Do you support Western intervention against ISIS?

You sure took your time on this reply. I was beginning to worry that you were sick or something.

So did you support the rule of Saddam Hussein, as opposed to simply believing that the region was better off with him in power?

Honestly, if it wasn't for Saddam, we wouldn't have any of this shit in the first place because Iraq and Syria would have become one country. But no, the cocksucker wanted to have a personal kingdom and to waste all the oil money and economic growth of the preceding decade on losing a war with Iran.

Is that a matter between Saddam or no Saddam ?

Yes, the region was better wih Saddam, but this only means that USA intervention made things worse.

Indigo wrote:

So did you support the rule of Saddam Hussein, as opposed to simply believing that the region was better off with him in power?

It's very complicated. If I were to speak on behalf of my Christian Lebanese family and community, then the answer would be a definite yes, we always supported the rule of Saddam Hussein. He was especially close and friendly to Lebanese Christian/Maronites and he supported us during our war of independence and liberation both against Israeli and Syrian occupations. The materiel, financial, and political support he gave to Lebanese Christians is unrivaled by any other Arab leader in modern Lebanese history. A significant part of Christians' ability to defend themselves during the Lebanese civil war is owed to Saddam's support.

On another extremely important note, both Saddam and Hafez were secular. Despite all the differences that arose between them and between us (by us I mean religious and ethnic minorities in the Levant), they both guaranteed our existence, our way of life and our security when push came to shove. So no matter what misunderstandings arose even during wartime, we minority groups together with Saddam and Hafez were always united in our secularism and more importantly in our fight against Islamic fundamentalism, which was never even the slightest problem before the imperialist invasion of Iraq.

I will deviate for a moment from talking about Saddam to talk about one extremely important decision Hafez al-Assad took regarding the existence of minorities and in particular Lebanese Christians in the Levant. During the earlier stages of the Lebanese civil war, there was one point in which Christians were in a very dire and critical situation, on the verge of being overwhelmed by superior PLO forces who were being supported by the majority of Lebanese Muslims. So the Christian leadership asked Assad to step in as a peacekeeping force. After a complicated political set of events that spanned over a few years, the Christian leadership decided in a very cynical, opportunistic, and controversial move to switch allegiances from Damascus to Israel. Assad felt betrayed by the Christian community, and perceived this new allegiance as a grave threat that could result in a new Judeo-Christian alliance capable of furthering the spread of Zionism in the Levant. Thus he started to heavily arm the PLO and Muslim population in their fight against the newly Israeli backed ultra right wing Christian Phalangist parties. (Which I should stress were some of the most reactionary groups who were responsible for massacring just as much Christians as they did Muslims. They are the ones most responsible for Christians losing the war resulting in 90% of Lebanese Christians becoming diaspora. I only mention this so that people won't get the wrong idea that I am in some way a blind supporter of Lebanese Christians in a sectarian manner or that I'm a "believer" in the strict religious sense of the word.)

This arming of Muslims and the PLO proved successful and step by step Christian areas were beginning to fall under Muslim occupation. It reached to a point where the highest ranking political/military Lebanese figure in the PLO-Lebanese Muslim alliance, Kamal Jumblatt who was up until then in very good terms with Hafez, went to Damascus to ask permission from Assad to win the war against Christians finally, militarily, unconditionally and if need be ethnically cleanse Lebanon of the Christian community so that they may never pose a threat again.

This very possibility and even worse Kamal Jumblatts's proposal of completely destroying an ethnic minority be it politically, militarily or existentially so horrified Assad that he had this very person Kamal Jumblatt who was his closest Lebanese ally, assassinated shortly thereafter for simply letting the idea cross his mind. He had his close ally murdered to protect the very minority people who had betrayed him by siding with Israel. That just goes to show how secular Hafez was when it became an existential question. Every single Arab historian I've spoken to, some of which knew people who knew Saddam claim that he was of the same caliber in this regard. Both of them massacred populations they were at war with and I'm not saying that was in any way justifiable, but that no matter their sins, it never fell along sectarian lines. They were both secular down to the marrow of their bones.

Saddam never did support these particular Phalangist/fascist/Maronite groups. When I said he supported Christians, I meant secular Maronites like General Michel Aoun who lead the Lebanese Army in some of the fiercest battles against Syrian occupation during the country's war for liberation.

