artie_fufkin wrote:

Bin Laden and Saddam would have blown each other into oblivion, and what we should have done is sat by and watched it happen. We had the world on our side after 9/11, but all that sympathy went bye-bye when Bush decided to take on Iraq.

I dont believe that.  Other then a few mid eastern countries I think the world supported the USA invading Iraq.  However they supported it as long as we were going in solo.  Nobody wanted to help.  I cant think that to many people believe the world was a better place with Saddam in it.  My issue is how did it help me to spend my tax money in Iraq.  I dont think our country is safer then it was before we invaded Iraq.  Iraq might be slightly better off but that isnt going to insure that I recieve SS or medicare benifits.

"Other then a few mid eastern countries I think the world supported the USA invading Iraq."

Well, my point was that by invading Iraq, were giving a recruitment tool to the  Jihadists in those other Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia (wink, wink) and Jordan that are officially on our side, to say nothing of the impact it has in places like Syria and Yemen that hated us to begin with.
Even in Iran, which certainly has no love for Iraq, the radicals can turn plenty of people by saying "We're next, unless you help us stop the Great Satan."

"I cant think that to many people believe the world was a better place with Saddam in it."

Absolutely, but that wasn't our call. How would we react if the head of the government of another country, say Chavez, threatened to invade us because he didn't happen to agree with the sitting head of our country?

forsberg_us wrote:

Max wrote:

APRTW wrote:

I dont believe that.  Other then a few mid eastern countries I think the world supported the USA invading Iraq.  However they supported it as long as we were going in solo.  Nobody wanted to help.  I cant think that to many people believe the world was a better place with Saddam in it.  My issue is how did it help me to spend my tax money in Iraq.  I dont think our country is safer then it was before we invaded Iraq.  Iraq might be slightly better off but that isnt going to insure that I recieve SS or medicare benifits.

In one of the those gut-thumping ironies, large majorities of Iraqis see their country as worse than it was under Saddam Hussein.

I'm guessing that if you could have taken a poll around January 1861, you'd have found large majorities of Americans who thought the country was worse off with Lincoln in office.  Particularly if the poll focused on people in the southern states.

What is the percentage of those Iraqis who were Hussein supporters?

You can focus instead on quantitative indicators, if you prefer, like homicide rates and things like that, and Hussein-era Iraq probably beats out American-led Iraq by wide margins in most.  This isn't to say that the average guy on any street in any country wouldn't rather be a poor freeman than a rich slave, but we can really delude ourselves about our ability to export freedom and democracy when we don't get out and see the results first hand.  So, I'm not sure that the average guy on the streets of an Iraqi city feel they were freemen under either regime.

I haven't been to Iraq, but I've been around enough to get a feeling for how provincial Americans can be with respect to the wider world around them.  There is a whole body of literature on postcolonialism, and how postcolonial political entities are non-natural, ungovernable artifacts of a bygone colonial era.  With Iraq, for example, some people argue that there are at least three natural entities, the Shiite south, the Sunni middle, and the Kurdish north, that feel very little "We, the Iraqi's" amongst them.  It is further argued that the USA probably would have pushed for bona fide partitioning of Iraq, except that Turkey, another ungovernable polyglot with distinct ethnogeographic regions, made  it clear that it would not tolerate an independent Kurdish nation (because a large chunk of eastern Turkey would likely want to break away and join that nation).  So, I can easily appreciate that the complexity is probably way beyond my ability to understand, and that a ruthless strongman is often the most effective means to govern these otherwise ungovernable regions.

But it really shouldn't be that hard for us to comprehend.  Hell, give Alabama unrestrained democracy and they would quickly vote to disenfranchise nonwhites all over again.  That's what they really want from their "state's rights", isn't it?

Last edited by Max (1/03/2011 2:40 pm)

artie_fufkin wrote:

"Other then a few mid eastern countries I think the world supported the USA invading Iraq."

Well, my point was that by invading Iraq, were giving a recruitment tool to the  Jihadists in those other Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia (wink, wink) and Jordan that are officially on our side, to say nothing of the impact it has in places like Syria and Yemen that hated us to begin with.
Even in Iran, which certainly has no love for Iraq, the radicals can turn plenty of people by saying "We're next, unless you help us stop the Great Satan."

"I cant think that to many people believe the world was a better place with Saddam in it."

Absolutely, but that wasn't our call. How would we react if the head of the government of another country, say Chavez, threatened to invade us because he didn't happen to agree with the sitting head of our country?

