Not upholding him as a martyr or anything, but the situation is much more complicated than him being an ethno-supremacist or doing bad things for no reason. Ba’athist Syria has often been unkind to the Kurds as well, but Assad’s government is still what holds Syria together and thankfully better relationships are forming. The prevailing narrative seems to be that the U.S. and Saddam were hand-in-hand in oppressing the Kurdish minority but that’s just blatantly untrue. The U.S. was arming and using Kurdish rebels and separatists as a means of destabilizing Iraq, just as they try to do with Uyghurs (ETIM) in Xinjiang or… Kurds in Syria, or the Kuwaiti monarchists. Gaddafi was racist and paternalistic to Sub-Saharan African peoples and thought that Arab civilization was far more advanced, and posited a sort of “Arab man’s burden”. Saddam, as brutal as he and his government may have been at times, was a secularist and a socialist, and that should not be forgotten when considering the crimes the U.S. levied against Iraq – including facilitating the installation of a Kurdish-separatist-led puppet government, one that ironically went on to become cold to the West anyway after they realized they had been played by imperialists.
^Saddam and Castro^
^Saddam and Yasser Arafat^
^Saddam and Brezhnev^
I do not mean to step on you or your Kurdish friend’s toes, especially if you or they have experienced any of this turmoil firsthand. But in so quickly wholesale condemning socialist leaders, even the non-Marxist ones, I think we do a disservice to history. I think Saddam needs a serious critical re-examination from Marxist historians and socialists who were there to determine the truth from the falsehoods. From my understanding of things, Saddam had good intentions and wound up getting played by the neoliberal, imperialist hegemon, and then discarded when he was no longer useful.
edit: also want to say that the (hopefully temporary) death of the pan-Arabist cause has been a major blow to anti-imperialist revolutionaries in MENA. Saddam, as I said for all his faults, was a pan-Arabist and fierce advocate for a free Palestine. It is difficult to say how much worse off the Arab world, and the world generally, is without leaders sharing similar ideals of secularism, socialism and anti-imperialism.
Even by complete flat non-analysis the choice between Saddam’s Iraq and 20 years of ongoing humanitarian and civilizational catastrophe is very easy choice for anyone without imperialist brainworms.
the point about pan-arab secularism is really interesting and I do agree that Islamism largely replacing pan-arabism has been hugely detrimental towards Palestinians. I really do agree there’s a lot of truth we don’t know about Saddam and it’s going to be very difficult to dissect what was actually going on - I guess I just feel very icky trying to approach the topic
ye I don’t blame you comrade. I admit to only knowing very little, a lot of it from William Blum and a lot of the history unfortunately from the previously quasi-Nazbol “Flame of Liberation” who to his credit gave a very detailed breakdown of Saddam’s legacy that I think was very well researched and presented. To Nick’s further credit, he seems to have distanced himself from his previous homophobic and overtly bourgeois nationalist sentiments and has become more of a scientific socialist, especially with his recent split with Maupin. This is a long video but if you are interested in Saddam and Ba’athism more generally I do recommend it.
I also understand the personal conflict w/ having a Kurdish friend and probably their distaste for Saddam. It is not comparable as it’s just a hypothetical in my case, but I often wonder what would happen if I had a Ukrainian friend when the war started. Unless they happened to totally agree with me on everything, it would probably be very ugly and difficult to discuss – especially with the feeling that I was speaking from a position of no experience, being “laned” as it were. It’s a touchy situation and I definitely understand your hesitation to care about Saddam at all.
interesting excerpt, source admittedly unknown by me:
I really, really like Gaddafi’s Green Book and find a lot of its ideas about governance fascinating and enlightening regarding the Libyan dream of democracy that was being achieved. However…
Colonel, what the fuck?
Tangentially related here, but his ideas about gender and sex were also complicated. He supported the general concept of equality between men and women, but very much thought that women were first and foremost child-rearers and…
Complicated figure. He also thought wrestling and boxing were disgusting and upheld Bedouin society as a model for the dissolution of the savagery that is sports entertainment…? Colonel?
