Those who oppose war with Iraq on the grounds that that civilians would be killed fail to understand that people are already dying due to Saddam’s misrule. Saddam Hussein has not earned his name “the Butcher of Baghdad” for nothing. He has been ruthless in his treatment of any opposition to him since his rise to power in 1979. A cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering remains the hallmark of his regime.
The repressive violence of Saddam’s regime is the norm and not something used by the authorities in exceptional circumstances as it is in many countries. The repression, imprisonment, torture, deportation, assassination, and execution are strategies followed by Saddam’s regime in dealing with Iraqi people. The following are few examples of these crimes:
- The killing of Sunni leaders such as Abdul Aziz Al Badri the Imam of Dragh district mosque in Baghdad in 1969, Al Shaikh Nadhum Al Asi from Ubaid tribe in Northern Iraq, Al Shiakh Al Shahrazori, Al Shaikh Umar Shaqlawa, Al Shiakh Rami Al Kirkukly, Al Shiakh Mohamad Shafeeq Al Badri, Abdul Ghani Shindala.
- The arrest of hundreds of Iraqi Islamic activists and the execution of five religious leaders in 1974.
- The arrest of thousands of religious people who rose up against the regime and the killing of hundreds of them in the popular uprising of 1977 in which Shia cleric, Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Hakim, the leader of SCIRI was sentenced to life imprisonment.
- The execution of 21 Ba’ath Party leaders in 1979 in Iraq , the assassination of Hardan Al Tikriti former defence Minister in Kuwait in 1973, and the former Prime Minister Abdul Razzaq Al Naef in London 1978
- The arrest, torture and executions of tens of religious scholars and Islamic activists in such as Qasim Shubbar, Qasim Al Mubarqaa in 1979.
- The arrest, torture and execution of Shia cleric Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Sadr and his sister Amina Al Sadr (Bint Al Huda) in 1980.
- The war against Iran in 1980 in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, and many more were handicapped or reported missing.
- The arrest of 90 members of Al Hakim family and the execution of 16 members of that family in 1983 to put pressure on Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Hakim to stop his struggle against Saddam’s regime.
- The occupation of Kuwait which resulted in killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and injuring many times that number in addition to the destruction of Iraq.
- The assassination of many opposition figures outside Iraq such as Haj Sahal Al Salman in UAE in 1981, Sami Mahdi and Ni’ma Mohamad in Pakistan in 1987, Sayed Mahdi Al Hakim in Sudan in 1988, and Shaikh Talib Al Suhail in Lebanon in 1994.
It is well documented that Saddam’s regime has produced and used chemical weapons against the Iraqi people and against neighbouring countries. Here are some examples of his use of such weapons:
- It is widely known that Saddam’s regime dropped chemical bombs by air fighter on Halabja in Northern Iraq in 1988. The reports of the UN, other international organisations and Western governments confirmed that more than 5,000 thousand civilians were died within a few hours. Eye witness accounts, photos and films have verified the horror of this attrocity.
- Saddam’s regime used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers during Iraq-Iran war. Many of them were sent to Europe to receive medical treatment and they were seen on TV across the world.
- General Wafiq Al Samarae, the former director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, admitted in his book Eastern Gate Ruins that Saddam’s regime used light chemical weapons against Iraqi people in the cities of Najaf and Karbala to crush the popular uprising of March 1991 which followed the defeat of Saddam after his invasion of Kuwait.
- After the crushing of the uprising, large number of people took sanctuary in the Marshes of Southern Iraq. In 1993 Saddam used chemical weapons against those hiding there in order to crush resistance.
Now tell me again that Bush or Blair are worse than Saddam…
If the Iraqi people were willing to die to get rid of Saddam, they’d overthrow him themselves. Usually in situations like this, the War Party trots out someone from Japan or Germany saying how glad they are that the US came and freed them.
Yes, but those people were the survivors. Its one thing to say a population is willing to take a risk to get rid of a bad government; its quite another to trot out a survivor who says he was willing, after the fact, to trade a fellow citizen’s life for his own freedom.
