One common mistake that people make, especially dumb-ass lefty hippies, is to confuse support of a nation or regime in a certain action with being “friends”. For example, ol’ Saddam was never a friend of the US. For most of the 1980s, he was fighting a war against Iran, which was an active enemy of the US, so we supported him, just like we supported the mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets. In both cases, those that we supported eventually turned on us, but that was primarily because we were never friends; we just had a common enemy. Now, a case could be made that we have no business trying to engage in such international manipulations, but it is only the naive who think that these twists and turns of international partnerships are in anyway the result of personal feelings for anyone. It’s just business.
In the 1980’s the United States funded Iraq’s Saddam Hussein yet considered Palestine’s Yasser Arafat and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi terrorists. And they were. But so was Saddam, who at that time was terrorizing his own people, gassing Iraqi Kurds while receiving America’s financial and political support.
Jack Hunter conveniently leaves out key information. In the 1978, Ayatollah Komani had overthrown the Shah and taken hostage the occupants of the American Embassy. That was under Jimmy Carter who completely abandoned our friend, the Shah, and that led to the present regime. When Reagan came into office Komani knew what was best for him and released the hostages.
When Iran went to war with Iraq it was with that background. We didn't ant I ran to keep expanding after kicking out our friend the Shah. Our support of Iraq was minimal, about 2% of his military needs.
In the 1990’s, the US declared Hussein a menace and we apparently changed our mind about Arafat, who was even invited to the White House to shake hands with Bill Clinton.
More key information omitted. In 1990, Saddam invaded and occupied Kuwait. In 1991, GHW Bush kicked him out but left him in power, expecting his own people to overthrow him. Unfortunately for the Iraqis, Swartzkof allowed Saddam to keep his helicopter gunships and he used them to suppress his own people.
Bill Clinton is another story. Carter, Clinton, and now Obama all seem to favor the terrorists over the USA. Clinton even invaded the Balkans to support the Muslims. Why didn't Hunter mention that?
In the 2000’s George W. Bush went back to calling Arafat a terrorist, went to war with Saddam, who we also began calling a terrorist, ...
Bush was simply reversing the Clinton policy of sucking up to the terrorists and started calling them what they were. He went to war with Saddam because Saddam refused to obey the ceasefire agreement he signed with GHW Bush, had interfered with and then expelled the WMD inspectors the UN sent to see if he was complying with his agreement to destroy them. After Saddam ignored 17 UN resolutions Bush decided that someone had to enforce those resolutions and if the UN wasn't then he would.
... but made amends with Gaddafi by taking Libya off our official list of state sponsors of terror and sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to shake Gaddafi’s hand.
After Gaddafi saw what we did to Saddam he decided we were serious, that there was a new Sheriff in town, one much like Reagan, so he voluntarily ended his nuclear weapons program. That is why he was removed from the list and congratulated.
When you leave out so much key information it makes it easy to make America seem like a flip flopper. However, the flip flopping was always caused by alternating Republican and Democrat administrations and the differing world views of each. The Democrats are Communist who consider the USA their enemy and the Muslims their friends.
I expected better from someone writing for The American Thinker.