Word: saddamized
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LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON I'm principally a strategist, and from that perspective the war has been a disaster. First, the foremost winner has been Iran: it rid itself of its greatest threat, Saddam and his military, without firing a shot; won the Dec. 15 Iraq elections; owns the south, particularly Basra; and has felt the freedom to elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, in turn, has felt the freedom to reclaim leadership of radical Islam, leadership Osama bin Laden claimed on 9/11. Second, the foremost loser--after Iraq itself--has been Israel, whose leaders must now fear more than ever...
MICHAEL YOUNG Yes, Iraq was worth it, because it exposed more clearly than ever the brutal underpinnings of Arab nationalist rule. From an Iraqi perspective, there is much uncertainty today but also no nostalgia for the savagery of Saddam's rule. From the U.S.'s perspective, the struggle to stabilize Iraq will discourage similar endeavors in the future, but the war also highlighted how subcontracting American interests in the Middle East to supposedly stable Arab dictatorships is no longer viable. The shoddy edifice that U.S. soldiers so quickly dismantled in Iraq is no less present in countries Washington considers allies...
BERNARD KOUCHNER No, because of the way Americans went about it. I think it was up to the international community to pull together and get rid of Saddam for the Iraqi people. I have long argued for the "right to intervene." But you have to succeed. To do that, you need the international community standing with you. Saddam had been a major assassin in his country for 35 years. What difference would a few weeks have made? They should have done as we did in Kosovo, setting up a contact group and relying on international cooperation and peacekeepers...
...modern history. But for the young Marine from Oklahoma or the child in Iraq blown up this past week or the one before, it wasn't. Better things must obtain from the demise of Iraq's dictatorship, even if it is largely accepted now that the end of Saddam's rule represents a positive precedent for Iraq and the modern Middle East. Democratic Iraq, like democratic Germany or Japan, might make all the sacrifices less painful...
...January 2005 election brought a religious Sh'ite coalition to power, Sunnis allege, he began remaking the paramilitary National Police into Shi'ite shock troops. A member of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Jabr fled to Iran in the 1970s to avoid Saddam's crackdown. Jerry Burke, a former civilian senior police advisor to the Interior Ministry, said Jabr's experience with Saddam's government has left him bitter and distrustful of anyone he suspects has ties to the previous regime. That would most certainly include the former members of Saddam Hussein...