The execution of Saddam Hussein was the smartest move that Washington has made, the greatest gift to its Arab clients -- especially Riyadh, Cairo, and Amman -- in recent times, who badly needed something like this to deflect their populaces' anger away from their support for Tel Aviv and Washington fighting against the Palestinians and Lebanese, even in the midst of Israel's Lebanon War last year. A concerted campaign to posthumously rehabilitate Saddam Hussein, shield Washington from responsibility for his execution as well as for its wars in the Islamic world, and use the execution in its ongoing campaign against Iran is on. Arab commoners who buy this spin deserve to have their shares of oil money pocketed by the Arab power elite and financial centers of the multinational empire. -- Yoshie
<http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/pro-saddam-demonstration-in-amman-was.html> Friday, January 05, 2007 The pro-Saddam demonstration in Amman was without a doubt conceived and manged by the mukhabarat. Even the slogans and banners: some even cited the "Shi`ite crescent" phrase. And the security forces were uncharacteristically cooperative. <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-friend-joseph-suggests-that-saudi.html> Friday, January 05, 2007 My friend Joseph suggests that Saudi media are now resorting to favorable coverage of Saddam in the hope of using the execution to further instigate and aggravate Sunni-Shi`ite discord. He is right. Here, Al-Hayat carries an interview with Saddam's US nurse who tells us that Saddam "smiled a lot and was pleasant." <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/it-was-sad-to-see-man-bashshur-who.html> It was sad to see Ma`n Bashshur (who told me stories of Saddam's assassination attempts against him when he split from the Ba`th in the early 1970s) leading a funeral procession for Saddam in Tariq Al-Jadidah. Would it not have been better to organize a funeral procession for the victims of Saddam and Bush in Iraq? <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/when-asked-about-iraqi-guard-suspected.html> "When asked about the Iraqi guard suspected of filming and releasing the contentious images, Faroon said, "Maybe a guard also filmed it secretly, but I did not see that." He said he was misquoted by The New York Times, which reported Faroon identified al-Rubaie as one of the two Iraqi officials he witnessed filming the hanging. The paper, which removed the story from its Web site, said it will print a correction in Thursday's paper. Al-Rubaie attributed the error to a mistranslation from Arabic to English." <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/angry-quiz.html> Angry Quiz. Why did the Jordanian government send a state minister to attend a rally for Saddam Husayn this week? <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/here-i-am-complaining-about-those-in.html> Here I am complaining about those in the Arab world who are expressing sympathy with Saddam, and I then I see this: "[US military spokesperson] Caldwell said Saddam remained "dignified" up until being handed over to the Iraqi guards." Saddam dignified? <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/it-is-clear-who-shot-cellphone-video.html> Tuesday, January 02, 2007 It is clear who shot the cellphone video of Saddam's execution. There were only two "officials" with cellphones in that room. Muwaffaq Ar-Rubay`i and Sami Al-`Askari. And both of them shot the footage on their cellphones having smuggled the cellphones in. <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/sunni-versus-shiite-on-live-tv.html> Sunni Versus Shi`ite: on live TV. Today, on live TV, the state of Sunni-Shi`ite relations was exposed for all to see on Al-Jazeera's Al-Ittijah Al-Mu`akis. The host invited Mish`an Al-Jabburi (a former henchman for Saddam who later supported the invasion of Iraq) and another person who is not well-known but was expected to represent the "Shi`ite" point of view. The premise was fraught with tensions of course. The topic was Saddam's execution. Within minutes, the show degenerated into obscene exchanges and the two guests actually physically got into an altercation. The "Shi`ite guest" stormed out of the studio within minutes after he was accused of being an Iranian who actually had changed his name (he admitted later after he returned to the studio that he had indeed changed his name after being stripped of his citizenship by Saddam). Al-Jabburi (who was one of the first to profit from the massive corruption of the occupation--they all seem to have embezzled and bought houses in Amman, London, and Lebanon) heaped praise on Saddam and hailed the resistance although he used to appear on TV to support the occupation of Iraq. But the real thrust of the debate was made clear early on when the two--both of them--engaged in blatant hateful, sectarian vitriol. They resorted to the names of heroes and villains of Sunni and Shi`ite history to insult one another. It was exciting TV until you realize that their encounter is reflected in the blood on the streets of Iraq. And what is this with the Saudi-led campaign to refer to Shi`ites and to Iranians as "Safavids". The Saddamist Ba`thists started that and now it is commonly used by anti-Shi`ites in the Arab world. Walid Jumblat and the other sectarian forces of March 14th movement are now using it. They use Safavid as a pejorative word. Do they know about the Safavid dynasty and the great achievements under its rule? "In 1666, Isfahan, according to a European visitor, had 162 mosques, 48 colleges, 182 caravansaries, and 273 public baths, allmost all of them erected by `Abbas I and his successor, `Abbas II (1642-66)." (Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 294). Incidentally, this book is far superior to Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples. Hourani once told us, while he was still working on it, that he intended it as a corrective to Hitti's major history of the Arabs especially because Hitti treated the beginning of the Ottoman era as mark of dramatic decline of the Arabs. But Hourani's final product is, in my opinion, quite disappointing, and he did not want to upset