- The spectacle was disgusting."Rejoice not when thine
enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, lest
the Lord see it, and it displeaseth Him, and He turn away His wrath from
him!" Thus commandeth the ancient Jewish moral code (Proverbs, 24,
16).The writer of this warning knew, of course, that every person tends
to gloat when his enemy falls. But he wanted to point out that this is
an ugly human trait and one should try to overcome it. And now a mighty
world-power has sunk to this level. It is repeatedly displaying the spectacle
of American soldiers looking for lice in the hair of a miserable Saddam
and poking about among his teeth. If it is possible at all to evoke pity
for a man like Saddam, who is responsible for the death of hundreds of
thousands, the Americans have achieved this. By showing him off as a drugged
tramp, they created the opposite effect from what they wanted. The Vatican
has called for mercy. The public humiliation of an Arab leader, whatever
one may think about him, evokes the deepest feelings of insult and fury
among tens of millions of Arabs. These feelings will strive to express
themselves violently. This may cost blood, much blood. (Not long ago, the
United States cried to high heaven when the Iraqis showed off some American
prisoners. But there are apparently no mirrors in Washington DC.) The childish
stories about the tremendous success of the American army and intelligence
agencies are ridiculous. It is fairly certain that this was simply a case
of a paid informer. A trained eye could easily detect how the "spontaneous"
outbursts of joy were staged: Here a small group waving the flag of the
Communist Party, there a few dozen people jumping like monkeys for the
cameras - probably the same people who were jumping a year ago for the
cameras of Saddam. Two Arab "journalists" producing a raucous
show at the carefully staged press conference of the American general.
When Winston Churchill won a terrible war, he did not behave like George
W. Bush. No Winston he. I have not written about Iraq in this column since
the end of "major hostilities". I checked myself. I know that
it is neither nice nor wise to say "I told you so". But it is
very hard to write about Iraq without using these four words, since almost
all the predictions of this column before and during the war are coming
true, one after another. For example:
-
-
- The Americans invaded Iraq in order to remain there.
-
- They did not invade because of "international terror".
Nor because of "weapons of mass destruction". It,s the oil that
drew them there. The aim of the United States was not to topple Saddam
and go home, but to create a permanent American military base in the Arab
world, in a country that has the second largest proven oil reserves in
the world and is also located within easy reach of the oil riches of Saudi
Arabia and the Caspian Sea. Now that is already quite clear. Saddam had
no connections at all with Osama Bin-Laden. The "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
do not exist. The Americans have simply changed the reasons for the war
after the event. ("First make war, than find a reason.") Now
it is all about eliminating Saddam and bringing democracy to Iraq. Good.
But Saddam has been eliminated - and the Americans are not heading home.
Elections could be held at once. But the Americans refuse. They want to
keep their marionettes in place, so they can invite the Americans to stay
forever. The American occupation will last a long, long time. It is not
a means. It is the aim.
-
- The toppling of Saddam will not be the end of the war.
-
- It will only be the beginning. This forecast is now being
confirmed in the most extreme fashion. No people resigns itself to foreign
occupation. Occupation breeds resistance. At the time I recounted our experience
in South Lebanon: The advancing Israelis were welcomed as liberators, because
they drove the Palestinians out. A few months later they were being shot
at from all sides, because they did not go home. After 18 years and a thousand
soldiers killed, they escaped under the cover of darkness "with their
tail between their legs". The Americans cannot absorb this simple
lesson. They do not look upon themselves as occupiers but as liberators
who came to do good by the Iraqi people. They are convinced that the Iraqis
are grateful and love them. They consoled themselves with a legend they
invented: it is not Iraqi and Arab freedom-fighters who are attacking the
occupation army and its collaborators, but die-hard henchmen of the evil
Saddam. But now the evil Saddam has been caught, and it appears that he
had no possibility at all of directing operations from his spider-hole.
The capture of Saddam must mark the end of the legend about his die-hard
followers. Iraq finds itself now in a classical colonial situation: A foreign
conqueror is robbing the natives of their natural resources. Resistance
groups are staging violent attacks, with a large part of the population
supporting them. Two hundred years ago such groups defeated the mighty
Napoleon in Spain. At that time, the term "guerilla" (little
war) was coined. What will happen now? It,s all so predictable: Reacting
to the operations of the resistance, the occupation will become ever more
brutal. That will increase the support of the population for the guerillas,
and so forth. The vicious circle so well known to Israelis. That,s how
it happened in Lebanon. That,s how it is happening now in the occupied
Palestinian territories. The public humiliation of the defeated leader
will only accelerate the process.
