Actually we should remember that Saddam Hussein practically asked permission to invade Kuwait and April Glaspie told him, “[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.’ The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did.”
From http://www.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/08/wikiileaks_april_glaspie_and_saddam_hussein
I couldn’t wait for us to kill Hussein after 9/11 but as horrible as he and his psycho sons were, what he kept down was what we’re seeing now. Back then I recognized that he was a counter-balance to Iran, but I didn’t have any idea that there were worse actors than Hussein and Khomeini.
Can’t quite bring myself to say that people were better off under that vicious psycho but I wonder what the non-ISIS folks would say now—especially the Christians and others who saw their children cut in half before they themselves were sold into slavery or butchered like their children.
Probably the mistake was giving them a democracy where Islamists could win... OTOH I don’t think we want to have to permanently occupy the sandbox.
It’s a filthy mess and has been for well over a millennium.
My desire to kill Hussein goes back farther. As one who was deployed during the 90’s to enforce the No-Fly Zone, which Hussein AGREED to in 1991, which he then proceeded to violate numerous times, I had to eventually wonder why we were playing the straight man to him, while he toyed with us, and we did nothing.
We did pound anti-aircraft batteries and radar sites with precision. And if it flied, it died. However, we were going after the wrong targets; they were peripheral to the entire game. We should have re-aimed everything at his palaces. We certainly could have been just as effective. We didn’t need to invade Iraq, just kill Hussein. If another baddass wanted to take us on after him, kill him too. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Middle-East hellholes don’t deserve our boots on the ground. Not a single soldier or marine should have to die in the sand. Instead, just reach out and touch someone, courtesy of the USAF and Navy. I am pro-bombing bad guys; against occupying their cesspool nations.
One other target. It is a known fact that various mullahs and imams; so-called Islamic religious leaders, are constantly rabble-rousing and issuing fatwas against us and other various crimes against humanity. I think they should get the MQ-9 Reaper/Hellfire treatment at every opportunity. More so than most dumbass tin horn dictator, actually.
Thanks for the link. That’s really interesting.