'What if Iraq Had Not Been Liberated?'
By Aaron Goldstein (03/21/07)
Four years have passed since troops from the United States, Great Britain and several other countries liberated Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein.
Of course, things have not gone as planned. In war they seldom do. The euphoria that surrounded Saddam’s fall gave way to anarchy and disorder. There is little doubt that Iraqis still live a perilous existence be it at the hands of al Qaeda or Shiite militias supported by Iran.
But let us not be under any illusions that if only George W. Bush had not invaded Iraq it would have been a kite flying oasis with rainbow colored skies and chocolate flowing rivers. Yet it is worth asking what life in Iraq would be like if the United States and Coalition troops had not taken it upon itself to remove Saddam Hussein.
To start with Saddam Hussein would be alive, well and living in his choice of dozens of Presidential palaces.
The world would continue to wonder if Saddam would continue to pursue weapons of mass destruction. Saddam would have continued to play cat and mouse with United Nations weapons inspectors and circumvented them at every turn. The world would have every reason to believe that he possessed WMDs or was capable of assembling them in short order. The UN Security Council would continue to pass countless resolutions condemning him for violations of the Gulf War Ceasefire. In a manner reminiscent of Team America: World Police these resolutions would be complete with Hans Blix handing Saddam a letter from the Security Council telling him that they were very, very angry with him. And Saddam would have simply continued to ignore these edicts.
There is little doubt that U.S. Air Force and the British Royal Air Force would have continued to enforce the no fly zone policy to protect the Kurds in the North and the Shiites in the South from Saddam’s periodic aerial attacks on these populations.
Abu Ghraib would have remained open under old management. And believe me it would have been far more brutal than what was meted out by a handful of rogue American soldiers who were ultimately held responsible and punished for their actions. Thousands of Iraqi political prisoners, mostly Shiite, were executed inside the walls of Abu Ghraib. Excluding its eight year war with Iran, Saddam’s regime was responsible for over 100,000 civilian deaths including chemical attacks that killed 5,000 Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988. It cannot be emphasized enough that Saddam gassed his own people. In all, it is estimated that up to 600,000 civilians perished under Saddam’s nasty and brutish regime. No doubt that count would have climbed considerably had he remained in power.
Saddam would have undoubtedly continued to give safe harbor to terrorists. When the late al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was wounded in Afghanistan in 2002 he headed straight for Baghdad. Saddam also provided safe haven to both Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas who were infamous for the murder of 18 civilians at the Rome and Vienna airports and the attack on the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985, respectively. Let us also not forget the $25,000 checks he would write to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers.
I believe that if the Bush Administration had opted not to set Saddam in their sights the Democratic Party and some human rights organizations would have lobbied the Bush Administration to have removed Saddam on humanitarian grounds. Much in the same way the Bush Administration is today being lobbied to intervene militarily in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Again, I am under no illusion that when the clock strikes ten that all is well in Baghdad. But whenever I think things are really bad in Iraq I think of the millions of Iraqis who risked their lives on three occasions in 2005 to vote for their own representatives. This tells me that a majority of Iraqis want this struggling democracy to work. This above all else is why I have not given up on the War in Iraq.
Democracy does not come easy. One can imagine the despair an American family might have endured in 1780 in the midst of the Revolutionary War that appeared to have no end in sight. Granted King George III did not order the United Empire Loyalists to strap belts filled with explosives around their waists. But nonetheless life in America’s nascence was far from idyllic. Consider this passage from Ronald Reagan’s famous “City on the Hill” speech in 1974 commenting on the men who signed the Declaration of Independence:
Fifty-six men, a little band so unique – we have never seen their like since – pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers in heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more.
And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in the caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart – but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships – they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home – he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep – all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.
I invoke Reagan to illustrate this point. If the United States and Coalition troops had not removed Saddam Hussein then Iraqis would not have a had a chance for freedom. It is that simple. Yes, it is quite possible that those who drafted Iraq’s Constitution might not be prepared to make the sacrifices that those who signed the Declaration of Independence did. Yes, it is possible that this endeavor will end in failure. But that is the price of freedom. Having the chance to fail is better than having no chance at all. So what if U.S. and Coalition troops had not removed Saddam? Then the people of Iraq would have no chance at all.
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