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January 25, 2004

Dim Dean

Howard Dean may blame his fellow Democratic candidates for his failure to capture his party's nomination for President, but for my money the man is his own worst enemy. Dean's latest trick included telling a Manchester audience that Iraqis are worse off with Hussein gone than they were before. Really now, how stupid can one man be?

I should probably begin by noting that while I'm very happy to see the many benefits the Iraqis have gained through our removal of Saddam Hussein, I would not have supported the war simply on those humanitarian grounds, and I won't point to those benefits as an ex post facto justification for the war. Is it great that Iraqis are freer now than they have been in 20-30 years? Absolutely. But that isn't why we invaded, it's just a wonderful fringe benefit.

But to suggest that Iraqis are worse off with Hussein gone is simply asinine. I suppose it's possible that the average standard of living in the country has gone down since Hussein fell, but that would only be because Hussein's standard of living was so high it was dragging up the standard for the rest of the country. Iraqis no longer live in fear of a knock on their door in the middle of the night. They can protest peacefully without fear of being gunned down. They can look to the future with hope, rather than resignation. That's a pretty solid improvement in their standard of living, and to say otherwise is to demonstrate how obtuse Dean is. The average American, I'm willing to bet, knows that Iraq and Iraqis are better off without Hussein than with him, and Dean's comment is going to hurt him badly. Assuming he can somehow win the nomination, and I think he's a longshot now, Bush will crush him in the general election over stupid remarks like this.

Kudos to Iowa Democrats for derailing this numbskull. I've already come to the conclusion I'll probably vote for the Democratic candidate this fall in hopes of returning to divided government, but the Democrats will make that a much easier decision by not nominating this idiot.

Posted at January 25, 2004 08:11 PM

Andrew Olmsted

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Comments

"Iraqis no longer live in fear of a knock on their door in the middle of the night."

Well, that's plainly not true. You've not been reading all the accounts of midnight raids and people being dragged off, and tossed into prison without lawyers, I gather. Certainly it's true that they're not, overall, then treated remotely as badly as Hussein treated them, but that's true damning with faint praise. And, mind, I'm not saying that raiding and questioning doesn't need to go on. Of course it does. But your statement there is, no offense, literally untrue, and it's still inevitably incredibly scary for those Iraqis involved and their families, particularly given that, statistically, a large proportion of people questioned and held for some time are going to be innocent. And given that whatever the reality, they're going to imagine it's comparable to Saddam's treatment.

I don't know this journalist's history or reliability, but even if we discount his account down to a tenth, or a twentieth, you can't say Iraqis no longer live in fear of a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Not yet. Please note that this is a multiple entry story, and as they say, Read The Whole Thing.

Here is a pretty good answer to your question about the intelligence failures, by the way. Essential reasing. (If you want to blog them, feel free to link to my own entries. :-))

Posted by: Gary Farber at January 25, 2004 10:16 PM

I have to agree with Gary, clearly Iraqi's are still in danger of being carted off in the middle of the night, on evidence that wouldn't pass muster in a civilised country.
Additionally, I must be imagining the corpses of the protesters we've killed.

Posted by: Steele at January 27, 2004 12:34 AM

If you two can't see any difference between Iraq under Saddam Hussein and now, we really have nothing to talk about. I will concede the specific point, but that is no different than life here in the United States, where the drug warriors can kick down doors at any time. The quality of life in Iraq is markedly higher now than it was under Hussein.

Furthermore, that's not even the point. Dean's comment was stupid, because even if he was 100% accurate, it makes him look dumb. It emphasized his poor feel for the electorate. Dean already has the diehard antiwar vote; that clearly isn't sufficient to win the nomination. So all such comments do is increase the perception than Dean is unelectable.

Posted by: Andrew at January 31, 2004 06:33 PM