective opposition established, Canada is Jean Chretien’s personal fiefdom.

Back to the military - I believe the reason we were considered an ‘elite’ force is because we don’t have divisions of ground troops with standard army training. Instead, our soldiers are trained as commandos and peacekeepers. I used to work on a military base and taught aviation ground school to military guys, and I know how much training they do. They’re always in the field, they do a LOT of jumps from aircraft, etc. Around my neighborhood it’s quite common to see a column of soldiers walk by in full kit on a 10K or 20K hike.

The U.S. ‘elite’ forces are just as good or better than the Canadians, and have better equipment. As I said in one of the pieces I linked to above, Canada trains jointly with the U.S. and participates in so many shared exercises and exchange programs that the differences between the two militaries comes down to a unit-by-unit comparison. It’s just that a higher percentage of Canadian troops are ‘elite’, because Canada’s military role set it up that way.

You can see the structure of the Canadian forces in action in Afghanistan. We have two main contingents over there right now - I believe Canadians are in charge of securing Kandahar and the airport and compounds - the ‘peacekeeping’ role. We even have some weaponry that’s better than what the Americans have for this role (The ‘Coyote’ APC). The other contingent of Canadians are from Princess Patricia Light Infantry, and it consists of snipers and special forces-type soldiers. We also have an elite team of commandos operating over there in much secrecy, and they are as good as any in the world.

Canada’s ‘elite’ status may have also been hurt after some airborne soldiers killed a Somali captive a few years ago, and the despicable Chretien government responded to the outcry with a political move - it disbanded an ENTIRE regiment of highly trained commandos that had a long, distinguished history going back through WWII.

Still, I’m damned proud of our military. Our air force pilots are some of the best in the world. If you ever get a chance to see the Canadian ‘Snowbirds’ aerobatic team, don’t miss it. They do things no other military team will do, and they do it with amazing precision. Those are pilots that are rotated in and out of regular squadrons.