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Originally Posted by stonwulfe
This is what I'm asking people to consider, and indeed comment upon. I wasn't seeking so much an answer to my question, so much as conversation regarding the impact of his removal from power. I'm asking for people's predictions on what the impact are, not the 'what ifs' of an alternate future where he could still be in power. Perhaps I should have been more concise.
Basically, what do you as individuals think of his being deposed and hung, and what do you think are the different courses this development may be? We can already make a few guesses, given the reactionary increase in sectarian violence, but what else do you think may be happening?
Further, do you think he should have been removed? What, by comparison (not as a 'what if' scenario, per se) would the world be like if the U.S. had waited to depose him? Would this sectarian violence still occur? Is the vacuum generated by his absence a direct measure of his importance in Iraq, whether real or imagined?
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First off, the removal from power of Saddam is a good thing.
But there were some serious flaws in how it was done. And these flaws allow to make some predictions as to how the situation will evolve.
The main problem is that through misinformation, overeagerness or less innocent reasons, the situation in Iraq prior to the invasion, as presented by the US government was a phantasy, an illusion. The dictatorship of Hussein wasn't as much a dictatorship against the entire population as it was of two of the peoples that the Brits jumbled together in the arbitrary and fictitious nation of Iraq back in 1922 IIRC. (Note that the Kuwait issue also stems from back then.)
From day one, as much under the monarchy as under the later Ba'athist republic the Kurds were oppressed and revolted on several occasions. After the Iranian revolution and the ensuing Iraq-Iran war also the Shi'ites became target of brutal oppression. But, and this is almost entirely absent from the present day debate, the Sunnis were not the object of this oppression (except for political adversaries, union leaders and the other usual victims of tyrannical regimes). Saddam Hussein was and IS popular among Sunnis to this very day - post mortem.
The obvious result of this was that the flowerthrowing liberated Iraqis were all but absent from the scene when the Republican Guard and the regular army were overthrown, except in the Kurdish part and the homogenous Shi'ite regions. The real result, as was predicted with ease in all but a few corners of the globe, was similar to the situation of former Yugoslavia after the death of Tito : civil war between the constituent parts of the population, in this case three.
What is absolutely necessary at this point as the very first step is an independent or at least selfgoverning Kurdistan, formed in the north of present Iraq. This is a healthy, tranquil region which has capabilities of selfsustenance. It could then attract the Kurds now living in Turkey in dire circumstances where they wage a guerilla warfare against the Turkish government and also often resort to terrorism. A double advantage thus.
The situation between the Sunnis and Shi'ites is less easily demined but it should be obvious that a plain all areas democracy CANNOT work this soon. What is necessary is a federal or confederal state along the lines of for instance Belgium or maybe Canada.
Everything hinges on the question whether the occupational power (the USA) will continue the centuries old colonist error of laying out nations where there are none. If they do (and I fear they will as the alternative presented here would invalidate the entire build up and occupation rhetoric) Iraq will remain not as much a Vietnam, as a Lebanon with twenty years of civil war to come.
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Originally Posted by stonwulfe
Basically, what do you as individuals think of his being deposed and hung,
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Respectively :Good and barbaric.
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Originally Posted by stonwulfe
would the world be like if the U.S. had waited to depose him? Would this sectarian violence still occur?
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The civil war would not have occured, further oppression of the Shi'ites would have seen to that.
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Originally Posted by stonwulfe
Is the vacuum generated by his absence a direct measure of his importance in Iraq
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Of course, he was a dictator.