Besides, we count the Iraqi draftees killed as legit targets (and I’m certainly not going to fault an American soldier for shooting back), but if they were drafted and tossed into combat to fight off an invasion, in my mind they are civilian deaths when they get killed.
“If the German people wanted to get rid of Hitler, they’d overthrow him themselves” still doesn’t make it right for other countries to sit around watching German *Jewish* kids get gassed.
Morality goes deeper than state boundaries. Sometimes, it’s right to break into your neighbour’s house. Sometimes it’s even right to break into your neighbour’s house when he doesn’t want you to. If your neighbour has kidnapped some people and is torturing them in there, his property rights aren’t worth recognising.
And if he’s got bombs in there and you’ve got good reason to think he’s planning to take them out and use them on you (or give them to someone else who will), and you *still* don’t act…
Where the anti-war people go wrong is, they think that doing nothing makes them morally blameless. But sometimes, doing nothing is positively evil. “Not in my back yard”.
Saddam has done and threatened enough now. It’s time for him to go.
“If they haven’t done it yet, it shouldn’t be done.” That argument is amusingly self-sealing, in a scary kind of way.
Please delete all those damned pings. There’s something messed up there. MT kept giving me an error and trying to ping again whenever I made a correction — even when I told it not to try.
I’ve now turned off that auto-ping thingy.
And I apologize profusely and abjectly. (Also see Perry’s post).
I did link both posts, but the ping-spam was totally unintended!
Peace != the abscence of war. Sometimes war is peace.
Kathy, don’t worry. It happens with pings all the time. I deleted the multiple ones, but please do keep the auto-ping on, it’s a useful feature. Hope MT will fix the bug, or whatever it is, soon.
With what, exactly? Slingshots and rocks?
“If the Iraqi people were willing to die to get rid of Saddam, they’d overthrow him themselves.”
Rich. Ya see, having a real state terror apparatus as opposed to an imaginary one makes it quite likely that any effort to overthrow the regime will result in:
a) Your death is very, very likely.
b) The regime stays.
This is opposed to the case of US invasion, where:
a) Your death is on average not very likely at all.
b) The odds of the regime staying are very low indeed.
What one needs to realize is that the “Iraqi people” is not one homogenous entity, it is composed of millions of individuals, who are largely uncoordinated.
Any coordination outside of the state apparatus is ruthlessly crushed. Thus, the state apparatus rules. Historically, it is not the most tyrannical regimes that have been the most vulnarable to overthrow – rather it is those dictatorships that allow some parallel power structures that are in peril from popular revolt. Tyranny works – and it works mostly out of fear.
Of course, controlling all media, all schools, all political parties etc. helps a lot as well.
One interesting implication of your thesis is that we really don’t need free speech, elections, and other similar silly concepts. After all, the “will of the people” will automatically be manifested anyways, so why go through all the trouble?
“Yes, but those people were the survivors. Its one thing to say a population is willing to take a risk to get rid of a bad government”
The population doesn’t have a will. That’s a big part of the problem. Individuals have wills. If they cannot co-ordinate outside the party structure, there will be no alternate power structure, and hence no regime change.
Regards / GulGnu
-Stabil som fan!
“but if they were drafted and tossed into combat to fight off an invasion, in my mind they are civilian deaths when they get killed.”
Stacking the books already, eh? Well, let me help you a bit:
[Civilian deaths] * [Military deaths] * [Mammal deaths] * 10 + 2.000.000 (Chomsky coefficient) = “Civilian Deaths”.
There, should cut down on your workload.
Regards / GulGnu
-Stabil som fan!
What to say about “If the Iraqi people were willing to die to get rid of Saddam, they’d overthrow him themselves.”?
If the If the Afghan people were willing to die to get rid of the Taliban, they’d overthrow them themselves. Well, they were either unwilling or unable to do so, but considering the events of 9/11/2003, I don’t think that it was wise to rely on the Afghans to take care of bin Laden. And I don’t think that it is wise to rely on the wisom and experience of France and Germany now. Both have been bought off by Saddam. Both have shown a hideous willingness to trade Iraqi blood for oil and money.
