Thread: Why Terrorism Exists

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Now there is no Saddam Hussein to kill them for doing that. Plus, they have a lot of hope of a good country to return to some day. With the Hussein regime in power, there would have been no such hope.

You know UM, I was working with some Iraqi women right when the war was starting, and actually, unless you were against Saddam, their country wasn't that bad when he was in power--for them, and a lot of people like them, at least. It was a lot better than Saudia Arabia, that's for sure, and lots of other countries in the Middle East. I'm not saying Saddam was a good guy, I know he did horrible things, just that the majority of people in the country lived as normal lives as you can in that part of the world, and it's not that way anymore, and it won't be for a very long time, if ever. Bad things happened to their families (the women I worked with's) immediately after the invastion. My point is that just getting rid of Saddam doesn't transform it into a nice place to live--it probably never will be, and we screwed up a huge number of people's lives there. They had a society, with educated people. Anyone with any sense and money got out of there a long time ago. And I don't think that they have "a lot of hope". (Where do you get your optimistic information?) They may never go back. The foundations of their society have been destroyed. So if you are talking about the greater good, starting a war there did not accomplish it. It should have happened from inside. We owed them something, having made Saddam what he was during the Iran-Iraq war, but we didn't pay them back the right way.

Surely they will split that country into three parts, because they just can't get along without a dictator to control them. (Maybe we can find them another dictator, we do that pretty well.) I know you know that Iraq only exists as the country that it is because of English colonialism, so right there you've got problems. I've heard a little about them splitting into three, but I'm not up with the latest thinking on that.

UM, you always say this was to spread freedom and democracy, altho I don't think you deny that it was ultimately for oil, you just down-play that part. In that case, do you think we should invade every country that isn't democratic? Just the ones that have something we (our corporations, I should say) want? Maybe them first, then we'll get to the others later? There were countries with a lot, lot more suffering than was going on in Iraq, believe me. On the surface, their society was functional. Underneath, not so good--but the same could be said for this country.