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"The world is a better place with Saddam in Prison...."

  
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:21 / 08.10.04
I've heard this a lot from a great many politicians and their cronies, including that dude (I forget his name, apologies) who has categorically concluded (after spending just shy of $1billion...that's $1,000,000,000) that THERE ARE NO ABC WEAPONS IN IRAQ AND HAVEN'T BEEN SINCE 1991...nor did he have the capability to develop them to any significantly threatening level...only 'the intent to do so'...(last time I checked thought-crime wasn't covered by international law)...

They all say the same, dull mantra, and Tony is completely in love with it:
"The world is a better place with Saddam removed from power"

This completely fascinates and disgusts me in equal measure, and I'd love to know what is meant by it. For example, if you were a devoted family man, with wife and three kids, living and working in Iraq prior to your 'liberation', would the fact that you lived under the rule of a demented tyrant have seriously impacted on your day to day runnings? Sure, he's a crazy, evil bastard and you have to be careful what you say to who. But you have a job. You have a family. You have a home and runnning water and electricity and a good education.

Now that you are liberated, your legs have been blown off, your wife and all three children have been horribly killed in front of your very eyes, and your country is tearing itself apart into what is possibly shaping up to be a protracted Sunni/Shia/Kurdish civil war, not to mention the Western military problems, and all your best friends are dead. Over 10,000 of them. And this world, your world, (welcome to it!) is 'better' than the one you had before.

I don't get it.

Alternatively, you are a mum of two in the suburbs of London. You work in the City. Since Iraq was so thoughtfully liberated by your government, the ranks of moderate Islamists or peaceful politicized Muslims abandoning their middle ground in favour of radicalized militancy is exponentially increasing. The reasons for the fomentation of Islamic militancy, and millenarian apocalyptic ideology throughout the middle-east have been spectacularly perpetuated by your very own goverment. The likelihood of an act of attrition perpetrated to futher a campaign in a perceived cosmic war taking place while you are on a bus or on the tube seems to be resignedly accepted as 'when' rather than 'if'. And this world, the world in which dirty bombs are foiled by tabloid journalists and explosive belts are detonated in crowded, child filled shopping centres, is better than one you had before.

OK, sorry to harp on, but what the fuck is better about this world without Saddam Hussain in power, apart from the balance sheet at the reconstruction firms with the Iraq contracts?

I feel fucking sick.

I would love to ask Tony, as a Christian, if he would have his legs blown off, his sons decapitated, and his wife vapourized, if God sent him a vision that by doing so, and allowing it to pass, the woprld would be a 'better place'. Cunt.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
13:23 / 08.10.04
Depends whether or not the thread title is the exact quotation used. There's a difference between, "The world is a better place with Saddam in Prison...." which suggests that after everything done in order to achieve that position - all the lovely unleashing of doom you've mentioned above - the world is now a better place, and, "It's a good thing that Saddam is in prison."

One would need some fact-distortion of the scale of which the American media spin machine is capable in order to claim that the former makes any sense, but surely there're a few reasons why the latter isn't unreasonable? It's not too difficult to argue that Saddam wasn't exactly great for Iraq, even if its even easier to argue that the current alternative is considerably worse.
 
 
sleazenation
13:31 / 08.10.04
The quote that gives this thread its title is a quote from Tony Blair's speech at the Labour party conference two weeks ago...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:40 / 08.10.04
I doubt Ken Bigley's family would agree that the world has been transformed into Tellytubbyland now that Saddam is deposed.

In fact, anyone here notice any improvement at all in 'the world' since he was captured? Show them hands.

The notion that 'in the future' we'll all see what a great thing it was is offensive and specious to say the least.
 
 
ibis the being
16:24 / 08.10.04
One would need some fact-distortion of the scale of which the American media spin machine is capable in order to claim that the former makes any sense

I think the most frustrating thing is that they're not even bothering to put facts through the spin machine. Bush and Kerry alike have been saying "The world is better off" now that Saddam's been deposed, and it's one of those statements that, on the face of it, seems inarguable to most Americans. Without parsing the real-life consequences of the Iraq invasion, these politicians are making a sort of vague, generalized assertion akin to "the world is better off without Jeffrey Dahmer in it." Well, of course it is, in the most basic sense that evil is bad and murder is unacceptable in society. But you can't just make the logical leap to "so the way we rid the world of that bad thing was good." Did you get rid of Jeffrey Dahmer by convicting him in court and sentencing him to prison? Or did you get rid of him by firebombing his entire town and killing hundreds of people including Dahmer? I admit that's a wonky analogy, but what the pols are telling us is the answer to that is "it doesn't matter." When of course it does.

Did anyone see Fahrenheit 911? Some of the most shocking bits of footage in that, for me, were the scenes of everyday life in Iraq before we invaded. Families laughing and talking, people sitting at cafes, kids playing in the street. Was that not freedom? Are they more free now that they're living in total chaos and war? It's deeply confusing for people who were told we did this to "save" them.
 
