by “deserve to go” I don’t think it’s an indication that the US could’ve had any benevolent reason to go to Iraq I think it’s more acknowledging that he was doing some dodgy stuff (regardless of US opinions on him). There was never any justification to invade Iraq but that doesn’t mean Saddam was good
obviously Iraq is an overall worse country post-Saddam but I’ve never really gotten comrades who apologise for Saddam like he’s a leader in the same vein of a Nasser or a Gaddafi. Victim of a smear campaign? Yes. Terrible person still? To me yes.
my best friend is Kurdish though so I don’t think I could ever have a different opinion without feeling guilty
Saddam targeted and assassinated communists. Iraq made major gains under him and obviously Iraq did not deserve to be invaded, but he was not an ally to Marxists.
This is both true and untrue. It’s complicated. General Qasim refused to engage in pan-Arab ideas, shutting down the proposition of Iraq joining the UAR, and purged communists and Nasserists from his ranks himself. The Qasim government, on paper, discussed nationalization of industry as a serious matter, yet the oil industry was not wholly nationalized until Iraq was under Ba’athist leadership. Communists were part of the popular front with Qasim for a while, and the bloodshed that resulted in the following coup d’etat did not stem from an explicitly anti-communist bias, but an anti-Qasim one, based primarily on the reasonings above. It is also of note that the Iraqi Communist Party fell in line with the CPSU and made the horrific error of supporting the creation of Israel, something the pan-Arabist Nasserites and Ba’athists rightfully condemned.
“We are not anti-communists in any way, we are against anti-communism. The only reason for this is that they took up arms against us and we have no other option.” - Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, 4th President of Iraq. The communist party would go on to join the popular front and the government before being outlawed after a failed coup.
It should also be stated that during the bloodshed of the Ba’athist revolt, Saddam Hussein was not a leading figure in the Ba’ath party by any stretch. If he was responsible for killing communists, it was during street skirmishes where he was merely one of many soldiers in an unfortunate situation. Anti-communist repression during Saddam’s years as leader are spouted tautologically as if they are true for the sake of it without any clear evidence – other than the ICP potentially attempting to instigate a military coup in the 80s which was crushed and 21 people were executed. If you have any sources I’d like to know.
My point here being that it’s worth understanding this part of history intimately rather than the sound-bite representation that Ba’athists kill and hate communists for the sake of them being communists - it’s untrue. It’s horrible and unfortunate what happened to many comrades in the ICP but their mistakes also cannot be overlooked, especially the errors they made that assisted in perpetuating imperial extraction of the Arab world and the helped facilitate the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians. It is worth studying this not only to come closer to the truth, but also to understand the modern state of Arab liberation today – the rise of the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, first and foremost Islamic groups, as the vanguard of Arab liberation from imperialism cannot be understood completely without understanding how the secular, socialist national-liberation movement of the Ba’athists and Nasserites was mostly destroyed with the aid of Israel, Iran and the U.S. Communists being killed anywhere is an outrage, but I would argue historical circumstance led to the ICP choosing friends in the wrong places and adopting lines detrimental to the cause for national liberation. The Ba’athists would have, and did, ally with the communists at times.
Apologies if it came off as snarky, condescending, or anything like that. I didn’t mean it in any way but constructive, and I also remain aware of the fact that I’m not super educated on the subject. I just think the nuance makes the whole situation so much more complicated than what we’re told either from the mainstream or from well-meaning communists even.
It wasn’t snarky! Communists are expected to be experts on history, economics, sociology, psychology, etc. Which is impossible for any one individual. That’s why we rely on each other for collective knowledge and insight. So thank you for teaching us.
Interesting perspective. I am reluctant to accept all of it at face‐value, and I still wouldn’t say that I “like” Saddam, but I’ll definitely keep all of this in mind when I look into the subject again. I’m tempted to place him in the category of opportunist rather than typical anticommunist.
