RE: Is world better without Saddam?
December 30, 2015 at 12:58 pm
(This post was last modified: December 30, 2015 at 1:05 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
I think that you've fixated on Saddams importance to the exclusion of our own involvement in all of that. We obviously didn't have to get rid of the army to get rid of Saddam, nor did we in actuality (as you mention..they just changed the patches on their shirts). Even if we were required to do so we did not have to leave them stripped of an army, recall that we were supposed to cover them until they were trained? Pointing to the military capability of Saddam, in this converstaion, borders on ludicrous. There was another, vastly more powerful military in the area. Ours.
You think that we didn't know what we were in? How did all those experts (and yourself) make such good predictions, then?
We did know, we had actionable plans. The criminal bit is how we went forward, with that knowledge, in spite of those plans, and how we presented (and chose to pursue) a counterfactual narrative, and counterproductive actions. Counterproductive, of course, to a non-factual narrative. Had we been looking to improve the lives of Iraqis with regime change (which we weren't but should have been), then we could have. This is my position, this is why I;d call the world better without Saddam, even though I, like you..think that the region is worse off because of how we went about it.
You think that we didn't know what we were in? How did all those experts (and yourself) make such good predictions, then?
We did know, we had actionable plans. The criminal bit is how we went forward, with that knowledge, in spite of those plans, and how we presented (and chose to pursue) a counterfactual narrative, and counterproductive actions. Counterproductive, of course, to a non-factual narrative. Had we been looking to improve the lives of Iraqis with regime change (which we weren't but should have been), then we could have. This is my position, this is why I;d call the world better without Saddam, even though I, like you..think that the region is worse off because of how we went about it.
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