How did Sadam maintain peace in Iraq ?

Before the American invasion Iraq had no civil war.

So how come the so called intelligent USA cant stop it ?

 

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obviously, no one can. do you have a solution?

 

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Hi singulraity

thank you for the thread you have started

Off the top of my head saddam controlled iraq throguh the following mechansims

1) ruthless security apparatus - including police and intellenegce services and army and elite army etc...
2) all of the different security elements were promoted to sbnithced on the others.
3) keeping his family in key positions in governement
4) playing off the tribes against themselves.


basically divide and rule.!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
take care
zak

 

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Hussein kept the peace like Tito of the former Yugoslavia did; He forced different ethnic and religious groups to work and live together, or else. It worked for Yugoslavia until it busted up into fiefdoms. We'll never find anyone able to hold Iraq together now that the US unleashed all the religious zealots and encouraged ethnic seperatism.
In some parts of the world you just need a strong central government to keep order.

 

Saddam Hussein was brutal thug dictator. All resistance to his rule resulted in crackdowns and killings.

The problem is, we can't really point fingers. We supported a lot of it, because he was our ally against Iran. Blaming him for his brutality makes us look bad.

 

He had a common enemy to unite (however tenuous) his people, that enemy was Iran.

 

US puppet government in Iraq did not Blame Saddam for any of the gas attack he conducted with US satellites supplying the locations of Iranian troop concentrations etc. He was only tried for the gas attacks made within Iraq. the number of Iranian he gasses to death was at least an order of magnitude greater. If he had been tried for any of that, it would be hard to prevent he from stating that GWB (and Rumsfield who has been photograph shaking Saddam's hand during the discussions of how to deploy the gas more effectively etc.) were the coordinators of the gas attacks and would need to be on trial also.

Officially he will hang because he put down a revolt, killing about 150 of its most active members afterwards. Actually, he is being hanged because he escaped CIA control, started to sell oil for Euros, etc. - He was foolish - He should have continued to do as told by CIA, as Mussbarrick in Pakistan is still doing. I suspect he has learned his lesson and perhaps is the only person who can prevent Iraq from splitting into three separate states. The creation of Kirdistan will cause civil war in Turkey.

Best solution may be to punish Saddam by making him again rule over the mess US has made in Iraq.

 

What Iraq had before the invasion was NOT peace ....by any stretch of the imagination! Sadman killed and imprisoned thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes for nothing at all.

As I recall, one town sort of tried a little civil war ....and he wiped out the entire town, killed every man, woman and child in the town. Is that what ya' call "maintaining peace" in Iraq???? If it is, then the US military could do that easily by dropping a few "big ones", huh?

Baron Max

 

Yes. As mentioned earlier, it happens in every artifically created countries once it gets freedom or autonomy, like Yugoslavia or the Sovietunion.

It can be justified with a simple math, is the suffering/number of deaths is more or less after given the freedom? Sure Saddam didn't get 100K people killed in 3 years, thus one could argue that as long as he kept his killing average below 30K per year, Iraq was/is better off with him...

Also a HUGE difference is if the people on power are from among the natives (Saddam) or from outside (US). The former is just one alpha dog reaching the top position, the later is foreign occupancy, that would be fought by pretty much any country's patriots....

 

Good reply to the Baron Max you made Syzygy. I doubt if he will agree that GWB has been much worse for the average person in IRAQ than Saddam, bad as he was, but under Saddam, the was electricity, very cheap gas (with no long lines or black market), and essentaily free food at the whare houses which were the looters first post-invasion targets. If you were foolish enough to make trouble for Saddam (or in a few dozen cases, unusually attractive to his sons) then you had very significant troubles, but the average resident of Bagdad was much better off under Saddam than now.

The US and Western world in general was also better off:
(1) All of Iraq has been converted into the best "live fire" training ground the terrorist could have dreamed of.
(2) Oil exports were approximately 50% greater under Saddam than currently and help hold the price down.
(3) Iraq was a profit center of the West (and Russia) as many western products were sold there. - the French did especially well. They built the entire telephone system for Iraq and had most of the oil extraction export contracts, etc. Not too surprising they were against GWB's successful (from his point of view) war which cancelled all those contracts and gave them to US based companies. (Halliburton now has all the oil field equipment contracts the Russian previously had.)

But returning to this point, instead of “profits from Iraq“, the current request alone GWB just sent to Congress is for 160 BILLION dollars more to cover the cost of the war - and that is only current operating costs! It does not include the much larger cost that will continue for decades as benefits, especially to the widows and injured and even to the "fully whole" soldiers who return, without need for twice weekly visits to VA psychologists etc, and claim their education etc benefits.

 

Yes, that is called maintaining the peace.
Saddam punished dissenters so no one would dissent. And they had peace. And ac, and electricity, and didn't have militias of armed thugs beheading 50/day, willy nilly.

The difference between a lawful state a chaotic one– you can predict which actions will lead to your demise. Don't talk against sadam, and you don't die. Now, you die. Or maybe you won't.

 

That's true. He couldn't really maintain peace, but had to quell rivals and rebellions often. He accomplished the peace that there was, which was far better than what exists now, through brutal methods. How much better will the US accomplish this?

How did Saddam maintain peace? Helicopters.

 

So ....if that's all true, then you're suggesting that the colonies shouldn't have fought for independence from England, right? And the US should still have remained as a colony of the English?

Ohhh, nice.

Baron Max

 

How'dja come to those conclusions, Baron? LOL! The lil' ole slippery slope fallacy? The rebels in Iraq shoulda rebelled, just as the early colonists did. They were fighting for religious freedom in many cases, just like us. Many of them are fighting today against the establishment of a western democracy, which they view as incompatable with their brand of Islam.

(I was hinting at Bush Sr.'s directive to allow Saddam his helicopters after the Guld War, with which he put down the rebellion we encouraged.)

 

The U.S. has essentially placed a Shiite minority in control of a Sunni majority in Iraq.

 

Sunnis are a minority in Iraq.

 

Baron Max ,

u seem to be an out of control US kid

 

Things aren't always as they seem.

Baron Max

 

How did Sadam maintain peace in Iraq ?

Through fear.

 

True, but you must have some intelligence to make fear provide control.

GWB has greatly increased the "fear level" of the average person in Baghdad. Most now literally fear for their lives when they go out on the street and never did before under Saddam. (Well perhaps a few very pretty girls did, if one of his sons was near by, but the burka solved that problem.)

GWB is too stupid to know how to use fear for control/ peace as Saddam did. I think that using fear that way may also be against American principles, (but no longer sure with the new laws GWB is pushing for in Congress, specifically the limitation of trial by courts, right to legal representation, etc and privacy invasions like unauthorized wire taps etc.)