Please elaborate on your comments!
Reader comment on item: Let Iraqis run Iraq

Submitted by Steve (United States), Oct 20, 2003 at 00:28

Dr. Pipes:

Since you were one of the writers who convinced me that the war against Saddam was a good idea, I am a little shocked by your statement that the mission is probably going to end in failure and that the US had better withdraw as quickly as possible. Do you mean that we shouldn't have attacked Saddam to begin with? Or just that getting rid of Saddam's hideous regime was the most good we could hope for? Please elaborate on your views in another column.

Steve

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Daniel Pipes replies:

I advocated destroying the Saddam Hussein regime, not spending years, a fortune, and many lives to rebuild the country. Here is my warning from 1991 on the topic, at a time when a debate was raging about the desirability of a U.S. intervention against the Saddam Hussein regime. I wrote about the prospect of U.S. forces occupying Iraq, "with Schwartzkopf Pasha ruling from Baghdad":
It sounds romantic, but watch out. Like the Israelis in southern Lebanon nine years ago, American troops would find themselves quickly hated, with Shi'is taking up suicide bombing, Kurds resuming their rebellion, and the Syrian and Iranian governments plotting new ways to sabotage American rule. Staying in place would become too painful, leaving too humiliating.
from "Why America Can't Save the Kurds." The Wall Street Journal, 11 April 1991, http://www.danielpipes.org/article/209.
DP