North Looking South
By John Barham, Jan 19, 2007

Adiós, Saddam: A consideration of Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush

During a six-year stay in the Middle East, I had the opportunity to visit Baghdad and Mosul in Iraq. It was a time just before the Iraq-Iran war, and my main impression was that Iraq was flourishing, owing to its oil revenues. Many Iraqis were eager to talk to an American, and I learned much about their country during my two-week visit.

Most Iraqis with whom I spoke were enthusiastic about their strongman-president, who at that time was considered to be in collaboration with the Reagan administration. In fact, just before leaving Riyadh for Baghdad, I have a vivid memory of a photo in the Arab News showing a warm embrace between Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld during one of his visits to Iraq.

The outward political stability that I observed in Iraq was obviously rigidly enforced. Any cursory review of Levantine history will show that Iraq was artificially cobbled together by the British Empire, and its various ethnic constituencies could only have coexisted under the rule of an iron hand. In many ways, the rule of Saddam resembled that of Tito in Yugoslavia, where Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Muslims and Christians were forced into a “pax Tito” by virtue of the strength of the dictator.

The extreme heterogeneity that characterized Iraq was exacerbated in its early history by the British effort to place in power a Hashemite ruler over a hodgepodge of Sunnites, Shiites, Kurds, Chaldaeans, Syrians and minority groups of Christians and Jews. The eventual overthrow of the Hashemite king and the rise of the secularist Baathist party and associated military regimes seem now to have been more than predictable. In retrospect, Saddam’s rise to power was by virtue of a flawed map sketched out by the striped-pants crowd in London.

As the high tide of empire receded, the United States began to fill the void in the Middle East left by Britain. Unfortunately, American diplomacy was not a great improvement over British bungling. And, of course, American history shows that most administrations have taken the easy road of dealing with dictators to achieve their aims. To the Reagan administration, Saddam was simply a pawn to play against the Islamist Shiite regime in Tehran.

Despite their limitations, dictators, especially those who feel they have the support of the great powers, usually are affected by grandiose ambitions. And so it was with Saddam, whose craving for Kuwaiti oil fields was provoked in part by the lackluster skills of American Ambassador April Glaspie, who unwittingly led Saddam to think that the United States would not concern itself with his aggrandizement of Kuwaiti oil. The result was the first Gulf War and the American-led coalition that restrained Saddam and compelled Iraqi forces to abandon Kuwait and its oil fields.

Sadly, George W. Bush did not distinguish Iraq as a potential quagmire as his father had. Neither did the current Bush administration take into account the ethnic and religious animosities that would work against the imposition of “democracy.” And, further confusing the situation, the second Bush administration misled much of the electorate to forge a connection between the secularist Baathist regime of Saddam and Islamic terrorism, while lying to Congress and the American people about weapons of mass destruction. The consequence has been an on-going hemorrhaging of American blood and treasure—in a conflict now approaching the length of US involvement in World War II—and the cultivation of fertile soil for the spawning of more and more terrorists.

Last week, I read of the execution of Saddam Hussein. My feelings were mixed. Saddam was a brutal dictator whose regime was guilty of numerous atrocities. But, at the same time, he was a creature of the intrigues and diplomatic maneuverings of the great powers. His sins were many; but, compared to the ambitions of George W. Bush and his neo-conservative mentors, whose extreme irresponsibility and ignorance of the Middle East have been responsible for untold thousands of innocent deaths, his execution would seem to be the ultimate act of hypocrisy. Hopefully, the new Congress in Washington will shed light on the Bush regime and the reckless policies that have caused America to assume the role of a pariah throughout much of the world.

May the people of Iraq eventually live in peace. And may George W. Bush eventually be called to account for the irregularities of his administration that have spread misery and discord and have triggered far more crimes against humanity than all those perpetrated by Saddam Hussein.

John Barham, who retired from the University of Missouri last June, is a full-time resident of San Miguel de Allende. During his 40-year career in higher education, John was an administrator and professor in colleges and universities in Alabama, Texas, New York, Missouri and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He may be reached at barhamjw@yahoo.com