But at the same time no one was under any illusions. Saddam was very much a gangster in his own right, extremely self indulgent, not to mention being the farthest thing from a left-wing politician although he did offer millions of dollars of support to Marxists-Leninist organizations like the PFLP under the command of internationalist communist revolutionaries like Wadie Haddad and Carlos the Jackal, albeit his support for both Lebanese Christians and communist organizations outside of Iraq were of a purely opportunistic nature while at the same time he persecuted communists he deemed a threat in his own country. He in reality did not have a single anti-imperialist bone in his body.

And I'm not even going to get started on the long string of political and historical mistakes he made like the wars with Iran and Kuwait. I am not however one of those who believe that these mistakes were entirely groundless. I do see the logic in his reasoning no matter how false they now appear to be in hindsight. With Iran he believed that he was in part fighting the very same Islamic fundamentalism that most everyone now want to destroy. His mistake was in gravely underestimating the Iranian people's character as well as their military potential, and he paid dearly for it.

The issue with the Kuwaitis was a mesh of Saddam allowing himself to be played for a fool by the Americans, bad judgment, mounting debt, and Kuwaiti cynicism and stubbornness.

His war with the Kurds is something I'd prefer not to give an opinion on at this moment because it was an internal Iraqi issue and because I don't know enough about the details to express an opinion confidently.


Anyway I've never been a fan of retrospectively analyzing a persons actions. No one alive is fit to make predictions based on would be or "what if" scenarios. It's amusing to read such analysis but it in no way merits serious attention or consideration. Everyone seems to be a genius in hindsight yet a complete idiot in real time. That's what I believe. Proof of it lies in the current situation. You've got geniuses from everywhere thinking that they've got the ultimate solution to ISIL. I can't wait to see which one if any of them turn out to be right. The best part is that if this whole operation goes to hell and blows up in everybody's face, these same geniuses will look back and find excuses in the details, claiming that had this person or that person done this or that, it would have turned out the way they planned.

I have a very long incomplete draft where I critique retrospective analysis in general and of Stalin in particular that I will eventually post someday.

In conclusion Saddam was the kind of man you could work with so long as you did not pose a threat to his rule. The relationship was purely of an opportunistic nature, and it just happens that I was on his side during the anti-war student demonstrations in Beirut of 2002/2003, part of which the student branch of the Lebanese communist party were actively involved in. Otherwise I remember my youth before that in Lebanon as a time of indifference to Hafez's and Saddam's rule. I neither liked nor hated them. But it was very much a time of such peace and security unparalleled to any other place or time I've visited since or before that. Back then you could literally walk anywhere in the Levant 24 hours a day with a huge cross dangling from your neck and a bottle of champagne in your hand and never worry about a goddamned thing.

So until better days come along I can only reminisce about the old days with fondness. And until a worthy alternative to Saddam's rule manifests itself, I can only remember him as indeed a great man and a giant in Arab history.

I've been thinking about posting something on YouTube within the next few months in his honor unlike anything that's been seen on the Internet before among the Arab community. It's a video from the early 90s of one of the most famous and celebrated Arab singers/artists and an icon in Arabic cultural history signing a song dedicated to Saddam simply titled "Saddam". I have one of only two copies.

If I do finally decide to upload it, it won't be done in glorification of Saddam himself but rather in remembrance of better days when Saddam was the boss.

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His war with the Kurds is something I'd prefer not to give an opinion on at this moment because it was an internal Iraqi issue and because I don't know enough about the details to express an opinion confidently.

Haha. A genocide is something you don't want to comment on because "it was an internal Iraqi issue".
You don't know enough about Halabja to express an opinion, really?

No, I don't know enough about the Halabja chemical attack. Most people may think they do, but I have my doubts. The Halabja attack is an infinitesimally small part of both the Iran-Iraq war and more importantly the still ongoing Iraqi-Kurdish conflict that has now spanned close to 100 years. I never analyse events independent of their backgrounds. Hundreds of thousands of people from both sides died in the Iraqi-Kurdish conflict even before Saddam Hussein was born. It was never his particular war against the Kurds. He was just a part of the larger and more complicated Arab-Kurdish conflict. I have met enough Iraqi Arabs to know that the ethnic hatred between them and the Kurds runs deep. I have however never spoken or even met a Kurd in my life, which is the main reason I'm reluctant to express a confident opinion. I find it extremely important to hear their personal side of the story, which I'm sure at the end of the day will boil down to two differing ethnic people fighting for their own national interests, in which one side seemingly came out on top most of the time. There's nothing new or unique here. Both Iraqi Arabs and Kurds had already committed massacres individually amongst themselves and amongst each other even before Saddam was born. So most of the people in Iraq were born into this conflict, which is why I say that it's an internal Iraqi issue. I find it difficult making accurate judgments about such a personal conflict being born outside of it.

