Nobody is “pimping for dictators.” Saddam was a dictator, but he wasn’t an Islamist any more than it suited him. He favored his own type of Islam, and he liked to dress up and pretend he was a new Saladin (big Muzzie hero) but Christians were generally left alone. Since they were generally the most educated, most commercially adept, etc. he used many of them in his regime.
That is not to defend him. He obviously had his own reasons for doing this and they weren’t charitable. However, the big problem is that we let the post-Saddam Muslims enshrine sharia in the Iraqi constitution - we could have and should have prevented that.
Bush was terrified of offending the Muslims. I think he intended originally to go for the two somewhat secular states, Iraq and Syria, then take out Iran, but of course the left’s attacks on him over Iraq made that impossible. What he should have done, IMHO, was wipe Saudi Arabia off the map, taking Mecca with it, and the whole problem would have been solved. But that’s never going to happen (even aside from the fact that we have a Muslim in the White House at the moment).
