Dirty Deeds Done Not So Cheap

For the French and for many opponents of the war, the argument proffered was that without Saddam there would be chaos in Iraq. One French diplomat is cited as saying: "The opposition doesn't exist. The situation in Iraq won't change for a certain amount of time. If Saddam Hussein disappears, it's the regime that will be swept away and there will be federal anarchy."

People who took this view feel vindicated by every setback the new regime in Iraq confronts and the attacks of suicide bombers.

Far from glossing over the difficulties in rebuilding Iraq, the book documents the extent to which this was inevitable after 35 years of a brutal dictatorship in which Saddam ruthlessly eliminated civil structures, political opponents and those within his party he viewed as a threat.

The repressive system put in place by Saddam was impregnable from within. There was no democratic solution to Saddam's dictatorship.: no popular movement, no insurrection could have overthrown him, as the Kurds and Shi'ites found out through bloody experience.

"The American war was perhaps not a good solution for getting rid of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. But, as this book shows, after 35 years of a dictatorship of exceptional violence, which has destroyed Iraqi civil society and created millions of victims, there wasn't a good solution," Kutschera writes.

Many opponents to the war claim that the US solution of overthrowing Saddam's regime and attempting to establish a completely new polity is doomed to failure. They gloat over every setback, every terrorist atrocity, and say that the US led efforts are doomed to failure. The modern anti-war left isn't so much against war, but against any change to the status quo in the world, especially if it is led by the US.

These people couldn't be more hopelessly wrong. They are pessimistic at heart, and in deed. They willingly look the other way when dictators repress, torture, and murder entire populations. They believe that this is the way things will always have to be, because the option of overthrowing bad regimes may be far too messy.

I'm sorry, but the mess of permitting dictators, mullahs, and totalitarian regimes to continue their tyrannical grip on country after country is unacceptable. The continued existence of totalitarian regimes in Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, and Sudan (among others) shouldn't prevent action against one of the most egregious violators of international agreements, human rights, and UN Security Council resolutions.

The more than one million victims who remain fully accounted for shouldn't be disregarded.