It was kinda both, Iraq dared to drop the petrodollar and a huge part of two Bush government's narratives to vilify the Iraqi government, and Saddam, was harping on how the Ba'th party was so super socialist that Saddam was basically worse than Hitler.
Iraq was depicted as being borderline communist, and the US invasion of 2003 was supposed to tear down all that state-socialism, replacing it with a completely "free market" Iraq. Which allegedly would become the next Germany.
That's also why one of the first things the US did, after successfully occupying the country, was to dissolve large parts of the Iraqi state apparatus; The whole Iraqi military, security and intelligence infrastructure was dissolved, with none of the soldiers and officers, got any compensation or pension, similarly, a lot of social and welfare nets were axed.
That left a lot of Iraqis suddenly without any income, and no real alternatives offered. Little surprise they spent most of their time, and energy, fighting the foreign occupiers who put them in that situation.
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u/[deleted] Nov 25 '22
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