Saddam was weapon of mass destruction
Toronto Sun  | February 18, 2005 | Lorrie Goldstein
 

When it comes to Iraq, both sides of the media punditocracy have a narrative that they will not deviate from, no matter what.

If the pundit supported the invasion of Iraq, then typically nothing -- not the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, not the failure to find operational links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, nor the many failures of the American occupation -- affects that narrative. No matter what the facts, the post-war narrative of such pundits is one of continual triumphalism.

On the other hand, the narrative of those who opposed the war is that nothing good can come from the invasion -- not the ending of Saddam Hussein's murderous regime, not the recent Iraqi elections, not the possibility that a democratic Iraq could serve as a role model for the Arab and Islamic world. For these pundits, no matter what George Bush does, it's wrong.

Unlike the punditocracy, George Mansour was born in Iraq, grew up there, and has been back since the fall of Saddam.

He has lived in Canada since 1990 and today works as the senior Iraqi advisor to the International Organization for Migration. It was mandated by Iraq's independent election commission to oversee the international vote by Iraqi expatriates in the recent election.

Understandably, Mansour is far more concerned about discussing Iraq's future than rehashing the past.

As he put it during a recent taping for Michael Coren Live on the Iraqi election (where I was also a guest panelist): "Wasn't it enough for the Iraqi people to live 35 years under a dictatorship? Should they have waited longer than that?"

Whatever Bush's motivation for invading Iraq, Mansour argues, the fact remains that if the U.S. had not invaded, Saddam would still be murdering, torturing and imprisoning Iraqis.

Assuming the critics care about the Iraqi people: "Can they tell me what was the alternative to invading Iraq?" he asks.

Pundits perpetually critical of Bush cite U.S. support for Saddam during his war against Iran in the early 1980s, along with George H.W. Bush's failure to come to the aid of Kurd and Shia rebels after the first Gulf War in 1991, as examples which prove the hypocrisy of George Bush's claim he wanted to liberate Iraq.

But in Mansour's view, at least the Americans did finally act, unlike the Arab and Islamic world which repeatedly ignored the Iraqis as they begged for help in deposing Saddam.

"All those years under the terrible dictatorship in Iraq, nobody from the Arab countries was raising their voice to help the Iraqi people," Mansour said. "Whenever the Iraqis raised their voice ... the Arab (and Islamic) answer was always 'this is an internal problem and you have to solve it.' But they couldn't solve it. They couldn't do it by themselves. They needed help."

He says complaints that the American occupation has exacerbated tensions among Shias, Sunnis and Kurds not only exaggerate reality, but overlook how Saddam divided the country for decades, ruling through terror from Baghdad while ignoring the needs of the north and south.

He wishes the pundits and politicians demanding that American troops leave immediately would listen to the new Iraqi government about when they should go. The Iraqis, he points out, know their security needs better than anyone.

Mansour, who left Iraq at the age of 23 to purse training and then a career as a journalist in the region, has returned to Iraq several times since the fall of Saddam. He says great strides are being made but it's not a story the media want to focus on.

A firm believer that Iraq's oil resources belong to the Iraqi people, he rejects the argument that the Americans were only interested in Iraq's oil, noting that if that's all they wanted, they could easily have made a deal with Saddam, who would have done anything to stay in power.

Ultimately, the ongoing battle raging in the media between supporters and opponents of the Iraq war leaves him cold.

For Mansour, the important thing is that Iraqis for the first time in decades have a chance for a real future, now that the biggest weapon of mass destruction that was aimed at them -- Saddam -- is gone.