Better Saddam than Dead

Print
By David Corn*
TomPaine
August 16, 2006
Better dead than Red. During the Cold War, that was the rallying cry of the dieh
ard anti-communists, many of whom never had to face the choice. During those yea
rs, hundreds of millions of peoplein the Soviet Union, in China, and elsewheredid not
adhere to such an extreme slogan. They may not have fancied living in lands with
out freedoms, but they believed it was preferable to reside under repression tha
n to die trying to topple tyranny. There have always been brave souls-the rebels
of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the members of Solidarity in Poland, the disside
nts of the Soviet Union, the champions of Tiananmen Squarewilling to sacrifice thei
r own existence to achieve freedom for their fellow citizens. But let's face it;
most of us would rather be redor any other colorthan dead. And that's hardly an irrat
ional choice, for even in a dictatorship, one is often free to enjoy family and
friends and some of the mundane pleasures of life.
Which brings us to Iraq. The chaos and mayhem there has reached (or surpassed) a
point when it may not be unsound to say that Iraqis were better off under Sadda
m Hussein. Think of it this way. In the years since George W. Bush ordered the i
nvasion of Iraq, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. The most recent s
tatistics are staggering. In May and June, according to the United Nations, six
thousand Iraqis were slain. Recently, the health ministry noted that 1,850 Baghd
ad residents were killed in July alone and 3,438 civilians were killed throughou
t the country. That is, in a three-month period, about 10,000 Iraqis have lost t
heir lives in the troubles the invasionand the poorly planned occupationgave birth to.
Yet despite these harrowing numbers, President Bush, according to The New York
Times, is befuddled by the lack of public support among Iraqis for the American
mission in their country.
As we all are aware, pre-invasion Iraq was a nasty place in terms of human right
s and political freedoms. But in the years prior to the invasion, there was not
this level of slaughter. Amnesty International's 2002 report (PDF here ) notes t
hat "scores of people, including possible prisoners of conscience and armed forc
es officers suspected of planning to overthrow the government, were executed." S
cores of suspected government opponents were arrested, and their fates and where
abouts were unknown.
Scores of people killed-that's what now happens on a dailyrather than annualbasis. Of
course, there were brutal and horrific acts of mass murder during Saddam Hussein
's reign. The Anfal campaign of the late 1980s-which included chemical weapons a
ttacks on Kurdish villages-led to the deaths of tens of thousands and the forced
displacement of hundreds of thousands. Saddam's repression of the Shiite rebell
ion of 1991which came at the end of the first Persian Gulf war after President Geor
ge H.W. Bush called on Iraqis to overthrow the dictator and then did nothing to
support the uprisingresulted in about 30,000 Shiite deaths. Since the invasion, the
discovery of mass graves has reminded the world of these atrocities.
But the United States took no action at the time of these nightmares to stop the
killings. And in the years since the Gulf War, a weakened Saddam had not repeat
ed such genocidal acts. That is hardly praise. But let's be blunt: Far many more
Iraqis have died due to the war Bush started than were killed by Saddam in the
years prior to the invasion. The total number of civilian Iraqi deaths may well
be more than 100,000. (The equivalent loss for the United States would be more t
han 1 million people.) This is much more than the recent death counts in Lebanon
and Israel-which spark justifiable outrage on each side.
I imagine that hardheaded advocates of the war will say that such is the price o
f liberty, that eggs must be broken. Yet here's the rub: The Iraqi people did no

t decide that such a cost was worth bearing. They had it imposed upon them. In t
he examples of anti-communist rebellions cited above, freedom fighters in those
countries were willing to take the risk and put their own lives at stake. They c
ould determine if they wished to be dead rather than red. In Iraq, there was no
such indigenous calculation. People in another country decided they knew what wa
s best for Iraqis. And they then botched the job.
The Saddam regime is gone; that's true. But given what has taken its place, it w
ould not be an irrational choice for many Iraqis to prefer the Iraq of 2002 rath
er than the Iraq of 2006. Think about it. Most Iraqis before the invasion-like m
ost citizens in most repressive states-managed to get by. They may not have had
freedoms, but they had their friends and relatives. They still fell in love, had
sex, had families, played with their kids, followed sports. The lucky ones-like
the lucky ones in all countries-had meaningful work. Now millions of Iraqis hav
e lost a loved one. And in return, they have a country that is unstable and on t
he brink of collapse, and their daily lives are marked by crime and deep uncerta
inty involving life and death. It's a different sort of terror than what George
W. Bush speaks of.
Is it better to be free in an environment of violent chaos than safe in circumst
ances without freedom? I'm not arrogant enough to say that I know the answer. I
might well choose a life without political freedoms rather than lose my wife or
children. Live free or die, they say in New Hampshire. But how many people reall
y believe that? In any event, that choice should be left to those who are actual
ly willing to die to make the point. The 100,000 or so dead Iraqis cannot tell u
s what they would prefer.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powe
ll, and the other supporters of this war are responsible for the consequences of
their actions-or they ought to be. One result is that tens of thousands of Iraq
is are now dead who would not have been had the invasion not happened. Given tha
t Bush hails the preciousness of each life when the subject is embryonic stem-ce
ll research, I wonder why the Iraq war is not judgedand acknowledgedan abysmal failure
by its creators. Do they not believe Iraqi lives are as valuable as frozen embr
yos?
Before the war, Bush and his aides said the primary rationale for the war was ne
utralizing a direct WMD threat to the United States. That turned out to be bogus
. They also claimed that bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq would have a pos
itive effect on the entire Middle East. Strike that, too. Additionally, they cla
imed the war would save the Iraqi people. Instead, it has created a hell for man
y Iraqis. The carnage that has come about due to Bush's invasion is unforgivable
. In defending the war, Bush often points to the fact that a brutal dictator has
been removed from power. But so profound is Bush's failure in Iraq that there i
s increasing merit to the argument that this single positive achievement was not
worth the cost.
Let's ask all the dead Iraqis what they think.
About the Author: David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPa
ine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of T
he Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers
). Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com.