December 30, 2006

Saddam Hussein

The American government at times can be rather poor in its judgment. I am listening to the news, and it doesn’t sound good. One Arab personality after the other is speaking out against the hanging of Saddam Hussein. The guy may have been bad, no, he may have been appalling, but he was their bad guy, so what right do the Americans think they have to come to Baghdad and execute an Arab leader? And to execute him on Adha of all things? That’s what I am hearing. Poor judgment.
They are even showing the video on how he is being prepared for his hanging. Very sad. And even poorer poor judgment. How do they think this will go down in the Arab world? They don’t even hang their own prisoners anymore! Lethal injection would have been a better PR move.

I am trying to figure out what message the Americans are trying to send to the world. But whatever the message is, the Arabs are not taking it very well.
When Bush was about to invade Iraq (the 2nd time), I went to the Sit Zeinab area near Damascus, where the majority of the Iraqi exiles have settled down over a number of years. These are people that had to flee from Iraq because of Saddam Hussein. They were either threatened, or their family was threatened, and basically had to run for their lives. And even these people said back then that although Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, he was ‘their bad guy’, and they could not see anything positive coming from the Americans barging into Baghdad and deposing the guy. An Iraqi doctor I spoke to said: “We need help from the Americans, and we appreciate the help from the Americans, but a revolution has to come from within, not from the outside. It will not work if it is imposed.” How right he was.
It is not working and the Americans finally seem to admit that Iraq is currently in a state of civil war.
On CNN they are interviewing Arabs from Dearborn, Michigan (all which are from Bint Jbeil, South-Lebanon, as I understand), and they seem very happy. “He got what he deserved.” But this is not at all the feel I get from the news stations here. Quite the opposite. This is not going to go down well.
It is amazing how poor the decision making of the American government can be at times. Don’t they have advisors that can read the Arab world and Arab sentiments? Did they think anyone was going to be happy about this? Couldn’t they have solved this a bit more careful. Give the guy life, and then secretly poisoning him, making it look like he contracted pneumonia or so, so he’d die in jail, and hey, what can you do about that? But no, they made such an overtly defying statement, that it is hard to understand what the point was.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The points are (a) to make a long overdue payment to Muqtada Al-Sadr to prevent a further escalation with him and his Mahdi army and (b) to rejerk the knees of some regional leaders (e.i. Bashar Al-Assad) who regained some of their confidence post the latest Iraq report in Washington.

Note that CNN did not even attempt to have the first shot of the hanging ordeal. Rather, it was copying other “Arab” media channels.

In other words, it was an “Arab” ruthless leader, tried by an “Arab” court, hanged by a bunch of hooded “Arab” policemen, and shown on “Arab” networks… The U.S. has nothing to do with it!

Anonymous said...

Yes, well, that may be the thoughts on it in the US, but here in the Middle East that will be a toough one to sell. Nobody is going to fall for that one. I think just about everybody here see the hand of the US government in this one.