ISIS in Iraq was a direct response to the replacement of Sunni with Shi’ite authority. Most of the ISIS fighters in Iraq are Sunnis from Saddam’s army.
It is interesting to speculate on how Iraq would have evolved with the aging Saddam left in power but to assume a development similar to sectarian ISIS is absurd.
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[QUOTE=septimus]
ISIS in Iraq was a direct response to the replacement of Sunni with Shi’ite authority. Most of the ISIS fighters in Iraq are Sunnis from Saddam’s army.
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I’m unsure of what your question is. Yes, ISIS originated from AQ in Iraq, and that was mostly Sunni ex-military types. But the rebellion in Syria was fully involved before ISIS became a military power, and Assad was having issues dealing with it before ISIS became a power. As for Iraq, the fault lines in Iraq were there long before ISIS OR AQ in Iraq came to the country.
It would be, if that’s what I was assuming. It’s not. I’m saying that Arab Spring like rebellion was in the cards for Iraq with or without the US invasion, and that Saddam wouldn’t have been able to keep a lid on it, any more than Assad was able to do so BEFORE ISIS came into being or started to exert real power. I think it’s absurd to suggest that Iraq would somehow have been immune to this event that rocked the entire region, especially since the ethnic and religious fault lines in Iraq were at least as bad as those in Syria, if not worse…and Saddam was even more hated and feared that Assad was prior to Syria’s melt down.
I think these analyses are ignoring that the no fly zone might have continued all the way into the Arab Spring. I would be very surprised if the US and UK did not get involved in providing air support to rebelling Iraqi Shiites and Iraqi Kurds in this alternate history.
The presence of US and UK air forces cannot be ignored because Libya’s government forces were destroying the army of the rebelling factions until NATO air support became involved. I think the same would have been the result in Iraq. It seems very unlikely the no fly zone wouldn’t readily evolve into a no Saddam zone.
Agreed…very similar to Libya. I can’t see Saddam being allowed to do what Assad has been allowed to do, especially since I don’t think that either Russia or China would be as supportive of Saddam as they have been of Assad in this alternative history, especially in light of the first Gulf War which still would have happened.
Saddam was also one of the most brutal dictator there was at the time. As such, there was a very high chance of a post-Saddam Iraq being better IMO.
Mine was not a question. I was commenting on your faulty “analysis.”
Syria is allied with Iran, making Sunni Iraq, if anything, a natural ally with Syrian rebels, ISIS or otherwise. Your analysis seems limited to “Iraq is Arab so … Arab Spring.” This ignores BOTH that the current conflagration cannot be ascribed to any democratic “Spring” AND that, due to opportunity, rebellions are often a response to the relaxation of authoritarian rule.
IMO, had Bush continued sanctions without invasion there would have eventually been a Baathist coup. I won’t guess what else would have transpired down the road but to assume a result similar to what we saw under U.S.-imposed Shi’ite rule is misinformed and insulting to the diversity of Arab people.
Which analyses are you talking about?
[QUOTE=septimus]
Mine was not a question. I was commenting on your faulty “analysis.”
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Well, I can see your confusion, since it’s obviously you didn’t understand a damned thing I said. 
So, your ‘analysis’ is that Arab Spring would have had no effect on Iraq or the underlying fault lines in the country because…reasons?? Well…yes, I can see why you are so confused then.
The Shi’ite and Kurds just continuing to simply take it and watch from the sidelines, no doubt. Yeah…that’s some cracker jack analysis you got there. Sunni coup, everyone else stands around with their thumbs up their asses and waits to see who gets to rule over them next because they were so cowed by Saddam…or something. Rebellions never happening except when authoritarian rulers let them and all. And they wouldn’t have been effected at all by the examples of Arab Spring happening throughout the region because Iran…and Iraq…and something vague. Plus
Why does everyone presume that without the events of the previous 8 years, the Arab “spring” would have occurred at all. It did not happen in a vacuum (nor ISIS rise that way).
Support for the sanctions were already weakening. Probably they would have round to irrelevance in a few years after 2003 anyway as China and Russia rose and basically began trading again.
Talking of sanctions, there’s a wonderful parallel with the US led sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea. It’s almost as amusing as Obama’s criticism of China for its human rights record.
I say “no”. The Arab spring may have washed over Saddam and the civil war going on in Syria may have included Iraq to a much larger extent.
Just speculating here, but in 2007, Saddam would have been 70. If he’d died of natural causes (or internal assassination), could Qusay have been a relatively benign dictator (assuming his older and psychotic brother Uday didn’t try to seize power) ?
I agree. And, not to belabor the bleeding obvious, but Cheney and Rumsfeld were only there because Bush put them there – and it wasn’t just them, there was also the raving neocon Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and others – every single one of them connected with PNAC and with the strategy of American hegemony in the Middle East.
