March 2, 2003
SADDAM'S FELLOW "COMBATANTS":
'Old Europe' Feeds Hussein's Suicidal Fantasy (Amir Taheri, February 27, 2003, LA Times)While the American media are having a field day against the "old Europeans" -- France and Germany -- the Iraqi media are building a fantasy world in which a resurgent Europe, inspired by Saddam Hussein's "heroic leadership," will put an end to the U.S. "quest for global hegemony."Despite the protests of French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and others opposed to war in Iraq that they do not endorse Hussein's brutal regime, the Iraqi press sees it differently. Iraq's media are trying to create the impression that Hussein enjoys worldwide support that cuts across ideological barriers.
"The battle started in Iraq," wrote Hussein's eldest son, Uday, in an editorial in his daily newspaper Babel on Saturday. "But the struggle of mankind against the American-Zionist enemy has now spread to the whole world. The world is waking up and responding to the call of our Heroic Leader." [...]
Iraqi newspapers and radio and television networks, all controlled by Hussein or his family, refer to the German leader as al-munadhil al-bassel (the brave combatant) because of the stance he has taken against the U.S. and in favor of Iraq. This is an important title in the Iraqi Baathist lexicon, just one degree below the title of al-munadhil al-akbar (the great combatant), used to describe Chirac, the only Western head of state to have met Hussein and to have forged a personal relationship with him in the 1970s.
On the side of the "villains" are British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Italian and Spanish counterparts Silvio Berlusconi and Jose Maria Aznar.
Hussein's Iraq is building up other heroes. France's National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Austria's neofascist leader Joerg Haider, American social critic Noam Chomsky, Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Columbia professor Edward Said, British Labor Party leftist Tony Benn, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Jesse Jackson are some of the Iraqi "heroes."
Geez, Charles Lindbergh accepted one medal from Hermann Goering for his contributions to aviation and it became so infamous his wife dubbed it the Albatross. These guys are entered into the Ba'athist Pantheon and the Left idolizes them. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 2, 2003 7:05 AM
And the disturbing part of it all is that it isn't even a fantasy, like Taheri writes. These fools are in fact Saddam's allies in a struggle to destroy the Zionists and humiliate the Americans.
Posted by: Peter at March 2, 2003 8:08 AMDoes anyone have any idea why the Ba'athist party is getting a free ride in the press? Here's a party that sustains tyranical systems in Syria and Iraqa and which gives an ideological foundation for some of the worst tendancies of the Arab countries, and most Americans have probably never heard of it. I don't get it?
Posted by: David Cohen at March 2, 2003 7:16 PMDavid:
How many of the journalists covering the story get it?
This is an old story indeed: Flirtation with anything deemed "fascistic" (forgotten, of course, is that Nazi stands for National Socialist
) is an insurmountable shame, but outright admiration for the ideologies of the Left, despite their mountains of corpses, is a matter of indifference.
Paul - The mystery in this case is greater, because Baathism is directly descended from National Socialism, and most on the left would want to say that Saddam is a right-wing dictator, just as they say Hitler was. (Left=internationalist, right=nationalist, in one telling.) What's strange now is that the left seems to be dropping those distinctions and just outright favoring dictatorship over freedom. This has confused and dismayed those leftists who are still somewhat liberal.
Posted by: pj at March 3, 2003 8:22 AMpj:
All becomes clear if you consifer it through the Brothers Judd's Grand Unified theory of Everything. All of human affairs is divided between two impulses: towards freedom on the one hand (Right), the other toward security (Left). Liberals favor not dictatorship but stability, because they disfavor war.
oj - Your Grand Unified Theory is missing a key concept -- evil. Security and liberty are both good things. The trouble is not that people disagree over which goods are preferable, but that some seek others' harm.
Just read what the left writes -- some of them hate
the right, and would be pleased to see us suffer. Are you certain that their desire for security will always trump their hatred?
pj:
Actually, one of the key points is that freedom entails a willingness to accept evil. Security is based on the assumption that in a society that's tightly enough controlled there will be no evil. The perfect example of this contrast is "A Clockwork Orange" which asks us whether it's better for us if we're free but the Alexs exist, or unfree with no criminality.
oj - Our goal should be freedom and
security. I think we can sometimes compromise freedom in pursuit of security (e.g. giving the Homeland Security dept additional powers to wiretap etc.), or vice versa, but in general good societies have both. Neither anarchy (the absence of security) nor tyranny (the absence of freedom) is a good state.
Contrariwise, we can see by the example of, e.g., Saddam that not everything fits in your scheme. Saddam is clearly not seeking security, either for himself or society; his invasions of Iran and Kuwait, his sponsorship of terrorism, all have put his own life at great risk, and we know he's placed Iraqi citizens at great risk. And he's not pursuing freedom either.