Deep Blade writes to tell me:
Iraqis are occupied by a foreign army and most don't like it. As horrible as Saddam was, he belonged to the Iraqis, their own problem with whom they could have dealt.
Sure. After 35 years or so, they had him right where they wanted him.
Such an outcome could have been as bloody, but Iraqis will never be given that chance to make their own history.
Which is a thing to be regretted? Assuming this fantasy civil war of yours had occurred, do you really think that Iraq's neighbors would have stayed out of it? True, we've got plenty of interlopers there now, but with our military might in their very midst, the dominoes are going to fall our way, not theirs.
There is reason to believe that if the vicious sanctions regime had been ended, the population of Iraq would have been able to deal Saddam Hussein the same fate as other murderous gangsters supported by the US and UK--without invasion and occupation--namely Ceausescu, Suharto, Marcos, Duvalier, Chun, and Mobutu.
I don't agree, but maybe you know something I don't. Anyway, the "vicious sanctions regime" was a UN creation ---and you know now that it wasn't going to be lifted so long as all those conscientious kickback artists had their hands on the switch.
How offensive to moral human decency is some American guy posting in a blog about who should live and who should die in Iraq?
For a guy who drops so many historical references, you seem to be woefully unaware of the role the international community always plays in national revolutions. This time around, as many times before, it's Uncle Sam and John Bull making possible the liberation of an oppressed society.
Now, do we sometimes support thugs and losers? Yep. Triangulation is a basic feature of foreign policy. No apologies.
And no apologies for saying that there's a lot of irredeemable psychopaths in Iraq who need to be wiped out. What other choice do we have? Like Jefferson said, the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants.