Re: [A-List] A reformulation (only five?)

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sabri Oncu wrote:

> I suspect that there is anyone on this list who has high opinions of either
> Sam or Saddam.
I for one have been in print for praising Saddam and the Baath Party at
the beginning of the US invasion:

The War Nobody Won


Part 1: Chaos, crime and incredulity


By Henry C K Liu

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman defines Saddamism as an entrenched
Arab mindset, born of years of colonialism and humiliation that insists
that upholding Arab dignity and nationalism by defying the West is more
important than freedom, democracy and modernization. And he identifies
Saddamism as the real enemy of the United States.

Saddamism will now form the new basis of pan-Arabism. No one knows for
certain why Saddam did not put up a fight, as expected by everyone
except Rumsfeld, Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Perhaps this is Saddam's new "unconventional" tactic, to turn the fight
into a protracted guerrilla struggle, perhaps not. Either Saddam is dead
or he merely failed to answer the call of history. Perhaps he was
betrayed by the Republican Guard commanders. But if he did not intend to
fight, he should have given up before the hostilities began. The entire
Arab world is puzzled by his behavior to date and disappointed by the
turn of military events in Iraq.

Whatever actually happened, there was no superpower victory. It was a
fixed match in a superbowl in which one opponent took a fall. Or the
real war has yet to start with a vanished opponent that has merged into
the general population to fight a protracted unconventional war. Ahmad
Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress favored by the US Defense
Department for a key role in postwar Iraq, told BBC radio on Monday that
his group was tracking Saddam Hussein, who remains in Iraq and is moving
around the country.

Either way, the potential of Saddamism is very much alive. Many in the
Arab world insist that those Iraqis recorded by US television stamping
and spitting on the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein were Kurds, not
Arabs, or unprincipled paid hooligans, not freedom fighters. "Millions
loved Saddam" was a common comment throughout the Arab world, and widely
reported in the Arab press.

A Brookings Institution study by Christine Moss Helms in 1984 (before
the official US demonization of Saddam) did not contain one single word
about the Saddam regime torturing anyone. It characterized the Iraqi
Ba'ath Party as a political organization of clandestinity and ubiquity.
Iraqi Ba'athists might deviate from strict interpretation of Ba'athist
ideology of Arab unity, freedom from foreign domination and tribal
socialism, yet Ba'athist doctrine generally set guidelines for Iraqi
policy formulation, such as geopolitical non-alignment, pan-Arabism and
accommodation with diverse religious and ethnic groups, throughout its
history. Leadership was not hereditary, setting it apart from other Arab
regimes. Iraqi Ba'athist policies, as distinct from Ba'athism in the
Arab world in general, were directed toward specific Iraqi needs and
problems, keeping Iraq from extreme pan-Arabism.

Since the Iraqi Ba'athists took control of the country in 1968, the
leader had to deal with practical problems of governance of a
less-developed country, by devoting considerable resources to internal
development, irrigation projects, upgrading of agriculture,
industrialization, education and freedom for women. It also had to deal
with problems facing any oil-producing nation: economic imperialism,
globalized finance and US dollar hegemony.

Resistance by Arabs to foreign intervention and influence generally
takes two forms that share diagnosis of the problem but are
diametrically opposed in proposed solutions. The first is that Islam
provides the raison d'etre for unity, despite a variety of beliefs such
as Islamic modernism, reformism, conservatism and fundamentalism.
Postmodernist foreign interference in the Muslim world poses increased
and profound consequences that push many Islamic movements to adopt
political goals, with a return to perceived purity of Islamic values.

The second response is Arab nationalism. While recognizing the
importance of Islam, Arab nationalists feel that it, as an ideology,
does not fully encompass the modern needs of the Middle East. The
reasons are threefold: 1) the region includes non-Arabs and non-Muslims,
2) there are differences of interpretation within Islam and 3) Islamic
fundamentalism cannot effectively adapt to changes facing the region.
Arab nationalists are committed to modernization through secularization
that would also facilitate pan-Arab unity. Nasirism has been generally
accepted as the main representation of Arab nationalism. In contrast to
Nasirism, as espoused in Egypt, which relied more on personality cult,
Ba'athists attained a high level of organization. Although the leader is
also inescapably tied to supremacy in the tradition of tribal culture,
the Ba'ath Party is designed to function in the event of the leader's
sudden death or ouster.

