A lot of people misunderstand Saddam like OP does. Yes, his regime was very corrupt, and yes, his sons were pretty shit people (even if some of the stories are likely made up atrocity propaganda), but Saddam did an admirable job in governing a country which had long been an absolute mess of tribalism. It's downright incredible the amount of propaganda the US produced against Saddam Hussein from 1990-2005. Like I remember being at college and a professor had a box of books he was offering for free, so I picked up the Saddam book, and it was nothing but pure propaganda glorifying the Gulf War ("golf war" lmao nice one OP) neocon war agenda. It's really sad a lot of people still buy into it.
Let's keep in mind that Iraq had centuries and centuries of sectarianism. "Iraq" was almost entirely a creation of British colonialism slapping a bunch of Arab tribes of two faiths, Kurds, Turks, and some other minorities together in one country. It was incredibly poor and relied on nothing but oil. Saddam took this and gave the people of Iraq national pride and turned Baghdad into one of the finest cities of the Middle East thanks to his Iraq-first economic policies. Corruption was just the side effect of this program, but he couldn't
not be corrupt, otherwise why would all the tribal sheikhs back him?
It's very contentious what he did to the Shia and the Kurds, but keep in mind a lot of this policy started due to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which was Shiite based. As far as I'm concerned, suppression of the Shiites (and not all Shiites were oppressed, since some had government posts) was like suppressing communists in 1950s America or Catholics in 1600s England. You can't have a faction within your country advocating sectarian religious supremacy and pledging allegiance to a foreign power, otherwise you don't have a country. Similarly, the Kurds were Iran/CIA backed as a destabilization force against Saddam, so they too deserved it. I won't say Saddam is 100% innocent in how his regime handled the problem, but it's far from "ethnic cleansing" or "crimes against humanity" and other nonsense.
Saddam's real problem was his bad foreign policy. He should've put real effort into keeping Ba'athism together as a political force instead of splitting with Syria. Many, many mistakes were made in the war with Iran, and it never should've continued as long as it did. And picking a fight with the West was really, really bad. He also could've pivoted toward not being AS hostile toward Israel in the wake of the Islamic Revolution, since at the very least it would've kept Mossad from snooping around and killing talented scientists like Dr. Gerald Bull who could've been just as big for the space industry as Elon Musk is today thanks to the space gun Saddam was funding him to design.
Overall I'd say he was a solid ruler and a product of the nation and times he emerged from. I wouldn't want to live in his country, but he did a lot for the people of Iraq which was all undone by the barbarism inflicted on that nation by the West during the 1990s that culminated in the illegal and murderous invasion that pillaged the country.
I like the history of the region so I joke about Saddam being my favorite dictator, but in reality he was a regular bastard and a really poor leader at that. Shit like the Halabja chemical weapons attacks and the Dujail massacre are inexcusable. He started a war with Iran and ran it entirely on debt, creating an economic crisis which he tried to resolve by invading Kuwait. He started the war with Iran ostensibly to "liberate" the Arabs living in southwestern Iran, only to mistreat them to the point where they'd rather fight for Iran. He interfered with the army to the point where it had a marked effect on their ability to effectively prosecute the war.
You do know the so-called Halabja massacre was due to those Kurds being part of an Iranian-backed rebel group, and that town harboring their fighters, right? Same with most other supposed "crimes against humanity" Saddam committed against the Kurds. The evidence for it is shoddy and reeks of CIA nonsense.
