The Left’s Totalitarian Martyrs: Saddam Hussein

On December 30 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed for his war of aggression against Iran and Kuwait, as well as for his mass-killing of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. The execution of Saddam got the backing of most Iraqi people, who deeply hated Saddam and remember his atrocities. It was clearly a victory for Iraq’s people and the free world. However, at the same time, leftists have come crying for Saddam and condemned the execution. Leftists, even those who admit that Saddam committed atrocities on innocent Iraqi civilians, have made Saddam seem like a martyr for tolerating the taunts he got during the execution and walking quietly.

At least much of the radical left also supported the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and only spoke out against him when exaggerating the amount of support the Reagan and Bush Sr. Administrations gave to his regime. George Galloway, Vice President of Stop the war coalition, has protested against Saddam in the 1980’s for getting some [though very little as I will show in this article] support from America and the west and then supported him when his regime and America were publicly enemies. After the 1990-1991 Gulf war, George Galloway expressed his “heartfelt greetings and support” to Saddam. Ramsley Clark, founder of the International Action Center [IAC], and who’s a leading figure behind ANSWER [Act Now to Stop War and End Racism] and a member of United for Justice and Peace went on being Saddam lawyer in his trial and said that “he was calm, thoughtful, reflective.”

However, Saddam Hussein was called the “Butcher of Baghdad” by his people for his atrocities on innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Saddam is best known for his killings and tortures of thousands of Iraqi people, as well as for his terrorist invasions of Iran and Kuwait. He is a notorious bad guy to the west. However, he did not just become a brutal dictator over night, but was brainwashed into believing in Fascism by his uncle Kairallah Tulfah, who, along with the rest of the Baath party, collaborated with Hitler in WWII.

Saddam was born in Tirkit, Iraq on April 30, 1937. His father either abandoned him or died. Either or, his mother remarried. His step dad abused him until he was ten. When Saddam was ten, he moved out to live with his uncle Kairallah Tulfah, who supported one fascist [Adolf Hitler] and would later create another monster, his nephew Saddam Hussein.

Kairallah brainwashed Saddam, even turning him into a Fascist. His uncle told Saddam that three people/creatures that god shouldn’t have created were Persians, Jews and flies.

Saddam joined the Baath party when he was twenty years old. A year later, in 1958, the pro-British king Faisial was overthrown. Qassem too his place. Qassem was pro-Soviet. He was another regime from the Free officers, the same movement which overthrew king Farouk and replaced him with Nasser in Egypt, in 1954. The Baath party opposed Qassem. Saddam was among those in the Fascist Baath party attempting to overthrow Qassem. Though Qassem was overthrown in 1963, it was not until 1968 when the Baath party took over, when one of their members Ahmad Hassan Al-Bakr, took office. Al-Bakr was Saddam’s cousin. Saddam was vice president. However, in 1979, as Saddam was becoming more powerful, he became president. He killed and tortured his opponents, including members of the Baath party. Saddam’s terror reign was what gave him the name “Butcher of Baghdad.

One year later, in 1980, Saddam invaded Iran. He saw his goals in Iran as easy, underestimating their power. In Iran, it was one year after the shah was overthrown and replaced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Saddam killed innocent men, women and children with chemical weapons. Though Saddam was interested in taking the Shatt-Al-Arab way and controlling valuable resources in Iran, Khomeinist Iran sought to impose their totalitarian Islamist system on the world, seeing Iraq as an important country to export the revolution. Seeing that his goals in Iran are hard to achieve, in 1982, Saddam offered a truce. Khomeini rejected it because of his goal of exporting his Islamist system to Iraq, a goal that Iran still retains even today.

Though in 1982, Iraq was removed from the US State Department list of states that sponsors terrorism. It was added on that list since Saddam took power because Saddam provided support to terrorist groups like the Abu Nidal group.

The French helped Baathist Iraq to aquire nuclear weapons, even after Saddam made himself the dictator. Saddam Hussein was one of the most anti-Israel dictators and was friends with Palestinian terrorist leaders like Yasser Arafat. In 1981, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear weapons reactor.

America, European nations, the Soviet Union and the Arab states supported Iraq. Though the material support Saddam got from America was small, as seen in this chart shown here.

In 1988, both Iran and Iraq agreed to a cease fire.

Saddam also used chemical weapons on the Shiites and on his genocide on the Kurds. One notorious attack on the Kurds in Iraq was in Halabja, in northern Iraq, where men, women and children were gassed by Saddam’s army.

