How would he have quelled the civil war?
Round up all the critics?
Seal the borders?
Punish the families of the suicide bombers?
Any chance he would have done something open to the current administration that would work?
In the weeks leading up to the invasion, I read an interesting history of Iraq that focused on the reign of Saddam (I’ll post the title/author later if I can find it). The main impression I was left with after reading it was that Saddam, while incompetent in many respects (international relations and warfare being the most obvious) really understood Iraq and how to manipulate, inspire, coax, bribe and lead its citizens and various factions in the direction he wanted them to go.
When he came to power he managed to unite a fractured country that had gone through multiple military coups and assasinations since the British left, during the Iran and Iraq war he got his largely Shia population to fight against their co-religionists in a largely unsuccessful and bloody war. After the first US Gulf War he faced down two simultaneous revolts that had the (admitedly not full-hearted) support of the worlds only Superpower, by exploiting the various factions of his advesaries to divide and conquer, even after he’d spent the last decade working to unite those factions under a sense of shared Iraqi nationhood.
Obviously many of his methods were grossly brutal and aren’t open to us. But there was more to his success then gassing villagers: he really understood his country. If I had been head of the occupation, I think I would’ve offered Saddam a trip to the Hague for a presumable life sentence in return for his acting (not openly, obviously) as a advisor to the US Occupational Authority.
He’d have quelled any civil war by never letting it get going in the first place. Malodorous points out all the ways he kept things under control to begin with.
Doubtful. In addition to the politically savvy qualities listed by Malodorous, Hussein had (1) a well-functioning government, (2) a large Sunni governing elite with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and (3) a large, well-armed, well-organized army. Since the invasion, the Sunnis have been reduced to a beleaguered and powerless minority, and the government and army were dissolved; they have to be rebuilt from the ground up, and the insurgents are obstructing that process quite effectively.
Malodorous:
Bull. He understood one thing: brutal repression works. And it does. He never sought the cooperation of groups not in power, he had an army and a secret police, a (healthy, not crazy) sense of paranoia that never let anyone in power show even the slightest bit of disloyalty, and the result is few rebellions, and none of any consequence.
Why do you think the Iraqis were happily toppling his statues when the US invaded? Why do you think the Shia lauunched a failed rebellion after the first Gulf War given the false hope of US backing? This was “understanding his country”?
The US, despite the whining of the left, is not brutal in nature. That’s the reason why we’re having much more trouble running Iraq than Saddam did.
Damn liberal media!
Well, the mainstream and FOX cheered saying that “this footage is worth in gold for the administracion” Very few outlets (like the BBC) reported what did go on:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3024.htm
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001971815_statue04.html
Do you remember what president was in the White House when the Shia launched their rebellion and did not help? And what president was in the US when Saddam was gassing people?
IMO one of the reasons why the US is not brutal in nature is precisely because of pressure from the left and even people of the right with a conscience. However, seeing that almost 2 million Iraqis are refugees and 6000000 are dead and we are going to continue in the same path…
…
I had to stop there when I was going to say that “we are not directly responsible for that”, but something is telling me that your say so that “we are not brutal in nature” is not helping. We have lots of responsibilities in this mess. IMO there is a brutal part in not willing to face the real damage that is going on and seeing many that continue to apologize for this administration.
Saddam was not the first brutal military dictator of Iraq. He was preceeded by several others who were assasinated, displaced by coups or both (look up the massacres of Assyrian Christians for early examples of their cruelty). Saddam was brutal, but unlike his predecessors he knew how to use that to unite his friends and divide his enemies, he knew which of the Shite tribes, for example, hated eachother, which could be bribed for loyalty, etc. When he needed a united Iraq to fight the Iranians, he used this knowledge to suppress the weak and sell the powerful a vision of a united and rich Iraq. When he was in danger of being overthrown, he knew which of his enemies could be bribed, co-opted and manipulated over to his side.
Understanding doesn’t equal being liked. He was certainly hated by a large portion of his citizens, at least during the last decade of his rule. But again, he was able to direct much of his enemies energies against each other so that he could stay in power over the opposition of his countrymen and most of the rest of the world. During 1993-'94, for example, the two major parties in charge of Iraqi Kurdistan (basically an autonomous country at that point) fought a war against eachother in which on side actually allied with Saddam and allowed him to regain military access to Northern Iraq in return for crushing the opposing Kurdish Party. Interestingly the leader of the Party that allied with Saddam had had his father brutally murdered by the regieme many years before.
It’s misunderstanding this history, that Iraq had become, especially during the 90’s, a mess of competing factions, alliances and betrayals rather then a people repressed by a single evil man, that led the Bush Administration to miscalculate so badly during the invasion/occupation.
The book, by the way, was The Reckoning by Mckay. I recomend it for a less cartoon villian view of Saddam.
The suicide bombers are probably not Iraqi.
Personally I would have Saddam in a retirement home on a South Sea island, surrounded by hot and cold running women, and lavishly entertaining people worried about having an enforced ‘regime change’.