Saddam and the Republicans

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Nov 6, 2006

A court has decided Saddam Hussein's fate. Now American voters have to decide what to do about his former collaborators, the Republicans.

By Christopher Dickey
Newspeak

Nov. 7, 2006 - So Saddam Hussein is slated to die. Good. Had he been executed, assassinated, or simply expired a few years ago, the world would have been saved a great deal of pain. Few dictators have ever been more loathsome or long-lived, their methods more cruel, their regimes more totalitarian. His government was every bit as ruthless as Adolf Hitler's, but the Nazis only ran Germany for a dozen years, Saddam—behind the throne and then on it—ruled Iraq for thirty-five. It is good to know he will pay some price on this earth for evils that will live long after him.

But what about the Americans—the Republicans, in fact—who helped Saddam remain in power all those years and then, changing their minds when the monster proved beyond their control, launched the ill planned and shamefully executed war to eliminate him that continues to this day? The dictator killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, it is true. According to the most recent study by the British journal The Lancet hundreds of thousands more have died from combat, terror, crime and pestilence since the Bush administration brought him down. It's hard to imagine a more striking example of two wrongs making for a worse—horribly worse—outcome. Is there a moral equivalency? Actually, there is. The Republicans asked to be judged for their intentions. They wanted … what was it they wanted to do? Find weapons of mass destruction? Stop terrorism? Assure oil supplies? Ah, yes. They said when they launched the war that petroleum played no part in their judgment. “Nonsense,” was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s dismissive retort. But President George W. Bush himself said last week that oil was one of the main reasons now to stay the course, or hang around, or whatever it is the administration says it’s doing in Iraq these days—until victory, of course.

Well, Saddam Hussein asked to be judged by his intentions, too. He had a tough country to rule, and he found that only fear could do the job for him. (Is that so different from what American commanders are discovering now? In their dreams, they’d love to see a new Iraqi strong man deliver them from this quagmire.) Saddam wanted to keep the Iraqi state together, with well-defended borders, in the face of a growing threat from the wild-eyed mullahs in Iran. He would kill anybody who threatened that design. And in the 1980s the Reagan administration (with a little token hand wringing) thought that was just fine.

The Democrats, while they may be feckless, are largely blameless in this drama. President Jimmy Carter was too busy bungling the Iran hostage crisis to pay much attention to Saddam, and probably was thankful, for a minute or two, when Iraq launched its war on Iran in 1980. By the time Bill Clinton came to office in 1993—after Saddam had invaded Kuwait, been driven out, and been allowed to survive—there wasn’t that much left for an American president to do, unless he wanted to invade the country, topple the dictator, occupy Baghdad and … well, the Clinton administration had other priorities.

No, the Saddam psychodrama, and the cost to the United States, has always been a very Republican project, whether for accommodation, rehabilitation or annihilation . . . more . . .


article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15590729/site/newsweek/



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