anybody at the end of his career, so even on the Arab-Israeli conflict section, he did not want take a stand, and offered words of praise for the "Mandate" colonialism of the East. The books also feel rushed. Personally, our criticisms of classical Orientalism notwithstanding, and aside form clear methodological problems, I still like Philip Hitti's History of the Arabs. It is a very good read. Hitti knew how to spice up the narrative with the most interesting details. I always mention the section when, in talking about the splendor and ostentation of Baghdad in the classical Islamic period, he talks about one royal dinner that featured the tongues of fish as the delicacy. Where was I? Oh, the Safavid dynasty. Of course, I don't want to glamorize the Safavid dynasty; after all. There was a brutal imposition of Shi`ite Islam on the lands under its rule. That--not Islam as commonly assumed in Western writings (see Richard Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period)--was conversion by the sword. <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/saudi-media-in-service-of-us.html> Saudi media in the service of US propaganda. Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat has this headline today: "American Anger over the Surrounding Circumstances of Saddam's Execution". <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/saddam-had-been-in-american-custody.html> "Saddam had been in American custody and was handed over to Iraqis just before his execution. It is therefore hard to dismiss the perception that the Americans could have waited, because in the end it is they who have the final say over such events in Iraq. Iraqi officials have consistently publicly complained that they have no authority and the Americans control the Iraqi police and the Army. It is therefore unusual that Iraqis would suddenly regain sovereignty for this important event. For many Sunnis and Arabs in the region, this appears to be one president ordering the death of another president." <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/this-obituary-of-saddam-was-posted-on.html> This obituary of Saddam was posted on Tripoli in Lebanon by `Abdul-Majid Ar-Rafi`i. Ar-Rafi`i was a popular physician in Tropoli (studied medicine in Lausanne with my mother's uncle) in the 1960s and 1970s and won a seat in the Lebanese parliament in 1972. He was a leader of the Ba`th Party in Lebanon--the pro-Iraq branch after the split. When the Ba`th party split between the Syrian and the Iraqi branches, most Ba`thists in Lebanon joined the Iraqi branch. So when the Syrian troops entered Lebanon in 1976 (and even prior to that), they went after pro-Iraqi Ba`thists and killed them, one by one, and bombed their offices. They even killed Musa Shu`ayb, a poet who wrote a nice poem about Tall Az-Za`tar titled: Hayfa is waiting for the bus at the Tal Az-Za`tar crossroad." Ar-Rafi`i was a member of the pan-Arab command of the Ba`th party that was under the control of Saddam. So Ar-Rafi`i had to flee Lebanon for most of the war years, and would visit occasionally but would stay in East Beirut. He lived in Baghdad in recent years, but was in Paris when the US invaded Iraq in 2003 (he said his wife was seeking medical treatment). He was a good friend of my father: and I must praise the dates and the mann wa-salwa that he used to bring us from Baghdad--so delicious. He also once got a great `abaya for my father (whatever happened to it, Mirvat?). After the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, Ar-Rafi`i returned to Lebanon only to discover that there are no more Ba`thists in Lebanon. He however insisted resurrecting the Ba`th party under a different name: he founded the Arab Vanguard Party, which has 4 (probably five) members. The obituary declares Saddam to be a "resisting hero" and says that he was killed by the "Zionist, American, and Safavid gangs and their agents". (thanks Karim) <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/some-jordanian-opposition-figures.html> Some Jordanian opposition figures would not dare demonstrate against the king of Jordan, but are more than willing to demonstrate for Saddam Husayn. I was most disappointed to see Layth Shubaylat--one of the most courageous dissident in Jordan--offer words of praise for Saddam Husayn. <http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2006/12/i-read-two-page-spread-in-new-york.html> I read a two-page spread in the New York Times: a biography of Saddam Husayn by (the thin-skinned) NEIL MacFARQUHAR. What is striking about it that it does not make references to the support that Saddam was getting from Gulf governments and from Western governments for much of the 1970s and 1980s. It does not talk, for example, about the council that he established with Husni Mubarak, King Husayn, and the Yemeni president. And it quoted objective observers including Sa`d Bazzaz who is identified as "a writer and editor." Bazzaz was in charge of Saddam's propaganda for much of his rule until the 1991 war. <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06arabs.html> January 6, 2007 Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many By HASSAN M. FATTAH BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 5 — In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe. On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him. "No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed," President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. "They turned him into a martyr." In Libya, which canceled celebrations of the feast of Id al-Adha after the execution, a government statement said a statue depicting Mr. Hussein in the gallows would be erected, along with a monument to Omar al-Mukhtar, who resisted the Italian invasion of Libya and was hanged by the Italians in 1931. In Morocco and the Palestinian territories, demonstrators held aloft photographs of Mr. Hussein and condemned the United States. Here in Beirut, hundreds of members of the Lebanese Baath Party and Palestinian activists marched Friday in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood behind a symbolic coffin representing that of Mr. Hussein and later offered a funeral