Reflections on the Death of Saddam
Saddam Hussein was a symbol of an archaic era of a particular ideology: Arab socialism. The dream of a unified secular Arab state has died with Saddam. The death of Saddam coincided with the birth of a new ideology: Islamism.
This is not the end of the struggle by native forces against an Imperialist West; this is only the beginning.
America has killed one of its stooges, it has opened the path for thousands of anti-Western forces.
The sitaution in Iraq and the entire region is only going to get worse and it is going to take a long time for the West to realize that Islam is its own way of life and can survive independently and successfuly from liberal democratic capitalism.
Sphere: Related ContentPublished December 30, 2006 . Filed under: Uncategorized
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How, pray tell, does one become an American stooge? By defying U.S./U.N. sanctions for a decade, ensuring decent healthcare, education, electricity, and clean water for the Iraqi people against all odds for that hellish period which we all seem to have forgotten? By helping Palestinian widows and orphans more than perhaps any other Arab ruler? By refusing to accept offers of political asylum, and remaining in Iraq after the invasion, to fight the imperialists to the death?
There is no shortage of stooges in the Muslim world, but I dare say Saddam, who died saying kalima, was not one of them. I am amazed and saddened that Muslims have adapted the corporate media refrain on Saddam: “He was America’s man.†Even after the destruction of Iraq, Muslims are regurgitating the official line of the party complicit in its destruction. We have, once again, failed to recognize wartime propaganda. Goebbels—no Wolfowitz—would be proud.
I do not doubt that Saddam made a grievous error in allowing himself to be used by the imperialists, during the Iraq-Iran war—an error for which, he will no doubt answer to Allah
(AWJ). And yet, which national leader—Muslim or non—has not erred in their political life? The current discourse almost makes one believe that Saddam’s reign ended with the Iran-Iraq war, and that he was somehow incapacitated from participation on the world stage thereafter. Accordingly, the man is tried in the realm of our imaginations only for actions he took decades ago. And the entire sanctions period has vanished from our minds.
The claim that Saddam was a U.S. stooge brings to mind similar Western claims of “blowback.” The idea seems to be that any actions taken by Muslims, for good or for ill, cannot occur without the stewardship of the West—an arrogant premise to say the least. Such views, when embraced by Muslims, are symptomatic of a self-hatred, perhaps the residual effects of our colonial heritage, that we are incapable of any endeavor without the help of Gora Sahib.
January 14, 2007 @ 8:13 pm