Bowser is constantly making the point that Iraq under Saddam was a paragon of stability in the Middle East, with Saddam firmly suppressing the crap we're seeing there now.

I pointed out that the same could have been said for other totalitarian regimes. The Soviets certainly suppressed much of what is now going on in former client states. I didn't even mention Tito's Yugoslavia, and how that ended up, and I should have.

And certainly, under thirty years of authoritarian rule of the Shah in Iran, there was little in the way of radical Islamic activity. How the Shah actually was deposed in 1978 is a story with a hundred authors, depending on whose axe is being ground. The Ayatollah had been opposed to the government since the early 1960s, and until the end of the 70s, was quite effectively suppressed.

The point was that if one is going to be nostalgic for Saddam, why not be consistent and be nostalgic for all the "stable" societies under someone's iron fist?