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REMEMBERING SADDAM

December 28, 2006 7:46 AM

There was a documentary on NPR some time ago about Angola prison in Louisiana, where many of the state’s “full-lifers” are kept – men who have been sentenced to life in prison without any chance of parole.  The men sing gospel music – quite beautifully - as a release from their physical containment, and spoke openly with the interviewer about their life in the prison.  The one taboo subject was the graveyard, where these full-lifers are buried when they finally die.  Apparently this graveyard, within the prison compound, has no headstones – when you die in Angola, you disappear without any record.

With Saddam Hussein now on death row here in Baghdad, the government is deciding what to do with his body after he has been hanged.  There has been no announcement, but the consensus seems to be that he too should be put in an unmarked grave, since any known grave site could become a focus for rallies by loyalists or desecration by his many foes.

That doesn’t mean, however, that he will disappear without trace.  When we ask Iraqis what the legacy of Saddam Hussein will be, they say, simply: “look around you.”  The violence on the streets of Baghdad, while complicated and spurred by many competing agendas, is, they say, fundamentally a product of Saddam’s 30 years in power.  His example showed Iraqis that the only way to achieve power – and to hold on to it – is to be the meanest dog on the street.  Any sign of weakness and your enemies will start creeping up on you.  That is probably why Saddam continued to pretend he was developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons long after those programs had actually been stopped – he wanted the aura of having his finger close to the button of mass destruction. 

The entire apparatus of the state was founded on terror.  Not only were the police notorious for their torture techniques, but videos of actual detainees being horribly tortured made their way to the public markets, where they were snapped up by a public that was caught in the thrall of the demonic regime.  And so it is hardly surprising that when the sectarian death squads now go out at night to find their victims, they don’t simply shoot them in the head – they use electric power drills on their limbs and skulls, burn them with cigarettes, splash them with acid.  It is the same language of terror – if you dare to oppose me, I will wreak more terrible vengeance on you than you could ever imagine.  The response to the death squads has been ever greater car bombs – sometimes multiple car bombs at the same site, so that as people come rushing out to help survivors, they get caught in the second or third blast.

The violence in Baghdad is not, as some are tempted to say, mindless.  It is in fact carefully calibrated and has a definite aim.  It is perpetrated by a variety of groups seeking to boost their own position in the bloody ascendancy for supremacy that has evolved in Iraq.  When the US organized elections here the ultimate goal was to arrive at a new political balance once Saddam’s henchmen were taken out of the equation.  Iraq is indeed moving towards a new balance of power – but the parameters of this “New Deal” are being fought out on the streets with AK-47s, mortars and car bombs, and not in the parliament buildings.  Nobody listens much to what the members of parliament have to say today.  Saddam never did.

December 28, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (4)

User Comments

Posted by: Gregory F Fegel | Dec 29, 2006 4:41:31 AM

Posted by: go | Dec 29, 2006 6:44:25 PM

Posted by: Linda Trzos | Dec 30, 2006 5:54:35 PM

Posted by: neshawn j nickens | Dec 30, 2006 8:32:21 PM

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