Not upholding him as a martyr or anything, but the situation is much more complicated than him being an ethno-supremacist or doing bad things for no reason. Ba’athist Syria has often been unkind to the Kurds as well, but Assad’s government is still what holds Syria together and thankfully better relationships are forming. The prevailing narrative seems to be that the U.S. and Saddam were hand-in-hand in oppressing the Kurdish minority but that’s just blatantly untrue. The U.S. was arming and using Kurdish rebels and separatists as a means of destabilizing Iraq, just as they try to do with Uyghurs (ETIM) in Xinjiang or… Kurds in Syria, or the Kuwaiti monarchists. Gaddafi was racist and paternalistic to Sub-Saharan African peoples and thought that Arab civilization was far more advanced, and posited a sort of “Arab man’s burden”. Saddam, as brutal as he and his government may have been at times, was a secularist and a socialist, and that should not be forgotten when considering the crimes the U.S. levied against Iraq – including facilitating the installation of a Kurdish-separatist-led puppet government, one that ironically went on to become cold to the West anyway after they realized they had been played by imperialists.
I do not mean to step on you or your Kurdish friend’s toes, especially if you or they have experienced any of this turmoil firsthand. But in so quickly wholesale condemning socialist leaders, even the non-Marxist ones, I think we do a disservice to history. I think Saddam needs a serious critical re-examination from Marxist historians and socialists who were there to determine the truth from the falsehoods. From my understanding of things, Saddam had good intentions and wound up getting played by the neoliberal, imperialist hegemon, and then discarded when he was no longer useful.
edit: also want to say that the (hopefully temporary) death of the pan-Arabist cause has been a major blow to anti-imperialist revolutionaries in MENA. Saddam, as I said for all his faults, was a pan-Arabist and fierce advocate for a free Palestine. It is difficult to say how much worse off the Arab world, and the world generally, is without leaders sharing similar ideals of secularism, socialism and anti-imperialism.
Even by complete flat non-analysis the choice between Saddam’s Iraq and 20 years of ongoing humanitarian and civilizational catastrophe is very easy choice for anyone without imperialist brainworms.
the point about pan-arab secularism is really interesting and I do agree that Islamism largely replacing pan-arabism has been hugely detrimental towards Palestinians. I really do agree there’s a lot of truth we don’t know about Saddam and it’s going to be very difficult to dissect what was actually going on - I guess I just feel very icky trying to approach the topic
ye I don’t blame you comrade. I admit to only knowing very little, a lot of it from William Blum and a lot of the history unfortunately from the previously quasi-Nazbol “Flame of Liberation” who to his credit gave a very detailed breakdown of Saddam’s legacy that I think was very well researched and presented. To Nick’s further credit, he seems to have distanced himself from his previous homophobic and overtly bourgeois nationalist sentiments and has become more of a scientific socialist, especially with his recent split with Maupin. This is a long video but if you are interested in Saddam and Ba’athism more generally I do recommend it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ufJzwzdM8sE
I also understand the personal conflict w/ having a Kurdish friend and probably their distaste for Saddam. It is not comparable as it’s just a hypothetical in my case, but I often wonder what would happen if I had a Ukrainian friend when the war started. Unless they happened to totally agree with me on everything, it would probably be very ugly and difficult to discuss – especially with the feeling that I was speaking from a position of no experience, being “laned” as it were. It’s a touchy situation and I definitely understand your hesitation to care about Saddam at all.
interesting excerpt, source admittedly unknown by me:
I’m not saying you’re wrong, and I’m very impressed with your work. How do you think or what’s your source for Gaddafi being a racist?
I really, really like Gaddafi’s Green Book and find a lot of its ideas about governance fascinating and enlightening regarding the Libyan dream of democracy that was being achieved. However…
Colonel, what the fuck?
Tangentially related here, but his ideas about gender and sex were also complicated. He supported the general concept of equality between men and women, but very much thought that women were first and foremost child-rearers and…
Complicated figure. He also thought wrestling and boxing were disgusting and upheld Bedouin society as a model for the dissolution of the savagery that is sports entertainment…? Colonel?