"Long live Saddam!"
American tanks roll to victory in Iraq.From: "Anshul" (sultan@clear.net.nz)Dear Anshul,
To: "Richard Geib" (cybrgbl@deltanet.com)
Subject: saddam hussein
Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 00:49:02 +1200I am an Indian and have lived in Iraq for 8 years from 1980 - 1988. My experiences of Iraq were excellent. I think Saddam is a very good man. He is the best leader on this planet, better than any of the american presidents definitely.
Look at him, its a shame for US, he still stands there bravely after all you americans have done to that beautiful country. A person who has escaped the death sentence is never scared of anything and saddam is that type. My brother now 12 years old was born in Iraq in 1985, if you are familiar with Baghdad then he was born in medical city, the best hospital I have seen in the world.
I agree Saddam is to blame for the Gulf war but look at his good points. He has developed iraq from a junkyard to a powerful country and you americans have no right to destroy him or that country.
I do not agree with the Iraqi point of view for Saddam. My father has worked for one of his Military Technical Colleges in Baghdad, our army friends never had any problems, everybody looke contented and happy. Its because of americans that this planet can never have peace.
My address is sultan@clear.net.nz
Do reply
Long live Saddam
Anshul
I read your e-mail with great interest. It is not everyday one reads the defense of a man the historical record confirms as an utter knave - a scoundrel who stands out even in an age where tyrants and tyranny are all too common.
Let's take a look at some of Saddam Hussein's more notorious actions in almost 20 years as the head of a police state: his use of chemical weapons against his own people, oppression and slaughter of ethnic Kurds, invasion of neighboring Iran in a bitter war lasting 8 years, invasion and destruction of neighboring Kuwait, starting hundreds of oil fires in Kuwait and unleashing millions of barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf in a major man-made ecological disaster, launching missile strikes against Israel and Saudi Arabia, embarking on a suicidal war against an international coalition headed by the United States and defying the United Nations ever since... The facts speak for themselves. They hardly need repeating.
You claim that Hussein has his "good points" and has "developed iraq from a junkyard to a powerful country." I would argue that sitting on top of so many oil reserves people should ask why Iraq today is not more developed! Perhaps if Saddam Hussein had not spent so many billions of dollars on military hardware and had not led his country into so many disastrous foreign wars, Iraq would be something other than the crushingly impoverished country that it is today where children and the elderly die for lack of the basic necessities. The United Nation's sanctions placed upon Iraq many years ago are a direct result of Hussein's malfeances. Think about what Iraq with so much oil money might have been if that country had had a more enlightened and less despotic leader than Saddam Hussein!
Unfortunately, it is the Iraqi people (and not Hussein himself!) who pay for their leader's crimes. Ordinary people in Iraq by the millions might starve or lose their lives in wars, but you just know Hussein eats well and lives in relative security surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards. Only if we could just take Hussein behind the woodshed and give him the good thrashing he deserves! Alas, international relations don't work that way. The best anyone can do is place sanctions on his country.
You make the Persian Gulf War look like a simple mistake made by a man whose career was filled with other positive acts. Is it not closer to the truth that the Gulf War was the crowning star in a constellation of other ignominious acts on behalf of Saddam Hussein throughout his career? Is the Gulf War the exception, or is it the purest example of the malevolence of Saddam Hussein? -- look at how he offered 100,000 of his own people up on the alter of his own Pride! The Persian Gulf War a mistake or miscalculation on behalf of the United Nations? Let stand the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, allow the concentration of one fifth of the world's oil reserves in the hands of that megalomaniac Hussein, and watch his program to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons progress? That would have been good for the world? Are you daft?
Anshul, your reasoning makes me wonder if in the name of ethnic nationalism, religious prejudice, anti-Americanism - whatever - a fellow cannot convince himself that an apple is really an orange.
Very Truly Yours,
Richard Geib
P.S. I wonder if the average man on the street in Kuwait City would agree with you that America is the enemy of peace.
