Do you think there should be any references to Sadaam in Iraqui textbooks?

[La_Serpiente]

Poll question: Do you think there should be any references to Sadaam in Iraqui textbooks?

I recently read an article which described the new textbooks in Iraq. Previous textbooks praised Sadaam as a man who should be respected. The new textbooks have no mention of praise for Sadaam. However, I am not sure as to whether all information of Sadaam was expunged or just the literature which praised him.

Should the new textbooks have no mention of Sadaam and start Iraq's society off as a blank slate or should there be references in the books that describe him as a tyrant? Also, should the new textbooks mention the fact the US supplied Sadaam with weapons and money???

I think Sadaam should be mentioned so the children can find closure and learn from the past misstakes of placing in power tyrants. I am not sure about the Americans supplying him with weapons though. What say you, the good people of DU?

[mikehiggins]

1. I was going for tyrant with American weapons

but I think there should be an honest depiction of Iraqi society over the last half century rather than paint Saddam as the mastermind of evil that controlled an entire society. His role in the history of his nation should be honestly portrayed, as should that of those who kept him in power.

[Melodybe]

2. I agree, how else can you learn from the past?

[HEyHEY]

3. Hero!

Seriously though, Germans learn about Hitler, Americans learn about Nixon.....ya gotta learn good and bad history.

[FDRrocks]

4. Other

Tell it all truthfully but with comparisons. I would wager Saddam killed less people than many leaders. And, from what I hear, Iraqs living standard was above 80% of the Middle East. That compares very well against that area. And well above most of the Easten World.

edit: Given US and Vietnam, and US and Iraw, it only seems logical to follow he was much less a tyrant than many of our leaders.

[PissedOffPollyana]

22. Exactly!

"Those who do not understand history..."

One of the elements of my education that really bothered me as I started reading historical information on my own was the half-truths we were instilled with in school. Still, many of my friends choose not to believe what our government has really been up to over the generations because they have been programmed to look only at the most positive version of our history.

Manifest Destiny? It's a nice way to refer to the wrong-headed notion that we had the "right" the "destiny" to slaughter the indigenous people and take their land & resources.

We never read anything about our own concentration camps. Just because we didn't gas anyone (that we know about) doesn't make what we did accceptable or any less heinous.

The Iraqi children should be given an impartial and informative history that allows them to make up their own minds, not the propaganda that we'd like to foist on them.

How can they love their country and the positives of their history when they are given only a one-dimensional fraction of it?

[sistersofmercy]

5. Other, of course there should be mention of Saddam in textbook ,

afterall, he was a part of Iraq history. While their at they can mention exactly how Iraq become modernized, 1973, OPEC members voted to places an oil embargo against the US because of its support of Israel. Saddam, who was VP at the time but had control of the government, defied the oil embargo and sold the US oil which overted a huge national crisis. He took the proceeds and built roads, schools, hospitals, and had electricty run through out the country. As a bonus he gave every family a tv and a refrigerator. So, for all is Panarabic talk when it came down to the bottom line he sold out to modernize his country. It's a disgrace what people don't know about the history.

[Skittles]

6. I'm sure our dipshit "president" is referenced in U.,S. textbooks

just because he is a f***ing disgrace doesn't mean he can be erased fr.om history

[Gore1FL]

7. Other

Teztbooks should relate historical information, not propaganda.

[BonjourUSA]

8. The History isn't only black and white or rosy.

Saddam was an awful tyrant but he stopped the Iran with the Western support, he didn't allow the islamic expansion in his country where we found a free religious expression, In Irak we never saw a thief getting his hand cut off in a public show like in Saudia today yet... These facts are historically right but certainly it's too early to write them into the new Iraqi textbooks.

In France for example, our textbooks don't correctly talk about the war on Algeria or, during a long time,they didn't honestly talk about the Vichy gov because they wanted to present an united French people (almost all the country was resistant in these textbooks ! But they changed now !).

[sandnsea]

9. Ignore 30 years?

I don't think that's really "history". Well, at least to people not writing U.S. history books. He should be in there and the Iraqi people should decide how to describe him.

[BonjourUSA]

10. Doesn't Iraqi people have to write itself its textbooks ?

[sandnsea]

11. These days, who knows

I don't think they're exactly feeling all free and able to write whatever they want right now, what about you?

[BonjourUSA]

12. Isn't a typical colonial situation ?

[youngred]

13. How can you ignore 30 years of history and still call it accurate?

This is why there are so many gaps in the histories of humanity, because we cannot countenance what came right before.

Include it all, good, bad, and ugly

[BonjourUSA]

14. During the French colonial era, the missionaries taught African people...

their ancestors were Gallic. That's very funny, isn't it ?

[LeahMira]

17. Not really...

... but I do understand what you're saying. Missionaries were instrumental in colonizing our American Indians also.

To an extent, we've all been colonized in this way. We are taught only the history that is "approved." I have only recently discovered Howard Zinn's People's History books and have found an entire new world opening.

[BonjourUSA]

20. My question was obviously ironic.

[youngred]

23. funny in a very WTF sorta way

I just hope they didn't buy it. You make a good point though about the propaganda of the colonial leaders

[0007]

15. The U.S. installed Saddam Hussein to power to help us fight Iran...

We knew then that Saddam was a ruthless man and that he'd slaughter the Kurds. In fact we help him!

Why try to hide the fact that the U.S. was at fault as much as Saddam Hussein.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

16. "start Iraq's society off as a blank slate"

that option is creepy - write him out of the textbooks and pretend he didn't exist? That's straight out of 1984.

[leesa]

18. Silly question unless you adhere to the doctrine of

propaganda all the time. He's been their leader for better or worse for decades....you want to pretend it didn't happen? Welcome to BushCo world.

[Nazgul35]

19. how's about being historically acurate...

that might work...let's not try and spin things our influence them...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. It would be downright Orwellian

to remove all mention of a man whom most of the students remember.

[loudnclear]

24. We intend to mention GWBush don't we? Well, Saddam should be also

Why discriminate against tyrants? Hitler was in every history book I had in school.