The Brookings study warned that it would be erroneous to assume that all
non-Ba'athists opposed the Ba'athist central government, despite the
radical and ruthless image with which the Ba'ath Party had been
portrayed in the West and by opposition groups in exile. Many Iraqis
benefited from the Ba'ath economic and social policies during the 1970s
and valued the stability of continuous government since 1968. Many older
Iraqis who were not Ba'athists were proud that their children were party
members. And party membership did not particularly enhance advancement
in the general economy outside of government. One of the Ba'ath Party's
goals was to broaden the base of support from Iraq's heterogeneous
society. The party launched a Literacy Campaign to reduce the 44 percent
illiteracy rate to 20 percent. The party emphasized a policy that the
wealth of the nation is in its youth and promoted education for women.
The Agrarian Reform Law of 1970 gave women the right to own land on an
equal basis as men, and equal wages for female farm-cooperative workers.
Women were granted voting rights, and benefited from marriage reform. It
was not until 1991, at the start of the first Gulf War, that US
demonization of Saddam began in earnest.

Despite US media spin about pent-up Iraqi hatred for Saddam, looting is
not political expression. It is mere US propaganda that the looting
encouraged by the US military all over Iraq was the joyous expression of
an oppressed people suddenly liberated. The New York Times reported
isolated incidents of looting by some firemen in the collapsed World
Trade Center towers in New York. Surely, New York firemen as a group are
patriotic and honorable public servants. If massive bombing were to hit
New York, with the sudden disappearance of the police force, and the
absence of the National Guard, with indifferent foreign troops waving
criminals on, there would also be widespread looting in New York.
Rumsfeld acknowledged as much in his news conference by pointing out
that riots also happened in US cities even when the government had not
collapsed.

Political freedom is not about senseless destruction. The lootings of
museums and libraries are crimes against civilization. If only US
marines had also failed to protect the Ministry of Petroleum and the
oilfields the way they failed to protect these cultural institutions
that belong to the all humanity, the excuse of shortage of troops would
be more credible. Rumsfeld's lame excuse of "catastrophic success" in
war would be more credible if he had not been so confident, in defiance
of common-sense expectation, that the military operation would be over
within weeks, a confidence that even his own field commanders challenged
as unfounded. A war plan that had taken into account all unforeseen
contingencies, that had miraculously predicted that the war would end
within weeks, had been caught off guard by "catastrophic success"? It is
a no-win argument. You cannot have it both ways. Either unpreparedness
for success is a poor excuse or predictive confidence in success has
been a bluff.

Arab nationalism, and resistance
Post-World War II resistance by Arabs to foreign intervention and
domination in their affairs generally takes two forms that share common
diagnosis of the problem but are diametrically opposed in proposed
solutions. The diagnosis is clear: the centuries-long decline of Arab
culture and power invites foreign intervention and domination. The first
form of response to arrest this decline is Arab nationalism. History has
shown that European nationalism was the main vehicle for the rise of the
West. While recognizing the importance of Islam in Arab culture, Arab
nationalists feel that Islamic fundamentalism, as a political ideology,
does not fully encompass the modern needs of the Middle East any more
than Christian fundamentalism encompassed the complete needs of Europe.
The reasons in support of this view are complex, weaving around three
obvious strands. The first strand is that the region includes sizable
non-Arab and non-Muslim minorities that must be reckoned with in an
inclusive political structure. The second strand is that there are
fundamental differences of religious interpretation within Islam that
would present difficulties, if not insurmountable obstacles, to
religion-based political unification. The history of political
developments associated with the rise of Protestantism in Europe is an
object lesson. The third strand is that Islamic fundamentalism cannot
effectively adapt to the rapid changes facing the region and the world
and that resistance to change has been the chief reason for the decline
of Arab culture and power. The history of the rise of the West is
inseparably tied to the steady long-term decline of Christian
fundamentalism since the 17th century.