prayer. Photographs of Mr. Hussein standing up in court, against a backdrop of the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem, were pasted on city walls near Palestinian refugee camps, praising "Saddam the martyr." "God damn America and its spies," a banner across one major Beirut thoroughfare read. "Our condolences to the nation for the assassination of Saddam, and victory to the Iraqi resistance." By standing up to the United States and its client government in Baghdad and dying with seeming dignity, Mr. Hussein appears to have been virtually cleansed of his past. "Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands of people," said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. "All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators." Just a month ago Mr. Hussein was widely dismissed as a criminal who deserved the death penalty, even if his trial was seen as flawed. Much of the Middle East reacted with a collective shrug when he was found guilty of crimes against humanity in November. But shortly after his execution last Saturday, a video emerged that showed Shiite guards taunting Mr. Hussein, who responded calmly but firmly to them. From then on, many across the region began looking at him as a martyr. "The Arab world has been devoid of pride for a long time," said Ahmad Mazin al-Shugairi, who hosts a television show at the Middle East Broadcasting Center that promotes a moderate version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. "The way Saddam acted in court and just before he was executed, with dignity and no fear, struck a chord with Arabs who are desperate for their own leaders to have pride too." Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of the independent Jordanian daily Al Ghad, said, "The last image for many was of Saddam taken out of a hole. That has all changed now." At the heart of the sudden reversal of opinion was the symbolism of the hasty execution, now framed as an act of sectarian vengeance shrouded in political theater and overseen by the American occupation. In much of the predominantly Sunni Arab world, the timing of the execution in the early hours of Id al-Adha, which is among the holiest days of the Muslim year, when violence is forbidden and when even Mr. Hussein himself sometimes released prisoners, was seen as a direct insult to the Sunni world. The contrast between the official video aired without sound on Iraqi television of Mr. Hussein being taken to the gallows and fitted with a noose around his neck and the unauthorized grainy, chaotic recording of the same scene with sound, depicting Shiite militiamen taunting Mr. Hussein with his hands tied, damning him to hell and praising the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, touched a sectarian nerve. "He stood as strong as a mountain while he was being hanged," said Ahmed el-Ghamrawi, a former Egyptian ambassador to Iraq. "He died a strong president and lived as a strong president. This is the image people are left with." Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian media critic and director of the online radio station Ammannet.net, said: "If Saddam had media planners, he could not have planned it better than this. Nobody could ever have imagined that Saddam would have gone down with such dignity." Writers and commentators have stopped short of eulogizing the dictator but have looked right past his bloody history as they compare Iraq's present circumstances with Iraq under Mr. Hussein. In Jordan, long a bastion of support for Mr. Hussein, many are lionizing him, decrying the timing of the execution and the taunts as part of a Sunni-Shiite conflict. "Was it a coincidence that Israel, Iran and the United States all welcomed Saddam's execution?" wrote Hamadeh Faraneh, a columnist for the daily Al Rai. "Was it also a coincidence when Saddam said bravely in front of his tormentors, 'Long live the nation,' and that Palestine is Arab, then uttered the declaration of faith? His last words expressed his depth and what he died for." Another Jordanian journalist, Muhammad Abu Rumman, wrote in Al Ghad on Thursday: "For the vast majority Saddam is a martyr, even if he made mistakes in his first years of rule. He cleansed himself later by confronting the Americans and by rejecting to negotiate with them." Even the pro-Saudi news media, normally critical of Mr. Hussein, chimed in with a more sentimental tone. In the London-based pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, Bilal Khubbaiz, commenting on Iranian and Israeli praise of the execution, wrote, "Saddam, as Iraq's ruler, was an iron curtain that prevented the Iranian influence from reaching into the Arab world," as well as "a formidable party in the Arab-Israeli conflict." Zuhayr Qusaybati, also writing in Al Hayat, said the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, "gave Saddam what he most wanted: he turned him into a martyr in the eyes of many Iraqis, who can now demand revenge." "The height of idiocy," Mr. Qusaybati said, "is for the man who rules Baghdad under American protection not to realize the purpose of rushing the execution, and that the guillotine carries the signature of a Shiite figure as the flames of sectarian division do not spare Shiites or Sunnis in a country grieving for its butchered citizens." In Saudi Arabia, poems eulogizing Mr. Hussein have been passed around on cellphones and in e-mail messages. "Prepare the gun that will avenge Saddam," a poem published in a Saudi newspaper warned. "The criminal who signed the execution order without valid reason cheated us on our celebration day. How beautiful it will be when the bullet goes through the heart of him who betrayed Arabism." Mr. Safadi, the Jordanian editor, said: "In the public's perception Saddam was terrible, but those people were worse. That final act has really jeopardized the future of Iraq immensely. And we all know this is a blow to the moderate camp in the Arab world." Reporting was contributed by Mona el-Naggar from Cairo, Nada Bakri from Beirut, Rasheed Abou al-Samh from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and Suha Maayeh from Amman. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