-
- A vanquished Saddam will be more dangerous than a victorious
Saddam.
-
- The question arises: what to do with the prisoner? The
Americans have already said what they intend to do: hand him over to their
Iraqi servants, so that he can be tried and executed in Iraq. That would
be a first-class blunder. Nobody will believe in the fairness of such a
trial. There is no way it could be fair, because in a fair trial Saddam
would use the public platform to make his own accusations and reach out
to hundreds of millions of Arabs and other Muslims. The best would have
been to let him escape to the Fiji islands, there to live out his life
quietly, like Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia. But George Bush needs the ongoing
humiliation of Saddam for his reelection campaign. The only reasonable
way out now is to transfer Saddam to The Hague. In the eyes of the world,
he is entitled to the same treatment as another political mass-murderer,
Slobodan Milosevic. If he is treated differently, every Muslim will rightly
suspect that there is a double standard: one for a Christian European leader,
one for a Muslim Arab one. But Bush will not be satisfied until the body
of Saddam is hanging in a public square in Baghdad - perhaps the same square
where his statue stood before it was toppled in a carefully staged TV spectacle.
-
- The talk about bringing democracy to Iraq is hypocritical
nonsense.
-
- In order to safeguard their occupation, the Americans
need a supportive local regime. To use a World War II term: they need Quislings.
When the British created the Iraqi state as their protectorate, they crowned
Emir Faisal, a scion of the Hashemite family from Mecca. In order to keep
Iraq as their own protectorate, the Americans must crown their own local
agents. If truly democratic elections were held, the American agents would
be kicked out in no time - if they were not lynched first. That is self-evident.
Therefore, there will be no really democratic elections. Generally speaking,
democracy can not be "brought" anywhere. It cannot be implanted
in a different society with a different culture, as if it were a tree.
And in any case a tree needs fertile soil. Western democracy has grown
organically over the centuries, from the village community to the national
parliament. To implant it by force in Iraqi society, which is based on
the tribe and the extended family (khamulah) and on different concepts
and traditions, is a hopeless pursuit. What happened to Western democracy
when it was implanted in Japan? The outer forms are in place, the reality
is quite different. What is happening now to Western democracy in Russia?
Ask any Russian, and he will burst out laughing.
-
- Iraq will disintegrate.
-
- When we said it a year ago, it looked like wild speculation.
Today it is a safe bet. Only a brutal dictator like Saddam was able to
hold the package together. Before the 1958 revolution, the British colonialists
did it. In a democratic regime, there is no chance. A simple fact: The
Shiites have a majority. They will rule. There is no chance at all that
that they would institute a benevolent regime, after their long oppression
by the Sunnis. There is no chance that the Sunnis in central Iraq, who
despise the Shiites, would accept their supremacy. There is no chance that
the Kurds in the north, who have always fought for their independence,
would accept Arab rule - neither by Shiites nor by fellow Sunnis. They
hardly accept their fellow Kurds. The Americans can prevent the disintegration
of Iraq only by maintaining an occupation regime, open or disguised. They
could also set up an artificial structure, a sham federation, in which
Iraq would consist of three autonomous parts. But that would be sheer make-believe.
When Iraq will cease to exist for practical purposes, a new balance of
power will come about. For centuries Iraq has served as the eastern wall
of the Arab world, a barrier against Iran - which has never forgotten the
days of Cyrus, when it was the regional power. The fall of this wall will
change the geo-political situation in the entire region, which includes
Israel. The implosion of Iraq will be the signal for general anarchy: the
Arab world will be in turmoil, Islamic fundamentalism will threaten all
Arab regimes, the border between Turkey and the Kurdish-Iraqi state will
heat up, between Israel and Iran a nuclear balance of terror may or may
not hold, "international terror" will turn from legend to reality.
Since it is neither nice nor wise to say "I told you so," I will
restrain myself.
-
-
- Uri Avnery is a peace activist and a former member of
the Israeli Parliament.
-
- http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2003%20Opinion%20Editorials/December
/22%20o/Uri%20Avnery%20on%20Saddam%20capture,%20trial,%20and%20the%20war.htm
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