I think the whole objective was to provide a stable, secular, non-terrorist supporting state in the ME. Don’t forget that, in practice, Saddam did depict himself as an Islamic warrior, although it was mostly for eye-appeal and the rights of minorities, as long as they didn’t give him any trouble, were more or less protected.
However, I think it’s pretty undeniable that he was involved in encouraging terrorism elsewhere - Iraq’s well-trained special secret forces were known for turning up involved in seemingly non-Iraq related incidents. And there is also the fact that he and Bush had an antagonistic history that went back decades. I have always thought that Saddam was probably behind the OKC bombing; don’t forget that one of the first people sought, until the story was sanitized, was an Iraqi based in Germany who was known to be an Iraqi government terrorist operative. This certainly would have given a lot of personal motivation to Bush to go after Iraq.
However, the big problem was that we did the usual, winning the war but losing the peace. When Japan and Germany were occupied, it was a very strictly enforced and also long-lasting occupation that gave those countries time to restructure themselves to become modern states. On the other hand, because Bush (probably at the urging of the Saudis) was terrified of offending Muslims, he never let the occupation government in Iraq impose the strict governance that would have been required. And in fact, by letting Iraq enshrine Islam in its constitution (something he did not have to do and originally was not going to permit), he guaranteed that it would never become a functional modern state.
So when the Muslim Princeling took office, everything was ready-made for him to revert it back almost immediately to a primitive Muslim terrorist hell-hole, his favorite kind of “state.”
the best analysis , well written and to the point.This is accurate.Its easy now to blame Bush..the Blame belongs to Obama...Iraq was VN redo..we win the war and sell out the peace. Just so depressing and disgusting.
If that were the case, then how did the U.S. ever allow the Iraqi government to draft a new constitution in which Islam is established as the official state religion?
"War on Terror," my @ss.