I however have no doubt that Saddam is capable of such atrocities. Like I said before, he was a gangster in the truest sense of the word. He very much enjoyed torturing and killing his enemies, and out of all 20th-century Arab dictators, he definitely was the most brutal. He is nevertheless not solely responsible for the war crimes committed against Kurds, neither do I equate the Iraqi-Kurdish conflict into simply being a fight between oppressor and oppressed. If we take into account the interests in oil and all the outside forces that were involved in the conflict, then it becomes close to impossible to find anyone with clean hands.

Either way I do not have a dog in this fight. At this point I have nothing against the Kurds setting up their own independent nation-state. They've fought long and hard enough to deserve one.

On another note, I'm wary of using labels such as "genocide" and "terrorism". They have become too politicised, and are much too often used as weapons in the interests of one party over another. I am also not a supporter of using one form of lethal weapons over another, neither do I believe in playing nice and fair during wartime. War is not a game with a specific set of fair rules that are to be followed. War is the most desperate fight to the death where all means at one's disposal are used in order to win, and I have yet to see a warring party in history never to have committed war crimes against civilian populations. In other words, I don't think that using knives, guns, or bombs to kill people make it less of a crime than using chemical weapons. In the case of Halabja, I think the word "massacre" would be more accurate, whereas I find it a matter of opinion as to whether it constituted genocide or not. I remember the attack as being aimed to repel the Iranian military's advance into Iraqi territory, and so its military aim should already automatically negate genocidal intent. Or were the chemicals used the decisive factor in labelling it genocide? So if the same amount of people were killed with bombs would you have called it something else? So you see I truly, honestly, sincerely don't know enough about the details. My knowledge on this particular conflict hasn't improved since high school. Anyway I don't really care what you label it. If people want to call it genocide then it's fine with me. It makes no difference at this point anyway because Saddam's been executed, and that's justice enough I'm guessing for the civilian populations that have been massacred.

All the same, I really can't help but smile when I think about Saddam who had impeccable taste in his choice of suits and who also threw the best and grandest parties ever since Alexander ruled Babylon when the Levant was still Mesopotamia.

So you're a conspiracy theorist of some sort and a genocide denier then.
Cool.

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I remember the attack as being aimed to repel the Iranian military's advance into Iraqi territory, and so its military aim should already automatically negate genocidal intent.

This is golden. So the Turkish genocide of Armenians had some sort of a military aim, which according to you automatically negates genocidal intent.

I find it hard to believe that you're not just trolling here.

I don't even want to know how you came to those conclusions. May God have mercy on your tortured soul. Whatever you want Loz. Fine, I agree there was genocidal intent. Saddam Hussein was the anti-christ and I'm a demon incarnate.

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But at the same time no one was under any illusions. Saddam was very much a gangster in his own right, extremely self indulgent, not to mention being the farthest thing from a left-wing politician although he did offer millions of dollars of support to Marxists-Leninist organizations like the PFLP under the command of internationalist communist revolutionaries like Wadie Haddad and Carlos the Jackal, albeit his support for both Lebanese Christians and communist organizations outside of Iraq were of a purely opportunistic nature while at the same time he persecuted communists he deemed a threat in his own country. He in reality did not have a single anti-imperialist bone in his body.

This is because you are a stalinist. Saddam is a kind of Stalin of arab world. Baath party started as socialist with a pan-arabian twist party. Later the party went thru similar steps towards a ditactorship, with purges within ranks and the centralization of power under Saddam hands. In a similar (but not equal) sequence of events to what happened in URSS. So, he killed a lot of comunists (marxist-leninists) and baathist party members. But this is not becouse he was ultimately anti-marxist, it wasn't out of a total political discordance against marxist ideas, but under pratical political necessity to eliminate rivals and threats to his power. Baath ideology was very much marxist, but developed under the circunstances of an arabian world. If later on Saddam drifted more and more towards capitalism, the start was socialist (not exactly marxist). And even being a ditactorship and a capitalist country, no country in arabian world provided as much social protection as Iraq under Saddam. He went on to do things that are utterly oposed to wahabi ideology, like providing university access to women.

