A Political System With In-Built Decay
Fawaz Turki, [log in to unmask]

“A man may build himself a throne of bayonets,” wrote British mystic and
theologian, William Ralph Inge, “but he cannot sit on it.”

Contemplate, if you will, the agony of Iraq today. Soldiers of the regular
army and the Republican Guard dropped their weapons and abandoned their
positions, opting not to defend the nation; the political leadership went
underground, fleeing to places unknown; and the top bureaucrats of the
ruling party took a powder.

And these folks left Iraq’s urban centers, including the capital city, to
looters who not only stripped palaces of their finery, hospitals of their
medical equipment, and government buildings of their office supplies, but
ended up cannibalizing their own heritage when they rampaged through the
70-year old National Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad, one of the greatest
repositories of Iraqi culture, smashing or walking off with hundreds of
priceless artifacts and irreplaceable treasures, including Sumerian clay
pots, Assyrian marble carvings, Babylonian statues and intricate manuscripts
from the Abbasside era.

Why have we evinced such historical impotence in the face of an invading
army committed to introducing, at gunpoint, “regime change” in our part of
the world? Why have Iraqis, a people we had been assured were a cultivated
community, descended to chaos?

It will take many books, covering an immense range of subjects, to
understand the dizzying collapse of Iraq. For now, I proffer two words:
Political culture. I speak of a political culture that left the Iraqi
people, after decades of repressive rule, too sapped of national elan, too
exhausted to fight back, too indifferent to their fate.

It pays to review the devastating legacy — the damage report, as it were —
of a regime that derived its legitimacy, to quote Mikhael Gorbachev’s rueful
observation on the collapse of the Soviet Union, from “the legitimacy of the
bayonet,” where political leaders had not the slightest scruple about
deploying terror as a means of silencing dissent. Reportedly, Saddam
Hussein, with cigar in mouth, would jot “shoot” or “shoot at once” on the
margins of lists of political dissidents or disrespectful malcontents placed
on his desk. Thousands of ordinary folk, along with the best and the
brightest in society, were lost in the torture chambers and the great
furnace of intermittent purges.

Everyday life for Iraqis was completely dominated by the regime’s
ideological organs, which tailored facts and interpretations of political
events to suit the current party line, drilling into the language a bent for
saccharine pathos beneath which to conceal any amount of deception or denial
of reality, an automatic reverence for the long word and loud voice, and a
weakness for slogans and pompous cliches.

In effect, history was a branch of propaganda, and had nothing to do with
what was actually happening. When the “Supreme Leader” told you that Iraq
waged and then won “the Mother of All Battles” in 1991, citizens, socialized
on the ethic of fear, believed it all. Iraq was progressively becoming a
weak, broken-down culture at its core. And if you think this social
condition is not sustainable over long periods of time, then consider the
immensity of this leader’s personality cult: The ubiquitous statues,
portraits, songs, and parades extolling the man’s heroic deeds and persona.

In this make-believe world, the average Iraqi, humiliated at his inability
to gather his national being into some kind of inviolate order, was now
losing the capacity to question this humiliation. He had been so stripped of
his powers of self-determination, and his humanity so reduced to a fragment
that he subconsciously dissociated himself from objective reality. For how
else would you explain the collective outcry of Iraqis pledging, “With our
soul, with our blood, we stand by you, Saddam”?

Decay is clearly built into this kind of political system, and the rot
progressively eats away at it until it would take but a nudge, by an
invading force, in this case, for it to collapse — and with it to emerge the
implosive, self-destructive, long-suppressed rage of a people now tearing up
the roots from which their history of civilization grew.

Saddam Hussein’s regime fizzled with the shameful image of his statues being
so ignominiously toppled by foreign troops. Now it is left to the Iraqi
people, after decades of absorbing a mass of that regime’s hysteria,
illiteracy and cheapness, to pick up the pieces.

Let’s hope they learned a lesson from their modern history, because, sure as
heck, these folks don’t need to repeat it.

Arab News Opinion 17 April 2003


Editorial: American Naivete
17 April 2003

First, the Bush administration went into Afghanistan with the aim of
overthrowing the Taleban regime and capturing “dead or alive” Al-Qaeda
mastermind Osama Bin Laden. But where is Osama Bin Laden now? US president
George W. Bush has not mentioned his name in public since last October, and
it seems that he placed his bets correctly in supposing that the American
people have short-term memories when it comes to such important matters.

The picture of Bin Laden as the epitome of evil standing against everything
the Americans hold dear, indeed permanently threatening their very security,
was soon replaced by the new demon, Saddam Hussein. And it was the same kind
of “dead or alive” mentality of the Wild West that came into play when Bush
told Saddam he had 48 hours to leave town. Saddam was in every headline, was
the subject of Bush’s every speech.

But where is Saddam Hussein now? Nobody — not the Bush administration, not
the Western media, not the American people themselves — appear to give much
of a damn. Less than a week after the fall of Baghdad, Saddam is already
largely forgotten. Bush has stopped mentioning him, as he stopped mentioning
Osama.

