We don’t know if Saddam Hussein, in his hide-out, reads the Arab press these days. If he were he would not be too happy with the way his self-styled friends are commenting on his life work.
Broadly speaking, Saddam’s demise has produced three positions among those who lament it.
The first comes from nostalgics of pan-Arabism who would rather have Iraq crucified for decades than witness an Arab despot thrown out of his palace by the Americans.
The second position is that of those who claim that Saddam was a pawn in a power game played by the West, specially the United States, and was discarded because he decided to play for himself.
The third position would have us believe that Saddam was a well-meaning leader whose naiveté was exploited by big powers in the service of sinister designs.
The first position is beyond rational analysis because it is based on what sociologists label “nexal” sentiments, a more sophisticated term for tribal prejudices.
The second position is no compliment to him. Saddam compared himself to Hammurabi, a king of ancient Babylon who is supposed to have promulgated the first laws in human history, thus providing a structure without which there could be no civilization.
The third position, Saddam being misled by the big powers, is by far the most popular. People across the Arab world find it hard to accept that an Arab leader could have made so many mistakes for so long without having been misled by others.
Why did Saddam decide to murder the Kurdish leader Mulla Mostafa Barzani in 1969 thus provoking a civil war that lasted for six years? The answer given by adepts of the conspiracy theory is simple: Saddam acted on fake information planted by the Israeli secret service Mossad. The Israelis, so the theory goes, wanted to keep Iraq busy and out of any Arab coalition that might form against the Jewish state.
And why did Saddam decide to close the Shatt Al-Arab border waterway to Iranian ships almost at the same time, thus provoking a bloody border war that ended with his humiliating defeat in 1975?
Again the conspiracy theorists have the answer: The Soviets sought a base in the Gulf at a time that the British were preparing to withdraw from East of Suez, and hoped that Iraq, threatened by Iran, would give them what they wanted.
OK, But why did Saddam invade Iran in 1980?
Here is the conspiracy theorists’ answer: The US wanted to contain the revolution in Iran and urged Saddam to start a war. And what was it that prompted Saddam to invade Kuwait in 1990?
Here the answers are a bit more complicated. We are told that Saddam misunderstood what he was told by April Glaspie, then US ambassador in Baghdad. Glaspie had told Saddam that Iraq’s dispute with Kuwait was an internal matter and had better be sorted out through bilateral talks. Saddam had interpreted this as a sign that Washington would not mind if his armies annexed Kuwait.
Well, well. And why did Saddam insist on playing games with the United Nations for 13 years to the point that he left the US and its allies no choice but to topple him?
Again the conspiracy theorists have an interesting answer: The US asked some allies, including France and Germany, to make noises against the use of force, thus giving Saddam the illusion that he would, once again, escape the worst.
According to conspiracy theorists Saddam never had a will of his own and could be manipulated by anyone who wished to use him.
But the fact is that Saddam was the ultimate Arab despot with a perverted vision of his role in history. He was the victim of the system he had created — a system in which the chief never hears different views and always decides alone.
Saddam was a gambler. Only he gambled with the life and the future of his people. Even if he were deceived by this or that foreign power, he remains responsible for his deeds and misdeeds.
He could render a service to his people, perhaps even to his place in history, if he were to come out of his hiding to face trial. A proper trial would give him a chance to explain and defend his record, and to show that he was not a mere pawn in a game played by others. Such a trial would also help the Iraqis, and Arabs in general, understand the roots of the evil that has afflicted their politics for decades.