P.P.S. Don't forget that the United States was just one member of an international force authorized by the United Nations during the Gulf War which included Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Honduras, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
At 03:33 AM 4/29/99 -0500, you wrote:
hello,
i am responding to you iraq page--the one in which you refuted an email from a man named "anshul (sp?)." although i was not impressed with his comments towards you, i was impelled by your response to inquire about several things.
first off, i should say that i do subscribe to many of your beliefs and feelings about the entire kuwait incident. however, i was quite perplexed about some of your statements--your comment about how iraq could be so under-developed with such a substantial amount of oil.
to begin, i should admit to you that i am not american. i was born in lebanon and raised in france--my father is lebanese and my mother belgian. nor was i in this country at the time of the gulf war. i have just recently came here to finish my doctorate in history.
your oil comment perplexed me in many ways. i am trying to word this as pleasant as possible, so please do not let this informal medium construe my words. to begin, oil was but one of the many reasons saddam invaded kuwait. if you are familiar with how iraq was compiled, by great britain, from different tribes, then you could see the territorial claims he makes of kuwait--actually, geographically speaking, it is, technically, a part of the basra province--one of the many fused to make modern-day iraq.
the oil claim saddam was making was directed to a violation of opec stipulations. kuwait was overproducing, therefore dropping the prices at which iraq could sell their oil. after proceeding with complaints through formal channels, kuwait ceased; however, kuwait later reneged and proceeded to overproduce, taking in more money for themselves.
in regards to your question about iraqi oil production, i think you should look at a map. iraq only possesses 36 square miles of coast! compared to kuwait, it is assanine! therefore, iraq is forced to be dependent on pipeline transport via either saudi arabia or turkey. though i am not an oil guru, the downside to this method of extraction and transport are clearly evident.
i found the rest of your retort very interesting--i did like it. i think mr. "anshul (sp?)" had a lot to say, but was not able to find the words to express his feeling--it gave people indigenous to the area a bad stereotype.
i also wanted to inquire about your list of "actions" that mr. hussein has committed. although the list is by all means deplorable, i think you should admit that the u.s.'s list is of tantamount proportion! the only ostensible difference is that the u.s. is the only country that exhausts itself trying to hide and deny the evil it does. i.e.--not only does the u.s. have the cia inside the u.s. to do its dirty work, it also creates abroad cia's, like SAVAK in iran under the shah--which the u.s. erected under a coup.
lastly, your list of other countries committed to the gulf war struck me as odd. even though you can call the u.n. and n.a.t.o. "international" organizations, you need to assess them in a democratic light. since the end of the cold war, or better yet, 1945, the u.s. has been without real contention for global domination and power--in the middle east and elsewhere. when you are the strongest, fastest, wealthiest, etc..., people will cede to you for many reasons--they will fear not only your wrath, but your clout in swaying the voting opinion of others. i.e.--anwar sadat having his "international monetary fund" loan denied, all because the u.s. was upset with him for not overtly accepting their aid--how dare he want to build his country on arab nationalism, and even more absurd, without imperialistic help!
therefore, you can not honestly say that those international organizations are equal. look at the event in kosovo. whose troops, $$$, time, effort, and all around resources are being used? if china abstends and russia walks out of a meeting, do you think it matters to the u.s.? why would it? it don't need them for anything...!
oh yes, before i conclude, i was curious how versed you are on the iran-iraq war? if you know your facts, then you will realize that the u.s. virutally created hussein in the 1980s--all in the attempt to stem the islamic revolution brewing in iran. after the u.s. achieved their objective, they exploited hussein until he was no longer a threat--ironically enough, the u.s. even abandoned hussein mid-war and began helping iran--the entire irancontra affair.
anyhow, that is basically it. please feel free to respond.
