Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003 as a banana republic. His rule was long but cruel, a Stalin on the Tigris. Over a half million Iraqis died violently, mostly in senseless wars. He was power-mad and could trust no one. His decision making consequently suffered and so he found himself fighting not one but two hopeless wars against America.
In the 1970s he spent Iraq’s new-found oil wealth to build up Iraq. He gave Iraq good roads, clean water and cheap power. In the 1980s he fought Iran in what was then the largest land war in history. With a million men dead after eight years the war ended in a draw.
In 1990 he conquered Kuwait. In 1991 the Americans pushed him out. They easily overthrew his army but then found he was building an atom bomb and had made much more progress than anyone knew.
Saddam agreed to abandon his attempts to build the bomb or anything else as deadly. But he would never come clean: The United Nations would send its men to make sure he was not building the bomb, but he would never allow them the freedom they needed to make certain of it.
But then came 9/11 in 2001 where nearly 3000 Americans were killed in the middle of their largest city. Saddam had nothing to do with it – it was Osama bin Laden – but America no longer felt safe and ran out of patience with him. Either he gave the United Nations the freedom it needed or America would send in its army to disarm him by force. They gave him a deadline of March 2003.
Perhaps Saddam thought nothing would happen. France and Russia had a lot of money in Iraq and he could count on them to stop the United Nations from taking any forceful action. And indeed they did prevent America from using the United Nations to justify an attack. But America did not let that stop it: when the deadline passed it attacked all the same.
The Americans overthrew Saddam in a matter of weeks but then, to their shock, they found that Saddam had nothing even close to an atom bomb!
Throughout the 1990s all that Saddam was hiding was that he had nothing to hide! To maintain this fiction he went so far as to forgo all the money Iraq could have made by selling oil. He let the roads and power stations he built in the 1970s fall apart in the 1990s.
Later in 2003 America found Saddam hiding at in a hole. In 2006 he was tried for his crimes and hung. He saw himself as a martyr for his country.
To his credit Saddam kept Iraq at peace – unlike the Americans. But he ruled by fear and violence, freely killing Kurds, Shiites and his political enemies as needed to maintain his power.
See also:
Leave a comment