Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
Might want to take a look at his actual policies, as opposed to speeches. Even a dictator gives speeches that pander to his audience base, which, despite his secular ambitions, was still distinctly Islamic. And as much as possible, he tried to work in references to pre-Islamic Mesopotamian figures, such as Nebuchadnezzar, creating a sense of Iraqi national identity that he hoped would eventually be stronger than religious allegiences. No doubt he turned increasingly to Islamic rhetoric in the years following the first gulf war as a way of trying to keep his power base.
Early in his reign, he abolished many of the Sharia courts, and his constitution did provide significant rights and freedoms to women, including an aggressive literacy campaign for all youths. Maternity, custody, and workplace rights for women were all well beyond any Islamic neighbours. At the same time, the Ba'ath did dismantle several women's rights groups in the country. Typical of the Ba'ath party, it's always been more about maintaining power and removing possible objectors, rather than about any particular ideology. Which is why he was so against al qaeda: as a popularist islamic movement, they were a legitimate threat to Hussein's power, and probably forced him to resort more frequently to fundamentalist dogma (post gulf-war) in his speeches and policies as a way of mitigating that threat.
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Frankly, your entire post sounds like you're agreeing with me, particularly this part:
No doubt he turned increasingly to Islamic rhetoric in the years following the first gulf war as a way of trying to keep his power base.
Like I said, there was no such thing as a secular Iraq in the sense that we might describe secularism in the west.
Within one month of Saddam's fall, you had hundreds of thousands of e's marching through Baghdad slapping themselves on their backs with chains.
It was always there. Which is interesting.
From Fozzie: I'm more concerned that the US will bankrupt herself over the Iraq war, the Afghan war and the extreme post-9/11 security infrastructure.
The USA hasn't applied nearly the resources, on a GDP basis, that it applied to any prior, significant conflict . . . . . 9% of GDP in Vietnam versus a little over 1% to Iraq as an example.
In fact, the Iraq conflict has been called the most "affordable" of all wars America has ever been involved in, which is why its been fairly unnoticeable in the domestic economy and why GW Bush has been given a rather improbable five year string, far longer to wrap things up than one might have thought tolerable in a democracy. War tends to be unpopular, as it should be.
Overall, USA debt to GDP ratio isn't particularly out of line at all relative to many of its peers.
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of...by-public-debt
It all sounds like big dollars, but relative to what America could actually afford or in comparison to prior conflicts, its actually fairly restrained.
In turn, that has some critics of the administration saying that America hasn't really tried to "win" these conflicts because it hasn't applied nearly the resources that it could or it has in the past . . . . perhaps forgetting that it's not America that will decide what ultimately comes of Iraq, but Iraqis and what they make of their internal political process, good or bad, and Afghani's.
If this were Eisenhower's era, the USA defence budget would be three times the size it is today.
The big problems yet to be accounted for in the USA economy are future government pensions, the astronomical costs of long-term health care for wounded veterans, Medicare and Social Security.
America has been written off at various times before, most recently in the very late 1980's/early 1990's . . . . . and then it hit the accelerator.
Interestingly, if I'm not mistaken, American stock markets do better under Democrats than Republicans.
Meanwhile, I'm off to the dentist.
Cowperson