NBC journalist Richard Engel, who’s been posted to Iraq pre-war and post-war, offers an assessement of life then vs. life now.
Regarding Safety, for example:
UNDER SADDAM
Personal safety was a direct result of one’s ability to appease the state, or be lucky enough to stay out of its way. People were so afraid that men told me they wouldn’t even talk to their wives or children about Saddam.Saddam fought three wars while in power – resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands – so there was a good chance of getting killed or wounded in one of them.
Personal safety, however, was excellent. There were no muggings or kidnappings. I walked the streets and never had to worry about the money in my pockets (which was often considerable because credit cards were essentially useless). Then there was the time I lost a bag containing $9,000 in cash and my passport. It was returned, an event which Saddam Hussein personally recognized on Iraqi state television in 2001. (The incident was used by the propaganda machine to show the innate honesty of the Iraqi people.)
In all, there was a system – no matter how evil it was – and Iraqis had learned to deal with it. But there was no hope, only increasing skill at beating the system.
NOW
People are afraid to walk the streets. Militias, gangs, insurgents and police are all suspect. There are car bombs and mortar attacks every day in many cities. People are afraid of the Iraqi security forces, believing they are either Sunni insurgents in disguise or Shiite militias – both are deadly.The state remains threatening (many people are arrested arbitrarily and tortured) and crime has, to put it mildly, skyrocketed.
I cannot walk the streets. I would be kidnapped.
Husbands do talk to their wives openly, but don’t let them leave the house for fear of what might happen.
The situation is chaotic and changing. People do not know how to deal with it and find it terrifying. There is hope the situation will improve. But fears it will take a long time, costing many, many lives.
Engel offers similar comparisons in Political Freedom, Health Care, Education, Economy, Basic Services, and Prospects for the Future.
It’s depressing, but it’s also a perspective on the past.
Whenever I see one of these, “Yes, things are terrible in Iraq now but look how terrible they were under Saddam” musings I always think about how the United States decided not once, but twice to prop up his regime.
In the mid-1980’s the United States stepped into the Iran-Iraq War and saved Saddam Hussein. It was a conscious choice.
During the first Gulf War the United States left him in power. Even more shocking, they encouraged the Shi’ite south to rise up against him and when the Shi’ites did, the American military stood by while Saddam’s helicopter gunships blew them into pieces.
It is no accident that the fiercest resistance the American military came up against when they launched this current Iraq War was in the south. While memories may be short on this side of the Atlantic, you can be sure that the people of southern Iraq remembered those American pamphlets encouraging them to rise up, those pamphlets that tacitly promised support that did not come.
Was Saddam Hussein a monster? Yes, absolutely. But I think it should be remembered that every attrocity he perpetuated after the United States stepped into the Iran-Iraq War was made possible by that intervention. The United States chose to keep Saddam in power for almost 20 years, knowing full well what he was.
Food for thought, eh?
No arguments over US actions viz Iraq in the past. There are excuses — would the Middle East have been better off had Iran won the Iran-Iraq War? What pressures were exerted by the other Arab (and non-Arab) coalition partners regarding “finishing off” Iraq in ’91? — but all they do is point out that sometimes (even if you grant the decisions made the benefit of the doubt) there are no “good” answers, only less “awful” ones.
Regarding the shameful episode regarding the southern Shi’ites … it is a huge dark blot on this nation.
Nor does the liberation of the Iraqi people (the calculus of the “now and then” sort of comparisons like the above) really justify the war, though it’s a nice side benefit. There are any number of other places in the world as godawfully miserable as Iraq was. Some of which, for a variety of reasons (some bad, some not as bad) we continue to support, if not tacitly permit (whether “we” is the US, or the world community).