Romance of the Despot

As you get older it seems that years just wisk by leaving you to wonder how a year seemed to drag on when one is a child or teenager, but once you pass 30 or 40 how it just seems without explanation to speed up. Well, one year ago one of the most blustering and dramatic of the world's strongmen was executed: Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti.

Saddam Hussein, "The Butcher of Baghdad," "The New Nasser," "Liberator of Palestine," "The Godfather," "The Anointed," "Great Uncle," along with other titles he probably reveled in and loathed, really had an amazing career which was Romantic by its' rise from the dirt and desolation of the Iraqi village of al-Ouja to "great" Arab lion and leader with over 30 palaces scattered throughout Iraq to the gallows of one of his former prisons. Saddam's story was definitely one of the poor boy who makes good, but his own pride and miscalculations along with the pride and miscalculations of others led to the suffering of millions of Iraqi innocents. There has been much written about Saddam, much of which is only rumor, speculation, and sensationalism. Feelings about him run from passionately for him to passionately against him. Just look at YouTube in the last year where there are more and more videos put on in honor of the man. The comments about him after these videos run the gamut from calling him a saint and martyr to a dog and bastard. Some think he is either in Heaven or Muslim Paradise and others think he is burning in Hell with his two sons Uday and Qusay who preceded him in death. Rarely is there a middle ground reached where Saddam is concerned.

Today in Tikrit which is basically Saddam's hometown (al-Ouja is where he was born and apparently in close proximity) he was honored with songs and chants by children, many of whom are so young they don't remember him. There were also fiery speeches. Saddam was loved and hated by many. When he was executed last year, demonstrations broke in of all places, India. India has the largest Muslim population of an country on earth even though the chief religion is Hinduism, but for some reason there was a lot of outrage there on December 30th last year. Some of it was certainly because Saddam was executed on the first day of

Eid, but Saddam has also been rumored to have given aid to India in the past. The reason why Indian demonstrated may have been because his personal physician is said to have been Indian. Saddam was also said to be generous to those whom he felt honored or liked him. Here is a photo of him back in the 1970s on a visit to India when he was vice president of Iraq.That is Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, beside him. Like her counterpart in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, who died on Thursday, Indira met a tragic end. Bhutto's father who was president and prime minister was executed by hanging like Saddam. The real relationship between Saddam and the Indians is unknown to me. I do know that over the years, Saddam actively courted friendships with some countries in Africa. He was a friend of Castro and Qaddafi, and near the end of his rule was visited by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as this photo attests.

Saddam was a Romantic Despot and once the special glowing friend of the US in the region. At one point, before Iraq entered the war with Iran in 1980, Iraq was the most advanced nation of the region with a highly literate population, many of whom had university educations. Saddam, himself, always aspired to the best. He listed himself as both a lawyer and a general, but both titles were false. As a young man, Saddam allowed his penchant for politics to interfere with his quest to become an attorney. He tried to get into the military academy in Baghdad, but he was rejected. Being a tall man at 6'2" who at different periods of his life was strikingly handsome, he might have done his country a better service if he had become an actor. Saddam loved to dress up and would don the robes of the Bedouin chieftain, the general, or the look of the 1930s style gangster. He was a family man who loved to swim and play with his children, or at least he created this image for the public.His youngest daughter Hala was his favorite and was often seen with him even at political meetings when she was a little girl. She is reputed to have been a very sweet girl who loved Iraq and the Iraqi people, even stealing money and jewelry from her parents to hand out to poor people. Here is Saddam playing with Hala.

Here is Saddam sewing the sleeve on the dress of his eldest daughter Raghad, but it may possibly be Hala.


Here is Saddam and family in an old photo from the 1970s or 80s. The little girl beside him sucking her thumb is Hala.Saddam was said to have been married possibly 4 times. The photo above is with his first wife Sajida, who was also his cousin. She is the blonde lady. Saddam's and Sajida's marriage was arranged when he was only 3 years old. They met when he was about 10 and had run away from home to be with Sajida's family where he would be allowed to go to school, Sajida's father being a school teacher. Saddam's stepfather was totally against him receiving an education, beat and abused him, and felt Saddam should only aspire to be a farmer. Saddam obviously thought otherwise and hit the road to find his destiny.

Saddam Hussein saw himself as a Renaissance man, a throwback to leaders of old like Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin. Like Old King Neb, Saddam promoted colossal building programs for his country with many monuments to himself also thrown in. When he began modernizing his country while still vice president, he had electricity put in place throughout Iraq, plus he also made sure that every family received a television set and a refrigerator. More darkly, Saddam also got ideas from Joseph Stalin to whom he bore a slight physical resemblance. Saddam had the ancient city of Babylon reconstructed. He claimed to be a direct descendent of the prophet Muhammad. He was a patron of the arts with artists constantly using him in their subject matter as the "New Saladin" on a white horse leading Arab armies into victory or dressed in the garb of a Babylonian or Assyrian warrior in a chariot firing arrows. Saddam forged and forced a common identity on Iraq, a country pieced togther and created by the British. Out of Sunni, Shiites, Christians, Bedouins, Yazidis, Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Persians, Turkmen, Syriacs, Chaldeans, and even Jews Saddam demanded that they all see themselves as not just inheritors of an Arab state, but as descendants of the ancient empires of the Babylonians and Assyrians.

Saddam saw himself as a poet and also as a novelist, writing about 5 Romantic novels with political and allegorical themes. One of his first was Zabibah and the King. Even in his second and final imprisonment, Saddam was writing poetry.

Over the years we have heard mostly about the very bad Saddam Hussein, a man viewed by many as a brutal criminal, but don't we all have our faults, some of us with small and others with gargantuan. Saddam was a big promoter of the importance of education and pushed for women all across Iraq to be educated. All of his supposed wives were educated women. Under Saddam, the Christian community of Iraq was protected, but now they are threated and persecuted. One of Saddam's highest ranking officials was Tariq Aziz, a Catholic, who is still imprisoned by US forces. In the documentary Uncle Saddam, Saddam is shown as a man who saw himself as a father figure to his nation, encouraging people in the basics of just taking baths everyday in his regular TV announcements. When all hell broke loss in Iraq, some people lamented that perhaps Saddam knew what he was doing by keeping his foot on the necks of the Iraqis. He obviously was more well versed in Iraq than we Americans were.

Saddam's rise and fall were dramatic. When he was found in a hole in December 2003, he showed the world that the old adage, "the bigger they are the harder they fall" is very true. Saddam had gone from gangster to dishoveled Santa Claus. As my pastor said, "That was a SAD end."Saddam's destiny ran full circle in December 30, 2006. After the embarassment of being shown to the world as a poor old man pulled out of a hole and living in a two room filthy hut just across the river from one of his palaces, Saddam redeemed himself on the gallows. He died bravely and with dignity, praying the prayer which Muslims say before they die. The world's reactions were mixed. I was in Turkey at the time, and one of my colleagues who was Australian told another one of my American colleagues, "That was WRONG what the Americans did to Saddam Hussein. There is going to be hell to pay for this." Even the Vatican condemned the execution as morally wrong and said that modern nations do not engage in conduct such as hanging.
Though the world now does not seem to have the time or the common sense to learn and remember tough lessons, the life of Saddam Hussein is a lesson which many of us could benefit from by learning about.

To wrap this post up, here is a very well done tribute to Saddam Hussein. There are many on YouTube using Arabic songs, rap tunes by Tupac Shakur, and I even found one with a Hallelujah tune. The song in this video is sung by Hussein Al Jasmi.