Yesterday's Friend Is Today's Dead Dictator

"What is he, a sheep? I think the Americans wanted to tell all Arab leaders who are their servants that they are like Saddam, nothing but a sheep slaughtered on the day of Eid." -- Abu Mohammad Salama

After a farcical railroad of a trial and a rush to the hangman's noose, Saddam Hussein, one of America's best friends in the Middle East during the latter half of the 20th Century, was executed today. A mere week after Christmas, I am sure it is warming the spirit of Jesus Christ, wherever He is, to know that vengeance, bloodlust, and barbarism are alive and well in this world. (And Mohammed, Moses, and Buddha too!!!) Before sanctioning the execution of Saddam Hussein, why didn't President Bush -- a supposed devout Christian -- ask himself "What Would Jesus Do?" Bush must think Jesus is in favor of the death penalty, having suffered from it Himself. I tend to think not. But that's a topic for another day.

Some people are saying that what Iraq needs right now to quell the brutal violence and bring the civil war to an end is a "strongman," someone kind of like.... uh... Saddam Hussein. Not HIM though (now no longer an option), just someone who maybe talks tough, carries a big stick, who won't kill or oppress people, someone "strong" that all those nasty Sunnis and Shiites who are killing people will be forced to listen to and follow.

How fucking ironic.

What these "pundits" fail to understand is that a "strongman" is the same thing as a dictator, and the only way for one man or one government to force an end to the sectarian violence occurring in Iraq today is to violently oppress people, take their rights away, and make them fear for their lives if they don't do what is demanded. Saddam Hussein, a true Machiavellian, fully understood this. For decades, he was the ultimate "strongman," a fearful, violent, merciless, vengeful dictator who crushed any and all dissent -- including betrayals by members of his own family -- without a drop of remorse. Perhaps most infamously, on March 16, 1988, Saddam responded to stubborn opposition by Kurdish peshmerga rebels in northern Iraq by attacking the Kurdish town of Halabja with a mix of mustard gas and nerve agents, killing 5,000 civilians and maiming 10,000 more. This act of hatred epitomized this man's incredible cruelty and brutal intolerance of dissent.

I remember being absolutely horrified at the time, when I saw pictures in Time Magazine of little Iraqi kids lying on the ground in ghastly, contorted poses, like exhausted blue ghosts, their eyes, noses, and mouths open and stained purple from the effects of Saddam's nerve gas. I also remember wondering who the fuck this Saddam guy was and why in the world the Reagan Administration was not immediately condemning the atrocity in the strongest terms possible, rather than hemming and hawing and supporting Saddam's claim that it was Iran who was behind this mass murder. It was not until the 1990s that I learned that Saddam was our ally at the time, a secular buffer against our opposition to the Iranian Islamic revolution and that paragon of freedom and tolerance himself, the Ayatollah Khomeini. We hated Khomeini and Iran, remember? "The Ayatollah is an Ass-a-hola" t-shirts? Remember?

Saddam just so happened to be fighting a major war against our enemy Iran, and as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Desperate for help, Saddam reached out to Arab governments for cash and political support during the war, which lasted nearly a decade. The United States, along with France, China, and the Soviet Union gave Saddam military and financial aid, as well as diplomatic and moral support. To the U.S. and the other powers, Saddam was a sane, secular alternative to the threat of an Islamic revolution across the Middle East. Believe it or not, when Saddam came to power in Iraq in the late 1970s, he was a modern reformer. He opposed the imposition of Islamic law and abolished Sharia law courts in Iraq, except for personal injury claims. He implemented a secular, Western-style government and legal system, rather than a religious government, such as exists in Iran today. His government also gave women added freedoms and offered them high-level government and industry jobs. Of course, this was the bright side of an otherwise repressive regime.

It may seem a little strange today to think that during most of the 20th Century, Saddam was a very good friend to the United States. This relationship goes back to the 1950s and 1960s, when the stranglehold of conservative, pro-Western monarchies collapsed in Iraq, Egypt, and Libya, as revolutionary pan-Arab nationalism, led by the populist Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, took hold in the Middle East. In 1957, Saddam joined the newly formed, pan-Arab, socialist Ba'ath Party, which was growing in power and influence in Iraq.

