No, it's not. But there certainly are people who argued that Saddam's invasion was a progressive act. After all, Kuwait was (and is) a reactionary monarchy that suppresses women and immigrant groups such as Palestinians. The Saudi monarchy is such a regime but much worse.
For better or worse, Iraq is a quasi-socialist regime that has a well advanced social welfare system and far greater emancipation of women than most of its non-socialist neighbors. Of course, Saddam is personally a brutal thug and the place is no democracy.
Also, it was widely believed by those who believed it (and there is peripheral evidence in certain elements of his strategy) that Saddam would have played an Islamic fundamentalist card if he had invaded Saudi Arabia. They were violating the Islamic Holy Places by their corruption and subservience to non-Muslims, especially the US. This despite the fact that Saddam's own regime was not Islamic fundamentalist. But he did play to that card when his forces were attacked and some of those defending him did so on Islamic fundamentalist grounds, although not the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) members, all of whom are officially Islamic to some extent. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Tuesday, September 21, 1999 3:50 PM Subject: Re: East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
>J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
>
>> It was clear very early on that there was going to
>>be a response from the US and others. He went
>>into a defensive mode.
>> To answer Doug's original question, I have no
>>handy published source for this. Maybe it is false.
>>I can say, however, that it was widely believed in
>>Saudi Arabia for a lot of reasons that I shall not go
>>into here.
>
>It was also widely believed in the early 1980s that a Libyan hit
>squad was loose in the U.S. It was widely believed in 17th century
>Massachusetts that certain women were witches.
>
>> So, anyone who does not wish to believe it, feel
>>free to disbelieve it.
>
>It's not that I don't wish to believe it. I just don't like believing
>stuff without evidence.
>
>> But, if one feels that invading
>>Kuwait was a progressive wonderful thing to do should
>>also think the same of invading Saudi Arabia, a much
>>more reactionary country.
>
>Is doubting Saddam Hussein's intention to invade Saudi Arabia somehow
>an implied endorsement of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait? Not in my case,
>it isn't.
>
>Doug
>
>