Saddam Hussein Essay Example

Saddam Hussein Essay Example Saddam Hussein Essay Saddam Hussein Essay Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq as vice-president from 1968 to 1979 and as president from 1979 until he was overthrown by the American invasion in 2003.   Hussein was a Sunni Muslim, which composed about one fifth of Iraq’s population but who dominated the majority Shi’a and minority Kurdish communities through the dictatorship of the Ba’ath Party.The Ba’ath party was a secular group who saw radical Islam as a threat to their power.   After the Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran in 1979, Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi army to invade Iran in 1980.   Hussein feared that Iran’s Shi’a Muslims might try to turn Iraq’s Shi’a Muslims against him and the Sunni-dominated Ba’ath party.Saddam’s war against Iran last from 1980 through 1988; it was the longest conventional war of the 20th century.   During the war, Saddam Hussein ordered the use of chemical weapons against both Iranian troops and Iraq’s minority Kurds, who were in a state of constant rebellion against the Ba’ath party.   Despite his well-known crimes, the United States supported Saddam Hussein during the 1980’s because the American government felt that Iran was a greater threat than Iraq.In 1990, Saddam ordered the Iraqi army to invade another neighbor, the tiny oil-rich country of Kuwait to Iraq’s south.   Saddam declared that Kuwait was a part of Iraq, and that the border between the two countries was illegitimate, since it had been drawn by the British Empire and not by the people who actually lived there.After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he went from being America’s ally to America’s enemy.   The United States led a coalition of many nations to force Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait.   During the six week war of 1991, known in the West as Desert Storm or the Gulf War, the infrastructure of Iraq was pulverized.Despite the American victory in the 1991 war, Saddam Hussein remain ed in power in Iraq.   Iraq had become wealthy under Saddam due to its great oil reserves, but Hussein’s two wars had now made Iraq a third world country.   International sanctions throughout the 1990’s resulted in Iraqis’ standard of living plummeting.The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Saddam’s government.   The dictator was captured late in 2003 and was executed at the end of 2006 by the new Iraqi government.   After Saddam’s overthrow, Iraq descended into civil war between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims.   Although the dictator is gone, the conflicts between Iraq’s different communities is far from over.Source:Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge,   by Said K. AburishBloomsbury Publishing, London, 2000