Now that the dust has settled, did he really do anything wrong?

His rise to power and general Cold War behavior were textbook postcolonial dictator, with region-specific characteristics; clearly inspired by Stalin (hence the 'stache). Unlike Stalin, he inherited a country with significant, intractable ethnic divisions; but also unlike Stalin, he had a readymade cadre class of reasonably certain loyalty (al-Tikritis).

Saddam's first serious mistake, and it was a huge one, was starting an opportunistic war with Iran. Basically, he tried to subdue Iran while they were weakened by the Revolution. Unfortunately, he forgot that his soldiers were Arabs, and underestimated the amount of resistance the Iranians could manage. Still, it wasn't fatal.

Attempting to annex Kuwait was dumb. He could have invaded, looted/wrecked the place, and left. He maybe even could have seized and held the offending petroleum installations and negotiated some sort of settlement with the Kuwaitis, perhaps brokered by whichever third party Saddam wanted to cozy up to at the time (Syria maybe, or Egypt). By tying his forces down in Kuwait, he made an external intervention far more likely. He probably would have had a hard time holding Kuwait against e.g. an Egypt-Saudi led coalition, once the US had 500,000 troops in place it was over, even if his own forces had an equal capability (they didn't and he knew it, even if he didn't realize quite how bad the gap was).

But STILL, he survived, and in fact did a surprisingly decent job at minimizing the damage to his own forces, all things considered. This is where he fucked up for real: he continued to antagonize the US. He arguably had good, rational reasons to do so (basically: to maintain his domestic authority), but he went too far. Maybe some of y'all don't remember what it was like in the 90s, but basically Iraq was Generic Poster Villain in America. Watch the fucking South Park movie -- nobody had even heard of Paul Wolfowitz then.

The Case For The Iraq War was bullshit, but it didn't even matter. Tons of people just didn't like Saddam because he was the Bad Guy, that's what it really boiled down to.

The Kuwaitis didn't really give that much of a fuck at the end of the day -- they're fat lazy bastards -- so it's not like he'd stirred up some huge hornet's nest regionally. All he really had to do was be less openly antagonizing than Iran (creepy black turban dudes) or Syria (who undermined Our Greatest Ally via underhanded means) and he'd be good to go.

He wasn't a very sound military leader especially against Iran, but this is true for virtually every Arab military for reasons that partially aren't their own fault.
Whilst his economic policies weren't as successful as they could have been, Saddam's Ba'athism was more ideologically radical (in essence, Arab Fascism) than the more populist and watered down Assadist Ba'athism.
All in all, the only thing he did wrong was make a few military and economic mistakes. Fuck anybody who gets teary over a few dead Kurds.

The bloke may have been a cunt at times, but at the end of the day, he kept the country in check, and didn't take any shit from terrorist scum.

Also:-
>caused the US to spend/lose several trillion dollars, and several thousand lives, in order to hunt down and kill 1 bloke
>also made the US look like dumb fucks with the whole "MUH IRAQ HAS DA WMD'S!!!!" shit

Who really won there at the end of the day?

I think for myself.

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Saddam did nothing wrong.

youtu.be/8mMoqYRj56c

I was watching that earlier today, good stuff.

he had weapons of mass destruction that he used on his own people and would have given to entities that would have used them against us or our allies

he is guilty of the crime of being brown

>he had weapons of mass destruction
Where are they?

>Ba'ath
An Islamic version of Socialism/Marxism, which of course if just a blueprint for mobilizing the butthurt to a revolution and installing yourself as dictator. Pushed by the USSR during the Cold War to topple the western aligned governments of Iraq & Syria. The King of Iraq was from the same family as the current King of Jordan, prior to being overthrown by the Ba'athists.

The jew fears arab nationalism and a united arab people. That is why saddam was taken out. Now they are trying to take out assad. A divided arab world secures israel's existence

woke af

>Thinking just bc people are in your country they're "your own people"
I would glass california in a second. They aren't my "own people"

they went to syria

ever heard of wmd's in syria?

ever hear about saddam getting caught moving his wmd's to syria in the 6 months heads up warning that we gave him before we invaded the second time?

so as far as you're concerned, the penalty for disagreeing with you politically is death?

>Ba'ath
Kind of an Arab National Socialism with a little Pan-Arabism thrown in. Not necessarily Islamic, but enough to appeal to the illiterates. The problem why Pan-Arabism never gained any traction was that Arabs hate each other as much as they hate Jews. Not that they haven't tried with Nasser, Assad, Hussein, but egos got in the way. There was the short-lived Egyptian-Syrian United Arab Republic, but that didn't last long.

Who else? Israel.

The WMD talking point has been debunked years ago. They didn't have any chemical weapons after ratifying the treaty against them in the early 90s.

He styled himself after Stalin yet he allowed his extremely degenerate sons to act wild. Stalin was ashamed of his son for getting captured. Saddam on the other hand had full knowledge of his son's rape, murder, excessive spending, etc.

Fuck that faggot.

Don't insult Assad man. Saddam is a fucking degen.

This. AND he protested Christians. But hey, muh Israhell

no, that was another msm lie

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weeklystandard.com/mark-hemingway/are-syrias-chemical-weapons-iraqs-missing-wmd-obamas-director-of-intelligence-thought-so

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He did wisely disinherit Uday in favor of the more even-tempered Qusay.