"..isn't how international law works" International law doesn't work at all. We had a number of reasons to overthrow Saddam's regime - you can google up the Congressional resolution authorizing the war or for that matter the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 if you're interested.
"Saddam kept the factions controlled." Well, if you're truly convinced Iraq and the world was better off with Saddam in charge, you can come out and call for putting him back in power. He's alive and willing, I'm sure.
"You want to "remove" brutal leaders, you take responsibility for the obvious consequences attendant to the removal. Or you can try to worm out of the responsibility" Just to make myself clear, I think we were right to remove Saddam whether or not Iraq has a civil war following his removal. If an Iraqi civil war is inevitable when the dictatorial regime falls, so be it. It will fall on its own someday anyway so its just a matter of timing.
I also continue to think Iraq has a chance at a democratic transformation (though the results may take time to evolve) and if that is successful the result will be good for that country, the region and the world. See the following article on the subject of dimuqratieh and its success at ending the Algerian terror war:
THE NORTH AFRICAN FRONT
by Amir Taheri
Wall Street Journal Europe
August 11, 2005
Hours before the news last Tuesday that two Algerian diplomats in Baghdad had been "executed" by al Qaeda, al-Jazeera ran an interview with Ali Benhadj, the No. 2 leader in the banned Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS) and its terrorist arm, the Islamic Salvation Army.
In the interview, Benhadj hailed the Arab terrorists in Iraq as "brothers in arm" and welcomed the abduction of the two diplomats, Ali Belaroussi and Azzedine Belkadi, as an act of jihad. He said he would not tell "our brothers in jihad" what to do because they knew what was right according to Shariah, or Islamic law.
When the 'Arab Street' rises up against terrorism.
Al Qaeda's subsequent statement announcing the diplomats' murders -- and declaring this was done, in part, as a show of support for Benhadj's terror outfit in Algeria -- is the latest, and so far one of the clearest, indication that the terrorists who are killing in Iraq almost every day are part of an international network that has been at war against several Muslim states for more than two decades.
Algeria was one of the first Muslim nations hit by jihadist terror. The first attack came in 1984 when a gang led by Mustafa Bouyali raided a police post outside Algiers, killing four gendarmes. By 1990, terror groups were openly recruiting and training "volunteers for martyrdom" in several Algerian cities while the military-led government continued to believe that it could use the Islamists against democratic and leftist opponents. By 1992, Algeria faced a full-scale terrorist war that at times included set battles between the army and armed insurgents.
By March 1994, many believed that Algeria was lost to the Islamists. French President François Mitterrand publicly indicated his readiness to work with an Islamist regime in Algiers. "The rebels could arrive at the capital at any time now," a senior French diplomat told me as we dined in a deserted Hotel Al-Jazayer. He also revealed that Paris had worked out an emergency plan to cope with the arrival of "thousands of boat people" fleeing the Islamist rule.
History, however, is never written in advance. At the darkest moment, some Algerians decided to fight back. More than a decade and some 150,000 deaths later, Algeria has won its war against the most vicious terrorist movement the Muslim world has witnessed in recent times.
The story of how the Algerians defeated the monster is not widely known. And Algeria continues to get bad press, especially compared to its sibling-cum-rival Morocco. The Algerian experience, however, could be of immense use for defeating the terrorists in Iraq and coping with Islamist groups in the West. It was to share that experience that Algeria became one of the first Arab states to reopen its embassy in liberated Baghdad and to dispatch the two diplomats who met a tragic end.
By the spring of 1995 the Algerian counterterrorist strategy had taken shape. It was, as explained to me by two of its chief architects at the time, Moqdad Sifi and Ahmed Ouyahya, based on two assumptions. The first was that if the state could win the people on its side it would be able to defeat the terrorists. "The terrorists could win only if a majority of the people choose to wait and see," Mr. Ouyahya, who was to become prime minister a few months later, explained.
The second assumption was that, since the terrorists and their front organizations played the Islamic card, the state could not "grow a beard and pretend to out-Islam the killers," as Mr. Sifi, then a member of the cabinet, put it. Nor could the state energize the people with discredited ideologies such as socialism or pan-Arabism.
The "big idea" that could break the back of Islamist terror was dimuqratieh (democracy). The process started at the end of 1995 with the first pluralist presidential elections in Algeria's history and has since been followed with six more presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. To be sure, none of those elections met Western standards. But the exercise has helped foster a culture of democracy that is absent in most other Arab countries. In every election the share of candidates identified with various brands of Islamism has declined, dropping to 1% in last year's presidential election. Algeria's new constitution, inspired in part by Turkey's secular experience, forbids the use of religion as a political ideology.
Over the past six years Algeria has emerged as a new pole of attraction for tourism and foreign investment in the southern Mediterranean. Tens of thousands of pieds-noirs, Europeans who fled Algeria during the war of independence (1958-1962), have returned to visit, buy property and invest in a homeland they still feel nostalgic about. They have been joined by large numbers of Algerians living in France who are rediscovering their old homeland as a good bet for the future. The oil bonanza has also helped fuel an economic boom.
As Algeria has become less hospitable for Islamist terrorists many have moved to neighboring Morocco. According to a senior adviser to King Muhammad VI, Morocco may have been infiltrated by "hundreds, if not thousands of jihadists from Algeria, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the Persian Gulf."
"We know they are here biding their time," the adviser said. "Many have married to locals and created families, but may well be sleepers waiting to strike."
Some have not bothered to wait. Since 2002, the kingdom has witnessed terrorist attacks that have claimed 67 lives, including several foreign tourists. There is also evidence that Algerians and Moroccans, including those living in Europe, now account for the largest numbers of recruits by jihadist organizations.
Algerian and Moroccan officials admit in private that unless the two neighbors work together they will not be able to contain and defeat the terrorists. But relations between the two are cooler than ever. The root cause of this is the dispute over the Western Sahara. Morocco, having annexed the largest portion of the former Spanish colony, regards it as one of its provinces. Algeria, which controls a smaller portion, wants the Western Sahara to be reunited as an independent state.
In its early days the Bush administration recognized the need for an urgent settlement of the Western Sahara conflict and supported mediation by former Secretary of State James Baker. Later, however, and perhaps because Mr. Baker was never as popular with the second George Bush as with the first one, the mission fizzled out -- signaling that Washington was no longer interested in creating a North African front against terrorism.
In the meantime, after two years of little rain and poor harvests, and a perception that the new king is not investing enough energy in the necessary reforms, Morocco appears headed for troubled waters. Islamist parties, which unlike in Algeria have a free hand, have flexed their muscles through massive demonstrations in several major cities and daily campaigns of intimidation against "impious" middle classes. More recently the Islamists have tried to test the waters by calling for an end to the monarchy.
Algeria and Morocco remain important fronts in the global war against terrorism -- both in stemming the tide of new jihadist recruits to Iraq and elsewhere, and in understanding what does and doesn't work in rooting out terrorists from a struggling nation. Should Washington resume its efforts to bring these two neighbors together, it might also find the answers to some of its other problems.
Mr. Taheri is an Iranian author and journalist based in Paris.
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