But arent you (me) a marxist ? How come ?

I am in no way less marxist. But its easy to give marxism a totalitarian turn. Its what all countries have done (all comunist countries). To do this, you should concentrate on material results and forget about the cultural consequences. You prize health care above intelectual freedom. You prize economic performance above the end of commodity fetishism. And then you get a ditactorship that provides all basic material needs of an human being, but cannot provide any of the ideological advances that makes a man free. Thats the result of leninism thought. Its a common sight on all countries that tried to implement marxism thru the vanguardist means.

I was talking about you in particular AldoBrasil when I wrote this:

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I have a very long incomplete draft where I critique retrospective analysis in general and of Stalin in particular that I will eventually post someday.

The draft is the very same one I started as a reply to you during our very first debate in the DPRK thread, remember? I wanted to post it earlier but then you and Bagration already had a debate on Stalin going on recently and so I changed my mind for a second time. I will eventually post it when it's completed and maybe you'd critique it then. A small warning in advance, the draft is already full of poetic Stalinist glorification, just letting you know so you'll be ready in case you decide to reply.

For now I think we've drifted enough off topic since this is a talk about ISIL.

I do however have a question I wouldn't mind you answering now though. If you're not a believer in Leninism, then why do you have his picture as your avatar?

Let me know if you put that Saddam Vid up on Youtube.

I'd like to read your Stalin piece too when you finish it!

Do you really want to critique retrospective analisys ?

Well, so lets kill all history teachers, becouse the whole point of history is to do retrospective analisys. But why ? To prevent (or try to) history from repeating itself. If you castrate the retrospective analisys, then whats the point of history ? Recording dates and numbers ?

Marxism is about retrospective analisys of history as much as it is about revolutionizing the future. If Marx had not resorted to retrospective analisys (even if short term, he was writing not much time since the industrial revolution) how he could have understood capitalism ?

Of course, history cannot be changed, but we must call a spade a spade.

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For now I think we've drifted enough off topic since this is a talk about ISIL.

The whole point : If saddam was still in place, we would not have an ISIL.

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I do however have a question I wouldn't mind you answering now though. If you're not a believer in Leninism, then why do you have his picture as your avatar?

Becouse there is no photo os Gramsci saying that he is too sexy for the PSI.

You seem to think that the words critique and criticize are synonymous. Critique means evaluate in a detailed and analytical way. In my draft I simply state the shortcomings and limitations of retrospective analysis. I do not negate it completely as a way of studying the past.

Wouldn't it have been easier for you just to wait for my post?

You really are something else Aldo. I've had my words ridiculed, criticized, and mocked countless times in my life but this is the first time I've ever had something I did not even get a chance to say criticized.

AldoBrasil wrote:

Because there is no photo os Gramsci saying that he is too sexy for the PSI.

Who's the black private dick / That's a sex machine to all the chicks?

omnimercurial wrote:

Let me know if you put that Saddam Vid up on Youtube.

I'd like to read your Stalin piece too when you finish it!

I doubt you'll find the video interesting. It's a short video of a great Arab musician singing a song about Saddam in Arabic. It's unique by the fact that this particular song by such a revered Arab artist about a controversial figure has never been made public to the Arab community.

I have yet to ask permission from the original owner, as well as decide for myself whether or not risking this artists' reputation posthumously is worth the trouble. Some things are better left off kept to oneself, but I will send you a link if I do decide to upload it.

I'm almost certain that I'll eventually post the Stalin piece so no problem there.

For now I would say that I was right to support this "intervention" as it obviously helped the PKK a bit.

I can't see long term US/NATO/Imperialist intervention being progressive.

The US even do not want to intervene properly. They just want to keep ISIS in check and maintain their divide and conquer strategy. Look how balkanized the whole Middle East is now.

Yes

Just this last one. Get it done and then never again meddle in that region. Defeat the ISIS abomination, then take out all the troops and stop supporting imperialist causes there.

That's not how it works. The US has no rationale for destroying ISIS except insofar as if benefits our position in the region.

They would gladly destroy ISIS if they could replace it with FSA or other soft terrorists like Al Nusra.