Bush, Saddam & Obama
I had always wanted McCain to win the presidential elections even though everyone around me had made me feel that would be asking for too much. It was Biden's Iraqis-are-uncivilized-monsters plan, Obama's constant why-the-hell-should-we-help-the-Iraqis-anymore line and the dodgy characters in Obama's life that had made me flinch everytime I thought about the Obama-Biden team planning their next country split up and concrete-wall building crusade in the White House.
McCain wanted the troops to leave Iraq and return home with honour, dignity and with victory. Obama wants the troops to leave Iraq, period. I do not know if this is what Obama genuinely believes to the best option or he was simply being pragmatic and adopted this stance to win the favour of the Americans who desperately wanted their troops home as soon as possible.
I tried my best to stay up all night to watch the results but somehow I managed to fall asleep about a 1/3 of the way through, and even then I remember it wasn't looking so good for the Republicans. When I woke up I realised it was Obama. At first I was upset but then for some strange reason, a verse in the Quran started to play (on repeat mode) in my head. It was the last part of verse 30, chapter 8, Al-Anfal (The Spoils of War):
"...They plot and plan, and Allah too plans; but the best of planners is Allah." [Quran 8:30]
With a smile I saw the bigger picture. I realised that if Obama was 8 years older and had won the Presidential elections 8 years ago, Saddam would not only have still been in power, but Obama would probably have been in one of Saddam's Presidential Palaces drinking coffee with the butcher as part of his terrorist out-reach programe for the Middle East. George Bush won the 2000 elections for a reason. Similarly to how God sent Moses to deliver the Israelites from Egypt, God had guided Bush to deliver the Iraqi people from Saddam. Saddam planned, Obama is planning, but God is the best of planners. Bush won, Saddams dead and the rest is just details.
posted by Eye Raki at 12:19 AM
24 Comments:
Hayder, the IA is close to being able to defend Iraq without foreign help.
Know Hope.
Hayder, my experience was almost the same. I managed to stay up late enough to see the results and I spent the rest of the night wondering to myself "why?"
It is solely because of his views on Iraq I could not bring myself to ever vote for Obama. I am honored to say I voted for John McCain and Iraq was the only issue on my mind, unlike many of my countrymen these days.
Anyways, I think you are right Hayder. Iraq has already won...Saddam is gone, and nothing can change that. God bless Iraq, because the Iraqis might just be the biggest winners at the end of the day :)
Anand that day can't come soon enough. You are right though and that day will be the biggest defeat Iraq's neighbours have suffered for years.
Corey, damn right Iraq has already won, and hopefully it will keep on winning.
Hi Hayder,
You are absolutely correct. A Lebanese friend is fond of repeating this line: "Every 1000 years, a miracle happens. Iraq's miracle occured when elderly Jews in Florida voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake."
I think the New Iraq ruptured the fabric of history, and what has been set in motion cannot be stopped by an Obama retreat.
Best,
Nibras
"Bush won, Saddams dead and the rest is just details."
I remember a politician saying that Bush was the only one in the world that believed that Israel won the war with Lebanon in summer 2006.
Now you are the only one in the world I know that believes that Bush won the war in Iraq.
You even cannot find a hardline neo-conservative that dares to say that, because of their shame.
If you want to be just politician one day, you have to understand this very good: Listen to the people!
The very big majority of the Iraqi and American people want the US troops out of Iraq. Not only US and Iraqi people, but the majority of the people in all countries in the worlds (except Israel. Maybe that is another reason why they are an illegal country in the this world).
Can you deny that the big majority of the Iraqi and American people want the US troops out of Iraq?
All eyes will be on Obama now. What he will do about the financial crisis and Iraq will be interesting, because if anything goes wrong he is going to be blamed whether its his fault or not.
Hayder,
The great, sad, bizarre thing about American politics is this:
If the Democrats had been able to cause Iraq to fail while Bush was in office, they would have done it.
Now that Obama (D) is President, they will not allow Iraq to fail. Not one US soldier will leave Iraq if it will put the democracy at risk.
Also the America leftists and the American media will stop complaining about how unpopular the war is.
Nibras, amen to that.
Cihad, Bush toppled Saddam, a new constitution was written, that constitution was ratified, a new government was democratically elected by the Iraqi people, the
Iraqis can now speak and think for themselves, and the list can go on.
If all that was a failure, then I pray Obama continues to 'fail' in Iraq.
I am not saying there were no sacrifices along the way, but something happened on 9/4/2003 that sent shivers down the spine of every leader in the region. Saddam, whose name you could barely whisper, was relegated to the trash bin of history.
