In 1990, American soldiers, holding high the banner of freedom and democracy, toppled Saddam's giant statue in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
The result was a strong cheer from the Iraqi public, who followed in the footsteps of the U.S. military, chanting slogans to bring down Saddam Hussein, and finally guillotined the dictator in 2006.
Now, 18 years after Saddam's death, do the Iraqi people really get the democracy and freedom they want?
Iron-fisted seizure of power
In July 1979, when events were changing in Baghdad, a squad of armed soldiers broke into a government building and arrested the head of state and administrative officials.
Then a young officer stepped forward in the shadow, gazing condescendingly at the national emblem of Iraq, who was the initiator of the coup d'état, Saddam Hussein.
He then used the army to quickly take control of the country, and in the midst of the confusion of the Iraqi people, the new leader stepped onto the political stage.
By virtue of his military prowess, Saddam Hussein possessed a toughness that his predecessors did not have.
Saddam Hussein came to power through a coup d'état, and the voices of the domestic opposition came and went, after all, Saddam's tyranny caused many people to be dissatisfied, so in order to consolidate his position, he realized that he must make excellent results as soon as possible and shut up his opponents.
As a result, he carried out drastic reforms of the domestic economy, and for a time surpassed Saudi Arabia to become the economic center of the Middle East.
This also made Saddam Hussein widely praised in the hearts of the people.
At that time, the development of heavy industry was the core of the strength of all countries in the world, and Saddam Hussein also wanted to catch up with the footsteps of developed countries, but with the strength of Iraq today, technology and capital could not be obtained at the same time.
In order to carry out the initial accumulation of capital, he put forward the slogan of economic development centered on the oil trade.
At the time, oil was known as black liquid gold and had a higher trading value than the US dollar.
Iraq developed oil as the country's primary industry, and quickly made a lot of money in the import and export trade.
However, after reaping huge economic profits, Saddam Hussein, who had been working hard to make the country prosperous, underwent a great change in his mentality.
Saddam Hussein always put himself in the position of feudal emperor and believed that he should be the master of the Iraqi state.
Although he does not wear a crown on his head, he has the power of a king, so for the king, the wealth of the state is naturally equal to his personal wealth.
So Saddam Hussein began to embark on the road of crazy accumulation of wealth.
In order to tightly control the profits from oil imports and exports, Saddam Hussein nationalized the country's oil and minerals, and no one was allowed to exploit or export them without the permission of the government.
Not only that, but Saddam Hussein also extended his claws to the private wealth of ordinary people.
He set up a clever scheme to eliminate dissidents, arrested many opponents, and confiscated his family property. And in order to consolidate his position, the tyrannical Saddam Hussein put his opponents to death, and in addition, a large number of people were killed by Saddam Hussein.
He even stipulates that the wealth of all people is the wealth of the state, and in the same way, the wealth of his own person.
Each person's wealth does not belong only to themselves, but to the nation and their leaders.
This also means that Saddam Hussein can expropriate the wealth of ordinary people at will.
Under the increasingly repressive dictatorship, Saddam's behavior gradually aroused strong dissatisfaction among the people at the bottom.
This also laid the groundwork for the United States to launch the Gulf War in the future.
However, although the tyrannical Saddam Hussein was deeply criticized by the common people and had a thousand bad things, there was one point where the Iraqi people praised him quite highly.
These are the four treasures that Iraqis have.
First, free medical care.
In recent years, many Chinese people have longed for the free medical system in Europe and the United States, believing that this is the real people-oriented.
However, with the impact of an epidemic, everyone has seen the vulnerability of the free medical system in Europe and the United States.
The so-called free medical care is nothing more than delaying death, and if you want to really cure the disease and save your life, you need to pay a higher price.
In the final analysis, free medical care is nothing more than a handout for the poor and a protection for the rich, and there are very few people who truly achieve the equality of all beings.
Saddam Hussein, however, stipulated that all Iraqi citizens could go to hospitals for free by virtue of their household registration and status.
Four major benefits
And this free of charge includes all ages and all diseases, no matter how serious the disease is and how complex the treatment is, all of them need to be free of charge.
Saddam Hussein was far more far-sighted than the developed countries of Europe and the United States, and he had long foreseen that the consequence of free medical care would be a shortage of beds, so immediately after the policy was promulgated, a large number of hospitals were built in the country to alleviate the shortage of beds and other problems.
I don't know how many years ahead of the European and American worlds is this.
Second, free education.
Education is the cornerstone of national development and the first step in the country's rise.
This can be seen from China's beginnings.
The same populous country also has a huge demographic dividend, and European and American countries chose their factories in China at that time, rather than India and Southeast Asian countries, and they looked at the cultural level of China's labor force.
Even if you are screwing in the factory, you must understand the design drawings.