Saddam viewed Kuwait as part of Iraq. Saddam had border disputes with Kuwait.

He had talks with Apiril Glaspie, who said that the border disputes was an issue among Arab nations, though she and the rest of the Bush Sr. Administration didn’t think that Saddam would actually invade Kuwait. However, in August 1990, Saddam invades Kuwait. Saddam killed and terrorized innocent men, women and children in Kuwait. The world condemned Saddam’s invasion. Even the Soviet Union, which gave Saddam the most support, condemned his invasion. The Arab nations also condemned his invasion. So did the west. Western European countries and the US condemned his invasion. The UN publicly issued resolutions against Saddam’s invasion and backed a US-led coalition that set out to liberate Kuwait. In 1991, US-led forces, composing of both the west and Arab nations alike, came to liberate Kuwait. They were welcomed by the Kuwaiti people.

To win Arab support, Saddam launched scud missiles at Israel. Israel sought to respond, but America told the Israelis not to respond and sent patriot missiles to hit scud missiles.

Saddam got the backing of the PLO. Jordan didn’t join the US-led coalition, since the pro-Saddam feelings among Jordan’s Palestinian population was too powerful for Jordan’s King Hussin regime to ignore.

Saddam also threatened Saudi Arabia. Osama Bin Ladin offered the Saudi royal family to defend that country if Saddam invades. Instead, the Saudis invited the US to come.

Thanks to the large number of countries in the US-led coalition, the Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait in a few months. America didn’t want to go in it alone because they knew how powerful Saddam’s army was. They knew that if America went in alone, it would be a bloody war that would cost a lot of American lives. So that’s why the Bush Sr. administration sought to get a lot of countries in the US-led coalition. Fortunately for that Administration, most of the world condemned Saddam’s terrorist aggression on Kuwait.

Saddam’s attempt to win more Arab support with his attacks on Israel failed miserably. The only ones backing Saddam were the PLO and other pro-Saddam Palestinians [I'm not saying that all Palestinians were pro-Saddam].

During the Gulf war, Palestinian demonstrators shouted,”Saddam, you hero, attack Israel with chemical weapons.”

After Saddam was driven out of Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government expelled its Palestinian population, expelling far more Palestinians than Israel. The PLO lost much of its Arab support for supporting Saddam’s invasion.

Saddam’s loss, along with Bush SR’s call to rebel against Saddam, got Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south, to attempt to force Saddam out of power and liberate their country. However, Saddam oppressed those revolts, killing many who took part in them.

The US-led coalition set up no fly zones in northern Iraq, where most of the people are Kurds, and in Southern Iraq, where most of the people are Shiites. The no fly zones were there to protect the Kurds and Shiites from Saddam’s atrocities.

Saddam was forced to destroy his chemical weapons and allow UN weapon inspectors to inspect any suspected site where Saddam is building chemical, biological and/or nuclear weapons, so they can force him to stop. These were the conditions for Iraq was under sanctions. Iraq’s economy was in shambles. To help the Iraqi people, the UN, as well as the US and the rest of the international community, allowed Saddam to sell oil for food to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Saddam used it to support terrorist groups. Saddam supported Palestinian terrorist groups. He used the oil for food program to support these Palestinian terrorist groups including the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], instead of using it to help the Iraqi people.

Saddam’s killing and torture of innocent men, women and children in Iraq continued until he was overthrown by the US-led coalition in 2003.

Saddam never fully cooperated with the UN weapon inspectors. He kept playing cat and mouse games with the UN inspectors. In 1998, the US bombed Saddam’s nuclear weapon facilities. It was called Operation Desert Fox. In the lead up to the Iraq war, Saddam still didn’t fully cooperate with the UN inspectors. The intelligence of world leaders also claimed that Saddam was building WMDs. Defectors from the Saddam regime also talked about Saddam’s alleged plans to build WMDs. Former [or then] CIA director George Tenet said on the O’reilly Factor that he believed that Saddam had WMDs going back to the Clinton Administration. Tenet later wrote a book critical of Bush back when he was still President. Both Democrats and Republicans alike believed that Saddam was building WMDs and voted for the US invasion of Iraq. After the US invasion of Iraq, the US-led coalition was unable to find Saddam’s WMDS. That got public opinion including the Bush Administration to conclude that in the lead up to the Iraq war, Saddam wasn’t building WMDs. Democrats exploited that conclusion as more dirt against Bush and the Republicans, despite the fact that they also believed that he had them. Some people still concluded that Saddam was building WMDS and just hid them in Syria, just to hide more evidence about Saddam’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

