On March 20, 2003, the United States and Britain bypassed the United Nations to launch the Iraq War and overthrow Saddam's regime. Three years later, Saddam Hussein was hanged, and the last generation of heroes left forever.
It can be said that Saddam's 25 years in office were 25 years of innumerable entanglements between Iraq and the United States.
When he was alive, Iraqis had reverence and fear, and they also hunted down and insulted him with the support of the United States, but after 16 years, Iraqis finally saw the reality, but they have lost four precious things.
Saddam's ruling clique is basically a family style, with his two sons, Uday and Qusay, holding the supreme power respectively, and the rest of the family sharing the priorities of one party.
The eldest son, Uday, controls the mouthpiece of public opinion in Iraq, forming and taking charge of the "Saddam death squad", which was once trained as a successor, but was eventually abandoned by Saddam Hussein, and later the second son Qusai became the successor and served as the deputy commander of the Iraqi armed forces, and could act as president.
In addition, Saddam's eldest brother successively served as Minister of the Interior and Adviser to the President; The second brother served as the chief of police and then the chief of intelligence; The third brother successively served as the head of the secret police force, the cousin served as the commander of the Baghdad region of the special guard of the Republic of Iraq, and his son-in-law Karmal also held important positions.
It can be seen from this that in order to firmly control the political power, Saddam Hussein simply racked his brains, but in this ruling group with the family as the core, there is not much warmth brought by blood relations, and some are just pouring into each other and deceiving each other.
In fact, the reason for this is closely related to Saddam's high-handed methods, because the process of his seizure of power itself was full of cruelty and blood.
In 1979, Saddam Hussein forced the then president's uncle, Backer, to abdicate the throne, eliminated his half-brother and cousin who was then defense minister, and carried out a mass purge of the Baath Socialist Party, successfully gaining a foothold in Iraqi politics.
However, Saddam Hussein was also a very shrewd politician, he was good at seizing people's hearts and timing, and he carried out drastic reforms after he came to power.
Since Iraq was the world's second largest oil exporter at that time, Saddam Hussein took oil as the core to carry out Iraq's diversified economic construction, and achieved great results.
In addition, Saddam Hussein paid great attention to the issues of national treatment and social welfare, and promoted a national literacy campaign and free and compulsory education, and also greatly reduced the subsidies and medical care provided to the peasants.
Not only that, but Iraq is becoming more urbanized, the countryside is becoming more modernized, farmers are allotting land, and rural cooperatives are being the envy of other countries in the Middle East.
At the same time, Saddam Hussein also opened up freedom to Iraqi women, who did not need to wear a veil when they went out, who could go swimming in a swimsuit and even have the right to vote.
In particular, in terms of housing policy, Saddam Hussein adopted a very advanced strategy, that is, nationalization. This policy is mainly to ensure that every citizen has a stable living environment, and ordinary people only need to pay a nominal fee, they can get a house from the state, greatly reducing the economic pressure, of course, these houses only have the right of residence and no ownership.
It can be said that Saddam Hussein at that time was extremely admired and respected by the Iraqi people, and it was his administration that allowed the people to live a prosperous life.
However, everything changed with the revolution in Iran, the sworn enemy of the Arabs.
At that time, the theocratic government of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and continued to launch rebellions in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein, who could not bear it anymore, began to start a war.
On September 22, 1980, the Iran-Iraq War broke out, when the United States, although it ostensibly criticized Iraq's invasion of Iran, in fact it was still inclined to Iraq, and continued to provide economic support, as well as the sale of dual-use products and military technology to Iraq.
Saddam Hussein was very grateful for this and promised the United States to treat the US representative in Iraq as an ambassador, and thus US-Iranian relations began to move toward a "honeymoon period."
In March 1981, the United States sold aircraft to Iraq, removed Iraq from the list of state sponsors of terrorism a year later, and sent a special envoy to Iraq. Even when Iraq developed and even used weapons of mass destruction, the United States knew that it did not oppose it.
In 1984, after condoning Iraq's many offensive acts, the United States resumed diplomatic relations and subsequently provided Iraq with $2.8 billion worth of agricultural products on credit, the largest credit the United States extended to a foreign government at the time.
In this way, with the support of the United States and the relevant Gulf countries, Iraq fought an eight-year war with Iran, but its family funds were also emptied, and Iraq's currency reserves plummeted at that time, and the former rich countries directly became heavily indebted.
Subsequently, in order to seize economic benefits, Iraq brazenly invaded Kuwait, directly threatening the security of the pro-Western oil-producing countries, so the George W. Bush administration, then president, finally began to change its attitude, regarded Saddam as the "new Hitler," and thus began to guard against Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction.
On August 2, 1990, when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait on a large scale, the United States was the first to respond and impose sanctions out of strategic and economic interests in the Gulf region.
Until the end of the Gulf War, the US policy toward Iraq was basically "containment and deterrence," and Saddam Hussein also waged a series of "anti-containment" struggles.
In the past two years, the United Nations has adopted 14 resolutions against Iraq, most of which involve economic sanctions and trade blockades. And in the face of the United Nations sanctions manipulated by the United States, Saddam Hussein was not afraid of-for-tat.
On April 3, 1991, the United Nations Security Council, under the impetus of the United States, passed a resolution, that is, the United Nations Special Commission responsible for supervising and destroying Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons was established.
In particular, it is worth mentioning that the United States also supported the Iraqi opposition in overthrowing Saddam's regime, and US President Bush signed a secret directive to overthrow Saddam's regime. In this way, with the vigorous support of the United States, the opposition forces in Iraq once rapidly grew to hundreds of people, but due to the large number of factions and scattered organizations, they were finally unable to form a unified force to overthrow Saddam.
It was not until after the 911 incident that the administration of President George W. Bush quickly included the Iraq issue in the category of "anti-terrorism", and the United States decided to "preemptively" overthrow the Saddam regime, so it joined Britain in brazenly launching a war against Iraq on March 20, 2003.
On the evening of 9 April, the US-British coalition forces toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein standing in the central square of Baghdad, and Baghdad fell.
Eight months later, Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in his homeland and declared him a prisoner of war, and over the next two years, the court tried Saddam Hussein several times before finally committing suicide in 2006.
Since then, the U.S. military has occupied Iraq, but the population no longer has access to the previous social welfare system, and Iraq's health care, housing, and education are facing enormous challenges in the context of ongoing war and economic recession.
Now that Saddam Hussein has been dead for 17 years, the Iraqi people are gradually nostalgic for the glorious moments of his reign, although he was once a "brutal" ruler, but it is undeniable that he did bring prosperity to Iraq, but also let the people live a period of prosperity, no one is perfect, perhaps fate doomed Saddam Hussein to a tragic end.