Is world better without Saddam?

[abaris]

We should leave despots in power, because it might cause us westerners a hardship in deposing them...or because they either threaten directly or indirectly their own public with the spectre of what terrible men might replace them?  What a convenient world to be a despot in.  Didn't you just get through telling me about ugly?  Getting rid of one of these guys is ugly.  Is that a reason not to do it, to leave those people to their fates?  We might fuck it up, is that a reason to leave those people to their fates?  People may die, is that a reason to leave those people to their fates?

We should leave them in power if the outcome is considerably worse than leaving them in power. As has been predicted by real experts.

Min posted that Clausewitz quote a few pages earlier. That's making the point pretty nicely. If you aren't attacked or threatened and even more if you don't know what you're in for, keep the hell out.

I just noticed, he pposted it in a different threrad. Here it is.

“No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.”


Carl Von Clauswitz