PROTIP

steph-honey:

Or you are so young, you just don’t remember this guy named Saddam, who was a violent dictator, who buried people he didn’t like in mass graves including women and children, after shooting them in the back of the head…and how he invaded Kuwait…oh, and AFTER we kicked him out of Kuwait, how he kept flying into no-fly zones and thumbing his nose at us about it, and all sorts of other shit that militant religious fanatical dictators like to do. But maybe you’re right, and he was really a great guy, and we should have left him in power because they were SO MUCH better off with him around. I’m sure the religious minorities and women over there agree with that. Sure.

Be careful assuming stuff like this. In 2007 and 2008, I worked with dozens of Iraqis from Baghdad and Erbil. One of our best employees was a Christian Iraqi woman. (Woman? Check. Religious minority? You better believe that’s a check.) They didn’t hate Americans, but they hated what our government did to their country, and they really DO believe they were better off before the invasion. All of them hated Saddam, but as they told me, “at least back then you know who was going to kill you.” We traded one murderous leader for dozens.

Again, this is only my own personal experience from the Iraqis I personally knew, but we employed a pretty wide range of people, and I think I got a decent cross-section of the population.