sincere thanks,
stephen tragarz :)
Dear Stephen,
As for the Iran-Iraq War, I thought similarly to Harry Truman who as a senator commented thusly about the Nazis and Soviets going for each other's jugular in 1940: "Let's help the Russians when the Germans are winning and the Germans when the Russians are winning. So each may kill off as many as possible of the other." Hussein was firmly in power long before the revolution in Iran or the Iran-Iraq fracas in the 1980s; his power and influence had long been growing with petrodollars until finally he got too big for his britches. Hussein finally crossed the Saudis and the main line of world power in the region and then he paid the consequences. (Or rather, tons of his suffering people getting the crap blown out of them paid the consequences. I am sure today Hussein as we speak lives in the lap of luxury surrounded by bodyguards while his people languish in the most ugly penury because of his rule.) A vigorous power politician who seeks to crush his opponents internally and externally, Hussein finally learned the truth himself of Thucydides' law: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." Seeking to squash Kuwait, he himself got squashed! How ironic! I am glad my country was tutor to Hussein in that hard lesson.
I look at the government of Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini and honestly cannot decide which is more loathsome. What a depressing area of the earth! I don't believe the U.S. government had as much control over Hussein then or now as you claim. The United States will reach temporary agreements of convenience with sons-of-bitches like Hussein, but he is out for himself and Uncle Sam knows that. It was no different with the Shah. The Israelis, Assad in Syria, Hussein in Iraq, Quadaffi in Libya, Khameni in Iran... what a nest of vipers! I feel sorry for the decent people who must live under those regimes -- with nary a hope for a better future anywhere in those cultures. Secular dictators like Assad or Hussein a deadly virus, the Imams and religious fanatics a cancer, and half-way decent men like Hussein of Jordan or Mubarak of Egypt never far from being assassinated... it is enough to make one despair. The Middle East clearly seems a place where a decent person can easily be caught between a rock and a hard place. A rough neighborhood.
I expect that when the oil finally dries up or we find some better form of energy the region will become as underdeveloped and ignored as Africa. Most of the regimes in the Middle East are living on borrowed time with oil and importing ambivalently modernity when they need it from Europe and the United States. The Muslim world during the European "Dark Ages" was a place of great learning, dynamic innovation, and successful social organization. But the Middle East both today and for many centuries had produced no cutting-edge technology, military hardware, political ideas, or scientific discoveries of note. The region boasts not one world class university; it sends, rather, its best and brightest to Europe or the United States to be educated. The Middle East is not, in the main, growing mature civil societies able to thrive in the global economy without hired foreign experts - military (soldiers) and civilian (engineers, software coders). There is orthodoxy. There is little rule of law and weak civil societies. There is little democracy and even less legal protection from the state. The saddest fact of all is that there seems no light at the end of the tunnel, as one descries no curative balm on the horizon which if applied would remedy these weaknesses.
You will most likely blame the United States (and that bogeyman, the CIA!) for this lamentable state of affairs in the Middle East. You are right in so far as America deals with and supports repressive regimes far, far from the liberal democratic mainstream as found in the developed countries of the Euro-Atlantic alliance. On the other hand, I see no better option anywhere on the horizon in terms of potential future governments in the Middle East. (If you have to choose between the Shah Pahlavi and the Ayatollah Khomeini, you are stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire!) The Islamic world has long been in decline and this shows no sign of changing today or tomorrow -- the ummah flapping painfully between centuries of yesterday's tradition and the demands of today's world. How sad! And this painful state of affairs is 20 times more relevant than any misdeeds by Uncle Sam to the reality of widespread repression and violence in the Middle East today. Khomeini and like-minded fundamentalists have shown that their retro vision of Islam as a theocracy can propose workable solutions to the questions of morality, identity, meaning, and faith in the Muslim world. They have had far less luck curing the crises of social injustice, political repression, economic backwardness, and military weakness. Secular dictators in the Middle East like Hussein and Assad come across no better in their aping of the worst aspects of modern Western nation-states.
An important reason why the United States is the most powerful and prosperous country in the world is because it is pragmatic and gets things done. America hardly looks backwards while focusing on the future. The Middle East, on the other hand, seems in so many places to stumble forwards as it looks fixedly backwards. The results are tangible.
I trust this message finds you well.
Very Truly Yours,
Richard Geib
