He was just a really, really bad one. He once had a quran written in blood for his personal library. That’s probably in the top two most offensive things you could do as a follower of Islam.
^ That sounds pretty devout to me.
Positive effects from Saddam’s regime or others might justify the use of violence or terror. I don’t disagree with this. I was just saying that the basic distinction between religious/non religious or Islamist/secular should not change this evaluation. Saddam’s religious inclination (or lack thereof) might have influenced his policies, and they might have been important in this sense. However, it was the policies that mattered, rather than religion itself intrinsically.
Saddam was no threat to anyone in the west. ISIS is. Saddam actually put down al-Qaeda and other wack job groups like ISIS quite effectively in his time, a lot better than the defense contractors and American consultants are doing today. Also consider the legitimacy globally of counter-terrorism versus American imperialism. France has always been an anti-terror leader, such as their operations earlier this year in Mali and elsewhere in their former colonial realms. France supported the US war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in defense of the US. Not really inconsistent at all.
The only group I know I’m behind are the Kurds. They seem like cool dudes.
Let me clarify that many Americans, on both sides of the political aisle, felt that Saddam was definetly a threat (to the West)
I was waiting to see how long it would take for someone to mention The Kurds. For those of you who live outside the USA, understand that the liberal media in America NEVER dares mention The Kurds because they are liberals and liberals generally sympathize with terrorists and criminals.
^I’m having trouble making sense of your comment. Are you bashing American media, Western media in general, or the Kurds?
Odd.
The Kurds are not liberals, they share the same religious and cultural views of their neighbors. Historically they were some of the most brutal allies of the Ottomans, and many of the ones in Turkey are pretty hard Islamists. It’s a US habit to arbitrarily nominate one group as the “good guys”, and Kurds have just been blessed with that like the Afghan Muj. or Bosnian Muslims were before. Just wait until they get an independent nation and we’ll see how “liberal” they are.
^It’s all relative though. The Kurds are pro-democracy and women’s rights. That right there puts them way ahead of their neighbors.
And most of the world ex-UK and Poland disagreed. And the rest of the world was right.
I’m going to have to call B.S. on this one.
Islam is literally the religion of peace, as in, that is what the word means. Plus unity and all that other stuff. Of course, practitioners seem to have a pretty liberal interpretation of this. When people say Islam was spread at the tip of the sword, they are not referring to circumcision.
^ Dumb and wrong:
Islam actually means “submission,” as in submit to God. It does not and never has meant “peace.” Dubya missed the mark on that one.
More precisely, the cardinality of the set of islamists is strictly smaller than the cardinality of the set of muslims, since islamists is a subset of muslims whose relative complement with respect to the set of muslims is not null. Any relative comparisons among sets without invoking the notion of cardinality, as done above, are probably meaningless.
So much stupidity and ignorance in that post ; I won’t even bother.
He’s right though. American backing for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - the main source of funds for the spread of Wahabi extremism is extremely self-defeating and ‘hypocritical’
Definitely badass.
Who knows? If we hadn’t looked the other way when Sadaam was gassing them with American supplied Chemical weapons they might even be an independent nation by now and definitely better equipped to take on ISIS.