Why Saddam will fight to the death.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I wrote this back in late January, early February, as an interpetive and elaborative commentary on an article by Mark Bowden in The Atlantic Online. The article is called "Tales of the Tyrant" and is about Saddam Hussein the individual. Considering Col. Olrik's comments on how it would be best for Iraq if Saddam were to surrender and go into exile, I'm posting it now - as it (both my commentary and the article) explains why, to Saddam at least, that is precisely the worst possible thing he could do to Iraq.

Alexander the Great met a King in India, and defeated him in battle; we call him Porus. On the defeat of King Porus, that storied individual was asked how he ought be treated by Alexander, and made this reply:

``In the same way as a king treats another king.''

So, to, would Saddam likely say.

The man who's stature is either excessively glorified, or excessively demeaned by the title of President will not flee from his duty; he will not accept asylum, he will not try to abandon his realm, and he will not try to slink away to enjoy his wealth.

It has never been about wealth for him; to imagine it is would be to fundamentally misconceive, to completely misunderstand, a man who's influence on history, at least, shall be quite disproportionate when it is said and done.

Neither has it been about the things wealth can buy, surely not the things that fill his palaces. Wealth is not Saddam's motivator, and to imagine it as such, fundamentally, is to again misjudge him.

Saddam, in a way that we justly think quite horrific, lives for his nation.

This article from May of '02 comes close:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/05/bowden.htm

But I think that Bowden perhaps misses something that he reveals; or more likely he does perceive it but then does not elaborate on it by avoiding psychoanalyzing the dictator.

It can simply be said that Saddam is a King. An Oriental Despot, a Great King, a King of the Land between the Two Rivers, a King in the style of Nebuchadnezzar and Xerxes. He lives in a different age and a different world than we do, quite literally. To Saddam, his imagination of that age is reality, and that is what dictates his actions.

He is a good Despot. He worked to modernize his country and provide for his people. But ultimately he is a Despot and that has charted his course. None restrain him, and his whim and his desires - for power, for aggrandizement, for the fame of history - are unrestrained and unslowable by his advisors, nor by any other structure of his government, a government that ultimately serves to transmit his Will to his people, appearences aside.

It is ironic that he modernized Iraq so well, for a time, when it was contrary to maintaining the sort of society that had created him. But it was necessary to maintain his holding - Iraq - as well as he should, and to be Just to his people. In the same fashoin his pointlessly mad aggrandizement was also the necessity of his attributes, the drive of the nature of that sort of ruler; a successful man from his culture could only do thus in his place. The tribal villages around Tikrit, a man without schooling in his childhood? The Caliph Omar, or King Nebuchadnezzar, these would be his exemplars, and never a Turk of the sort as Mustafa Kemal, besides.

The culture of the region is such that even such a man as Saddam, though, might be thought a good Despot: for random acts of mercy, and for the good which is swept away; even when it was built on misery and misery only remains.

He imagines himself as a man who has protected and cared for his people, who in his position as ruler of his nation, cannot do them wrong. How can he? Indeed, only he knows what is best for them. He is the only man in the whole nation of Iraq who can guide them. Saddam will not bow out of the show; to do that would be to destroy the illusion that he is a good ruler, and that illusion is important for him, even if it is irrelevant elsewhere. Indeed, it is what his existance is, now.

Saddam Hussein, whatever else might be said of him, I suspect will deserve the epitath falsely bestowed on another: "He died fighting at the head of his troops." For him to do anything else would be impossible. The man is fixed on his course, locked in with as much surety as the courses of the heavens.

His nation is His personal possession, and the one personal possession which matters to him. He thinks he has done a good job in maintaining it, and part of continuing to do so will be to, if necessary, die defending it.

There is a single free man in an Eastern Monarchy and that is the Despot. The whole realm is his plantation. And just as stubbornly as a plantation owner Saddam will fight for what he regards as his.

