Saddam

Unless you’ve been living in a cave (or a Muslim country) for the past twenty-odd years, you’ll know about the genocide; the oppression of the Kurdish people. You’ll know about the brutal suppression of any political opposition. You’ll have heard about the summary executions, most famously of his own son-in-law. You’ll know about the secret police and have guessed the inevitable corollary: the 4 AM knock at the door, the beatings, the torture, the people who simply disappear. Like all dictators, it’s safe to assume Saddam and his evil brood have millions salted away in Swiss bank accounts; wealth stolen from their own people. (Sure, that also tells us something about the ethics of Swiss bankers – as if we required that lesson, again, after World War II – but that’s another story....) Unless you’re daft, you now know that Saddam has been systematically running-down and looting his own country, for his personal gain, over a period of decades. While children died for want of simple medical care in the south, Saddam drew water from a gold bathroom faucet, in one of his several presidential palaces.

Of course we don’t have exact numbers, but you and I both know it’s a safe bet that, had Saddam remained in power for some period of time – perhaps another two or three years – that many more Iraqis would have died needlessly. Many more, indeed, than were killed or hurt in the war.

This much we can all agree on. But I’m an obnoxious right-wing bastard (so I’m told, anyway). The point that most of my "more reasonable" – by their own lights, anyway – friends raise is that they "didn’t like the way Saddam was removed" from power. Another point upon which we can, I think, agree, is that Saddam was unlikely to ever step down from power willingly. So long! Missing you already! It was always obvious we could only ever be rid of him by force. So I interpret this nebulous "didn’t like the way" statement to mean they objected to the tri-lateral action taken by the American, British and Spanish governments.

I guess the thing about this position, which I have most difficulty understanding, is just who else they thought was going to remove Saddam from power. Were Hans Blix or Kofi Anan going to depose Saddam? Was (and is) the UN ever going to do anything useful? Rwanda. Bosnia. Was that greasy, stinking, Gallic snot, Jacques Chirac, going to get rid of him? How about Herr Schroeder? Nein? Or Vladimir I’ve-still-got-Ms-Milosevic-hiding-behind-my-skirts Putin? Or maybe that other well-known civil libertarian, Jiang Zemin?

Of course we’d all have liked the Iraqi people themselves to have gotten rid of him. Well, while we’re expecting to cash-in on magic wishes, how about simply wishing that Saddam had been a really nice guy all along, and that we never had to get rid of him? Was there a chance of the Iraqi people getting rid of Saddam on their own? No, of course not: the tens or hundreds of thousands who did or might have tried do not even enjoy the dignity of marked graves. The Iraqi people could no more have toppled Saddam than the oppressed Russian citizenry could have toppled Stalin.

No, none of these folks were up for deposing Saddam. And one doubts Tony Blair would actually have hatched the plot, alone, either. So, no matter how much the anti-American brigade may love to loathe him, the fact remains that George W. Bush was the only leader in the entire free world with the balls to step up to the mark, and get rid of a tyrant.

Whether George W. was ultimately motivated by altruism, lust for power in the region, influence over oil production, fear of WMDs, or something else entirely, is a thing we can never know for sure. That’s why it doesn’t matter, in the end. History will only – can only – ever remember what happened. So, how will history remember the event? Poorly, as usual, I suppose. But assuming events over the next couple of years follow the script – down the more or less promising path, along which Afghanistan seems to be stumbling – I’d be pretty confident that the Iraqi people of the not-too-distant future will retain rather fonder memories of the American than the French roles in that last, pathetic pantomime of the UN Security Council.

So, am I suggesting that the end has justified the means? Frankly, I think the question is insulting. Neither I nor any of my "reasonable" acquaintances have ever lived in a dictatorship; have ever lived in fear of the secret police; of torture and death in windowless rooms. To drag out our moral soapboxes and prattle wide-eyed sophistry ... well, it’s the sort of thing the French would do.

Also see: http://dearraed.blogspot.com/