Tonight as I write this, I've just finished watching a documentary on the National Geographic Channel called "Inside Saddam's Reign Of Terror". It highlighted the reign of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party in Iraq from 1979 thru 2003. It included a lot of testimonials from Iraqi citizens who witnessed Saddam's brutality firsthand. It was a disturbing documentary to watch.
I admit that I have no love for the Iraqis, but I think it's a little clearer to me why they're such a brutal and violent people. It's likely they are this way because it's all they've ever known. Fear, mistrust, and extreme cruelty were a way of life for Iraqis under Saddam's rule for nearly an entire generation. I find myself conflicted, wanting to feel sympathy for the Iraqi people, but not quite getting there entirely. One would think that after such a long period of suffering, fear, and misery, that once the coalition lifted the black cloud of Saddam's rule from their shoulders in 2003, the Iraqis would never want to look back to that way of life. One would think that they'd look forward to a new day, a new life, and would embrace a potential world where people could think and speak freely. One would think that they'd desperately seek a world where there was no longer a need for fear. One would think that nearly everyone who managed to survive Saddam's reign would jump at the chance to breathe easy and renew their hopes for a better life.
That being said, it's amazing how quickly in 2003 the population of Iraq devolved into even more cruelty and brutality than that which Saddam left behind when he fell from power. I'm inclined to think that this tendency toward inhuman brutality was a learned behavior, learned firsthand from the Baathist secret police and the military. Their deeds and methods became well known not only in Iraq, but eventually around the world. When insufferable violence is all you ever know, I suppose it's hard for someone to swoop in and impose a world where that no longer exists. It's probably too foreign to even grasp.
I guess I have the luxury of waxing philosophic about these matters because I've never been exposed to that kind of world firsthand. Sure, I read about it, and I see it on TV. But I've never been there, nor do I want to be. I don't pretend to understand a world I've never seen or interacted with. Well, maybe I do purport to have an understanding here in my blogs. I guess the best way to describe it is that I'm trying to gain such an understanding. It's hard for me to get there, since I have a hard time relating. In my world, when some bastard does something cruel or inhumane to another, I expect to see justice and see that bastard pay for the crime. In Iraq, it was the "authority figures" that were responsible for all the cruel or inhumane acts. Who could an Iraqi turn to for justice when the very people that were "responsible" for doling it out were the same ones committing the crimes? If a person dared to speak up and demand anything, that was it for them. That person was as good as dead (if they were lucky).
I once got into a debate with liberal co-worker about the nature of the people in Iraq. I undoubtedly got into one of my rants about my disdain for the Middle East in general, and likely used the examples above as points of argument. I think I had described how most of the civilized world has gotten so far beyond where the Middle East culture is in terms of humanity (I know that's not even remotely true, but I'm trying to believe it). My co-worker's response was, "Well, they have to LEARN. Europeans have fought countless wars over the centuries, and eventually after people have had enough of warfare and suffering, they LEARN to change." I suppose there's a minscule shred of truth in that. Europe, for what it's worth, hasn't had a major armed conflict (that I can think of) for awhile with the exception of the Balkan conflict in the late 90's. Now they've got the growing European Union, which I suppose is a far cry from the way things were only a few decades ago. Things are hardly perfect, but I see such developments as an attempt at progress, if nothing else. But I guess I can't entirely agree that the Iraqi people need more time to "learn" how to embrace a change in their way of life. In my opinion, they've had plenty of time to "learn" what not to do while they lived under Saddam's rule. Obviously, they didn't learn much.
So what's my point in all of these seemingly random meanderings? Well, with the Bush administration gone, and Obama about to yank our troops out of Iraq, many are now wondering if it was worth it to depose Saddam. According to polls, it appears that most Americans do not. Was it worth all the bloodshed? Was it worth sending thousands of American troops to their deaths? Was it worth the deaths of many thousands of Iraqis, both combatant and civilian? Did the U.S. "learn" anything in this whole conflict?
Well, I can honestly say that after watching the documentary about Saddam Hussein tonight, deposing him was definitely a good decision. I don't think most Americans have an appreciation for what a sick fuck that man was. They hear the stories, and see a few quickly flashed photos of dead Iraqi civilians, and they say, "Yeah, he was evil. But he was no threat to the U.S." From what I just saw, he was a threat to anyone and everyone. We can consider ourselves lucky that his oppression didn't make it too far beyond his own borders. It's unlikely that Saddam would have been successful in dominating the entire world, in the way that Adolf Hitler was striving to accomplish back in WWII. Many of Saddam's neighbors had no use for him, and would likely have put down any attempt by him to expand his empire. That's essentially what happened in the first Gulf War. It's important to note that while the U.S. made up a significant portion of the coalition in that war, there were a number of nations that joined our efforts, including some of his neighbors. So was Saddam truly a threat that needed to be dealt with after 9/11? That is the key question on many American minds.
