Toppling Saddam was a mistake

Toppling Saddam was a mistake, even Bush knows that.

Ah, the naivety of “democracy-installers”. In 2003 when a generous part of the U.S administration, moronic opinion mongers from Fox news, and roughly 3/4th of the country was talking about how toppling Saddam through a war and installing democracy in Iraq was the answer to world’s problems, I looked around to see if I was dreaming, or were retards actually outnumbering the sane. Lawyers, PhDs, highly accomplished professionals; I exchanged views with numerous people and defended what was so obvious to me. War must be used as an absolute absolute last resort given its innate vicious nature, and clearly we hadn’t exhausted all options with Iraq. Wasn’t it so predictable that a war would exacerbate the scourge of terrorism by spawning more hate? Hate – the weapon of mass destruction that hit the U.S on 9/11! Surely anyone familiar with the culture and history of the Muslim world and with at least half a brain could see that democracy cannot be installed in the middle-east. And even if it could, was it desirable to do so? What kind of government would be elected by a population comprising of several fundamentalist groups? Sadly, more often than not, I had to shake my head in disbelief, and walk away from a futile argument.

Let’s examine the main arguments for this war. They are broadly five in number and have shared “Argument #1” status in turn, only to be pushed down the heap in time.

1. Saddam has WMDs

2. Saddam has links to Al-Qaeda

3. Saddam sponsors terrorism

4. Saddam is a murderous bastard to his own people

5. Democracy is needed in the middle-east.

Correction… let’s not talk about the WMD argument because enough has been said about it and was so lame that even the establishment soon dropped it like a hot potato. Of course, the erudite pit bulls...err…journalists at Fox news were the last to abandon citing it as a justification for war. The most pig-headed of them still chirp about how the WMDs had existed but then disappeared - tugged by hump back whales on their annual migratory path from Iraq to Antarctica. Saddam knew all the secret whale whistles you see, Osama taught him those when the two of them partied with Putin and Chiraq in Belarus.

Argument number 2 – links to Al-Qaeda. No matter how many times you repeat a lie, and no matter how vehemently you repeat it, you cannot elevate it to the status of a truth. Dick Cheney is probably the last Republican to hold on to this argument, so I am guessing it was his brain-child. This argument was unsubstantiated to say the least and at odds with the history of two men – Saddam and Osama. The former a secular indulgent materialistic dictator and the latter a hard-line austere Muslim. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, Osama effectively called him a “mother-fucker” (with the mother being holy Arab land). The 9/11 commission reported that Osama was supporting the Kurds in anti Saddam movements. Over the years, Arab media reported several Bin Laden speeches where he criticized Muslims that do not follow strict Islam, and Saddam was often at the receiving end. Saddam was a secular who had a Christian Deputy Prime Minister -Tariq Aziz- and that put him squarely at odds with Osama. Their core value system was different and hence this argument seemed wild right at the onset. However, if the Bush administration could prove the argument, I would believe it because stranger things happen in this world. The “proof” according to Bush and Co., was that Mohammed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. Well that argument was soon found faulty because Atta was in the US at the time of the purported meeting. I ask, even if there was proof of a couple of Iraqi intelligence officers meeting Al-Qaeda operatives, does that prove complicity of Saddam and Al-Qaeda? It doesn’t, much like a couple of rogue US senators selling out to lobbyists and big money doesn’t prove that the US government is for sale. There were a couple of other lame claims about the “link”, but nothing that was substantiated and nothing that could over-ride the obvious conclusions derived from the animosity between Saddam and Osama.

