No, it’s really not. Say what you will about Bin Laden, we do KNOW he’s a fundamentalist whackjob. Saddam occasionally talked like one, but never acted like one as far as I know. I doubt an ‘Islamicist’ would attack Iran like he did. I think your next comment (“then many people were in agreement that Islamic fundamentalism was a threat, including Iraq and the US.”) is right on. Saddam was tolerated largely because, as a secularist, he stood in opposition to the religious fanatics and could help keep Iran from becoming too powerful.
Not at all, as Marley noted. But just to add to that, I’ll note that relative to his whole career, stetching back to 1956, he very rarely talked like one, he never walked like one ( never implemented Islamic policies ) and pretty much never looked like one ( he preferred the standard “Tin-Pot-Military-Dictator/Generalissimo” look ).
As Captain Amazing noted religion is more a secondary issue re:Israel. Plenty of Christian and secular Arabs were ( and are ) just as eager to extinguish the Jewish state.
Well, actually that is not necessarily a long-shot. There are some significant differences between Khomeini Velayat e-faqih-style Shi’a fundamentalism and the sort of Sunni fundamentalism espoused by ObL. Each regards the other with some suspicision. For example before 9/11 the enemy most likely to get in a shooting war with the fundamentalist Taliban was Iran - their border was very tense.
I’d go further and suggest that it was Bush the elder, who “was not totally clear”. Seriously, what are the odds of experienced diplomatist (with cushy job to loose) to waffle, against any Bush to waffle? We may disagree on many things about Bushes, but plainly, speaking on the spot with an immediate clarity is not their family trait. Whatever names Bushes were ever called, “demagogue” was never even considered.
No, I said it could be argued that SH has/had no real ideology. I never said I would make that argument, myself ;). Actually I am somewhat neutral on the question, but leaning in Libertarian’s direction.
SH could conceivably considered a mild ideologue of old-school Ba’athist or Iraqi nationalist persuasion, or else no ideologue at, but rather a tribal warlord that used ideology as a aid when useful. IMHO he comes closest to the last, though it is not impossible that all of the above motivated him to some extent. His attachement to the Ba’athists appears to have been as much situational as anything else and it is a certainty he first entered the party as an enforcer, not an intellectual. Though his uncle does appear to have been a pan-Arabist, it is rather uncertain just how attached he personally ever was to that ideal. Really, it could be argued that by the time SH rose to power, the Ba’athist parties of Syria and Iraq were pretty thoroughly nationalist in character, rather than pan-Arabist and the activities of SH ( as a major party leader from 1968 ) and Hafez al-Assad had a lot to do with that…
I think you could say that Hussein was a pan-Arabist in that he wouldn’t have minded increasing his influence in the mideast. But he wasn’t one to sacrifice his own position at the top of the Iraqi heap. Which is pretty much what doomed the pan-Arab movement in the first place.
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