No blood for oil? It’s already been swapped by our “allies.” We want to end it.
This silly argument, that criminals like Saddam are no threat to us now, so we should wait until they are, was idiocy in the 1930s, as now. It was also Bush41’s policy, the reason we didn’t go into Baghdad when we had Saddam on the run in 1991. It was his policy toward the Balkan genocides also. It had some rational basis long ago when there were other superpowers around, but not today.
We’ve seen over and over the results of appeasement, but it will always be the preferred solution of cowards and phony pols like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Jacques Chirac and Helmut Schroeder.
Did you hear about the guy in D.C. who was murdered at the gas station? The police and the media are all up in arms that nobody lifted a finger to help the victim; they just walked over his body and went in and out of the gas station.
I guess Scott C. would say “Hey, if you don’t want to be killed, overthrow your murderer. Nobody has a moral obligation to help you.”
It’s amazing that there are people who actively support despots like the mass-murdering Saddam.
“Peace != the abscence of war. Sometimes war is peace.”
hahaha… have you ever read 1984?
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY…
bla bla bla.
nice rhetoric
It’s funny that we can use phrases like the “Butcher of Baghdad”, but noone seems to remember the “Butchers of Beijing”. Given the traditional conservative impulse to reject so-called “moral relativity”, there sure does seem to be a lot of it going on when it comes to the Chinese government mowing down it’s citizens in Tiananmen Square. The moral argument that we must take Sadaam out because he’s a bad man is not a bad one, but don’t kid yourselves thinking that that’s the real reason we’re going into Iraq.
Re; “If the Iraqi people were willing to die to get rid of Saddam, they’d overthrow him themselves. ”
The “Just open your legs, lay back and enjoy it argument.” I never knew that all the people in all of historys death camps and gulags, actually liked it. Learn something every day.
As has already been pointed out, it takes organization and weapons to overthrow a brutal dictator. The reason brutal dictators stay in power is not because they are loved by their people (flag waving demonstrations to the contrary). They stay in power becasue they crush every avenue of dissent. And in the modern world, where weapons and technology are more efficient than ever at serving the interests of dictators, then the people do not have the means themselves of ridding themselves of such thugs.
That makes the moral imperative on each of us even greater to overthrow murderous madmen like Huessin. Why Huessin? Why now? Why not the Chinese. First, getting rid of Huessin serves greater strategic interests; second, through the UN process, we have some leverage to go to war with him; three, frankly, he’s not strong enough to resist us or do any real damage to his neighbors. If we attack North Korea, a million South Koreans will die; if we attack China, 100s of millions of Americans would die. If we take out Saddam, the light of freedom spreads just a little bit further and brings us one-step closer to the day when regimes such as his and in NK and China are unthinkable.
“The moral argument that we must take Sadaam out because he’s a bad man is not a bad one, but don’t kid yourselves thinking that that’s the real reason we’re going into Iraq.”
The “Saddam is naughty to his people” argument is part of the picture, true, but it’s not the whole argument. If he had been content to have a go at his own people, yes, he most likely would have been left all alone. (At least under a republican president. As Kosovo illustrates, that would not have been as certain under a Democrat, national sovreignty and the UN be damned.) As things stand, in addition to this, Mr. Hussein also has a love for foreign adventures, and a taste for very potent weapons, which he seems determined to obtain, despite the very large costs and risks to himself involved in flaunting a cease-fire agreement with the world’s most powerful country.
Regards / GulGnu
-Stabil som fan!
If we attack North Korea, a million South Koreans will die; if we attack China, 100s of millions of Americans would die. If we take out Saddam, the light of freedom spreads just a little bit further and brings us one-step closer to the day when regimes such as his and in NK and China are unthinkable.
Who said anything about attacking? We can’t even keep China from NOT getting permanent favored trade nation status. We can’t even ask for new sanctions against North Korea. Yeah, we’re going after Saddam because he’s weak, but the absence of any meaningful sanctions against other brutal regimes undermines your whole point. Nice rhetoric though, with the “light of freedom” phrase and all. Just kinda shallow when Ashcroft is doing his best here at home to implement a police state.
