End of the Reign of a Cockroach in Iraq

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End of the Reign of a Cockroach in Iraq
by Michael J. Hurd (April 13, 2003)

Summary: Watch carefully which side comes to dominate in post-war Iraq.

That's all Saddam Hussein was: the moral and political equivalent of a cockroach. His metaphysical importance was never any more than that, and neither -- we now realize -- was his military strength. Years of hand wringing and appeasement by (primarily) the Clinton Administration made this pathetic thug (who thought he was a real dictator like Hitler or Stalin) into more than he ever was.

Saddam Hussein was the product of massive moral cowardice on the part of the liberals who ran the foreign policy show in the 1990's (and still do to a great extent). Had he been given another decade of a free ride, he could have well turned into someone truly dangerous -- such as the mullahs of Iran or the nuclear-wielding Communists of North Korea (enemies yet to be faced, much less defeated).

Notice how hordes of Iraqis cheer the demise of their dictator. They understand what American liberals refuse to get, and will never get: that not everything is morally relative.

Other Iraqis, it's reported, express "resentment" at the presence of Americans in their city. They see Americans not as liberators but as villains and invaders. These people -- just like the liberals in the United States -- have a different psychology from those who cheer the American presence in their country. They fear independence and freedom. They resent it and even loathe it in some cases. Saddam, in a twisted sort of way, was their "friend." So long as he could victimize them and hold them back, they didn't have to accept the responsibility for their own fate, the kind of responsibility that freedom requires.

Saddam was also a socialist--of the fascist variety. While he brutalized them, he also took care of them. He wasn't a "benevolent dictator," but he was a dictator and some people find being told what to do by a dictator reassuring. It's also less mental work.