A Brief History of a Long War
Despite it's supposed "brevity," this is a very long article on the relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the United States/UN between the years 1990-2003.
It's well worth reading. For those who love the image of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand in the mid-1980s, they should especially read the article, to get a fuller history of the US-Saddam relationship.
After reading the article, I feel as though we should have gotten rid of Saddam a long time ago. Because the press never kept anyone up on Saddam's activities, we felt as if he were contained, or no longer a problem. If there had been reporting on all his malfeasence and what he continued to do, it seems to me there would have been a lot more support for his removal all along. Or perhaps America just wasn't interested in hearing about Saddam's attempts to get weapons or continue to tyrannize his neighbors and own people.
Even debating whether removing Saddam was worthwhile is the saddest thing about the whole situation...
1 comment:
A couple of years ago John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt co-wrote an article that helped define why removing Saddam wasn't necessary, despite what a horrible person he is(http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2003/walt_saddam_box_nyt_020203.htm). In other articles Mearsheimer also explains that we purposely left Saddam enough military equipment and resources to maintain control of Iraq following the Gulf War, precisely because we didn't want to deal with the fall-out of the country's collapse. Interesting arguments all around.
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