Perhaps he'll die in his bunker, anonymously, or perhaps he'll die quite personally - in relative terms - by rifle shot, as he fires his own back at our troops with the careful precision of his aged marksmanship, in the closest thing to the sort of warfare he no doubt wishes for, of duelists, or of great nobles upon gilded chariots, in their purple robes and with bows at ready. In the sense of his culture, he is hardly a coward. He has risked physical danger before, and once attaining the prize he sought, protected himself so he could keep it. If the protection avails him not, the courage of a lone man will surely be less, as it always has against a disciplined army, but it will still be displayed. What else could he do but draw upon the last resource?

But though we can ignore the talk of him slinking off like a coward, we also know that he lives in a different age. He has no real idea of the strength of what he faces, or the determination. He thinks this is a duel between two families; when he is proven wrong he will die. Perhaps with more honour than many recent dictators, precisely because he is not a recent dictator but rather a throwback, the last of the Mesopotamian Kings of Kings, the defender of an old and outdated order which must die.

Saddam, the unquestionably bloodthirsty tyrant, and Saddam, the "Great Uncle" and steadfast defender of his country, mingle insensibly into a single image given substance and form and made comprehendable only when turned into a bas-relief alongside those of his Assyrian forebearers. Their nature is the same, and almost nearly, hauntingly so, is the culture that brought them up. It has resisted the incursion of our ideals a long time, but the brutality and atrocity of that organization must put paid to it now, as other offerings spread into its own sphere: we are their vanguard, and when we compare ourselves to what remains there and what Saddam represents, we should not presume distress for such a thing.

Let us hope we stay our course and press on, so that all throughout the Muslim world this old order shall die. Then, just as at Ulundi, where the marker the British raised salutes the Zulu warriors who died defending their "Old Order", perhaps that can also be the ironic salute to Saddam, the illiterate peasant who raised himself up by his own ferocity and determination to command his nation in the fashion of Rustam. He was a mere five hundred years to late.

Even in ironic respect for his achievements the facts still overwhelm, and the brutality of the man demands action. He thrust himself upon the world stage - ultimately, a ruler of his sort could hardly do less - And thus subject his ancient method to the critique of the far different mores of the globe, and he has been found wanting. Even as the Greeks and the Romans condemned as barbarian tyrants men praised as Just and fair rulers in the Persian Empire, so, too, Saddam has put himself in a position to be judged, and must now suffer the consequence.

As for the concerns of regional security, or even the economic desires for what sits in the ground of his nation? One would hardly suspect Saddam to be unaware of either, nor unapproving of acting on either one; he's acted for less... Quite the contrary to disapproval, indeed.

Ultimately, he will stay his ground and die, knowing a hint of what is coming for him, but unable to comprehend the full measure of the resiliency or nature of our western method of warfare, or the culture that drives it in this modern world.

Pathetically, that's more than a fair number of people who live inside of fully modern western countries understand, these days. After all, the concepts he lives with are the forbearers, not the lunatic spinoffs.

And that, precisely, may be why there's some hope for the region yet. For all they are mired in the most ancient of conceptualizations, enforced by the Quran in some cases, the societies of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Egypt are still those of realism, aided either by forced development, or colonial rule, or both, and, with their statist and mercantile worldviews, do not seem impossible to bring to democracy.

This is why the fall of Saddam, impending as it is, creates so much fear and opposition: For it will, indeed, be the beginning of the fall of the Old Order. The President began to shatter the idea - already fanciful at best - that we are fighting for purely economic reasons during the State of the Union address; I have more and more hope, that our full plan will be revealed in due time, against the necessary countries, as to reconstruct that region as it is needed for the security of the whole world.

And so it can be done, if we are clever enough, and concentrate against each nation seperately, as we have begun to do. Firstly Saddam, who knows his fate, and prepares as an Oriental Despot ought, haunted by the fatal reality of the future's inevitability, grasping for hope in God and in the sheer power of his own absolute Will. But surrounding Saddam, the world has changed; the fantasy into which he was born slips away. The defectors know it, the army knows it, the people know it. They are ready for change, and it will be provided.

The Mesopotamian Kings die with Saddam; then we must look South.

[MKSheppard]

I wrote this back in late January, early February, as an interpetive and elaborative commentary on an article by Mark Bowden in The Atlantic Online. The article is called "Tales of the Tyrant" and is about Saddam Hussein the individual. Considering Col. Olrik's comments on how it would be best for Iraq if Saddam were to surrender and go into exile, I'm posting it now - as it (both my commentary and the article) explains why, to Saddam at least, that is precisely the worst possible thing he could do to Iraq.