I wouldnt like it of course.  I think the war did nothing to change to opion of those who like us or put up with us.  Those who hate us, hate us more.  I think if we pulled out of every oversea base and told the world we are focusing on fixing our country they would understand.  I doubt those who hate us would see it a sign of weakness.  In fact I would make it known that while we are not babysitting the world, if you come over hear and screw with us it is on.  I think middle eastern countries would be happy we left there world and might see it as victory on there part.

forsberg_us wrote:

I'm just asking a simple question Max.  Is there a poll that supports your statement, or was this just a suspected generalization on your part?

I looked to see if I could find something that supported what you said.  The best I could find was a 2007 poll (pre-troop surge) that supported your overall statement, but in exactly the way I suspected.  Most Shiites and Kurds felt their lives were better.  An overwhelming number of Sunnis felt the opposite.  Since Hussein's Bath party supported the Sunnis at the expense of the Shiites and the Kurds, this makes sense. 

I'm just wondering if you have something more recent.  I'm not looking to get into a pissing match over it, I'm just curious.

No. I thought it was an accurate statement supported by surveys, but if I am wrong I will step back.  It's far from any area that I could claim any expertise in.  It seems to me that I read of surveys from Iraq with regularity, but maybe I am imagining it.

Max wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

I'm just asking a simple question Max.  Is there a poll that supports your statement, or was this just a suspected generalization on your part?

I looked to see if I could find something that supported what you said.  The best I could find was a 2007 poll (pre-troop surge) that supported your overall statement, but in exactly the way I suspected.  Most Shiites and Kurds felt their lives were better.  An overwhelming number of Sunnis felt the opposite.  Since Hussein's Bath party supported the Sunnis at the expense of the Shiites and the Kurds, this makes sense. 

I'm just wondering if you have something more recent.  I'm not looking to get into a pissing match over it, I'm just curious.

No. I thought it was an accurate statement supported by surveys, but if I am wrong I will step back.  It's far from any area that I could claim any expertise in.  It seems to me that I read of surveys from Iraq with regularity, but maybe I am imagining it.

The most damning thing a quick Google search revealed was:

"Iraq ‘Much Better Off’ Today Than Under Saddam, Cheney Says"

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=52549

Frankly, I think it is puzzling that a google search does not reveal much since that survey back in 2007.  If Iraq was better off now, and 'we' could document it, I think we would be trumpeting it to the four corners of the Earth.  The lack of data is, by itself, suspicious.  Let's see if anyone else knows anything.

forsberg_us wrote:

I'm just wondering if you have something more recent.  I'm not looking to get into a pissing match over it, I'm just curious.

Did you run across this?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22164

"Tens of thousands of Iraqis disappeared during the worst days of this dirty war between 2005 and 2007. Some were seen picked up by uniformed militias and piled into lorries; others simply seemed to vanish. Iraq's minister of human rights, Wijdan Mikhail, said that her ministry had received more than 9,000 complaints in 2005 and 2006 alone from Iraqis who said a relative had disappeared. Human rights groups put the total number much higher. The fate of many missing Iraqis remains unknown. Many are languishing in one of Iraq's notoriously secretive prisons.[12] In September 2010, Amnesty International released a report "New Order, Same Abuses" mentioning that "several detainees have died in Iraqi custody due to torture or abuse by Iraqi interrogators and prison guards. It says that tens of thousands are being held without charges and that guards won't confirm missing persons' whereabouts to their relatives, which, for Iraqi families who'd lost loved ones, was one of the most devastating aspects of the U.S. occupation.†[13]"

No. The search I ran had the term "poll" in it and I mainly looked at links from news sources or Gallup or things like that. It wasn't an exhaustive search, I probably spent all of 10 minutes searching. Like you, most of what I found was 2007 or earlier.

"Why?  Was he making his salads with real bacon bits?"

Worse than that. He was washing down a shrimp cocktail with a milk shake.

forsberg_us wrote:

No. The search I ran had the term "poll" in it and I mainly looked at links from news sources or Gallup or things like that. It wasn't an exhaustive search, I probably spent all of 10 minutes searching. Like you, most of what I found was 2007 or earlier.

So, in terms of something heinous like "number of disappearances", or "extrajudicial killings" life under Saddam Hussein might actually have been better for the average guy.  As you point out, no one fits the 'average', so there are some winners and some losers, but overall, it looks like there were more disappearances under the US occupation.

I know that some of the metrics used to estimate the general welfare of society include: infant birth weight, infant mortality rate.  I know a person who studied infant birth weight in Albania upon the transition from a communism dictatorship to a sort of free market, sort of democracy, and infant birth weight went down, indicating that the communist dictator's regime was doing a better job in making basic prenatal health care available.