stating aggression of Saddam Hussein, was limited. Syria was—let’s give Baker his due—”on side.” The Iraqi Baathists were demoralized by the sheer speed and ignominy of their eviction from Kuwait and completely isolated even from their usual protectors in Moscow, Paris, and Beijing. There would never have been a better opportunity to “address the root cause” and to remove a dictator who was a permanent menace to his subjects, his neighbors, and the world beyond. Instead, he was shamefully confirmed in power and a miserable 12-year period of sanctions helped him to enrich himself and to create the immiserated, uneducated, unemployed underclass that is now one of the “root causes” of a new social breakdown in Iraq. It seems a bit much that the man principally responsible for all this should be so pleased with himself and that he should be hailed on all sides as the very model of the statesmanship we now need.
the Last Guy We Should Listen To About Iraq
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“There would never have been a better opportunity to “address the root cause” and to remove a dictator who was a permanent menace to his subjects…”
I like Hitchens, but he is really wrong here. If I remember that recent history correctly, the aims of the war were very limited, and they never included removing Sadam. Doing so would have turned the backing of the war into a giant lie. The coalition of the time was right to defeat Sadam, and then leave him alone. -
If he had been removed then, it would have predated the modern jihadist threat, although with Baker etc about, one wonders what the regime would have been changed to.
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If only … Well with hindsight it might have been better, but to carry on to Baghdad in 1991 would have been illegal (and had the stoppers up in arms) and fractured the coalition. With all those troops in Saudi, it was neccessary to keep the Saudis sweet, or you might have a slight logistics problem.
With hindsight, all that was necessary was to forbid all air movements by the Iraqis, including helicopters. All but three Iraqi states were in open revolt soon after Bush’s “rise up” speech, and without their helicopters, the Baathists would probably have lost. OK, Iraq may have split into three, but it would not have had NATO forces tied down like we have now, there would have been no need for sanctions, and there could be no accusations of Crusader opression.
I generally agree with Hitchens, but seem to remember him opposing the Kuwait War, n’est ce pas?
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