I’m going to half defend Trump here. No, really: hear me out.
Yes, Saddam was a brutal dictator who invaded his neighbors for no good reason, oppressed the Shiites and Kurds, and basically killed people for sport. No, the record shows that Trump didn’t oppose the invasion from the beginning, regardless of what he says today. And no, the people Saddam butchered weren’t terrorists; that is a typical piece of Trump misinformation. The real point, however, is that there weren’t any Iraqi terrorists for him to kill, which brings up two legitimate questions:
- Would Iraq be a better place to live today if Saddam were still in power?
- Would the world in general be a better place if the Iraq invasion had not occurred?
Here are my responses:
- It depends on who you are. If you’re a Shiite or a Kurd and you’re far from the action, you are clearly better off today than you were 15 years ago. If you’re a Sunni, and you were good at keeping your head down and your mouth shut, Saddam wasn’t a huge problem, and you are living with IS and a Shiite majority today. If you are a Sunni or a Shiite on the front lines of terrorism, you have far more freedom, less reliable electricity, and less security than you did before the invasion. It’s definitely a mixed bag.
- While Saddam was dangerously unpredictable, he kept Iran in check, and IS would not exist today if he were still in power, since it relies heavily on military expertise and assets obtained as a result of the invasion. On balance, I think you would have to say the world as a whole would be better off if the invasion had never occurred, and that doesn’t even factor in the horrific costs of the invasion itself to the US and to the Iraqi people.
So, while he was (as usual) wrong about the specifics, in my opinion, Trump got the bigger picture right. I guess “truthful hyperbole” can actually contain some truth every now and then. Considering the source, you could call it a germ of truth.