What fascism really looks like

Hitch in the Daily Mirror, of all places:

Now would be an excellent time for the BBC to screen the video of Saddam's seizure of power. It is one of the most chilling sequences ever filmed.

He sits smoking a cigar on a dais, while a roomful of terrified central committee members listens to a broken man working his way through an abject confession.

As the man begins to name names, guards appear and escort them white-faced from the room. Saddam continues to puff away until nearly half his audience has been dragged off.

The next sequence, which hasn't ever been televised, apparently shows what we know did happen: the survivors were then given pistols and compelled to shoot their former comrades. This perfect Godfather touch improves on anything done by the great dictators of the 1930s. It shows that Saddam had really studied the methods and techniques of tyranny, and added some refinements of his very own.

This is the man, after all, who took his sons to watch midnight torture sessions in order to toughen them up. The man whose police would deliver videos of such sessions to the families of the victims.

Everywhere I have been in Iraq, I have noticed that the bravest person betrays a slight change of expression when the name Saddam Hussein is mentioned. Just a flicker in the eye, perhaps, but pure fear. The sort of fear you can bottle. And a hint of humiliation, too. Years and years of compulsory applause and hysterical adulation: the systematic humiliation of an entire people.

I'm willing to accept that the Iraq war was based on faulty, misleading intelligence. I'm willing to accept that the Bush Administration has made serious mistakes in the post-war occupation. And while it's disingenuous to damn the Americans for once supporting Saddam while ignoring his close links with France and Russia, I'm even willing to accept that America's support for him during the 1980s was absolutely shameful.

But I will never accept that removing Saddam Hussein from power was wrong. Never. And those who downplay and apologize for his tyrannical rule just to take politcal cheap shots at Bush - Michael Moore, Ted Rall, John Pilger and other losers - should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

If they're capable of feeling shame, that is.

Posted by damian at July 15, 2004 09:41 AM