A year later, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew the monarchist Faisal II in Iraq. Saddam and the Ba'athists opposed the new government, as did the United States, which was concerned that Qassim would (gasp) "go communist" and ally himself with the Soviet Union. (Remember the Cold War?) Most people don't know this, but Saddam was directly involved in a United States-backed plot to assassinate Qassim, which was orchestrated by your friend and mine, the CIA. Saddam was shot in the leg in the incident, but escaped to Tikrit with the help of CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents. He then crossed into Syria and was transferred to Beirut for a brief CIA training course. From there he moved to Cairo where he made frequent visits to the American embassy. During this time the CIA placed him in an upper-class apartment observed by CIA and Egyptian operatives.

So you see, our ties with Saddam go back a long, long way. He was our CIA bro, our homey, our best bud. That's why you see Rummy up there shaking his hand in 1983.

Alas, our friendship with Saddam began to go south after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988. With Iraq devastated and deep in debt and Saddam looking for a solution, tensions between Iraq and Kuwait flared up. Saddam's grievances with Kuwait were many. First, he claimed that the struggle with Iran had been fought for the benefit of the other Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq and a share of Iraqi debt should be forgiven. So he demanded that the Kuwaitis forgive the Iraqi debt accumulated in the war, estimated at $30 billion. Kuwait refused. Kuwait also refused to cut back on oil production, which Saddam had requested to raise oil prices to help Iraq.

Saddam was also pissed off about a Kuwait-Iraq boundary line that had been created by British imperial officials in 1922, when Kuwait was still a protectorate of Britain. The boundary almost completely severed Iraq from the sea. He, like most Iraqis, felt that Kuwait had no right to exist because it is a part of Iraq and only came into existence as a result of British imperialism. As this were not enough, Kuwait also angered Saddam by allegedly slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered to be within its borders.

In 1990, as Iraq-Kuwait relations were rapidly deteriorating, Saddam received conflicting information from the U.S. State Department about how the America would respond if he invaded Kuwait. The U.S. had forged a solid relationship with Saddam in the 1980s by sending him billions of dollars to help him fight Iran. We were loathe to give that up. On the other hand, we didn't really want Saddam to invade Kuwait, which would threaten Kuwait's friend and neighbor, Saudi Arabia, whose royal family had been friends with the Bush family for decades. Get it?

On July 25, 1990, only a few days before Iraq invaded Kuwait, April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, met with Saddam in an emergency meeting. She and other U.S. officials indicated that while President Bush Senior did not want Iraq to use force against Kuwait, the U.S. would not take any position on the Iraq-Kuwait boundary dispute and did not want to become involved. Saddam invaded Kuwait a week later, apparently believing, based on Ms. Glaspie's statements, that the U.S. would not become involved. How wrong he was.

So today, with American assistance and approval, our former friend Saddam Hussein, a ruthless dictator whom we supported militarily, financially, morally, and diplomatically for decades, is dead. Like Dr. Frankenstein, we have pulled the plug on a merciless monster we helped create. My only question is, who is the real monster here? Frankenstein, or his shortsighted, self-serving, and hypocritical creators? Who is ultimately responsible for the hundreds of thousands of lives lost at the hands of Saddam Hussein? Certainly Saddam Hussein himself. But also responsible are the American Presidents, French Prime Ministers, European leaders, and the military and corporate beasts they serve, who benefited from their relationships with Mr. Hussein. Indeed, Saddam would not have existed and prospered without a great deal of military and economic assistance from these power brokers, including those who live in the country most responsible for the noose that snapped Saddam's neck this morning: the United States of America.

So please spare me the self-righteous hypocrisy that a brutal dictator was "brought to justice" today. Right now, in places all over the world, the United States is supporting or tolerating men just as brutal, just as merciless as Saddam Hussein -- some even more so. We will continue to do so as long as it suits our interests, as we have done throughout our history. Most of these ruthless killers will die of natural causes -- see Augusto Pinochet.

And if one of them becomes a problem, another out-of-control monster like Saddam Hussein, well then Dr. Frankenstein will simply pull the plug again, as he did this morning. Just try not to look too closely at the blood on his hands when he does it. Otherwise you might see that the plug-puller is not really a doctor -- he's a monster himself.