Saddam Hussein:
In desperate pursuit of a hero
Khaled Diab
The
US-UK occupation of Iraq is succeeding in achieving the once implausible feat
of turning a reviled dictator into something of a cult hero. This demonstrates
the utter failure of the Anglo-Saxon military adventure there. It also reveals
the desperate need in some Arab quarters to find a hero amongst the villains
who pass for leaders in the region and to salvage some pride amidst all the
humiliation and defeat.
January 2007
Part I – Anti-heroics and
wishful thinking
Part III – The dead don’t
talk
Part IV – Emulating
history
Champion or
villain of the Arab cause?
Through this surprising post-humous
cheerleading in an independent London-based newspaper, Atwan is giving credence
to Saddam Hussein’s own deluded propaganda during his rein of fear in which it
was claimed that he united in his person all the virtues of the 12-century
Kurdish leader of Egypt Salahuddin al-Ayyubi, or Saladdin, (also, like Saddam,
from Tikrit), who drove the Crusaders out of Jerusalem and is one of the only
Muslim leaders in history to be universally revered in Europe, the legendary
Baghdad-based caliph Haroun el-Rashid, and the late Egyptian president Gamal
Abdel-Nasser, the voice of 20th century pan-Arabism. Saddam Hussein
was also a great admirer of the fearsome Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
But this romantic reinvention of the butchering
mass-murderer conveniently glosses over the fact that Hussein was never a noble
defender of Iraq, let alone of the pan-Arabist cause, despite his great
admiration for his uncle who attempted a coup, during World War II, against the
British-installed monarchy and was jailed for it. A peaceful and co-operative
Arab world is something to which every normal Arab aspires, but Saddam Hussein
was a greedy power grabber who, after becoming undisputed leader of Iraq,
entertained delusions of being the anointed leader of the Arabs.
His career, from assassin and thug in the pay
of the CIA and Egyptian intelligence, to pathological warmonger, saw Iraq
stumble and limp from one bloody and pointless conflict to the next. Even the
admirable health and education systems he constructed were destroyed in the
carnage of his own stupidity (with a lot of help from two US-led invasions and
a paralysing economic embargo).
Despite his pan-Arab rhetoric and his early
membership of the Iraqi Ba’ath party, he did more to stoke the fires of Iraqi
sectarianism than any other person in Iraq’s modern history through his
favouring of Sunni Muslims and his regular persecution of the Shi’a majority
and the Kurdish minority. In fact, one can safely assume that his number one
priority was himself. Second came his family and clan. But even they weren’t
immune, as his errant son-in-law discovered when he returned to Baghdad only to
be executed. Next, were other Sunni Muslims and, finally, came the rest of the
Iraqi population.
Saddam Hussein’s interest in the pan-Arabist
cause seems to have stemmed partly from his megalomania – his egotistical
desire to be the leader of an Iraq which was the undisputed leader of the Arab
world – and partly from the practical need to counterbalance his massive
unpopularity in Iraq and across the region. That explains why, when President
Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt went to Jerusalem to address the Israeli Knesset,
Saddam, who was embroiled in the bloody party purges which would see him become
Iraq’s undisputed leader, rushed to host a gathering of what Baghdad called the
‘confrontation states’.
Part I – Anti-heroics and
wishful thinking
Part III – The dead don’t
talk
Part IV – Emulating
history
Further reading
How I learned to start worrying and hate the bomb
November 2006 – With North Korea’s recent
nuclear test and Iran’s suspected nuclear designs, Khaled Diab explains why he
learned to start worrying and hate the bomb and suggests how the proliferation
of nuclear weapons can best be arrested – and reversed. Read on
Extraordinary
renditions –
The
playwright and the president
January 2006 – Jeff Sommers,
Khaled Diab and Charles Woolfson explore the dynamics between playwright and
president as American foreign policy stands in the dock. Read on
Extended
analysis
Dressed
to kill –
Under
the cloak of Bush’s foreign policy
December 2005 – Jeff Sommers, Khaled Diab and Charles
Woolfson expose what lies beneath the cloak of US President George W Bush’s
foreign policy. Read on
The price of war
October 2002 – Whether or not Iraq, after more than a
decade of ‘containment’ and sanctions, poses a threat to the United States and
its allies, any military action would most likely have serious economic and
political ramifications for Europe. Read on
ã2007
K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the
copyright of Khaled Diab.