When one looks at the history of the relationship between various US
administrations and Saddam Hussein, it is hardly surprising that the Bush
administration could be so certain that Saddam’s sudden disappearance would
not cause much of a ruckus. After all, that history is a record of US
support for his brutal regime, which has also been forgotten. Saddam has a
great deal to thank the CIA for, including bringing the Baath Party to
power, helping his personal ascent through its ranks, providing him and it
with financial aid during the war with Iran, and constantly protecting him
against internal coups.

Until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Saddam got everything he wanted from
the US. When then Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly visited Baghdad,
he told Saddam: “You are a force for moderation in the region, and the US
wants to broaden her relationship with Iraq.” And when human rights groups
presented evidence that Saddam had used mustard gas against Iranian soldiers
and Kurdish civilians, the US State Department refused to condemn him. Given
this sordid history — which finds its parallel in the initial unconditional
support from the US for Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban — the latest stories
going around about the mysterious disappearance of Saddam Hussein from
Baghdad just before US Marines entered the city almost unopposed are perhaps
not so much wild conspiracy theories as logical deductions given the US’s
Wild West mentality.

Many have long thought that Osama was allowed to get away because his
capture would have put a premature end to the so-called “war on terror”.
Perhaps, if a deal was done with Saddam through his old pals in the CIA, as
is widely believed in the Middle East, part of the reason was that Saddam
could not then reveal the documents and other evidence which could bring
home to the American people in any subsequent trial the blatant hypocrisy of
successive US governments’ foreign policy in the Middle East.

News has a notoriously short shelf-life in the US, where the media often
appear — to the rest of the world at least — to work on the understanding
that the average American viewer has a concentration span only marginally
longer than that of a goldfish.

Considering that the progressive talents of the American people ushered in
the IT age, it is extraordinary that they process information so
lethargically and naively, falling victim to every misinformation campaign
their government concocts.


Road Map of Intimidation
Arab News Editorial 16 April 2003



In the US-led war against the Taleban in Afghanistan, most of the world
agreed that President George Bush was justified in overthrowing it. In his
war against Iraq, views have been more divided; even so, despite convictions
that Iraq was chosen because it is oil-rich, Arab and a convenient target,
there were many who supported the toppling of an oppressive and potentially
deadly regime. Even the French and Russians said they wanted the US to win
once the war began.

But Syria is a far cry from Iraq and if George W. Bush continues with his
threats against it, he will find that he has snatched defeat and humiliation
from the jaws of victory. The grudging acceptance of what the US has
achieved in Baghdad will vanish. No one, not even his most devoted
international allies and supporters, is going to back action against
Damascus.

As for the ridiculous allegation that the Syrians are developing chemical
weapons of mass destruction, no one is about to fall again for such a cheap
propaganda ploy. “Weapons of mass destruction” has become the catch-all
offense to justify targeting any government that the hawks in the Bush
administration dislike. But surely, in such circumstances, the weapons of
mass destruction should at least be found.

Who might be next? Will it be Havana with its weapons of mass destruction?
Will it be Khartoum with its weapons of mass destruction? Meanwhile, those
who actually have them or are developing them — such as the Israelis and the
North Koreans — are treated very differently.

Flush with victory in Iraq, Bush is on a high, though seeming to require yet
another military fix to give his presidency meaning and justification. But
the opposite is happening. Washington’s powers of reason, its ability to
argue its case using logic and persuasion, are seen to have been displaced
by petulant fury, all because a foreign government will not do as it is
told.

Many countries other than Syria opposed the war against Iraq. Does Bush plan
to attack them? He accuses Damascus of providing arms to Iraq. Belarus and
Ukraine provided arms to Iraq during the embargo; will he invade them? Of
course not. He accuses Damascus of providing sanctuary to members of
Saddam’s regime; what is wrong with that? Sanctuary is an age-old
institution. And if Russia were to give some of the regime sanctuary, would
he be as threatening?

Only Syria is targeted. For Arabs and Muslims, it seems proof, coming after
Afghanistan and Iraq, that he is hell-bent on an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim
crusade. It looks like the payoff to Israel, to which Syria has been
implacably and powerfully opposed. The extraordinary comment on Monday by US
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice seems to confirm it: “It’s time
to sign on to a different kind of Middle East”. A Middle East, no doubt,
where everyone does what they are told by Washington, with Israel sitting at
its right hand to advise and to direct.

No way. The Middle East will not be remade by the US in accordance with its
diktats.

Bush talks about a road map to Middle East peace. He can forget it if he
hopes to beat the Arabs into obedience. Peace can only be achieved through
cooperation and Bush seems intent on intimidation.


With the very best of good wishes,
Musa Amadu Pembo
Glasgow,
Scotland
UK.
[log in to unmask]
Da’wah is to convey the message with wisdom and with good words. We should
give the noble and positive message of Islam. We should try to emphasize
more commonalities and explain the difference without getting into
theological arguments and without claiming the superiority of one position
over the other. There is a great interest among the people to know about
Islam and we should do our best to give the right message.
May Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,guide us all to His Sirat Al-Mustaqim (Righteous
Path).May He protect us from the evils of this life and the hereafter.May
Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,grant us entrance to paradise .
We ask Allaah the Most High, the All-Powerful, to teach us that which will
benefit us, and to benefit us by that which we learn. May Allaah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala grant blessings and peace to our Prophet Muhammad and his family
and
companions..Amen.




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