The world would be a better place if dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were still in power, top Republican US presidential hopeful Donald Trump said in comments aired Sunday. The billionaire real estate tycoon also told CNN’s “State of the Union” talk show that the Middle East “blew up” around US President Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, his biggest Democratic rival in the race for the White House. “100 percent,” Trump said when asked if the world would be better off with Saddam and Muammar Gaddafi still at the helm in Iraq and Libya. Both strongmen committed atrocities against their own people and are now dead. Saddam, the former Iraqi president, was toppled in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and was executed in 2006. Muammar Gaddafi — who ruled Libya for four decades — was ousted and slain in October 2011 amid a NATO-backed uprising. The world today is made up either of regimes or individual leaderships. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the regime’s structure continued to exist under a different slogan. However, when Somali President Siad Barre was ousted in the 1990s by an internal rebellion, the entire regime collapsed and Somalia has remained in chaos ever since.
Would Libya have been united and stable if Qaddafi had died of a heart attack rather than at the hands of rebels? I rule that out as the entire regime was solely based on him. The same can be said of Saddam, especially that Iraq was weakened by international sanctions that lasted for 13 years from 1990. This is why when the US-led invasion began, his army melted away in one week. Even if Saddam had died of natural causes, his regime would have collapsed because he had eliminated most of the leading figures in his inner circle, such as his son-in-law Hussein Kamel and dozens of others who belonged to his party. After the death of Syrian President Hafez Assad, the regime began to lose grip. One scream of rebellion in Deraa was enough to ignite protests in Syria. If people had not revolted in 2011, they would have probably done so five or 10 years later.
As for Egypt, what kept its unity following the recent revolution there was its army, which has always been the state’s backbone. Former President Hosni Mubarak was merely the head of state, not an absolute leader. Regimes that last, whether they are democratic or not, are based on sustainable foundations. No one can say that about Qaddafi’s or Saddam’s regimes. The reason for the chaos in Libya is that no one helped its people to establish a reasonable, inclusive regime. The same goes for Iraq, as the Americans underestimated the internal challenges when they disbanded the army and other state institutions.
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