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?
by “deserve to go” I don’t think it’s an indication that the US could’ve had any benevolent reason to go to Iraq I think it’s more acknowledging that he was doing some dodgy stuff (regardless of US opinions on him). There was never any justification to invade Iraq but that doesn’t mean Saddam was good
obviously Iraq is an overall worse country post-Saddam but I’ve never really gotten comrades who apologise for Saddam like he’s a leader in the same vein of a Nasser or a Gaddafi. Victim of a smear campaign? Yes. Terrible person still? To me yes.
my best friend is Kurdish though so I don’t think I could ever have a different opinion without feeling guilty
Saddam targeted and assassinated communists. Iraq made major gains under him and obviously Iraq did not deserve to be invaded, but he was not an ally to Marxists.
This is both true and untrue. It’s complicated. General Qasim refused to engage in pan-Arab ideas, shutting down the proposition of Iraq joining the UAR, and purged communists and Nasserists from his ranks himself. The Qasim government, on paper, discussed nationalization of industry as a serious matter, yet the oil industry was not wholly nationalized until Iraq was under Ba’athist leadership. Communists were part of the popular front with Qasim for a while, and the bloodshed that resulted in the following coup d’etat did not stem from an explicitly anti-communist bias, but an anti-Qasim one, based primarily on the reasonings above. It is also of note that the Iraqi Communist Party fell in line with the CPSU and made the horrific error of supporting the creation of Israel, something the pan-Arabist Nasserites and Ba’athists rightfully condemned.
“We are not anti-communists in any way, we are against anti-communism. The only reason for this is that they took up arms against us and we have no other option.” - Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, 4th President of Iraq. The communist party would go on to join the popular front and the government before being outlawed after a failed coup.
It should also be stated that during the bloodshed of the Ba’athist revolt, Saddam Hussein was not a leading figure in the Ba’ath party by any stretch. If he was responsible for killing communists, it was during street skirmishes where he was merely one of many soldiers in an unfortunate situation. Anti-communist repression during Saddam’s years as leader are spouted tautologically as if they are true for the sake of it without any clear evidence – other than the ICP potentially attempting to instigate a military coup in the 80s which was crushed and 21 people were executed. If you have any sources I’d like to know.
My point here being that it’s worth understanding this part of history intimately rather than the sound-bite representation that Ba’athists kill and hate communists for the sake of them being communists - it’s untrue. It’s horrible and unfortunate what happened to many comrades in the ICP but their mistakes also cannot be overlooked, especially the errors they made that assisted in perpetuating imperial extraction of the Arab world and the helped facilitate the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians. It is worth studying this not only to come closer to the truth, but also to understand the modern state of Arab liberation today – the rise of the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, first and foremost Islamic groups, as the vanguard of Arab liberation from imperialism cannot be understood completely without understanding how the secular, socialist national-liberation movement of the Ba’athists and Nasserites was mostly destroyed with the aid of Israel, Iran and the U.S. Communists being killed anywhere is an outrage, but I would argue historical circumstance led to the ICP choosing friends in the wrong places and adopting lines detrimental to the cause for national liberation. The Ba’athists would have, and did, ally with the communists at times.
Thank you for providing all that context
Apologies if it came off as snarky, condescending, or anything like that. I didn’t mean it in any way but constructive, and I also remain aware of the fact that I’m not super educated on the subject. I just think the nuance makes the whole situation so much more complicated than what we’re told either from the mainstream or from well-meaning communists even.
It wasn’t snarky! Communists are expected to be experts on history, economics, sociology, psychology, etc. Which is impossible for any one individual. That’s why we rely on each other for collective knowledge and insight. So thank you for teaching us.
We rely on each other like true comrades!
Interesting perspective. I am reluctant to accept all of it at face‐value, and I still wouldn’t say that I “like” Saddam, but I’ll definitely keep all of this in mind when I look into the subject again. I’m tempted to place him in the category of opportunist rather than typical anticommunist.
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?