I’ve said before, the situation in Iraq wouldn’t have continued indefinitely. Saddam was 67 years old when we invaded Iraq. The UN sanctions had held in place for twelve years at that point; there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t have outlasted Saddam.
Agreed. The problem with a bubble is that it feels like everything is going great when you’re in the middle of one. Only the people who know enough to realize it can’t last see the problem - the higher you rise, the bigger the fall at the end will be. But it’s very difficult to convince people they’ve got to stop having fun for their own good.
Saddam had a successor. The only alternative to continuing the sanctions into the present day, as well as the bombings, would have been to just normalize relations. We saw how well that policy worked in the 10 years previous to the invasion of Kuwait. That didn’t do much for our image either.
I remember how upset the investment community got when Alan Greenspan mildly questioned the stock market bubble. People are even more attached to the value of their homes. I used to debate people on whether housing could keep on growing like it was, and how steep the fall could be. People reacted angrily at the mere suggestion that housing could fall in price at all. people have to live somewhere!
Any political leader who popped that bubble would have gone down in history as a villain. And seen their political career ended.
Not that many people were sympathetic to Saddam. Saddam was a monster, (see the Kurds,) but some of those he oppressed were Islamists who we wound up fighting also. His government included high level Christians, and women were far freer to live and work than in Saudi Arabia. Making him look weak and enabling a coup against him might have worked a lot better. Remember, he gave the impression of having WMDs to maintain his power - perhaps a clear statement that he had none would have been just as dangerous to him as falling for his lies about them.
I doubt too many people would have been upset by a slowing of the increase. There would have been regional crashes for sure (like in Nevada and Florida) due to over building, but that has happened before. This was the first nationwide housing crash, which made things much worse.
North Korea aside, most dictatorships fail to get passed on to the next generation. I’d have been surprised if Saddam’s son (whichever one was chosen) would have been able to successfully take over the family dictatorship. The likely result of Saddam’s death would have been a succession struggle and the collapse of the regime with no outside intervention needed. And if that didn’t happen and Uday or Qusay or some general had been able to grab the reigns and take over, we could have then considered the need to invade. Bush, on the other hand, seemed to be rushing in to the war like he was afraid he’d lose his chance if he waited too long.
In those ten years, Saddam Hussein was our client and we his patron. He was the USA’s fist in Iran’s face. That’s not normal.
Bush’s takedown of Saddam was a Mafia-style takedown of an uppity lieutenant who dared to cross the don. Unfortunately, those jackasses were running countries.
9/11 still happens, but no Iraq war. Bin Laden escapes to Pakistan but is apprehended a little earlier due to a larger troop presence in Afghanistan. Saddam still in power, but Iran’s stature is diminished. Oil prices are lower as a result of less mid-east tension. The housing bubble still burst, but stricter regulations ease some of the outlandish lending as does higher interest rates. No Bush tax cuts so the deficit is lower, but only slightly due to expansion of federal spending under Gore. McCain wins the 2004 election.
Not really. Saddam wasn’t an American puppet we put in power. There was a period in the eighties when we supported Saddam in his war against Iran, an enemy we had in common. But that no more makes Saddam an American client then our alliance with the Soviet Union during WWII made Stalin an American client.
Now Panama and Noriega - that was taking down an American client who got uppity.
I stand corrected. I was under the impression that Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti had a long-standing working relationship with the CIA, and that the USA actively armed him in the period before the invasion of Kuwait. But perhaps I overstated the case.
That’s what the revisionists have been saying, but it’s not really true. Saddam Hussein was and remained a Soviet client during the Iraq war. Relations between the West in general and Iraq, with the exception of France, became what could accurately be described as normal. Our allies and clients are people we sell weapons to. What we did for Iraq was take them off the terrorist sponsor list and allow the sales of dual use chemicals and non lethal military equipment.
As a point of comparison, we sold far more arms, and the good stuff, to Iran under the Shah, the Philippines, and Taiwan.
There’s no question that we were rooting for Saddam and took real steps to help him in his war against Iran. But words like “ally” and “client” just aren’t accurate. Saddam didn’t, and couldn’t, serve two masters. He was firmly in the Soviet bloc and that didn’t change until the invasion of Kuwait when he became diplomatically isolated. If Saddam was our ally or client, then Josip Broz Tito was a US ally and client. Tito actually got good weapons and decades of military support from the United States.
Greenspan was not an elected official and boy did he drop the ball. He saw the bubble, made one poor attempt at a shot across the bow with his “irrational exuberance” speech and didn’t jack up rates like he should have. Of course, that was in pre-Bush days.
My wag is that Gore also probably wouldn’t have gone for the unfunded Medicare. And I don’t think he would have attacked Iraq, but if he did it would have been on the balance sheet rather than off of it.
Well, I was wrong and I admit it, but your cite says Andropov pushed for an arms embargo against Iraq, and the Soviets were opposed to Iraq’s invasion of Iran, while the USA tried to keep Iraq’s military supplied with Egyptian parts.
So during the Iran/Iraq War, we were supporting Iraq more than were the USSR.
The Soviets did embargo Iraq in a fit of pique at not being informed of the invasion. That was Brezhnev’s call. When Iraq got pushed back over their border again, the Soviets relented. Here’s a chart showing the value of arms exports to Iraq during the war by year and by country:
It might not come out in your view, you might have to enter the values yourself, but it’s pretty simple: Iraq, 1980-1988. The Soviets were by far the biggest arms suppliers, followed by China. The US was a very small supplier. Brazil actually sold them far more.
We gave other kinds of help, like satellite data, but Saddam never became a real friend of the US, much less a client or ally.
Okay, just tested, I can’t link directly to the table. Here’s the database though:
Is it a big shock that the US would support Iraq against a country which had just taken over the US Embassy in Tehran and taken hundreds of Americans as hostages.
Invading Iran would have been a horrible idea for a number of reasons why it was never seriously considered by either the Carter or Reagan administrations.
I just love how the conservatives and liberals seem to be agreeing. I was about to post how I was actually going to agree with Shodan’s (!) assessment.