If Bush had listened "to the people" Saddam would still have been untouchable.
No Cihad I cannot deny that the vast majority of the Iraqi people want the US troops out of Iraq, I myself want them out of Iraq. No one with any 'gheera' wants armed foreigners on their soil for the sake of it, but the million dollar question is when, and under what circumstances, should they leave?
Cmar I hope you are right and that Obama was just talk, talk, talk.
'Bush won, Saddams dead and the rest is just details.'
Allow me to replace the 'details' for you:
'Bush won, Saddams dead....hundreds and thousands of iraqies are dead, thousands of iraqi women raped, thousands of iraqis unjustly torchered and imprisioned, thousands of iraqi children left orphaned, thousands of iraqis homeless, thousands left without basic everday necessities, Iraq's in rubbles and thousands will continue to suffer like this every minute of every day until god knows when...'
...but all of this doesn't matter off course....
"If all that was a failure, then I pray Obama continues to 'fail' in Iraq."
Me too. People who were not oppressed by Saddam's regime will never understand.
Bro I too supported the war and if even if I could go back to 2003, knowing what I know now, I would still support the war. However, why the praise of Bush? He did not remove Saddam because he oppressed the Iraqi people but he did so for his American neocon interest. If it was 1991, he would have betrayed 300,000 Iraqis to be buried in mass graves as his father did. If it were the 1980's he would have given Saddam chemical weapons as his father's boss did. If it was 1963 he would have supported and bankrolled the Baathist coup as Kennedy did. He may have removed our tyrant, but there are many other tyrants around the world who Bush supports GREATLY and enthusiastically such as the Saudis, Mubarak, the Zionists and so on.
"hundreds and thousands of iraqies are dead, thousands of iraqi women raped, thousands of iraqis unjustly torchered and imprisioned, thousands of iraqi children left orphaned, thousands of iraqis homeless, thousands left without basic everday necessities, Iraq's in rubbles and thousands will continue to suffer like this every"
You could be speaking about any period from 1980-2003, but the difference is before there was absoulutely no hope for Iraq. Without Saddam and without the Ba'ath there is hope. Iraq is not a utopia of course, but at least now the country can move forwards, in contrast to decades of moving, at a pace, in the wrong direction.
Anon #2, this isn't about me praising or cursing Bush, history was made in April 2003 and that is what happened, Bush toppled Saddam. No one can argue that fact. Why he did so is another story altogether.
I hope i'm wrong, but I have to side with the last anon there. Knowing why matters greatly. Think about it, how is Iraq, a largely Shia country with a Sunni *secular apostate* tyrant who was practically finished in terms of foreign policy since 1991 be of any link to an attack by a Sunni Islamist terrorist group formed of 15 Saudis (which suggest an urgent need for some change to happen in...why of course Saudi Arabia)? how is it connected?
I used to support America, I used to say take all the oil but build our country, but their intentions sound fishy, I can't believe they are naive to believe Iraqis will simply accept whoever they prop up in their dream-nation building, that their advocacy of a confessional system like the one in Lebanon (which is also failing admirably) will help democracy in any shape or form, Iraq isn't an unexplored country in the world, it has been endlessly documented and has suffered Western foreign occupations before. Those are not birth pangs, those are death thores.
Eye Raki,
I've featured some of your remarks over at my first entry over at Iraqi Bloggers Central on the Arab reaction to Obama's electoral victory:
Arab Response to Obama's Election.
It's always great to see a new entry from you. Thanks for keeping us informed.
Jeffrey Schuster
Iraqi Bloggers Central
*
Was it Bush's fault so many Iraqis violently resisted democracy? Iraqis had issues that had nothing to do with Bush. All better now.
"Me too. People who were not oppressed by Saddam's regime will never understand."
I rather put it drastically: People who didn't receive their injection of fear right in their heart by Saddam's henchmen as we got that injection, will never understand.
Abbas, you make good points. As an American, I want to apologize for all the many severe mistakes that we Americans have made regarding Iraq than have contributed to significant suffering on the part of Iraqis.
Do you mind if I ask you and everyone else here a question?
"Why did Bush invade Iraq in 2003?" I thought then and still think now that Bush invaded Iraq because Saddam tried to kill his Dad (in 1993.) It wasn't business, but strictly personal. Those two families viscerally hated each other.
Abbas, I don't understand how the invasion of Iraq was justified by America's national interests. How could America benefit from an invasion?