I suppose the answer to that question is best answered with another question: What if we had never invaded Iraq in 2003? Would the world be a better place? Would the U.S. have made any more headway in the war on terror?
If you look at how things developed, I don't believe we'd have been any better off in the war on terror had we left Iraq alone. We obviously still would not have captured or killed Bin Laden by now. Everybody thinks that thousands more troops in Afghanistan would have made some sort of enormous difference, and that Bin Laden would have been taken out if we had more resources there. I feel the war in Iraq has had little bearing on developments inside Afghanistan. Sure we've had fewer troops there, but in the initial months (and even years) after we ousted the Taliban in late 2001, the majority of the surviving elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda either went underground or fled to Pakistan. Since we were (and are) unable to pursue the enemy into Pakistan, we'd have had countless thousands of American troops in Afghanistan with no obvious enemies to fight. Most of the enemy were either dead, hiding, or sitting across the border in Pakistan flipping us off. Would it have made sense to have kept all those American troops in Afghanistan, when for all practical purposes we'd killed off every bad guy we could reasonably find? We would have probably lost more soldiers from land mine incidents than anything else there at that point. The country is still littered with mines leftover from the days of the USSR's invasion. I suppose our troops could have turned their efforts to clearing all that shit out, but the purpose of the military's presence there was to FIGHT TERRORISM. It's kinda hard to fight it when there's nobody there. You can argue all day about whether Iraq was a necessary fight or not, and whether going forward it will be judged a success or an "abject failure" as a friend of mine once described it. I feel that deposing Saddam needed to happen sooner or later. I don't feel our time in Iraq has adversely affected the outcome in Afghanistan. We may have thinned out our presence there, but we never actually LEFT. As threats have been identified, we've mopped 'em up.
I suppose if we'd have kept more troops in Afghanistan and focused more on rebuilding efforts, we may have made it harder for the Taliban to win the hearts and minds of most Afghans. But let's face it, folks, the Taliban didn't take control of Afghanistan the first time by winning any hearts and minds. If you don't know the history of the Taliban's rise to power, they took control by brutal force and they maintained control through Islamist oppression. While our forces may be thin in Afghanistan today, we've at least done our best to win the hearts and minds of Afghans. Our military has always done that whenever possible. If we made any major mistake in the invasion of Afghanistan, it was failing to blockade the border with Pakistan first with large numbers of our troops. It's a huge border, and sealing such a porous border is easier said than done. But we came in from the south and the north (as I recall it), and we counted on Afghan elements aligned with us to hold the border with Pakistan. THAT, more than anything else, was our fatal mistake. It was those "friendly" Afghan elements that allowed Bin Laden and his cronies to slip across the border into Pakistan. They betrayed us. And why wouldn't they? Bin Laden and friends were fellow Muslims. We Americans were infidels. There's no way that we should have trusted the Afghans to side with us and take out Bin Laden. We should have been at that border to lock it down near Tora Bora. But as I always point out in my blogs, hindsight is 20/20. Now we know better. We didn't have the luxury of knowing the future back then, so there's no point bitching about it, liberals.
If I had my way, we'd have chased those bastards into Pakistan and kept kicking ass eastward until we got to the border with India. Then we could have handed over Kashmir to India and said, "With our compliments." But the consequences of invading Pakistan would have been far more bloody and horrible than Iraq could ever dare to be. We were wise to stay out of Pakistan in many respects, but I feel (and have always felt) that Pakistan is the true source of all our extremist troubles. I suspect we'll be involved in a war with Pakistan sooner or later, especially if the current government falls from power and extremist elements get a foothold. If that happens, the world is in serious trouble. For now, I like our current strategy of remote-controlled missile strikes on high value targets inside Pakistan. I say keep launching missile attacks from drones until we've weakened the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership to such an extent that they can't effectively organize anymore. I hope our dingbat new president doesn't put a halt to those missions. At least it lets us take out bad guys without putting our troops directly in harm's way. I view these drone attacks as our answer to the enemy's IED attacks. The enemy reaches out and touches us with IED's, and we reach out and touch them back with precision strikes from drones. If the insurgents won't come out and fight us like soldiers, then the hell with it. Let's keep launching missiles at 'em. If they decide to try and engage us in a proper ground war, then we can readily meet that challenge and wipe the floor with the panzies.
As far as Iraq goes, a hasty withdrawal is clearly a bad idea. I hope even you die-hard liberal peace-mongers can see the truth in that. But the good news is that through our military's hard work and sacrifices, we've made a lot of headway in Iraq towards getting a government established. Iraq has a lot of work to do, but maybe the Iraqis will eventually learn to do what my liberal co-worker described. Maybe the Iraqis "have to learn" how to live with each other. If they don't, then shame on them. They will have learned nothing from the Saddam Hussein era, and that's a shame. From what I've seen tonight of Saddam's reign, the Iraqis should definitely know better.
