By Mathew Maavak
It was pretty much of a shock to learn of Saddam’s capture so soon. Then again, come to think of it, no! George W. Bush’s popularity is dipping badly and those niggling questions about Sept 11 are now gaining feverish momentum.
This capture comes timely for the incumbent, and the immediate propaganda value will be enormous. But has Bush walked into a trap? Pretty likely, and the next few weeks or months are going to be crucial. Saddam’s fate must now either be decided quickly (through an Iraqi bullet to his head?) or be prolonged long enough after the 2004 elections, through a series of legal wrangling.
If the second scenario works out, there is every likelihood of an uncustomary “adherence to international law” with teams of amici curiae given a free hand to wrangle over his legal rights. It will buy lots of time, provided the man shuts up.
This capture runs against the grain of obvious logic. Saddam is no Manual Noriega and he will command far more attention than Slobodan Milosevic. The video clip of him being examined by a US Army medic was typical of both US bravado and myopia. With him in “expert” medical hands, there will be some very hard explaining to do if anything untoward happened – a death or an unusually cooperative ex-dictator known for his wily tricks. Maybe a Soviet-style psychiatric institutionalization might re-jog his memory, one that will suit his hospitable hosts.
According to the BBC, Saddam was found holed up in a tiny cellar, not the secret command bunker we were implicit led to believe, on and off. An argument can be made that this “spider hole” contributed to his elusiveness. He just needed a food chain, from very few sources. Still, it is not a good one. For one, it will smash the Saddam in-the-secret-bunker image; his Fedayeen found to be way over-hyped. There is something wrong here. Saddam may have indeed chosen a six by eight feet hole for safety as he knew too well about the pandemic Arab treachery and the US$25 million bounty, especially after his sons died under a hail of US bullets, and his sons-in-law earlier, with his own blessings.
In Victor Ostrovsky’s book By Way of Deception, a planned Palestinian terror attack was once thwarted by the discovery of an out-of-place order for quality beef. The scent of a pre-attack feast was too strong to ignore. With thousands of US troops - many of them from elite units - combing through Tikrit, how this genocidal criminal avoided capture till now is a mystery. They only needed 600 for this operation. No one in Tikrit knew where he was? Follow the money the trail, follow the food take-aways! There was US$750,000 with him. The trails were aplenty; all were leading to the same man.
This is indeed good news for the Iraqis and bad news for the Americans. Thus far, he has served the raison d’etre for the war, a tenuous one, it can be argued. Now what? The propaganda value of a shadowy Saddam, capable of wreaking havoc was inestimable. Much of that locus standi has now vanished. The Iraqis can now rise up to say, “The dictator is gone. Thank you, now please leave…” Is this going to happen?
No! The US wasn’t there for Saddam, and I don’t think they were there for the oil either. Sabotaged oil pipelines do create a literal smokescreen and a justification for continued occupation. Now, we shall see the true face of Iraqi guerrillas – a combination of nationalists and Islamists that the American media conveniently blamed on mastermind Saddam.
The euphoria will die down; the pot shots will get more frenzied. A car bomb killed at least 17 people near Baghdad yesterday. The joyous staccatos seen in the city just show how many weapons of celebration are around. They can be trained in a different direction another day soon. Are these the first salvoes that will shatter the myth of a “liberation” project?
It was perhaps in the White House’s best interest to have had Saddam killed during the capture. Maybe US soldiers were still sore after the turkey dinner fiasco, or they were zealously carrying out their duty. Hardly any sane person would have wept for Saddam under any circumstances. He could have been handed over – quite innocently – to the Iraqis for a summary, Ceausescu-style execution.
Gen Douglas MacArthur’s quick disposal of Gen Tomoyski Yamashita in WWII is no longer quite possible. Like Gen MacArthur’s macho posturing during his first meeting with a humbled Emperor Hirohito, the sight of a medic clinically examining a beaten, disheveled Saddam, instead of a defiant maniac, was really a bad propaganda shot…
So, this was the one who struck fear into the hearts of “freedom-loving” people until 24 hours back?
What can Saddam do? He just needs to open his big mouth, after a shave, a good brush and gargles of Listerine. He can recount all those scummy collusions with the US, which, went right through the Kuwaiti occupation. Why were those Shi’ites betrayed? Who talked to whom? What was the deal? What about the other deals? Clips of exhumed bodies from that bloody crackdown more than a decade back was shown alongside Saddam’s ignominious capture on BBC. Another pictorial blunder for the coalition! Or was the BBC acting sneaky again? Those bodies incriminate Saddam, and the Anglo-American alliance. In fact, the incriminating evidence will be immeasurable.
Civilian deaths, supply of arms, the semi-proxy war on Iran, will all come out of the horse’s mouth. For every allegation, Saddam can retort Tu quoque – You too! It’s a time-honored legal tactic, valid and destructive to the point that Hermann Goering was able to put up a brilliant defense during the Nuremberg trials. The man, much known for his follies and bizarre vanities, was just cured of a morphine addiction before being marched into the defendant’s box. Even dopeheads can pile up rebuttals to every allegation.
Goering’s statements are now memorable; they still linger in the minds of those caught in this New World Disorder. A defense by any tyrant can be slow poison. It can dent the gratitude of “liberated” peoples for ages to come. The Soviet General R.A. Rudenko’s rape of Poland, and the subsequent Katyn forest massacre can make many Europeans skeptical about any war of liberation. Nazi war criminals repeatedly pointed to this famous Allied cover up in their defense. How this led to many of them missing the hangman’s noose is a little uncertain.
If Bush needs to win that election, he needs to silence Saddam, Guantanamo-style, in seclusion. That will raise suspicions. Any medical mishap or anomaly will also raise suspicions. Not a very good situation, is it?
How are they going to answer their former ally, when every meeting with Donald Rumsfeld alone is going to be recounted in detail? Bribe and intimidate all those who can corroborate those shady minutiae? One possibility but a lot of it is already out in the public domain. If the dictator was ever that good in understanding power, he would have prepared for this day long back, with stashes of documents secreted away for his eventual defense.
There is a likelihood, as early newscasts indicate, that Saddam might be handed over to the Iraqis, neither the ones brutalized ones nor the rational, but the ones most likely to parade him to the execution grounds, a brief stop before the onward journey to one of his former palaces, where, they will set their collaboration with US authorities firmly in stone. The sands of Arabia are a bit too fickle for that.
There is another possibility that whoever thought this through had done his homework very well, and the timing was impeccable. If true, students of propaganda will be using this incident as a case study for decades to come. Yet, it’s too early to say anything for sure… We don’t know all the facts yet.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Copyright@Mathew Maavak 2003
PS. Silence, distractions and imposed Black Holes in the media are indeed the best strategy. (Jan 29, 2004)
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