I’ve seen people supporting Saddam and I guess it could have been just a mistake or something, but it seems like such a shitty decision to make, and he also received support from the US, so I don’t really know what to believe there.
Long story short, the US encouraged him to do it in hopes of reversing or at least stopping the Islamic Revolution from spreading. The Americans and the Europeans armed both sides, including with chemical weapons to make sure that it would be as big a bloodbath as possible.
Saddam was at the time essentially a CIA plant dictator put into place to stop the spread of the Islamic revolution and the rise of Arab Socialism. For Iran, Saddam was gassed up by the US to act as a distraction for Iran and to draw both countries into a long, drawn out conflict with the aim to drain Iran, and push Iraq further into a role of an American Neo-colony.
In all, Saddam was a terrible person and leader, but that neither justifies nor excuses the American invasion and subsequent slaughter of Iraqis. Especially seeing as how America placed Saddam into his position of power. They created their own boogeyman. Saddam deserves critical support against the US, but he was neither a socialist leader, nor someone that leftists should support.
There’s also some people that think that just because he was a part of the Ba’ath party, he was a socialist. But if I remeber correctly, once in power he purged the actual socialists and the left wing of the party in Iraq.
It wasn’t even once he was in power, it was 6 DAYS after becoming president. He accused the vast majority of the Ba’ath leaders and many members of being Syrian spies, and executed or imprisoned them based off of those charges. The Ba’ath party from that point forward became essentially an empty controlled opposition party.
This extremely strained Iraqi-Syrian relations, and essentially marked the death of socialism in Iraq.