 
Ganesh
22:45 / 08.10.04
Even if the central lie of the world now being a "better place" were even vaguely true, this'd have to be offset against the danger of introducing the precedent of pre-emptive attack (based on fuck-all evidence) with retrospective end/means justification. The fact that Blair's clinging to such crap even now only serves to diminish him further - if that's possible.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:10 / 08.10.04
What's particularly depressing is the way Blair's been trying to say, recently, that because he * believed * going to war with Iraq over the head of it's WMDs was the right thing to do, this should in some sense justify his ( being charitable, ) apparent inability to do the job that's just bought him a house worth three million quid. His beliefs in this case are simply not relevant - he either lied or he's incompetant, and either way, he should go. To where I personally * believe * he'll a pitchfork shoved up his arse by a leering Satan for the rest of eternity, if there's any justice.
 
 
Ganesh
23:15 / 08.10.04
Well, quite. We're apparently supposed to suspend all critical considerations in the face of Tony's 'belief'.
 
 
PatrickMM
01:44 / 11.10.04
I'd say it probably is better for the world as a whole that Sadaam is out of power, but what bothers me is people saying this somehow justifies thounsands of people dying, and the whole country being thrown into disorder. This is like saying, well, I guess the 3,000 people who died on 9/11 were worth it, since it led to us getting rid of Sadaam.
 
 
sleazenation
08:49 / 11.10.04
Come on PatrickMM, like it says in the abstract, lets unpack the idea, or at least examine it slightly, before blindly repeating it. In what ways was he a threat to nations other than his own?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
09:22 / 11.10.04
Great - a hand! As above, I'd be really interested to know what you actually mean, 'better as a whole'.

Not snarking, I'm genuninely intrigued by what is meant when you say this.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:18 / 11.10.04
Well, OK - how about this? Although the headline for Barbelith is that there were no WMDs, the report also says that Saddam apparently wanted to restart the WMD programme at the end of sanctions. Further, the Oil for Food programme had been severely compromised, and was not only providing Saddam with significant amounts of cash but also allowing him to set up relationships with which to bribe and corrupt officials, who could therefore have been compromised and used to support a future effort by Iraq to develop WMDs, which would in turn have lead to destabilisation in the Middle East and the greater availability of WMDs elsewhere.

A government that owes its existence to US military action might therefore decide that it cannot afford even to give that impression that it may *want* to develop WMDs, much less try to do so. This may in turn give countries like Iran pause - since they know that, although the US may be failing to take action in North Korea, they already *have* an effective deterrent, whereas Iran could possibly be forcibly prevented from achieving one. So, nuclear proliferation (in particular) is retarded, although of course this has its own effect on the presence of a nuclear state in Israel.

It's a stretch, but it's a start...
 
 
PatrickMM
15:44 / 11.10.04
Ok, Sadaam was a dictator, who didn't allow his people to speak out against the government. He had a history or provoking wars with his neighbors, and was prone to imprisoning and torturing people with no apparent reason. He was also a ruler who had been in a war against the United States, and hence was a perceived enemy of the US.

So, who is it better for? In some ways, it's better for the US. We don't have the question mark of Sadaam, and the potential danger he poses. In some ways it's better for the Iraqi people, in theory, they should have a democracy eventually.

However, in practice, it seems like the chaos created by overthrowing Sadaam is more dangerous than Sadaam himself, and the Americans lost in the war are certainly more than he would have ever killed directly. So, it's definitely better in theory, and probably in the long term, for both US and Iraqis, but that all depends on whether the Iraqi democracy works and is a strong government. If it doesn't, and the whole society collapses, everyone's going to be wishing Sadaam was back.
 
 
Ganesh
16:12 / 11.10.04
Ok, Sadaam was a dictator, who didn't allow his people to speak out against the government. He had a history or provoking wars with his neighbors, and was prone to imprisoning and torturing people with no apparent reason. He was also a ruler who had been in a war against the United States, and hence was a perceived enemy of the US.

No prizes for spotting the one phrase within this paragraph that comes even vaguely close to being pertinent to Bush's decision to bomb Iraq. Clue: it's also the phrase least applicable to the US under Bush.

I think Haus's Mr Fantastic reasoning comes closest to a logical case for Saddam's '10 minutes then we shoot' removal - and it really is a stretch. Arguably, his relatively secular dictatorship, and readiness to sell oil to pretty much anyone, served to (weakly) stabilise the Middle East, albeit at considerable cost to his own people. Hell, if I were Iran, I'd be working my bottom off to develop nuclear capability now, while everyone's busy trying to contain Iraq...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:13 / 12.10.04
Well, that *is* the problem. Iran must suspect that, once the manpower taken up in Iraq can be shifted, it's next. So it either goes for total compliance or it races to develop enough of a nuclear deterrent that the USA does not want to risk an invasion. Problem with that being that Israel is likely to want to get involved at that point, even if the US can't, and can now effectively hold the US to ransom - stating that if they do not take action, Israel *will*, which will quite possibly create a shooting war across the Middle East which US forces in Iraq will be stuck in the middle of. I think it would take a stronger and better leader than Bush to take a hard line at that point.