You’re undoubtedly right that Iraq would be a different place today than it was in 2003 even if Bush hadn’t invaded, but it’s truly hard to imagine any circumstance in which it, and the world, wouldn’t have been very much better off. And indisputable that some 4500 American soldiers would still be alive, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive, and a trillion dollars would still be in the US treasury. It’s absolutely frightening looking back at this cabal of evil that inhabited the White House at the time, and indicative of a truly broken system that none of them are being prosecuted.
Wolfowitz is advising Jeb on foreign policy
Yeah, because the Chinese human rights record is so comparable to the US. I mean, I’m sure in the US we routinely arrest people for saying purportedly anti-government stuff on the internet, or just for being in a spiritualist sect such as Falun Gong…and, of course, then harvesting their organs ‘voluntarily’ to sell. Yeah, I can really see the parallels between the US and China there and no doubt that the Obama criticizing China is way off track, since we can’t stand up to such a shining example of human rights.
Of all the ridiculous things you’ve said on this message board, this one is certainly off the charts.
You seem to have a particularly insular understanding of what the USA does.
Yes, from what I understand the Chinese human rights record is better than the USA. A random list: institutionalised torture, black op sites, disappearing people, Abu Graib, Guantanamo, drones killing school children and other civilians, bombing weddings in Afghanistan, mass surveillance of its own people, oppression of minorities, mass imprisonment of minorities, 25% of the worlds prisoners/5% of the worlds population, etc.
In the USA, one in three black males born in 2000 will go to prison - one in three. 33%.
Wasn’t there also something about US states are having trouble killing prisoners because the rest of the world doesn’t want to sell them the means?
The UN seems to know more: UN Issues Scathing Assessment of US Human Rights Record
So yes, human rights advise and handing out sanctions - very droll, USA.
China is a totalitarian, one-party regime masquerading as a modern liberal democracy.
Nobody will take you seriously to compare their human rights record to that of the United States.
[QUOTE=up_the_junction]
You seem to have a particularly insular understanding of what the USA does.
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And your seem to have both a chip on your shoulder about the US AND be completely clueless about what goes on in China to even make so ridiculous a comparison.
But seemingly what you understand about China could be written on the head of a pin in 25 point font. So, why would anyone take your opinion seriously on this?
Yeah, all of that’s bad. I note you didn’t give any Chinese examples, but then, you don’t know any would be my guess. A random list about China would be: Tibet (full stop), suppression of Falun Gong, how they treat their own citizens, execute more prisoners than the rest of the world (including the evil US) combined…and these are the OFFICIAL stats, which are almost certainly bullshit, as are those about how many prisoners they have…harvesting the organs from the condemned ‘voluntarily’ in a culture that doesn’t normally go in for this sort of thing, truly scary levels of environmental damage, AIDS villages, unreal levels of mass surveillance in staggering levels of information suppression, very ugly levels of oppression of minorities (Tibet, as mentioned, but Uyghurs/Weigers as well as others), etc etc etc etc etc.
The fact that you list these things the US does and don’t have a clue that China one ups us on every one just shows the level of ignorance.
Will they be going to jail because of something that they posted that would be considered anti-government on a message board? No? Well, in China you can go to jail for this. You can go to jail for a LOT of things in China, and there are a lot of things you can be executed for…in fact, over 50 things. And, as noted, China executes a LOT of folks every year. Officially it’s something like 6-7k…of course, officially they ‘voluntarily’ harvest over 10k organs per year, so Chinese numbers don’t always make sense.
You’re asking for objective measures of a subjective claim.
Saddam had survived popular uprisings before. Where exactly would the disarmed and disorganized Iraqis have gotten the resources to successfully fight against Saddam? Iran would’ve tried to smuggle arms in for the Shia militias, but there would be no Sunni uprising at all due to the Sunnis knowing Saddam was all that kept them paramount in Iraq. If you look at Iraq today and historically since the invasion, it’s primarily been the Sunni insurgents that have been the most violent and the most successful, and the Shia militias have always gotten some degree of armament from Iran, which wouldn’t change. All of the present serious insurgency in Iraq is Sunni based, and they would not be rebelling against Saddam. Without a Shia government in Baghdad there is virtually no impetus for the Islamic State to exist at all.
Further, look to Egypt. While popular revolt pushed Mubarak out, the moment the government that replaced it was deemed too Islamist by the military, it was removed and the military was put back into control. There has been little serious threat to said military government in Egypt since. This is because Egypt has a very powerful military and doesn’t have citizens armed with large amounts of military hardware lead by former military officers. Iraq would be in a similar situation had Saddam never fallen, you’d have a big, long powerful (internally) military against unorganized rabble.