Saddam’s Box
As you’ve read everywhere, Saddam has been captured. I watched the footage of his medical check-up and of Iraqi’s dancing in the streets on news of his capture, as I was getting ready for church Sunday. While I think that this is just the start of the end of our war in Iraq, Niki (my wife) has a sinking feeling that it’s really the start of something else. Have we opened Pandora’s Box by capturing Saddam Hussein?
Sure, we’re still fighting what is essentially two wars: Afghanistan and Iraq both under the guise of a “War on Terrorism”. We have one mastermind, but we’re still without Osama Bin Laden….who, in my opinion, is our greater threat. I’m interested in how this will all playout in the coming election year.
December 16th, 2003 at 12:12 pm
I agree. I think its going to be difficult for us in the future now that the present administration has reversed the fifty year old American policy of non-preemptive aggression against other countries.
I’m well aware of what an awful tyrant Saddam was but I just can’t see why there was such an immediate necessity to remove him from power. If we’re removing Saddam for his treatment of the Iraqi people and invasion of Kuwait then are we going to invade all of the many other countries which are guilty of the exact same thing? As John Stewart of the Daily Show said, “At some point we’re going to run out of Army Reservists!”.
The only real differences I see between the regime of Saddam Husein and the other Dictators in the Middle East is that The Saud family, Emir of Kuwait and Kings of Jordan, Qatar, etc, is that They have decided to “play ball” with the United States while Iraq chose not to.
Any way you look at it, the next five years are going to get worse before they get better.
I was never a big Clinton supporter but now I wish the present administration had his nation and coalition building skills as well as his ability to empathize with the rest of the world for the greater common good.
December 16th, 2003 at 12:12 pm
This is an interesting point.
On the one hand we have a lunatic dictator (who no doubt the world is better off without) but, has yet to be proven to have done anything directly to the United States. As far as I know Saddam has not committed any crimes subject to US jurisdiction and our claims of a right to control his fate is questionable at best.
On the other hand, with Bin Laden we have a criminal who has admitted responsibility for the murder of thousands on US soil. I have to wonder about the application of resources and why Bin Laden has not been given a higher priority. An added bonus is that with Bin Laden it’s much more clear cut — the guy is a mass murder who can be extradited, tried and sentenced without any of this international law rigamarole. I suspect that this would better serve the victims of 9/11 than the capture of some nutcase who never did anything to them in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong — I am not a Saddam defender and hope with all my heart that a special place in Hell is reserved for his sociopathic ass, but what about the other guy? Twelve thousand troops in Afghanistan searching an area nearly as big as Iraq (if you include bordering regions he’s likely to be hiding in) compared to several hundred thousand who have participated in the search for Saddam and still took nine months — as it is now, I’d have to put my money on Bin Ladens continued survival and that’s just wrong.