Are you glad that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power?
- Thread starter WriterDom
- Start date
When we removed Noreiga from power (without entering a vast war to occupy a country, by the way) what happened was the drug trade flourished, because instead of one strong man running drugs, and controlling the competition, hundreds of smaller dealers leapt to fill the void. The result was a lot more drugs in the US, which is what we were trying to avoid.
Without Saddam Hussein, there is a power void which invites religious and ethnic war, a la Yugoslavia, between Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds as well. After the first Gulf War and the imposition of sanctions, Saddam was contained. Iraqi Kurdistan was de fact autonomous -- now it is threatened by exclusion from the new goverment, and by worries about Turkey as well. Southern Iraq was stable -- now it is the site of upheaval, revolt and internecine fighting. The crimes against his own people and others for which Saddam was notorious had been stopped -- they were all long in the past, and he had no capacity for or stockpile of the famous wmds. (It is worth noting that the Iraqi Olympic soccer team -- direct victims of Saddam's terror -- decried the war.) The instability feeds instability in other parts of the region, esp. Saudi Arabia, and breeds huge resentment against the US, the same resentment which fed the attacks of Sept. 11th.
And there are, of course, further costs -- over 1,000 US soldiers dead and more than 7,000 siginificantly injured, and an estimated 120,000-300,000 Iraqis dead -- many of them non-combatants.
So is the question -- would I have been happy if a contained Saddam Hussien could have been removed from power without these costs, the answer is, yes, I would have been. If the question is, was it worth it all the resulting costs (including our vast deficit in the US) to remove him, the answer is "No."
Without Saddam Hussein, there is a power void which invites religious and ethnic war, a la Yugoslavia, between Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds as well. After the first Gulf War and the imposition of sanctions, Saddam was contained. Iraqi Kurdistan was de fact autonomous -- now it is threatened by exclusion from the new goverment, and by worries about Turkey as well. Southern Iraq was stable -- now it is the site of upheaval, revolt and internecine fighting. The crimes against his own people and others for which Saddam was notorious had been stopped -- they were all long in the past, and he had no capacity for or stockpile of the famous wmds. (It is worth noting that the Iraqi Olympic soccer team -- direct victims of Saddam's terror -- decried the war.) The instability feeds instability in other parts of the region, esp. Saudi Arabia, and breeds huge resentment against the US, the same resentment which fed the attacks of Sept. 11th.
And there are, of course, further costs -- over 1,000 US soldiers dead and more than 7,000 siginificantly injured, and an estimated 120,000-300,000 Iraqis dead -- many of them non-combatants.
So is the question -- would I have been happy if a contained Saddam Hussien could have been removed from power without these costs, the answer is, yes, I would have been. If the question is, was it worth it all the resulting costs (including our vast deficit in the US) to remove him, the answer is "No."
69forever
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I voted yes, but....
Politics and religion cannot be removed from the question. The removal of Saddam should have, and would have come from the Iraqi people themselves. We opened a can of worms, in the greed for oil and revenge, that will cost more than you or I can stand. By all estimates, we are committed to Iraq with troops for the next 20 years.
Are you willing to watch the body count rise to include your children and grandchildren??? Enough is enough, bring the troops home now! How many more and for what?
Politics and religion cannot be removed from the question. The removal of Saddam should have, and would have come from the Iraqi people themselves. We opened a can of worms, in the greed for oil and revenge, that will cost more than you or I can stand. By all estimates, we are committed to Iraq with troops for the next 20 years.
Are you willing to watch the body count rise to include your children and grandchildren??? Enough is enough, bring the troops home now! How many more and for what?
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