OK, how about... although Iraqis are still being arrested without charge, held without trial and tortured, this is intended as a transitional phase before the country can be pacified? So, you know, at least it is recognised as an abnormal state, rather than the status quo it was under Saddam... s-t-r-e-t-c-h...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
07:31 / 12.10.04
The problem with that is whether or not the Iraqi people can be unified in anything except their growing resentment of the West in general...The Shia and Sunni population are not going to gvet along any time soon, and the Kurds are looking for autonomy as well...

The only way to unite them all seems to be to impose a Western backed and manipulated government upon them...the snag being that that actually unites them against 'us'. So it's either fractured civil war state, maybe even dragging Turkey along for the Kurds, or 'Death to America' yet again.

While the point about the debvelopment of nuclear capability in Iran is relevant, the root problem in the region strikes me as being the state and privately sponsored dissemination of radical Wahhabism...This is the foundation ('al-Qaeda', funnily enough) of most radical militancy within Islam, and is something which no army invading Iraq or Afghanistan or even Iran, Syria or Jordan, is doing anything to stem or curtail. In fact, the exact opposite is most likely the case.

Putting an early stop to Iranian nuclear capability hardly seems to be balanced by the means which is probably spreading militancy throughout the region like nothing else.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
09:24 / 12.10.04
In some ways it's better for the Iraqi people, in theory, they should have a democracy eventually.

And were they ever polled to check that they actually wanted or required or were prepared to make the necessary cultural and ideological shifts to actually establish one?

The whole notion of 'modernisation' being inflicted upon 'the world' by 'progressive' governments really does smack of Judaeo-Christian mythology, and I can completely understand why alternative ideologies have a thorn up their ass about it...This whole notion of progress towards a Utopian future, heaven on Earth, democracy everywhere, it hits a bit of a bump in the road when the nations upon which it is being 'encouraged' are populated by fractious tribal and ideological loyalties which really don't particularly see eye-to-eye. Example : for all the noise made about the plight of Palestinians by commentators on the Middle East, from my (admittedly limited) experience of Saudi people (my brother lived there for 7 years, I've met a fair cross section of Saudi's and other sunni muslim ex-pats working and living around Riyadh) many of them wouldn't piss on a Palestinian if they were on fire. They are considered about the same quality of being as sewer rats by the tribal allegiances which run way back through their history. The notion of an 'Iraqi people' is informed by far more than geography, and the one factor which did previously give some coherence to the population has now been 'removed'. In the absence of a demented dictator ruling a secular nation, the people are suddenly warring amongst themselves for ideological as well as political control of their country - Shia, Sunni and Kurd. It's a fine bloody mess and no mistake.

It's all well and good preventing Iran from going nuclear, but if the global population of embittered, apocalyptic militants with a grudge to bear against all other ideological positions is multiplied beyond all containment, then the world is not, by my reckoning, any safer or better or improved whatsoever. It's like a Tom and Jerry bump on the head, you push it down and it pops up somewhere else, out of sight, ad infinitum. I don't see the current conflicts as doing anything at all to address the reasons for and methods of dealing with extreme religious militancy. And that, after all, is really what lead to all this shit in the first place.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
10:53 / 12.10.04
bush loses ibis Did anyone see Fahrenheit 911? Some of the most shocking bits of footage in that, for me, were the scenes of everyday life in Iraq before we invaded. Families laughing and talking, people sitting at cafes, kids playing in the street. Was that not freedom? Are they more free now that they're living in total chaos and war? It's deeply confusing for people who were told we did this to "save" them.

But no-one would say that Iraq was particularly nice pre-Saddam and Moore's milk and honey depiction was the most annoying thing in the film because he was laying himself wide open to scorn. Saddam DID have a reign of terror, there were secret police taking people away, his sons killed with impunity. PLUS UN sanctions meant there was little food or medicine. Amnesty's reports for the 90s make depressing reading. The lie is that it's somehow better to be shot by an Allied bullet as a citizen of a state not run by Saddam than it was to be killed by an Iraqi bullet in a state he did run.
 
 
ibis the being
14:26 / 12.10.04
Well, true - it's typical for Moore to exaggerate and I should have elaborated on my thought. I don't believe Iraq was like suburban Connecticut under Saddam, but at least there was some normalcy and daily life and peace, as opposed to now when there's war and ruin everywhere. The question was, how is anything better with Saddam in prison? Iraq may have been rife with human rights violations before, but it's total chaos now - that's not "better" by any standard I can think of.
 
  
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