I admit that I have no love for the Iraqis, but I think it's a little clearer to me why they're such a brutal and violent people. It's likely they are this way because it's all they've ever known. Fear, mistrust, and extreme cruelty were a way of life for Iraqis under Saddam's rule for nearly an entire generation. I find myself conflicted, wanting to feel sympathy for the Iraqi people, but not quite getting there entirely. One would think that after such a long period of suffering, fear, and misery, that once the coalition lifted the black cloud of Saddam's rule from their shoulders in 2003, the Iraqis would never want to look back to that way of life. One would think that they'd look forward to a new day, a new life, and would embrace a potential world where people could think and speak freely. One would think that they'd desperately seek a world where there was no longer a need for fear. One would think that nearly everyone who managed to survive Saddam's reign would jump at the chance to breathe easy and renew their hopes for a better life.
That being said, it's amazing how quickly in 2003 the population of Iraq devolved into even more cruelty and brutality than that which Saddam left behind when he fell from power. I'm inclined to think that this tendency toward inhuman brutality was a learned behavior, learned firsthand from the Baathist secret police and the military. Their deeds and methods became well known not only in Iraq, but eventually around the world. When insufferable violence is all you ever know, I suppose it's hard for someone to swoop in and impose a world where that no longer exists. It's probably too foreign to even grasp.
I guess I have the luxury of waxing philosophic about these matters because I've never been exposed to that kind of world firsthand. Sure, I read about it, and I see it on TV. But I've never been there, nor do I want to be. I don't pretend to understand a world I've never seen or interacted with. Well, maybe I do purport to have an understanding here in my blogs. I guess the best way to describe it is that I'm trying to gain such an understanding. It's hard for me to get there, since I have a hard time relating. In my world, when some bastard does something cruel or inhumane to another, I expect to see justice and see that bastard pay for the crime. In Iraq, it was the "authority figures" that were responsible for all the cruel or inhumane acts. Who could an Iraqi turn to for justice when the very people that were "responsible" for doling it out were the same ones committing the crimes? If a person dared to speak up and demand anything, that was it for them. That person was as good as dead (if they were lucky).
I once got into a debate with liberal co-worker about the nature of the people in Iraq. I undoubtedly got into one of my rants about my disdain for the Middle East in general, and likely used the examples above as points of argument. I think I had described how most of the civilized world has gotten so far beyond where the Middle East culture is in terms of humanity (I know that's not even remotely true, but I'm trying to believe it). My co-worker's response was, "Well, they have to LEARN. Europeans have fought countless wars over the centuries, and eventually after people have had enough of warfare and suffering, they LEARN to change." I suppose there's a minscule shred of truth in that. Europe, for what it's worth, hasn't had a major armed conflict (that I can think of) for awhile with the exception of the Balkan conflict in the late 90's. Now they've got the growing European Union, which I suppose is a far cry from the way things were only a few decades ago. Things are hardly perfect, but I see such developments as an attempt at progress, if nothing else. But I guess I can't entirely agree that the Iraqi people need more time to "learn" how to embrace a change in their way of life. In my opinion, they've had plenty of time to "learn" what not to do while they lived under Saddam's rule. Obviously, they didn't learn much.
So what's my point in all of these seemingly random meanderings? Well, with the Bush administration gone, and Obama about to yank our troops out of Iraq, many are now wondering if it was worth it to depose Saddam. According to polls, it appears that most Americans do not. Was it worth all the bloodshed? Was it worth sending thousands of American troops to their deaths? Was it worth the deaths of many thousands of Iraqis, both combatant and civilian? Did the U.S. "learn" anything in this whole conflict?
Well, I can honestly say that after watching the documentary about Saddam Hussein tonight, deposing him was definitely a good decision. I don't think most Americans have an appreciation for what a sick fuck that man was. They hear the stories, and see a few quickly flashed photos of dead Iraqi civilians, and they say, "Yeah, he was evil. But he was no threat to the U.S." From what I just saw, he was a threat to anyone and everyone. We can consider ourselves lucky that his oppression didn't make it too far beyond his own borders. It's unlikely that Saddam would have been successful in dominating the entire world, in the way that Adolf Hitler was striving to accomplish back in WWII. Many of Saddam's neighbors had no use for him, and would likely have put down any attempt by him to expand his empire. That's essentially what happened in the first Gulf War. It's important to note that while the U.S. made up a significant portion of the coalition in that war, there were a number of nations that joined our efforts, including some of his neighbors. So was Saddam truly a threat that needed to be dealt with after 9/11? That is the key question on many American minds.
I suppose the answer to that question is best answered with another question: What if we had never invaded Iraq in 2003? Would the world be a better place? Would the U.S. have made any more headway in the war on terror?