Arab nationalists and Islam fundamentalists are both opposed to
Westernization, but Arab nationalists are committed to Arab
modernization through secularization that would also facilitate Pan-Arab
unity. In this sense, Arab nationalism's concept of modernization is
comparatively more progressive than that of US neo-conservatives who
attempt to move a secular modernity in the West back toward revived
Judeo-Christian fundamentalism. Yet while secularization in Christianity
decidedly promoted Western advancement and progress, Islamic
fundamentalism has been encouraged by British imperialism since the
disastrous Gallipoli campaign of 1915 and by US neo-imperialism since
the end of World War II to retard Arab revival. The real target is of
course Arab nationalism.

Nasirism, developed by Gemal Abd al-Nasir of Egypt, had been generally
accepted as the main political manifestation of Arab nationalism, but
Ba'athism has evolved as a more effective political movement in recent
decades. In contrast to Nasirism as espoused in Egypt, which relied more
on leadership by personality cult in a transfiguration of tribal
structure, Ba'athists operated with a high level of discipline in
political organization. Although Ba'athist leaders are also inescapably
tied to ritualistic supremacy in the hierarchical tradition of tribal
culture, the Ba'ath Party is designed to continue to function in the
event of the leader's sudden demise or ouster. Thus if the US aim was to
remove from power an unruly Ba'athist leader in the person of Saddam
Hussein, the de-Ba'athification program adopted after the 2002 second
Iraq war was counterproductive. Iraq might be governable without Saddam,
but it cannot be governed without the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, at least not
without a long period of social chaos and political instability during
which the US occupation regime would face hostility with extreme
prejudice and incur costly payment in blood while it attempts to fashion
a new political landscape out of an unnecessary political vacuum it
itself created. US marginalization of the Ba'ath Party from the Iraqi
political arena will set political stability in Iraq back for decades,
with an end game that may very well require a reconstitution of the
Iraqi Ba'ath Party.

Birth of the Ba'athists
The Ba'ath movement was created in Damascus in the 1940s by an Arab
Christian named Michel Aflak and a Sunni Muslim named Salah ad-Din
Bitar, both Syrians, after World War II as a nationalist
anti-imperialism movement. In 1953, the movement crystallized as the
Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party. It reached its operational zenith in the
1960s when it evolved into a strong expression of Arab revolutionary
nationalism. Aflak remained a leader of the party until his death in
1989. Pan-Arab unity is at the core of Ba'athist ideology and dominates
all other objectives. Ba'athism advocates a tribal socialist system
domestically which emphasizes socio-economic development for the benefit
of greater Arab society. The party's organizational structure is similar
to communist parties, which in turn is similar to the Roman Catholic
Church. The basic organizational unit of the Ba'ath Party is the party
cell. Composed of small membership, party cells function at the urban
neighborhood or the rural village level, where members meet to formulate
tactics to implement strategic party directives. As in communism and
Catholicism, this type of organizational structure particularly thrives
during the underground phase of the movement and cultivates members who
are committed, intelligent, moral and principled. At the time of the
first Iraq war in 1991, about 10% of Iraqis, the cream of the population
who effectively ran what was arguably the most socially advanced and
secular country in the region, were estimated to be Ba'ath Party
members, many being younger generation members of conservative
anti-Ba'athist parents.

The Ba'ath Party achieved political success first in Syria, but its
leaders were exiled in 1961 after Syria's Pan-Arab experiment of a union
with Egypt failed. Aflak and others then relocated to Iraq. In 1963, the
Ba'ath Party succeeded in taking power in Iraq, but it failed to hold
power for long due to inexperience in public administration. The party
took power again in 1968 when General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr staged a coup,
with Saddam Hussein as deputy. The Iraqi Ba'ath Party remained committed
to a unified Arab nation, even though in practice pressing domestic
concerns within Iraq commanded immediate attention. Nonetheless, Iraqi
foreign policy under Saddam had been significantly motivated by Ba'ath
ideology.

