> If you care to, we can. I'd say, though, that the U.S.
> is responsible not b/c of its arms dealing, but b/c it
> goaded on and supported the vile Hussein. The parallel
> to Cambodia where a 'defeated' US sided with the
> post-1979 KR suggests intself here.
No doubt the US wasn't on the side of the angels when it seemingly decided that fascistic Baathism was superior to Islamic theocracy (or when it decided that the KR were somehow better than the Vietnamese). However, it also seems clear to me from articles like Mark Bowden's "Tales of the Tyrant" (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/05/bowden.htm) that Hussein didn't need to be goaded into the Iraq-Iran war, and that Hussein also didn't need much help from anyone to make Iraq (even by the dim standards of Middle Eastern depotism) an unpleasant place to live.
BTW, the allusion to Cambodia is an interesting one. From the little I've read on the subject, it seems that the Vietnamese provided tons of support to the Khmer Rouge insurgency. The border disputes that later arose and provoked a Vietnamese invasion would seem to be "blowback" in the sense popularized since the 9-11 attacks. Yet no leftists (except perhaps a few who held out hope for Khmer "socialism") argued that Vietnam didn't have the moral authority to expel the Khmer Rouge and insert a puppet regime in Cambodia. In fact, I believe Chomsky once claimed that if there's ever been a humanitarian intervention, that was it.
-- Luke