Saddam also supported terrorists including those who killed Americans. Among the terrorists Saddam supported who killed Americans were Abu Abbas, Yasser Arafat, and until 2002, Abu Nidal. Saddam was a major backer of the second intifada. The violent terror demonstrations in the second intifada, showed support toward Saddam, as well as hatred for America and Israel. Saddam gave $10.000 and then $25.000 to families of suicide bombers, even giving certificates that congratulate families of suicide bombers for their family member’s suicide terrorist attack. There was also debate about whether Saddam supported Al Qaeda. The Bush Administration used the alleged ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime as a justification to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein. The ones who claimed that there was no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda pointed out that Al Qaeda was a radical Islamic terrorist group that opposed secularism and that Saddam was a secular dictator. They point out that Saddam’s Iraq was no Islamist state. In fact, Islamist opponents of Saddam were Al Qaeda’s allies. The ones who did believe that there was a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda pointed out that despite Saddam’s secularism and Al Qaeda’s radical Islamic ideology, the two collaborated with each other because they both hated America. Saddam did support Jihadist terrorist groups like Hamas. Among the families of suicide bombers that Saddam gave money and certificates to congratulate the bombing attack, were families of Hamas suicide terrorists. Al Jazeera reported that, while on trial, Saddam congratulated the Hamas for winning the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections.

This is what the 9/11 commission report says about the claim of whether Saddam had a link with Al Qaeda:

Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda-save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against the “Crusaders” during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army [page 61].

The US gave Saddam an ultimatum to leave Iraq in 48 hours or face war. Saddam rejected the ultimatum. Two days later, the US-led coalition began a bombing campaign against Saddam’s regime known as Shock and Awe. One month later, in April, Saddam’s regime was overthrown. US forces hunted down for Saddam Hussein. On December 2003, US forces found Saddam hiding in a spider hole and arrested him. Saddam was put in jail. The US took the job of rebuilding Iraq, seeking to turn Iraq into a western-style democracy. Some of Saddam’s supporters joined the anti-American insurgence, which sought [and seek] to disrupt the democratic process in Iraq.

Saddam was eventually put on trial for his crimes against humanity, like the killing of his own people and his terrorist invasions of Iran and Kuwait. Many leftists complained that Saddam did not get a fair trial. They complain that his lawyers were killed. As horrible as the fact that Saddam’s lawyers were killed, he still got new ones. Iraq was in a bloody civil war, which resulted in the killing of Iraqi government officials, US-led coalition troops, insurgents and innocent civilians. It was in a civil war between Sunni and Shia extremists. Add to that, there was an effort by the insurgents and their Iranian and Syrian backers to derail the democratic progress in Iraq that was instituted there by the US-led coalition.

Saddam’s crimes were too-well known. There was no evidence that he was innocent, while the proof showed that Saddam was a bloodthirsty dictator. The left says that Saddam should’ve been tried in the Hague, despite the fact that his crimes were committed in Iraq. So the Iraqis should’ve decided the punishment for him. On December 30, 2006, Saddam was sentenced to death. Much of the left claimed that Saddam was a martyr for tolerating the taunts and just walking quietly to where he was executed. Much of the left complained that the execution of Saddam was being filmed. However, Saddam filmed the atrocities committed against his victims in order to send chilling warnings to the Iraqi people and to use fear in order to crush dissident.

Much of the political left whitewashed and/or supports him. The problem that extreme leftists such as anti-war protesters had with saddam was not his killings and tortures of innocent people, but that he received even a slight portion of US aid during the Iran-Iraq war. Many times when the political left doesn’t support Saddam, they support the Islamo-Fascist regime in Iran, which is even worse than Saddam ever was.

Much of the political left considers Saddam as a victim of US “imperialism,” supported him against America and cried for him when he was on trial. Radical leftists consider the the ones who tried Saddam to be US puppets. There is no evidence that the ones who tried him were US puppets. Sometimes leftists complain that America shouldn’t get low to Saddam’s standard in terms of sentencing him, despite the fact that it was Iraqis, not Americans, who decided the verdict in Saddam’s trial.

While much of the left supports other totalitarian figures, with Saddam, many leftists keep saying that they’re not defending Saddam even while defending other terrorists and dictators. Much of the political left still whitewashes and/or supports Saddam Hussein and cried for him when he was on trial.