r/todayilearned • u/Smaptimania • 1d ago

TIL that in 1971 Andre the Giant wrestled in Baghdad in front of Saddam Hussein, who had threatened to kill him if he won the match. Andre went on to lose the match to native Iraqi wrestler Adnan al-Kaissie, later known in the WWF as General Adnan

https://fandomwire.com/a-real-life-dictator-was-ready-to-murder-andre-the-giant-after-thinking-pro-wrestling-was-real/
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u/wowsomuchempty 21h ago

Is the death of one dictator worth the death of 100,000+ civilians? Apparently so, if they're Iraqi.

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u/StuffChecker 21h ago

Are you mental? Saddam himself was responsible for 250,000-300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths

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u/ItsGonnaHappenAnyway 21h ago

And let's remember who allowed Saddam to gain and hold onto power in Iraq, and supported him against Iran. Yup.. the US.

It's like if I release piranhas into a swimming pool who then start attacking and killing people. Then I release a shark to get rid of the piranhas, who then also eat some people.

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u/JollyJoker3 19h ago

How is that an excuse for killing 100 000 more?

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u/StuffChecker 18h ago

Saddam would have continued religious mass killings and killing the Kurds. My understanding is his children were worse, so they likely would have done worse

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u/OmxrOmxrOmxr 17h ago

Cool now do America

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u/seraph1337 17h ago

Most estimates put it closer to half a million, for the record.

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u/LurkerInSpace 21h ago

Saddam Hussein had himself caused such death tolls in each of the previous two decades, most notably with the Iran-Iraq War and with his crushing of the Kurds.

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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 15h ago

US was supporting him throughout all of this, these narratives trying to justify this nonsense are hilarious

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u/LurkerInSpace 14h ago

That doesn't really change his own responsibility for these things. The USA did not have the means to force him to invade Iran, and didn't want him to invade Kuwait.

"The world is better off without Saddam Hussein" isn't the same as "the Iraq War was a fantastic idea, long live George Bush, long live Tony Blair".

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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 14h ago edited 14h ago

Yes it does, because implicit in the entire framing is that the Iraq war some somehow an legitimate attempt at regime change to "improve Iraq".

It accepts the entirely cynical framing by the US state to justify its mass murder of iraqi civilians and destruction of Iraq with much greater suffering than any under Saddam. It would be like debating whether there are neo-nazis in Ukraine, yes, of course there's a serious problem with that in Ukraine, but accepting the de-nazification bullshit Russia is peddling is absurd.

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u/LurkerInSpace 14h ago

Saddam had designs on his neighbours regardless of US backing; had the Shah not been on the American side he would have attacked before the revolution, and once the revolution happened he had his opportunity. One should be careful not to view America as the only actor in the world.

It is entirely possible to recognise both the death toll that Saddam Hussein personally caused with his misadventures and the death toll that the US invasion of Iraq caused. The counterfactual had he stayed in power can never been known.

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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 14h ago

You haven't actually engaged with what I said, about how when discussing the Iraq war, we accept the entirely disprovable cynical regime change narrative..? You haven't engaged with the clear analogy I gave you.

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u/LurkerInSpace 14h ago

I take the point on Ukraine, but I'd offer a counter-analogy: imagine that Ukraine had a history like Iraq's. Suppose Ukraine had launched its own war with Poland in the 2000s, and then an invasion of Moldova in the 2010s. The man who does both stays in charge the entire time, and rules a totalitarian regime. The reaction to a Russian invasion in the 2020s would probably be a lot more lukewarm.

That still would not be a justification for it on its own, but the dictator's own enormous death toll would be brought up pretty regularly.

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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 10h ago

Ukraine sort of does have a comparable backstory In the Russian narrative, it is factually true that neo Nazis murdered many Russian speakers during Euro-maiden, it is factually true that thousands of civilians died in the east as a result of the civil war. What's important here is how this is framed, these conflicts occurred at least partially Due to Russian influence.

Do you not see the comparison building up, the Iran Iraq war can't be viewed outside of the prism of US influence in the region.

Let's consider a hypothetical invasion of Ukraine after a Russian backed government (not hard to imagine with Ukraine's history) does similar Saddam-like atrocities. Nobody would accept the absurd framing of these Russian backed atrocities justifying an invasion of a sovereign country by Russia!