If you look at how things developed, I don't believe we'd have been any better off in the war on terror had we left Iraq alone. We obviously still would not have captured or killed Bin Laden by now. Everybody thinks that thousands more troops in Afghanistan would have made some sort of enormous difference, and that Bin Laden would have been taken out if we had more resources there. I feel the war in Iraq has had little bearing on developments inside Afghanistan. Sure we've had fewer troops there, but in the initial months (and even years) after we ousted the Taliban in late 2001, the majority of the surviving elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda either went underground or fled to Pakistan. Since we were (and are) unable to pursue the enemy into Pakistan, we'd have had countless thousands of American troops in Afghanistan with no obvious enemies to fight. Most of the enemy were either dead, hiding, or sitting across the border in Pakistan flipping us off. Would it have made sense to have kept all those American troops in Afghanistan, when for all practical purposes we'd killed off every bad guy we could reasonably find? We would have probably lost more soldiers from land mine incidents than anything else there at that point. The country is still littered with mines leftover from the days of the USSR's invasion. I suppose our troops could have turned their efforts to clearing all that shit out, but the purpose of the military's presence there was to FIGHT TERRORISM. It's kinda hard to fight it when there's nobody there. You can argue all day about whether Iraq was a necessary fight or not, and whether going forward it will be judged a success or an "abject failure" as a friend of mine once described it. I feel that deposing Saddam needed to happen sooner or later. I don't feel our time in Iraq has adversely affected the outcome in Afghanistan. We may have thinned out our presence there, but we never actually LEFT. As threats have been identified, we've mopped 'em up.
I suppose if we'd have kept more troops in Afghanistan and focused more on rebuilding efforts, we may have made it harder for the Taliban to win the hearts and minds of most Afghans. But let's face it, folks, the Taliban didn't take control of Afghanistan the first time by winning any hearts and minds. If you don't know the history of the Taliban's rise to power, they took control by brutal force and they maintained control through Islamist oppression. While our forces may be thin in Afghanistan today, we've at least done our best to win the hearts and minds of Afghans. Our military has always done that whenever possible. If we made any major mistake in the invasion of Afghanistan, it was failing to blockade the border with Pakistan first with large numbers of our troops. It's a huge border, and sealing such a porous border is easier said than done. But we came in from the south and the north (as I recall it), and we counted on Afghan elements aligned with us to hold the border with Pakistan. THAT, more than anything else, was our fatal mistake. It was those "friendly" Afghan elements that allowed Bin Laden and his cronies to slip across the border into Pakistan. They betrayed us. And why wouldn't they? Bin Laden and friends were fellow Muslims. We Americans were infidels. There's no way that we should have trusted the Afghans to side with us and take out Bin Laden. We should have been at that border to lock it down near Tora Bora. But as I always point out in my blogs, hindsight is 20/20. Now we know better. We didn't have the luxury of knowing the future back then, so there's no point bitching about it, liberals.
If I had my way, we'd have chased those bastards into Pakistan and kept kicking ass eastward until we got to the border with India. Then we could have handed over Kashmir to India and said, "With our compliments." But the consequences of invading Pakistan would have been far more bloody and horrible than Iraq could ever dare to be. We were wise to stay out of Pakistan in many respects, but I feel (and have always felt) that Pakistan is the true source of all our extremist troubles. I suspect we'll be involved in a war with Pakistan sooner or later, especially if the current government falls from power and extremist elements get a foothold. If that happens, the world is in serious trouble. For now, I like our current strategy of remote-controlled missile strikes on high value targets inside Pakistan. I say keep launching missile attacks from drones until we've weakened the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership to such an extent that they can't effectively organize anymore. I hope our dingbat new president doesn't put a halt to those missions. At least it lets us take out bad guys without putting our troops directly in harm's way. I view these drone attacks as our answer to the enemy's IED attacks. The enemy reaches out and touches us with IED's, and we reach out and touch them back with precision strikes from drones. If the insurgents won't come out and fight us like soldiers, then the hell with it. Let's keep launching missiles at 'em. If they decide to try and engage us in a proper ground war, then we can readily meet that challenge and wipe the floor with the panzies.
As far as Iraq goes, a hasty withdrawal is clearly a bad idea. I hope even you die-hard liberal peace-mongers can see the truth in that. But the good news is that through our military's hard work and sacrifices, we've made a lot of headway in Iraq towards getting a government established. Iraq has a lot of work to do, but maybe the Iraqis will eventually learn to do what my liberal co-worker described. Maybe the Iraqis "have to learn" how to live with each other. If they don't, then shame on them. They will have learned nothing from the Saddam Hussein era, and that's a shame. From what I've seen tonight of Saddam's reign, the Iraqis should definitely know better.
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