Argument 3: Saddam sponsors terrorism. This one was partly true, but it is a classic example of a half truth twisted to brainwash gullible people. The devil lies in the details. By all records, Saddam sponsored only one organization that could be labeled “terrorist” – Hamas. Hamas is a Palestinian militant organization involved in a never ending fight with Israel. Hamas has never attacked any US interest, and even though it hates US for supporting Israel, it isn’t any threat to the US, unless of course Jerusalem is the 51st state (as some powerful NY lobbies see it anyway). And again, Saddam’s reasons for supporting Hamas are not Islam ideological, they are plain and simple retributive. In 1982, Israel raided Iraq without provocation and bombed its nuclear plants and ambitions into oblivion. Saddam cannot be expected to forgive Israel for that transgression into Iraq’s sovereign territory, and his support of Hamas was payback for that day. It’s called a proxy war and has been waged around the world by many countries, several times by the US. Not very different from what the US did in Afghanistan by arming/paying the Afghans to fight the Russians, or arming/paying Saddam to fight Iran. A proxy war which is entirely a bilateral issue between Iraq and Israel was twisted into a nice catchy phrase by the Republican spin doctors – “Saddam funds terrorism”. The objective of course was to induce Americans into visualizing Saddam paying a bloke to blow up their neighborhood bake sale, and hope that this fear made them hit “Bush” at the voting stations. It worked!

Argument 4: Murderous Bastard. Yes, Saddam ruled with an iron fist and many Iraqis suffered under his rule. Suffering however, is relative. To put it in perspective, the history of the region must be examined, or in this instance Iraq’s present can be examined too. Iraq is made up natural enemies juxtaposed with each other. Give them an opportunity, and they will go at each others throats. These forces have to be kept at bay with an iron fist. This is not to say that Saddam’s rule was perfect, but in a relative world, it was the lesser of the evils. Saddam’s biggest plus, and an unparalleled one at that in the middle east, was his secularism. Christians practiced their religion without fear, women wore skirts and worked without fear of persecution. How are the Iraqis that are kidnapped by American trained rogue Iraqi police or by militias, and the women who are threatened if not wearing a veil, better off today? Of course, everyone had to add Saddam to their list of Gods, but having done that, the average Iraqi could go about his life without having to worry about the government. Fundamentalist Muslims weren’t allowed to become larger than life figures. This was ensuring that Iraq wasn’t a hotbed for Islamic terrorism. All in all, while some people suffered under the ego of a dictator and his sons, there wasn’t any viable option to better the situation externally. Even if there was one, is it really the prerogative of the U.S.A to rid countries of cruel dictators? Also, isn’t it understandable that a proud people would rather be ruled by a cruel but effective dictator from among their own than bear the ignominy of a foreign country bombing their infrastructure to the stone-age, 19 year old foreigners patrolling the streets for years with the authority to intimidate and arrest anyone or raid any home without a warrant and in rare but real cases stoop to the moral murkiness that rapes and kills young girls? While by any means, that doesn’t characterize the U.S military effort in Iraq but human weakness when acted upon by the catalytic action of war can make beasts of men, and for every 1 vile action of a US troop, a thousand virtuous ones are forgotten. Surely, the US had to know that before they dreamed of being greeted with flowers and remembered as messiahs?

“Saddam gassed his people” said Bush 42 in 2003. So Saddam is guilty for the actions of his military which killed civilians. Fair enough, I agree that he is. But then by the same logic guess who is responsible for the civilians killed in Fallujeh by the use of white phosphorous, a chemical agent banned in war? Children, men and women incinerated on the spot, in their clothes, a macabre sight. George Bush? The ranking General in Iraq? The platoon commander in Fallujeh? “No one” they say because it is war and they had to do what they had to do. Double standards?

Argument 5: democracy is needed in the Middle East. I have just one word for proponents of this argument – “Palestine”. Palestinians had elections and they elected HAMAS. A democracy is inherently flawed in that it is only as good as its people. Not to say that the people of the middle-east aren’t worthy of exercising their franchise. The point is that the western world is not ready for the kind of governments that will emerge through free franchise in the Muslim world. Any guesses on who among Musharraf and Bin Laden would win a one-on-one presidential race in Pakistan? Let’s put it this way – it probably depends on the voter turnout from the northern part of the country. Scary? You bet. Some things are best left untouched, like a rare secular dictator in the Middle East. What will the US do if Muqtada-Al-Sadr gets voted to power in Iraq in two years? Operation “Shock and Oh-Crap”???