He's staying in power because there ain't no job security or retirement plans
for a dictator. Once he's out of power, people will no longer fear him, and he'll
be fair game for anyone who has scores to settle with him (and my god,
he has a LOT)

[The Duchess of Zeon]

He's staying in power because there ain't no job security or retirement plans
for a dictator. Once he's out of power, people will no longer fear him, and he'll
be fair game for anyone who has scores to settle with him (and my god,
he has a LOT)

Did you even read what I wrote and what Mr. Bowden wrote?

[MKSheppard]

Did you even read what I wrote and what Mr. Bowden wrote?

I did.

This is a more cogent reason as to why he will never give up power
in Baghdad until he's driven out or dead:

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/200 ... 172982.htm

The tyranny Saddam has imposed on Iraq has few equals in the world today. International human-rights groups, as well as the United Nations, report that some 16,000 Iraqis have disappeared, never to be accounted for. Saddam's agents are everywhere searching out evidence of disloyalty. The British Index on Censorship, Messrs. Kaplan and Kristol recount, reported a case in which a Ba'ath Party member was present at a gathering where jokes at Saddam's expense were exchanged. The party member and all of the other males in his family were executed — and the family home was bulldozed. Another man had his tongue sliced off for "slandering" the Iraqi leader.

One of Saddam's first acts after coming to power in 1979 was to declare the existence of a "Zionist spy ring." Fourteen people, including 11 Iraqi Jews, were strung up before a crowd of thousands in Baghdad, and over the course of the next several months, hundreds of Muslims said to have collaborated in the plot were also executed. Saddam had the "plotters" executed on live television and their bodies hung from lampposts in the city.

In 1992, Saddam arrested 500 of Baghdad's most successful businessmen on charges of "profiteering." Forty- two were executed, their bodies left hanging outside their stores with signs around their necks saying "Greedy Merchant." In 1994, the regime issued a new decree announcing that anyone found guilty of stealing an item worth more than $12 would have his hand amputated. For a second offense, the thief would be branded.

Many regimes practice torture on their enemies. But Saddam tortures the children of his enemies before their eyes. Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kaplan quote testimony from a former political prisoner provided by Middle East Watch: "Each hour, security men opened the door and chose three to five of the prisoners — children or men — and removed them for torture. Later, their tortured bodies were thrown back into the cell. They were often bleeding and carried obvious signs of whipping and electric shock."

Twenty-nine of the children mentioned in that particular report were eventually killed. Their bodies were returned to their parents with the eyes gouged out. Saddam often took his own sons to the nation's prisons to have them observe the torture — the better to "toughen them up."

During the war with Iran (which is predominantly Shi'ite), Iraq's own Shi'ite population came in for especially brutal treatment. Thirty-five thousand Iraqi Shi'ites were driven out of the country at the start of the Iran/Iraq war, and thousands more were tortured and murdered before the war was finished.

Following the Gulf war, Saddam's genocidal fury was even worse. When the Shi'ites in southern Iraq rose in rebellion, Saddam determined to kill as many as he could. An Iraqi army document, obtained by the U.S. State Department, showed that Iraq's military was under orders to "withhold all foodstuffs, ban the sale of fish, poison the water and burn the villages." As many as 100,000 Iraqis were murdered by the regime in the months following the Gulf war.

Saddam's treatment of the Kurds was, if possible, worse. The Kurds are a non-Arab minority living in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia. Saddam accused the Kurds, who are Sunni Muslims, of collaborating with the Iranians and gave orders for their extermination. The Iraqi air force used chemical weapons to gas the towns of Halabja, Goktapa and 200 smaller villages, killing as many as 200,000. Mothers were found with their scarves wrapped around their babies' faces, hoping to protect them.

With a list of atrocities that long, is it any wonder he doesn't want to leave
power voluntarily? As long as he is the strongman of Baghdad, he has
the resources of the Nation-state to protect him, but once he's deposed,
he no longer has his secret police, et al to protect him from assassination
attempts or extradition to the Hague.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

With a list of atrocities that long, is it any wonder he doesn't want to leave
power voluntarily? As long as he is the strongman of Baghdad, he has
the resources of the Nation-state to protect him, but once he's deposed,
he no longer has his secret police, et al to protect him from assassination
attempts or extradition to the Hague.