The Left smugly sit by the fireside warmed by the freedom of those who came before them. They issue platitudes and other nonsense while never addressing the horrors of Iraqi oppression. When confronted by the truth, they revert to ad hominems. When asked to act, they defer the issue, hoping that the failure to act will some how settle it.
I do not tire of the Left speaking out; I will never tire of their constant refrain; The Left are like French movies which promise sophistication addressing some deep human emotion but never come to a resolution. You always come out scratching your head asking what was the movie all about and hoping the French will never produce another.
This may be wishful thinking, but re: korea, here’s my plan:
If China opened her borders to N. Korean refugees and let people come in, N. Korea would be unpopulated in a matter of months. If the US paid China (like reimbursement for economic costs of refugees) to open the N. Korean border and not send people back, the N. Korean regime would be seriously weakened and hopefully collapse. It’s a good idea in any case.
This is not completely true, as south korea may already be allowing refugees ( I dunno) and the massive military presence may be what is keeping people from escaping. However, N. Korea prob would not be able to do the whole weird korean-chinese border. and in any case, it’d help.
discounting the political difficulty of doing this in China. I am woefully ignorant of such things.
Malex, read #10gi, he’s on hiatus, but there was some interesting stuff about Korea. He was stationed there and his wife is Korean.
Seems the SKs let the Chicoms know NKs were escaping and the Chicoms turned em back over to NK because that’s their agreement.
SK has very bloody hands in all this.
how do I get to #10gi?
*interprets SKs and NKs and Chicoms and such* ooh, that’s not good. not good at all. I’m amazed; I guess the deluded S. Korean – Jong Il (is that how you say his name for short?) friendship has gone pretty far.
Gabriel Syme’s eloquent –– both verbally and pictorially –– post scarcely requires any further comment. But those who think Iraqis haven’t tried to remove Saddam are utterly mistaken. There certainly have been. By his own generals, by the betrayed people of the South, etc. Such attempts have resulted in reprisals of the bloodiest kind, torture and execution. Saddam has had members of his own family killed for atempting to betray him.
he also possesses a vast security police system underpinned by a bureaucracy worthy of Hitler. And as anyone who has lived in a brutal police state can tell you, fear is a great recruting agent for spies. Self-policing soon sets in.
People who argue like this simply do not have any idea what they are talking about. Some kinds of ignorance, or strategic blindness, — like that displayed by ordinary Germans during Hitler’s rule — are in themselves criminal.
If the US attacks Iraq, they’ll probably win handily. And when they march into Bagdad, people will probably strew the tanks with flowers and dance in the streets. A number of people will have died; a number in the low thousands with any luck, and in the low hundreds of thousands at worst. And if history ended there, with the happy ending, then it would make little sense to oppose the Iraqi campaign proposed by the Bush Administration.
But history will not stop once the troops march into Bagdad. A government willing to ask sacrifices from its people and demand competence from its ministers might have a chance to build a stable democracy in place of the current Iraqi tyranny, but incompetent administration in Iraq will lead to failure.
Failure may well lead to catastrophe. If an American adminstrator treats a post-Saddam Iraqi government as a puppet, we can expect the Iraqis to tear it to pieces, the way they tore apart (literally) the government the British left behind. If the way Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle have addressed France and Germany offer Iraqi democrats a preview of the treatment they can expect, then the Bush policy will probably fail, giving rise to another tyrant, possibly a worse one.
The Bush administration has shown a lack of patience for a job which requires great patience, and no willingness to commit resources to a job which will require massive resources. The angry denunciation of protestors as allies or dupes of Saddam resembles the angry claims that drug agencies which resist laeitrile and other quack cures must like cancer. Decrying the disease only gets ud half way; the cure must at least leave the patient no worse off.
To correct the obvious cock-up in my post above: “There certainly have been” should read “There certainly have been attempts”.
BTW, Gabriel Syme’s post earned an Instapundit link. Nice one. Hope he site can stand the extra hits.
