Having been fully convinced that there were no WMDs and that the policy of containment was working wonderfully and therefore the War in Iraq has been a disaster of historic proportion, I still wonder…
Why did Saddam tempt GWB and the US in general with his defiant attitude toward weapons inspectors, U.N. dictates and such? Didn’t he simply underestimate the willingness of this administration to go to war? While the Administration really badly wanted to go to war, there were opportunities on Saddam’s side to prevent it, I believe. Why didn’t he avail himself of those oppportunities.
Saddam undoubtedly thought that the government of the United States would not authorize an invasion and that the UN would not pass Resolution 1441. That wasn’t his first miscalculation when dealing with the United States, but it was definitely his worst. And probably ours, for that matter.
I think that Saddam was positioning himself for greatness in the Middle East as the man who single-handedly faced down the United States and embarrassed them on the world stage by making them back down. Imagine the prestige that he would have gained from that. I think he believed it all the way to the end, too, right up to where the tanks came rolling in to Baghdad. The irony is that he got his wish: the United States is embarrassed. Too bad for Saddam that he didn’t live to savor it in exile somewhere. Well, no, not really, but you know what I mean.
The answers above are about right, but you can add to them two other things - his complete hatred of George Bush and the United States, and his being surrounded by ‘yes men’ who were afraid to tell him what he didn’t want to hear. So they told him that there was no way the U.S. would attack, that he could stand up to them, force them to withdraw, and increase his stature in the Middle East dramatically.
This is the man who had a picture of George Bush Sr. made of tile on the floor of one of his palace entrances, so he could walk on it every day (a grave insult in Iraq). Capitulating to the demands of his son would have been such a loss of face as to be intolerable. It would also have weakened his self-appointed position as leader of the Arab world.
It’s possible he saw the whole thing as one big opportunity - thumb his nose at the U.S., maintain the pretense that he had WMD, and come out of the whole thing basking in the respect of the region and with his imaginary threat to his neighbors still intact. Then once the U.S was gone he could start quietly building up his WMD programs again.
Dictators often make these kinds of tragic miscalculations. The ruthlessness that gets them power in the first place ensures that there’s no one to pour cold water on his plans and say, “you’re making a mistake, chief.”
Saddam was a thug and wasn’t nearly as clever as he thought he was. He must have believed he could convince Iran that he did have weapons while convincing the United States and its allies that he didn’t. That was bound to fail. If he’d been a smarter man, he wouldn’t have been blinded by his hatred of the U.S. and his belief in his own invincibility or destiny.
Some time ago, around the time he was hanged I think, it occurred to me that Saddam was actually a dope. As a secular dictator in the Middle East, he could have lived his entire life as a US ally (a quiet one because of his brutal government, but still) and done whatever he pleased, then died and left the country to his sons or whomever he wanted. Instead he misread things and invaded Kuwait - because he thought the US was okay with it, or was mad at Kuwait, or thought the country rightfully belonged to Iraq and it fit with his delusions of being another Saladdin or another Suleiman or whatever.
Brinkmanship is a familiar game in the Middle East. Play it too often and you go right over. And I agree, Saddam was a dope. But there are a lot of dopes in the Middle East playing to set up the next Caliphate, with themselves as the Caliph.
The first war never officially ended in defeat. You could argue why but IMO it’s because the retreat turned into a bloody turkey shoot and instead of a decisive victory (WWII style). Saddam walked away with his country intact. We even let him keep attack helicopters, which were then used against the Shiites in the South. He also attacked the Kurds in the North. That’s how the Northern and Southern no-fly zones came about. And that’s when we became the world’s policeman. The stalemate created a long-term presence in Saudi Arabia, which brought OBL into the picture.
OBL tested the waters in Somalia shooting down the blackhawk helicopters. He then blew up: a US base in Saudi Arabia, US embassies in Kenya/Tanzania, a warship in Yemen, and finally the WTC.
Saddam Hussein’s fate was sealed once GWB decided to overthrow him. There was nothing he could do.
(I say this as an unabashed opponent of the war. Goddamn mistake, if you ask me. But that’s another issue entirely.)
(This also leaves open the question as to when the Great Decider decided to invade. As far as I’m concerned, that decision was made in late January, 2001, or thereabouts. But that, too, is another issue entirely.)
The thing about dictators is that if you maintain your power through fear, any slipup, any momentary relaxation, could mean you lose said power, immediately and with great force. SH couldn’t back down. Not in any way. His covert entreaties to let weapons inspectors in wouldn’t have done him any good; once word got out that he had no WMD’s, his enemies in Iran and Syria would have become more encouraged to start fomenting dissent via their proxies within Iraq.
He held power with an iron fist, and he could never show any weakness. So playing chicken was basically his only course available.
Honestly, I don’t know why the thread simply doesn’t end with this comment. The man wasn’t freakin’ Machiavelli. He was most likely just a ruthless bastard who didn’t have enough imagination to see himself as anything other than the biggest fish in Baghdad. “Me, not be dictator of Iraq? Inconceivable!”
Not even that matters; I can’t find a cite, but I recall even before the war one of the Bush Admin’s officials admitting in an Italian interview ( which was barely mentioned over here, of course ) that they’d attack Iraq even if he fled the country or was dead.
Because Saddam didn’t really matter; it wasn’t about him, really. Bush and the neocons wanted Iraq; that’s what it was about.
It wasn’t really about the guy who “tried to kill [Bush’s] dad?” That stretches believability. They wanted Iraq for a reason and their view that Saddam was dangerous was part of it. (I know they dramatically overstated the threat, but they did think they had to get rid of him.) And like I was saying, Saddam wouldn’t have been on the neocon hit list if he was a smarter man.
It wouldn’t have mattered if he was twice as smart as Einstein and as much a pacifist as Gandhi; they wanted Iraq, he was in the way. His being nasty and less smart than he thought made it easier, that’s all.