Abbas, you know that America has given Iraq $44 billion worth of its hard earned tax payer dollars in economic and military grants. This is in addition to American taxpayers paying close to a trillion dollars on keeping US troops inside Iraq. How has the Bush administration tried to advance American interests in Iraq? The Bush administration hasn't tried to advance American interests in Iraq. This is part of why the vast majority of American do not like Bush.
President Bush said he supported democracy in Iraq before the invasion. He kept this promise. Iraq has had one person one vote elections, run by the UN. The Iraqi people are completely accountable for how they voted. I don't think you can blame the result of the elections on Bush, naive, uninformed, unsophisticated, simpleton fool that he is.
"Was it Bush's fault so many Iraqis violently resisted democracy? Iraqis had issues that had nothing to do with Bush. All better now."
Maury, I think that the Baathists and AQ as they saw it were killing Shia, Kurds and immoral Sunnis more than "fighting democracy." And things are not "All better now."
Iraq's government revenue has collaped. The MoF (ministry of finance) has already slashed the 2009 budget from $80 billion to $65 billion. They are also slashing long term budgets in the out years. The MoF is considering painful deep additional spending cuts. In addition, Iraq is even more corrupt than Khamenei's regime . . . hard to imagine though that is. Iraq's non-oil GDP is sluggish.
None of these indicated that things are "All better now."
Hayder, Iran is also severely cutting social spending and government CAPEX, because of lower oil prices. How unpopular has this made Khamenei. Will Khamenei be able to survive the internal social turmoil caused by lower oil prices? Do you think another 1979 is possible over the next few months?
Anand, I asked that question once to an old taxi driver in Tehran, he said:
"If you put 500 toman (60 cents) in an akhunds [clerics] hand it is impossible to get it back, how do you expect us to take the government from them?"
It is going to take a lot more than a decrease in oil prices to stimulate major change in Iran.
Abbas, do you really care that Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to go into Iraq? Besides wasn't all this about WMD's? Saddam was the most dangerous WMD in Iraq, and he sure as hell was found.
"How could America benefit from an invasion?" _____ America, like the other democratic countries, benefits whenever another country transitions from dictatorship to democracy. I think one of the main reasons for the invasion of Iraq was the real fear that Saddam might sell WMDs to terror groups. The CIA was certain he had big stocks of WMDs. ____ I agree that for Bush personally, "He tried to kill my Dad" was a major motive - but that wouldn't apply to Cheney and Rumsfeld.
A few points:
1) Bush did not invade Iraq because Saddam tried to assassinate his father. First off, I don't think any president is capable of sending our troops into harm's way over a personal vendetta. Second, if he did, then he had to get the majority of Congress to go along with his vendetta and I doubt they would have done so. The truth is that lots of people in the US government, both Dems and Reps, wanted Saddam toppled. 9/11 provided the reason to turn talk into action.
2) Yes, a lot of Iraqis are dead. However, freedom is not free and the price is blood and death. Even then you only rent it.
3) Bush did not give the Iraqis democracy; he gave them a chance at democracy. Whether there is a democracy there is up to them.
4) Of course America pursues its own interests. Why would it, or any country, do any different? In this case, removing Saddam was in the interests of the US. Replacing him with a democracy was the neocons' idea. Obama may very well decide on regime change in Iran, but he may go back to the Cold War practice of emphasizing stability over democracy.
From your previous post:
"People who demonstrate (against the war, around the world) don't know the meaning of Saddam".
This is, startlingly, still true. When my son was on leave from Iraq in August, we had a few parties for him. Many young people attended. One college student started to talk to my son about Iraq and how wrong she thought the war was. I interrupted the conversation to ask her to tell me what she knew about Saddam and his minion. Her response can best be summed up as an open mouth gape. Suffice it to say, by the time she and her friends left, they had received a primer about the regime and it's atrocities toward the Iraqi people but also against all those who stood in the way of his "ambitions" from me and my son. Their faces displayed that they knew nothing of the regime or what the Iraqi people had suffered under the fist of this butcher. I advised her and her friends to go read a little bit more, because they were speaking of things they clearly did not understand. My son smiled at me.
There were mistakes made. That is clear. Removing Saddam and his minion was not one of those mistakes. The world is far better off without them here.
i am totally shocked...
'....Similarly to how God sent Moses to deliver the Israelites from Egypt, GOD HAD GUIDED Bush to deliver the Iraqi people from Saddam...'
Those sentences made me laugh! Moses was a good man in every respect. Wasn't God capable of appointing a better Saviour than Bush?
Poor Iraqi people, they don't seem to be God's favourite people do they?
Eyeraki try to give your people a bit of respect.
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