in retrospect, even Sadam Hussien..........perhaps he filled a role that westerners can never achieve....
perhaps we need strong armed dictators in these areas just to control the nuts....
same thing in Syria...I personally think bammey is trying to kill off the Syrian regieme so his muslim fanatics can take over....notice how this has been happening all over the Mideast.....
It’s tough to figure out his mind. The only thing that I can think of is simply PURE IDIOCY in these areas. But Bush wasn’t much better...he too thought that the “Ibrahim Lincoln’s” would appear out of nowhere in Iraq was a bit annoying too. The bottom line is that there will be a dictator...simply because the only way to avoid it is to have a public that won’t tolerate it, and that doesn’t happen there.
As far as the president...I would agree except that he keeps droning the bastards in Pakistan and Yemen. He doesn’t seem to have a problem taking them out - but then a bit to the west, he’s installing them in power. That’s why I think they’re simply clueless here.
And his two enemies were the jihadis/Saudi-sponsored-Wahabbis and the Iranis (he called them "Those Persian flies that must be swatted")
Saddam thought of himself as a latter-day Ashurbanipal who would conquer Iran and rule over the Arabs
The Saudis hated him
If we had let Saddam take Kuwait, then he would have threatened the Saudis, preventing them spending money on arming the Taliban and AlQaeda and getting them to give him money to fight Iran
And yes, he would have restarted the war with Iran, only with a lot more money and he would have killed a lot more Shia fanatics
Instead, by posting troops in Saudia we gave AlQ the pretext (infidels on the "holy land" of Saudia) and the Saudis gave money to set up Wahabbi schools etc...
Gulf War I led to GW II, Afghanistan, 9/11, the radicalization of Pakistan, etc. etc.
you are correct about Syria — Assad’s regime is better for Christians, women, even for Israel compared to the alternative...