Is it true that George Bush's faith in God caused him to invade Iraq?

[Sarsath]

George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'

 

[Nithavela]

About as much as god tells all the candidates to run when they go on and not even make it to the top 3.

It's just a soundbite to appeal to religious folks.

 

[wing2000]

George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'

I don't recall G.W. making that argument (God told me to) in the lead up to the Iraq invasion. As the article notes, he allegedly told Palestinian leaders this information four months after the invasion.

Man has been invoking God in in his war campaigns since the beginning of time...

 

[yougottabekidding]

I wouldn't believe one word printed by the Guardian. It is not worth the ink used to print it.

 

[Just Another User]

I wouldn't believe one word printed by the Guardian. It is not worth the ink used to print it.

The Guardian's decent enough. Nothing too spectacular but it's well written. The Scum and the Daily Fail however...

 

[DaisyDay]

I wouldn't believe one word printed by the Guardian. It is not worth the ink used to print it.

No, it is fairly reliable.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I don't recall G.W. making that argument (God told me to) in the lead up to the Iraq invasion. As the article notes, he allegedly told Palestinian leaders this information four months after the invasion.

Man has been invoking God in in his war campaigns since the beginning of time...

Insert "With God on Our Side" by Bob Dylan here.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[W2L]

Saddam was a war criminal and needed removed. As far as wars go, Iraq was one of the more moral wars that we have fought.

 

[ViaCrucis]

"The whole world is wet with mutual blood; and murder, which in the case of an individual is admitted to be a crime, is called a virtue when it is committed wholesale. Impunity is claimed for the wicked deeds, not on the plea that they are guiltless, but because the cruelty is perpetrated on a grand scale." - St. Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 1, 6, addressed to a certain Donatus (not that Donatus), c. 250 AD

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ThatRobGuy]

No, it is fairly reliable.

...you're forgetting, for some people, anything left of "center-right" is "unreliable, biased, liberal media"...largely because they've gown accustomed to an echo chamber that tells them everything they want to hear, and dismissing any fact they disagree with as a "Soros-funded conspiracy".

 

[Sarsath]

Saddam was a war criminal and needed removed. As far as wars go, Iraq was one of the more moral wars that we have fought.

No, the war was a disaster and created ISIS. Saddam Hussein was the only thing keeping Iraq stable.

 

[dzheremi]

If so, then there must have been some miscommunication between him and God at that time, because all it really ended up doing is destroying the most ancient Christian communities in the world (the various Syriac people of Mesopotamia) and making extremely unstable what had previously been one of the few truly secular and pluralistic societies of the region. Yes, Saddam was brutal and did need to go, but now you have a million people fighting to be their own Saddam or worse. And the same also happened in Libya and Syria (both secular) thanks to the Obama administration's decisions to back the rebels, so this is not a partisan trait or issue. All politicians are short-sighted, regardless of who or what they pray to.

Invoke God all you want; you still have to deal with what you have actually done.

 

[ViaCrucis]

No, the war was a disaster and created ISIS. Saddam Hussein was the only thing keeping Iraq stable.

I don't think there's any debate that Saddam was awful, because he was. He was an evil despot. But, yes, Iraq was one of the few places where people could actually practice their religion relatively peacefully--the Saddam regime was secular. The vacuum of toppling that regime ended up bringing far worse things to the region, such as ISIS.

Yes, the war was a disaster. But we need to also acknowledge that Saddam was a horrible despot. Evil, but turns out he was the lesser of possible evils.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[W2L]

Saddam Hussein was the only thing keeping Iraq stable.

He gassed his own people. He killed children. He was convicted of war crimes by his own people.

 

[SarahsKnight]

"The whole world is wet with mutual blood; and murder, which in the case of an individual is admitted to be a crime, is called a virtue when it is committed wholesale.

Ain't that the sad truth.

 

[W2L]

We found mass graves left by Saddam. Thats not stability its a crime against humanity.

