Saddam is Captured

I posted the following the afternoon that Saddam was caught on liberal website DailyKos. Tragically, Saddam was captured the very day I'd set aside for a huge paper on Iraq. That discombobulated the whole thing, much to my dismay...

A Problem: Al Qaeda rationality (Sunday at 19:23 UTC ) [link]

There is something very important here .... In a sense, Saddam's capture is as helpful for al-Qaeda as the invasion of Iraq itself. Saddam, as a corrupt secularist, stood in the way of the middle eastern Islamic revolution intended to produce a sort of caliphate. When Saddam was still at large, military activity against the Americans could still be understood as "Baathist" activity (regardless of that claim's truth). But now it is far easier for militants to refute the "Saddam-lover" label. And now groups which share some of al-Qaeda's principles no longer have his long shadow upon them.

We can't ignore certain historical facts which are easily forgotten to Americans, but very present in Iraqis' daily perceptions of their place in the world. The Iraqis still know that they were the seat of the Caliphate back in the day, and that was a time of prosperity and leadership.

In particular what occurred in Samarra was important. This Sunni town was fiercely anti-Saddam, and yet people stood and fought the US Army, which in turn trashed large parts of the city. Samarra itself was the capital of the Caliphate for a few decades, and hence, people there are far more likely than most other places to have a political logic in sync with al-Qaeda's, although it will also be expressed as Iraqi nationalism and that ultimate evil of neo-con theory, Pan-Arabism.

The fact that the US allowed all the Iraqi government ministries to be destroyed (and allowed Chalabi to run amok earlier) dramatically increased the chances that fissures will form between Sunnis and Shiites by destroying the bureaucratic basis for accountability and reconciliation.

Let's not forget what al-Qaeda literally means: "the base." Iraq, perhaps more so than Saudi Arabia, is a historical base of this political pattern, and such an anarchic, well-armed territory that it's the base for all kinds of activities. (Saddam cooperated with the Saudis to suppress domestic Islamic militants. Without his block, why not assume that the Iraqi Islamic tide will destabilize Saudi Arabia??)

It is a relief for Iraqis to finally have Saddam's shadow of potential ascendance disappear, but now the many anti-Saddam, anti-American militants no longer have to refute ties to Baathism. Yet sectarian friction is going to increase, and no one can say anymore that the other guy is doing it in Saddam's name.

Posted by HongPong at December 14, 2003 06:22 PM
Listed under Iraq .