"Anyone who feels sorry for Saddam will find the antidote by re-reading The Republic of Fear, by Kanan Makiya. Everyone should have read that book by now: it is the best single account of the hell-on-earth that the Americans and allies broke open. Bad as things are in Iraq right now, they were considerably worse under Saddam.

Historians could make themselves useful by explaining, to a public still taking its news mostly from the idiot box, how the mess now reported from Iraq descends directly from what happened over generations previous. That it is the fallout of a 35-year totalitarian experiment, just as Russia today, in its dysfunctional way, enjoys the fallout from its own 70-year totalitarian experiment. The problems do not end, when the waters recede from a terrible flood: only the drownings stop, and death from contagion is about to begin.

Saddam ran Iraq the way Stalin ran Russia -- more murderously, in proportion, but less efficiently. Had he been no more efficient, but had a better grasp of the world political order, he’d still be in power today -- and the problems for the West would be that much greater. As it stands we are staring down Iran and Syria. And now Iraq, instead of completing the trifecta, is a base against our mortal enemies on either side of it."