 

[dzheremi]

But being stable doesn't mean he's good or would not commit such massacres. Stability is often achieved through brutal means. He was a strongman, because that's what Iraq (which is in some sense an artificial invention of colonialists) apparently needed to keep its heterogeneous population from being at each other's throats constantly, as it is now in many places (and was from the very beginning of Iraq as country; look up the Simele massacre of 1933, for example). For a parallel, consider the situation in the former Yugoslavia with the end of communism. Nobody would say that Tito was a good guy, but at the same time no one would say that the nationalistic and ethnoreligious wars that plagued the region in the early 1990s were anything other than brutal and terrible. Communist rule kept a lid on preexisting tensions, which is pretty much what Saddam also did. It doesn't make for good leadership, but it does make for a more stable country so long as he is running it.

 

[SimplyMe]

If so, then there must have been some miscommunication between him and God at that time, because all it really ended up doing is destroying the most ancient Christian communities in the world (the various Syriac people of Mesopotamia) and making extremely unstable what had previously been one of the few truly secular and pluralistic societies of the region. Yes, Saddam was brutal and did need to go, but now you have a million people fighting to be their own Saddam or worse. And the same also happened in Libya and Syria (both secular) thanks to the Obama administration's decisions to back the rebels, so this is not a partisan trait or issue. All politicians are short-sighted, regardless of who or what they pray to.

Invoke God all you want; you still have to deal with what you have actually done.

Actually, our Middle Eastern Arab allies (particularly Saudi Arabia) wanted Saddam to remain in power largely because Iraq acted as a "shield," helping in preventing Iran from "exporting" their particular brand of Islamic extremism. At least part of this is that the Shia have a decent majority in Iraq, many of whom had similar beliefs to the people of Iran and wanted to set up an Iranian style theocracy in Iraq. So, the fall of Saddam caused ISIS -- which was the movement to bring Iranian theocracy to Iraq and bordering countries -- and allowed them to further export the movement to other Arab countries.

This was also one of the main issues in trying to create a functioning government in Iraq -- you have the majority Shia population, who wanted to make laws based on their version of Islam, and overrule the minority Sunni population -- not to mention the Kurds being yet another minority needing to be protected (or even the Christians). This was made worse by the Shia population being particularly brutalized by Saddam (who, although actually more secular, was a Sunni), so they wanted control (or even revenge) after being marginalized under Saddam's government.

 

[W2L]

But being stable doesn't mean he's good or would not commit such massacres. Stability is often achieved through brutal means. He was a strongman, because that's what Iraq (which is in some sense an artificial invention of colonialists) apparently needed to keep its heterogeneous population from being at each other's throats constantly, as it is now in many places (and was from the very beginning of Iraq as country; look up the Simele massacre of 1933, for example). For a parallel, consider the situation in the former Yugoslavia with the end of communism. Nobody would say that Tito was a good guy, but at the same time no one would say that the nationalistic and ethnoreligious wars that plagued the region in the early 1990s were anything other than brutal and terrible. Communist rule kept a lid on preexisting tensions, which is pretty much what Saddam also did. It doesn't make for good leadership, but it does make for a more stable country so long as he is running it.

No, he gassed woman and children. He left mass graves in his wake. If thats stability i dont need it.

 

[W2L]

Actually, our Middle Eastern Arab allies (particularly Saudi Arabia) wanted Saddam to remain in power largely because Iraq acted as a "shield," helping in preventing Iran from "exporting" their particular brand of Islamic extremism. At least part of this is that the Shia have a decent majority in Iraq, many of whom had similar beliefs to the people of Iran and wanted to set up an Iranian style theocracy in Iraq. So, the fall of Saddam caused ISIS -- which was the movement to bring Iranian theocracy to Iraq and bordering countries -- and allowed them to further export the movement to other Arab countries.

This was also one of the main issues in trying to create a functioning government in Iraq -- you have the majority Shia population, who wanted to make laws based on their version of Islam, and overrule the minority Sunni population -- not to mention the Kurds being yet another minority needing to be protected (or even the Christians). This was made worse by the Shia population being particularly brutalized by Saddam (who, although actually more secular, was a Sunni), so they wanted control (or even revenge) after being marginalized under Saddam's government.

So we let children die under Saddam so you can feel safe?