I guess you never read, “Under the Bombs”, written about, and through, the lives of people who lived in Germany in WW2. The Nazi Party kept a reign of terror to keep people from ‘negative attitudes’ and ‘defeatist talk’.
The Nazi’s had ‘flying death squads’ do summary executions of suspected traitors and, of course, anyone deemed unfit to live in the “Master Race’ society. Saddam is just the latiest re-incarnation of Hitler.
It’s time to get rid of Saddam. Here and now, before he becomes a real Hitler.
Doesn’t the US opposition think it’s a little more important to try to bring SOME stability to the world’s premier 100-B.C.-train-of-thought-with-2003-A.D.-weaponry region? And because this is would be an “unprovoked” attack, this is wrong? Okay, let me ask you this:
If your doctor said you had HIV, but you didn’t feel sick and because it’s such a terrible disease you didn’t want to believe it and the lack of symptoms subconsciously makes you believe you don’t; would this pretending you DON’T have it and NOT getting treatment cure you and prevent the potential that you could spread it to others? I think not.
Saddam is a pure bastard and he’s not going anywhere. To hesitate with “treatment” of this “disease” is to “let him spread the virus” – in other words, if the world bickers and looks weak over this, then other countries like his think, “Hey – they got away with having WMD. Let’s do that, too.” Of course, N. Korea’s already doing that. Either way, since when does the Western world negotiate with terrorists, since that’s essentially what Saddam is – he just has a UN-recognized state as a front.
I don’t know…I thought the whole idea behind NATO was that they had more balls than the UN. Now France and Germany stonewall what I believe is a very cooperative Turkey. Ridiculous…
Nice try, but opposing a given war is not support for the thug in charge.
No, its just [Draftee deaths] + [‘Civilian’ deaths]. Tossing Chomsky’s name in is just a straw man.
The jury is still out on the Afghans. The only reason their new leader is still alive is his US bodyguards.
If the Iraqis cannot overthrow Saddam because they lack guns, air drop guns.
You people remind me of Al “Global Warming” Gore. “We haaaaaaaave to give the State this power, something bad might happen if we don’t and we cannot take that risk.”
I guess Scott C. would say “Hey, if you don’t want to be killed, overthrow your murderer. Nobody has a moral obligation to help you.”
Either you support big government welfare programs or you are a heartless b@stard who would step over the body of a child starving in the street. Its the same argument – either support our government effort we claim will prevent X, or you are in favor of X. Oppose welfare? You want children to starve.
I’ve yet to hear an argument for this war from a supposed libertarian that isn’t word for word some socialist’s argument for his favorite big government power grab.
One interesting implication of your thesis is that we don’t really need free speech, elections, and other silly concepts, since the USGovt knows what’s best and can just go in and install it. If Bush knows what’s best for the average Iraqi, he knows what’s best for you.
Our wonderful governments should have let them emigrate instead of keeping them out, and trapped in Nazi Germany.
Government action contributes to negative outcomes, and negative outcomes justify government action to correct them.
Yes, these photos are tragic, as are all war photos. I think it’s shameful that you use them so sensationally, but I suppose that’s your best argument. Take a closer look…isn’t that an American made gun they are using on those poor people? Guns the like of which Ronald Regan supplied them with when he was in office to oust the Russians?
It’s politics, there are crimes against humanity going on all over the world…why do we choose to sensationalize Iraq? It’s the oil, stupid.
Yes, these photos are tragic, as are all war photos. I think it’s shameful that you use them so sensationally, but I suppose that’s your best argument. Take a closer look…isn’t that an American made gun they are using on those poor people? Guns the like of which Ronald Regan supplied them with when he was in office to oust the Russians?
It’s politics, there are crimes against humanity going on all over the world…why do we choose to sensationalize Iraq? It’s the oil, stupid.
Yes, these photos are tragic, as are all war photos. I think it’s shameful that you use them so sensationally, but I suppose that’s your best argument. Take a closer look…isn’t that an American made gun they are using on those poor people? Guns the like of which Ronald Regan supplied them with when he was in office to oust the Russians?
