>>>”He wasn’t advancing the jihad or the Caliphate, he wasn’t an Islamist.”
If those are your three criteria, Arrafat, Bin Laden, Khomeni, Hamas and Hezbollah fail to meet all of them. Saddamist Ba’athism was marxist with the goal of a unified Arab state. Secular, but so was Hitler and Stalin.
Maybe we can agree that:
Saddam was a genocidal mass murdering dictator hell-bound on dominating all that he could without conscience in what means for weapons used. And, that praising him as an anti-terrorist (or as anything else), is wrong and definitely not a good position for presidential candidate to take.
Thanks very much for your reply.
Arafat and Saddam were both secularist. Bin Laden and Khomeini were both Islamists of different flavors, Bin Laden being Wahhabi Sunni and Khomeini Shia. Hezbollah are Shia Islamist affiliated with Iran. Hamas is Sunni Islamist.
‘Saddam was a genocidal mass murdering dictator hell-bound on dominating all that he could without conscience in what means for weapons used.’
Well his hero was Joe Stalin, so that pretty much fits your description of Saddam.