That would be a good reason to stay there - But he rose to power for a reason. I think the mindset I outlined is an appropriate evaluation, and he wouldn't be leaving even if he didn't have those things to fear. Inherently, the resources of the Iraqi State are an extension of the Will of Saddam. That's the way things have always worked over there. Even the example of him exposing his sons to watching torture to toughen them up - Typical of such a Despot.

[Enforcer Talen]

interesting.

[Darth Wong]

Marina, the article you cited merely states an opinion in a very long-winded way, without bothering to prove it. Eloquence is no substitute for evidence.

How does it prove any of its claims regarding Saddam's state of mind? It merely repeats them, over and over. Where do you find all of these articles (like the previous thread you started) which make no effort to justify their claims?

[Enforcer Talen]

http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/2000/02/iraq99.htm

also interesting.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Marina, the article you cited merely states an opinion in a very long-winded way, without bothering to prove it. Eloquence is no substitute for evidence.

How does it prove any of its claims regarding Saddam's state of mind? It merely repeats them, over and over. Where do you find all of these articles (like the previous thread you started) which make no effort to justify their claims?

It seems implied that the stories and accounts of Saddam's life and behaviour in that article were taken from Iraqi defectors and refugees through a series of interviews, along with some books on the subject where mentioned.

One annoyance is that journalists rarely quote sources, unlike academics, who, of course, would consider anything else plagiarism. Since a lot of journalistic articles are being written on this subject, now, you have to shift through them and try to seperate the bad from the good, using one's own knowledge and, in some cases, instinct.

The simple fact of it is, though, there just hasn't been any change over there, and Bowden's evaluation of Saddam very nearly matches the typical personality of a classic Oriental Despot of Mesopotamia. It fits.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

To elaborate: I think the guy basically came out of a village near Tikrit that hadn't changed much since the age of the Rightly-guided Caliphs and took power believing in his own rhetoric and behaving like Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus the Great because he's not far removed from them in outlook or personality.

[Darth Wong]

To elaborate: I think the guy basically came out of a village near Tikrit that hadn't changed much since the age of the Rightly-guided Caliphs and took power believing in his own rhetoric and behaving like Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus the Great because he's not far removed from them in outlook or personality.

It fits, but so do alternate theories which rely only on phenomena that we can observe, like his obvious paranoia and power hunger, so why complicate it?

[Stormbringer]

It fits, but so do alternate theories which rely only on phenomena that we can observe, like his obvious paranoia and power hunger, so why complicate it?

I believe those are part of the personality that Marina is saying Saddam has.

[GUTB]

Saddam is your basic strongman-type dictator. He rose to the top of a brutal and chaotic power structure because he was smarter and quicker than those around him.

And, quite frankly, attrocity is as common as oxygen in 3rd-world regimes. What so many here are failing to grasp is that Saddam is a product of his society, not vice-versa. If Saddam was never born, it would be some other strongman-type dictator. If the government fell altogether, the warlords would come out of hiding and fight civil wars and pillage everything of value until one of them got powerful enough to slaughter all his enemies and make a new government.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Saddam is your basic strongman-type dictator. He rose to the top of a brutal and chaotic power structure because he was smarter and quicker than those around him.

And, quite frankly, attrocity is as common as oxygen in 3rd-world regimes. What so many here are failing to grasp is that Saddam is a product of his society, not vice-versa. If Saddam was never born, it would be some other strongman-type dictator. If the government fell altogether, the warlords would come out of hiding and fight civil wars and pillage everything of value until one of them got powerful enough to slaughter all his enemies and make a new government.

I think that's exactly what I'm arguing. Saddam is a product of his society - A society which hasn't changed appreciably since the 7th century, and is locked in the form of government that we call Oriental Despotism.

I'd argue that he has special traits in how he runs his regime, as well, which fit the classic pattern of an Oriental Despot as opposed to a really modern gradation of a form of dictator.