More than four years and hundreds of thousands of devastated lives later, a majority of the US population now believes that this war was unnecessary. Hindsight is a bitch ain’t it? Agreed we live in a plug and play world, but it was a no-brainer that the Iraqi population would not quite “play” in response to the US war machine “plug”. No-brainer to a few that is, while a majority got it wrong. What should this majority do now? What should the Sean Hannitys and Bill O Reillys and John Does from red states do now? For starters, be man enough to admit that they made a mistake in judgment and as such admit bearing a part of the burden of each crime and each death committed in the course of this war. But how will that happen when the atmosphere of “pass the buck on” is all pervasive in this administration? When things weren’t going right, George Bush needed a fall guy and the first unlucky target was George Tenet. “George Tenet delivered incorrect intelligence hence George Bush is blameless.” “How could George Bush take a chance with that kind of reporting from Tenet?” Bull-crap like that makes for idiot-impressing rhetoric when coupled with a thrusting finger on Fox news, but doesn’t stand up to the most basic analysis. Did George Tenet assimilate the information himself? Was he dressed in an Arab robe infiltrating the Bedouins of Karbala? No, obviously not. He delivered information collected by his subordinates. So if he is guilty because his subordinates misreported, pray why isn’t George Bush guilty when his subordinate George Tent misreported? The buck stops at the top! Period. Anything else is an excuse.

Since Tenet there have been many fall guys. When will the man himself take the blame? And maybe when he does, his followers may find the stomach to do the same.

Saddam is now dead and buried. Convicted by a kangaroo court in a trial that wouldn’t have resulted in anything but a mistrial anywhere else. It’s supposed to be ok because he 1. deserved death 2. Did not offer his citizens even this much of a trial. While the former is a largely acceptable opinion, since when have opinions justified verdicts? Isn’t unbiased justice the point of conducting a trial? Otherwise why didn’t the US set up a massive global online poll and convict Saddam based on that. The second point tries to justify one wrong by giving the example of another. The cliché doesn’t need to be stated.

What should be done then to fix this virulent quagmire that the US finds itself in? It goes back to the man himself – Bush 42. He needs to call a global press conference and apologize. He needs to accept that his administration made a mistake and that he is responsible for the hate directed at America from around the world. He needs to shield his citizens from this hate by taking it on himself. He needs to somehow make the Arab world believe that America regrets this action and will work towards fixing it. Then through the UN and through lots of money (which will still be a lot less than what is being spent now) an Arab peace keeping force needs to be put together that can take over from the US. The US forces need to leave, because no matter how noble the US men and women on the ground are, if you are an Iraqi who’s son is 6 feet under because of a not-so-precise ammunition, you will do whatever you can to payback in kind. And there are plenty of those around.

The above is the best bet in the short term. It will take a hell of a man to do what I propose for Bush. Yes, the Republicans can forget about winning an election for the next 2 decades, but the best possible outcome for the American citizens will have been achieved. So, it is America’s best interest versus the Republican Party’s future. You and I know which one will hold priority.

In the long term, the US needs to do a few things:

1. Really really strengthen its borders. In the amount it has cost to wage this war, 8 million police officers could have been hired. You do the math.

2. Solve the Israel-Palestine issue without a bias. It will be hard, but the US can shake off the influence of the Jewish Lobby and do what is right.

3. Reduce or eliminate foreign oil dependence.

4. Shake off the arrogance and make genuine friends around the world. The US donates more money than any nation in the world, emphasize that fact. Highlight the values of this great nation – freedom, opportunity, equality etc. Set up a sustained PR campaign to improve the image of America around the world.

No one can really afford a failed Iraq. Bush has a year or so to change the way history will look back at him, and by association at America. For the sake of Americans and all the unparalleled achievements of this nation over hundreds of years, I hope he reaches in deep within himself and finds the courage to do the right thing.