Despicable Racist Americaphobic Lies: "Saddam Was Our Guy"
Dean
Biggest lie of the last 20 years: "Saddam was America's puppet."
Best comment of the week goes to Tom W.:
Yup, the U.S. armed Saddam, all right.
With T-72 tanks, BMP armored personnel carriers, AK-47 rifles, Pecheneg machine guns, Degtyarov-Shpagin Krupnokaliberny heavy machine guns, Bazalt RPGs, MiGs, Antonovs, SCUDs, Tunguska air-defense systems, and all the other weaponry produced by American manufacturers.
You want to talk about lying liars and the lies they tell? Let's start with the bullsh** that America produced the racist neo-Nazi regime of Saddam Hussein, because after all, Donald Rumsfeld once, when he was "Special Envoy to the Middle East," met with every Middle Eastern dictator personally, and smiled and shook his hand, even while he delivered the news that America disproved of their recent actions.
Americaphobia: it's as real as Islamophobia, but too many Muslims are too stupid to recognize this reality.
While I'm with you on this issue in general, what the hell do Muslims have to do with anything specifically today? The latest recurrence of "Saddam was America's puppet" around here came from Arnold, who's about as far from a Muslim as any Wisconsinite could be.
This statement...
...though harshly worded, is true. But I'm not sure why it's relevant today. Arnold's comments today reflect a strong and consistent isolationism, but no Americaphobia.
Racist garbage that this is, it's actually given respect on the left.
Thank you.
We "supported" Saddam Hussein, to the extent we did, because he antagonized Iran.
In other words, we acknowledged the unpleasant reality in that Allah-forsaken hellhole called, "The Middle East," and did the best we could with the sucky reality we found there.
I believe that's called, "Realism."
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82
I would have linked it, but the linking procedure on your site doesn't seem to work with my Windows XP.
In any case, that will get you into the National Security Archive Briefing Book Number 82, edited by Joyce Battle, Feb 25, 2003.
There, you can read for yourself facts from our government's own documents, extracted under the Freedom of Information Act, about the "tilt" of the US government toward Saddam Hussein and his regime during the administration of President Ronald W Reagan.
I have a long memory, Dean. It has served me very well and it goes back to the late 1930s, even before I entered kindergarten in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood in Sep 1939. So I don't easily forget details as important as that "tilt" toward Saddam Hussein that occurred at length just a quarter-century ago.
And as everybody on Dean's World well knows, I call shots as I see them.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The US stepped in when it looked like Iraq might lose the Iran-Iraq War, not to help him win it. As it was, both sides did manage to lose.
That was considered to be a win for everyone else. Didn't quite work out that way, of course, but no one in the USG was shedding tears for either Iraqis or Iranians.
I really, really don't understand the fascination with Bush Sr.-era Hamiltonian realism. That makes us no friends (any more than it will make friends for the Chinese who are doing the same thing).
Must be solid. The skulls, that is.
But Dean, I also thought the "too many Muslims" thing sounded odd. Ali's politics are the product of the western left, not Islam. What are you, some kind of, uh, Islamo---
never mind!
Yeah, come on Arnold!
And free advertising on the right-hand navigation bar on Dean's World! How racist do I have to get to merit that?
Ooh, hurt me. We found ourselves in some morally ambiguous situations, and did our best in response. Therefore, we are no better than the enemies of freedom? It must be nice to be a self-righteous virgin.
Right?
I also fail to see why anti-americanism is a muslim-only problem. And given Ali's body of work its clear to me that he is as patriotic and loves America as I do, or you do.
My response is that I restudy the issue. That's what I did when I came to the conclusion that homosexuals should be permitted to determine for themselves the nature of their own sexual, social and familial relationships. Dean in fact cheered me for that. And I did not have to be dragged kicking and screaming into changing my opionion.
Moreover, the internet provides me quick, easy and comprehensive access to the kinds of materials from which I think I can make definitive cases about specific policies.
The National Security Archive is one such databank. And it is a good one. No particular political connection or leaning. And the editors affiliated with the project go where the data takes them. I could not ask for more.
You will carefully note that I have not written that I want the United States to pick up its military personnel and evacuate Iraq. I want them to remain, do everything possible to encourage the Iraqis to build and maintain a stable government, and to defend themselves against both islamofascist terrorism and the sectarianism that developed into the recent civil war -- which, I trust, is now winding down.
But I will not say that there was not an occasion during which the United States government considered the regime of Saddam Hussein an ally in their effort to contain khomeinist Iran, and that the United States government of that era either avoided supplying Iraq with weapons, military intelligence and international political support, and overlooked some of the more brutal aspects of Saddam's ba'athist rule over his country. Because the evidence proves that all this in fact occurred.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
And no, the United States of America and our government are a hell of a sight better than the enemies of freedom that we confront around the world and that we oppose when necessary.
But we always owe to ourselves to make certain we are not creating a groundless fable to support a cause we have undertaken. If we can build a stable Iraq -- and the prospect of just that outcome seems far better today than it did just four months ago -- then we will have a reality in hand that we ourselves played the foremost role in engineering and putting into place. And then even more so, we need no fables at all as our justification.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
My memory goes back to that time, too...and when I was in the US Navy on the USS Connolly patrolling the Persian Gulf in 1985 we went to General Quarters whenever Iranian OR Iraqi military assets got too close.
It is true we were far more atuned to threats from Iran, but Iraq was no friend and we were quite prepared to fight either or both, as need arose.
And I've gone through the linked documents...I fail to see US support for Saddam...I guess you can read into any thing whatever you want...
In foreign policy, there are no "permanent allies", only "permanent interests".
Saddam was supported, just not to the extent some would have us believe. Money, intelligence, and "dual use" chemical precursors and equipment. But his hardware was Soviet(Russian) and French.
Also, no one ever talks about the alternative to leaving Saddam to his own devices. An Iranian victory.
He was a Soviet client, not an American one.
Let me second that: Ali's current Guardian series is some of the best work he has done, on a par with his writings on womens' rights in the Muslim world. (But if there's vitriol in there, it must be something that someone less familiar with Islam can't recognize. All I saw was a lot of detailed, thoughtful reasoning.)
You give Stalin too much credit for the creation of the modern state of Israel.
You didn't mean something else, did you, Kristian?
Don't we then have the right - perhaps even the duty - to take him out?
A damned fine point. Never thought of it like that.
No. He was "our dictator" (damn the facts that say otherwise) and so therefore we are responsible for keeping him in power. Right?
Give me a fucking break. It was all about "WMDs," right? Nothing else ever entered into the equation, right?
While the creation of the State of Israel would have been upsetting to the Arab states, without Soviet support, there would have been no wars. Soviet recognition of Israel in the first place was under the assumption it would become a socialist state. When Israel chose European style democracy and protection, Soviet support turned to it's enemies, and Israel became another proxy war between West and East.
Usually makes enough impact to trigger a subject switch, but doesn't penetrate.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.