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Saturday, December 30, 2006

Saddam Hussein

There is an excellent obituary by David Hirst in the Guardian today. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980293,00.html

It sums up for me all the problems we face not just in the Middle East but in the origin and background of such dictators. Hirst draws the parallel with Stalin and the picture of Saddam seems to echo that.

There is the individual psychology, the social circumstances, the political history of the area - everything you need to create the personality and the political environment leading to despotism and brutality.

We have many such breeding grounds for people like Saddam in the world today and still no effective way of dealing with them.

It was absolutely mad to kill Saddam on Eid ul-Adha, the festival of sacrifice. Not only will it enrage an embattled Sunni population, it will be seen in some quarters as evidence of his martyrdom and even prophethood. Eid ul-Adha is the festival of sacrifice - Abraham's willingness to kill his son (in Islam, Ismail) on God's command. The timing of Saddam's death will be seen as proof of his sacrifice for the salvation of Iraq. The timing was evidently set by Bush to humiliate Arab Sunnis, but instead it will be seen as Saddam's betrayal, sacrifice and martyrdom - the nature of Saddam's death will be compared to Jesus's death.

The occupation forces made many stupid mistakes due to their ignorance and arrogance - de-Baathication, the dissolution of the armed forces, the destruction of government structures, the idiocy of adopting Ahmad Chalabi as a freedom fighter and then allowing Iranian-backed Shia militias to run rampant. The nature of the Saddam trial - it should have been held in an international court to enable the Iraqi authorities to distance themselves from the verdict and to enable Iran, Kuwait and Israel to place their charges of crimes against humanity and illegal warfare against him - and his execution are the ultimate in a long series of disastrous decisions by the occupation forces.

Saddam will be reinvented as a great martyr due to this execution and its timing. And there are plenty of people disillusioned with the "virtuous" acts of Western politicians like Clive, who will be inspired by Saddam's Eid ul-Adha sacrifice.