It’s politics, there are crimes against humanity going on all over the world…why do we choose to sensationalize Iraq? It’s the oil, stupid.
Does anyone find it interesting that Bush didn’t even mention Oil in his Press Chat last Thursday?
If you do a little research, you can learn that it really IS about oil, stupid. Sure, it’s about other stuff too, like Saddams’s violence against his people, and his non-compliance with the UN. But do you think we’d be attacking say, Yemen if they had some missiles they’re not supposed to and are mean to their people? No….no economic benefit there.
The problem is that a lot of leaders in the world can agree that Saddam needs to be removed from Iraqi control, but how it’s done and on what “official” basis is where there’s little agreement. Why NOT airdrop tons of guns for the Iraqi citizens, why not drop information, technology and resources to overthrow their government if that’s REALLY what they want….That would save a lot of American soldiers. My Iraqi penpal has been led to believe that Bush aims to attack Iraq to steal it’s oil. Unfortunately, I can’t tell him unequivocly that he’s wrong. What we can do is demand a less violent solution than war. Shit, if we’re talking about breaking treaties and resolutions and stuff, then why not just assinate him. If our CIA is as good as it is in movies, we should be able to make that look like an accident, and then we don’t have to wage a full scale attack.
In the end, the Iraqi people need to find a leader of their own (a nice one) and be in control of their own oil and it’s profits. There’s just so much more to say…….
let’s face it, he needs to go, his brainwashing and underhand tactics make him feel in power, yet even his own council are afraid and tell him only what he wants to hear?? madness as his barbaric ways result from his old fashioned attitude that violence is the key to upholding his stature.
Why do people insist on thinking this is about oil?!
1) We’re fixing to spend more money on a war than we could ever justify in the decreased price of oil. Yes, even if we steal all of the oil in Iraq.
2) Iraq doesn’t provide the U.S. with much oil. We are getting the vast majoity from Canana, Mexico and Venzuela at prices that are as low as is reasonable considering the trouble of production, transportation and refining. And believe me, it would be no harder to take any of these countries than to take Iraq.
3) In fact, Venzuela recently had a major uprising against their current leader. The ratio of people who wanted him gone versus people who still wanted him in charge was like 70%/15% with the remainder uncertain. The U.S. would have been hailed as a liberator and cheered in the streets if we had invaded that country.
This is NOT about oil. It’s about a vicious dictator who is aquiring WMD and has the willingness to use it against all of his enemies, ourselves included. America is not as interested in having colonies as you people seem to think! The oil is at most a bonus, assuming he doesn’t destroy the refineries and oil production wells so thoroughly that it costs more to rebuild them then they’ll ever make and that the people of Iraq are so greatful for their freedom that they give it all to us without a peep.
“And the people who knocked these buildings down, will hear us all, real soon”
“You are either with us, or with the terrorists”
“And the people who knocked these buildings down, will hear us all, real soon”
“You are either with us, or with the terrorists”
This is totally shocking and the more I read about this sick, evil and twisted dictator churns my stomach. I just can’t believe there is a single person on this planet that actually supports him, are they BLIND? or maybe just brain-washed with anti-US/UK propoganda?
The thing I find most interesting…
A minority of Americans, sit in their cozy chairs at night, thinking that the entire country is being ‘duped’ by polls that show the vast majority of Americans support the actions in Iraq.
Yea, I know EVERY media outlet is somehow being controlled by a Republican president…GET REAL!
I do NOT wish you (war opposers) to stop voicing your opinions…quite the contrary…but do so responsibly.
Realize that in fact, YOU may be the ones being duped. Left-Wing Hollywood, some Democratic leaders, and France and Germany are the sources for your knowledge on the region?! I’d suggest getting to know some people who have actually lived under these regimes…I have, and will stand by our governments decision…no matter the outcome.
I am so tired (although it seems to have slowed drastically) of hearing actors/producers/Hollywood Big-Wigs lamenting about the war, as if THEY are the majority of Americans…
So long, Saddam. It seems you have to go.
So long, Saddam. It seems you have to go.