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 II – Champion or
villain of the Arab cause?
Part III – The dead don’t
talk
Emulating
history
Although Saddam Hussein hated the British with
a passion, he learnt a lot from their post-World War I occupation and
involvement in his country. He learnt the effectiveness of chemical and
biological weapons in quelling uprisings from that all British hero Winston
Churchill who, as secretary of war, urged the use of mustard gas, which the
British had already used against Shi’a rebels in 1920. “You should certainly
proceed with the experimental work on gas bombs, especially mustard gas, which
would inflict punishment among recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave
injury upon them,” he wrote in a letter to one of his air marshals.
Saddam Hussein’s 100% support in the last
presidential referendum of his reign followed in the footsteps of the
mysterious 96% popular support the Iraqi masses gave to the candidacy of the
largely unknown, British-backed King Feisal, who came from Hijaz in Arabia and
was only offered the Iraqi throne by the British as a consolation prize for
having lost Syria, which the French wanted to make a republic. Interestingly,
Saddam Hussein also set up an indigenous Kuwaiti government when he invaded
which was unsurprisingly in favour of becoming a province of Iraq.
If imitation is the greatest form of flattery,
then the British should be chuffed, because the world’s sole superpower has
emulated to an extraordinary degree the British bungling in Iraq in the first half
of the 20th century. The Americans, like the British, expected to
enter Iraq to be greeted by the embrace jubilant crowds. But what the Brits
overlooked, like the Americans today, was that the Iraqi’s were not interested
in exchanging one oppressor for another. “The Arabs rebelled against the Turks
during the war not because the Turk government was particularly bad but because
they wanted independence,” TE Lawrence wrote in a letter to The Times.
Given their failed track record in Iraq and
Afghanistan during the heady days of empire, one would think London would’ve
counselled the younger and less-experienced Washington to stay out. The British
people, by and large, judging by the huge anti-war demonstrations there, were
far wiser than their government.
And the price of this wilful ignorance has been
phenomenal. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iraqis are dead. The country
has descended into civil war. The Shi’a-Sunni fractures in the Middle East are
bigger than ever. According to interviews conducted by the Iraq Centre for
Research and Strategic Studies, only 5% of Iraqis believe the country is better
off today than in 2003. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country and the exodus continues at
a rate of 100,000 a month.
This makes US President George W Bush’s
assertion that the hanging of Saddam Hussein was “an important milestone on
Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend
itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror” all the more surreal. If anything,
it is more like another tombstone on the road away from peace and stability in
that troubled land.
Part I – Anti-heroics and
wishful thinking
Part II – Champion or
villain of the Arab cause?
Part III – The dead don’t
talk
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
ă2007
K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the copyright of Khaled Diab.