Of course, Saddam Hussein understood this, so he launched a huge literacy campaign in the country.
In order for everyone to read, the slogan of free education was shouted.
As long as it is an Iraqi people, all tuition fees are fully covered by the state, from babbling to university graduation, and the students themselves and their parents do not need to bear any additional costs.
All of a sudden, everyone sent their children to school, and in just a few decades, Iraq has trained a large number of scientific and technological talents.
Not only that, in order to bring in advanced talent, Saddam Hussein also proposed a large amount of preferential treatment, so many advanced talents from Middle Eastern countries and even European and American countries went to Iraq. Iraq's industry continues to flourish.
Third, housing is free.
Now, with the bursting of the real estate economic bubble, countries around the world have begun to carry out property tax reforms.
In fact, Saddam Hussein was also a pioneer in this field.
In those years, he directly nationalized the land of the whole country, and even stipulated that even the houses where ordinary people lived belonged to the state, and the state only temporarily lent them to live.
This means that the homes of Iraqis cannot be bought and sold, but can only be arranged by the government.
The government has also opened up wasteland to build new houses, and young people who come to work in Iraq can have the right to use the houses for nearly 100 years if they are willing to pay a small part of the rent, until the person dies.
In fact, in addition to not being able to buy and sell, this policy also guarantees the residential rights and interests of all people in disguise.
Therefore, at that time, many young students came to Iraq to study, work, and even live there.
Fourth, pension is free.
Due to the sparsely populated area of Iraq, many places are uninhabited, Saddam Hussein built nursing homes in relatively remote areas, and he not only built the nursing homes into communities, but also equipped them with shopping malls, hospitals and other activity facilities around them.
Although it was the country's wealth to build nursing homes, Saddam Hussein ordered them to be open to the public and not charge a penny.
It even became the focus of envy of countries in the Middle East for a while.
However, good things don't always last long, and soon, the situation in Iraq took a turn for the worse.
Devastation
At the same time of domestic development, Saddam Hussein also received military support from the Soviet Union, especially the advanced Soviet-style equipment in the Middle East.
As a result, this also indirectly fueled Saddam's aggressive ambitions.
He was immersed in the ideal country he had woven and could not extricate himself, but Iraq's oil resources were limited after all, and he could not exploit them excessively in order to keep the water flowing for a long time, so Saddam Hussein set his sights on neighboring Kuwait.
In 1990, he took Kuwait with lightning speed.
Since the end of World War II, the Soviet Union has never waged a war of aggression against any sovereign country, even if it is as arrogant as the United States.
As a result, Saddam Hussein forcibly opened.
However, Saddam's actions have long aroused the murderous intentions of the United States, and the United States has also coveted Iraq's oil.
The praying mantis catches the cicada, the yellow finch follows, and the United States then sends troops to Iraq, and the Gulf War breaks out.
Although the United States can crush Iraq in a military duel alone, it will take a long time to achieve a final victory, especially if the United States has to confront the Soviet Union head-on, and the situation will be even more passive.
In order to accelerate the war, the United States launched a war of public opinion in Iraq, intensified the strong dissatisfaction of the Iraqi people against Saddam, and brainwashed the Iraqi people with freedom and equality.
The populace was quickly seduced, and they followed behind the American GIs with hammers, smashed the statue of Saddam Hussein, and ousted the Middle Eastern lion from the political scene.
At that time, Saddam Hussein fled in the country, and the people even spontaneously searched and reported in the country.
Under layers of internal and external searches, Sada was arrested, and after that, he ended his life of ups and downs.
However, after Saddam's death, Iraq did not develop into what the people imagined.
As later people said, although Saddam's rule was bad, it all got worse after the arrival of the United States.
On the contrary, without the protection of the lions of the Middle East, Iraq has become the focus of the crossfire in the Middle East.
The specter of war hangs over the country at all times, and ordinary people live in fear.
There are even fears that they will not be able to see the sun tomorrow morning.
I don't know if they will think of Saddam Hussein at this time.
After Saddam's death, Iraq's oil trade was gradually divided between Europe and the United States, and the various welfare policies that had been in the past also disappeared.
Housing, education, health care, and old-age care have become the four mountains that weigh on every Iraqi, but no matter how much they try, they cannot solve them.
Once again, everything seems to have returned to square one, and Iraq has once again become the devastation it has been after the war.
And the warmongers who have given the Iraqi people peace, freedom, and equality are coaxing people in other countries with the same slogans.
It was only then that the Iraqi people remembered Saddam's benefits.
An Iraqi journalist once said that it is undeniable that Saddam's tyranny is evil, but that every person in power after Saddam Hussein is more evil than him.
Today's Iraq has not yet emerged from the haze of the Gulf War, and only hopes that the country will be on the right track of construction as soon as possible.