Aflak saw the dispersed Arab peoples as a single nation the destiny of
which rests with the aspiration of becoming a single state with its own
independent role in the world as a major power. Although persuaded of
the importance of secularity, Aflak recognized the indigenousness of
Islam to Arab culture and advocated socialism in a tribal context. In
the 1950s, the Ba'ath Party called for a pluralist democracy and free
elections in Arab countries. Although it is not indifferent to the
Palestinian question, the Ba'ath Party has not taken it up as a primary
cause, as it takes the position that the Palestinian question is only a
putrid symptom of the cancer of Arab disunity and that a strong united
Arab nation will be able to solve the local problem of Palestine to
satisfaction. Israel subscribes to a similar view and treats Pan-Arabism
as a lethal enemy to the long-term survival of the Jewish state.

The Ba'ath Party entered into active politics first in post-World War II
Syria where political instability after independence produced frequent
changes of government. Ideology and organization of the party went
through changes in response to political events. The turning point came
in 1958, the year of the creation of the United Arab Republic (UAR) by
Egypt and Syria. The Ba'ath Party accepted the dissolution of its Syrian
section as it shared Nasir's views on Arab and international politics.
The breakdown of the UAR in September 1961 set off a long internal
crisis in the Ba'ath Party.

The failure of the UAR caused some senior Ba'ath Party members to
reconsider the pragmatic obstacles to the high ideals of Pan-Arabism. In
Syria, those known as "Regionalists" led by Hafez al-Assad, as opposed
to the "Nationalists" who were more in favor of a more universal Arab
line, dominated the Syrian section after the Regionalists gained power
in 1963. Nationalist founders of the Ba'ath Party, including Aflak, were
forced into exile. Two separate Ba'ath headquarters were set up: a
revisionist one in Damascus, the other in Baghdad, where Aflak had found
refuge after the Iraqi Ba'ath Party had risen to power in July 1968,
with Saddam in a key position. In Iraq, Ba'ath Party ideology directed
state policy, the clearest illustration being Iraq's recovery of Kuwait
in 1990, which was seen by the party as "a stage of Arab unification".
US opposition to the Iraqi recovery of Kuwait, developed only after it
had communicated to Iraq diplomatically an initial posture of
non-interference, was a delayed geopolitical reaction against a major
material advance in Pan-Arabism, with the reluctant silent acquiescence
of many of the Arab Regionalists. The first Gulf war was financed by and
with active logistics support from Saudi Arabia as the wealthy head of
the Regionalist snake.

In Syria, under Article 8 of the constitution, the Ba'ath Arab Socialist
Party is the leading party in the state and society. It leads a national
progressive Front that works for uniting the potentials of the Arab
masses and placing them at the service of the objectives of the Arab
nation. The party's leadership of the Front is embodied by its being
represented by majority in the Front's establishment. Hence, the
chairman of the Front is the secretary-general of the Ba'ath Arab
Socialist Party, and he is the president of the republic. The Front
decides on policy matters of war and peace. It approves the five-year
plans of the state, discusses economic policies, and lays down the plans
of national socialist education, and leads the general political
orientation.

Paradoxically, with the party's rise to state power in Syria and Iraq
and with policies in these state governments forced to respond to local
needs, Ba'ath ideology began to decline in influence in the Arab world,
contradicting its key political aim of promoting Pan-Arab nationalism.
However, its secular approach along with its socialist ideals remain
driving forces in internal party politics.

Arab fundamentalism
A separate Arabic approach to oppressive foreign domination is the
notion that Islam provides the guiding light for unity, despite
theological divergence in the form of Islamic modernism, reformism,
conservatism and fundamentalism. This approach took on new appeal as
religious fundamentalism was encouraged by the US all over the world as
an effective force to combat secular communism. With the threat of
global communism subsiding after the Cold War, a special bond between
the opportunistic US and Islamic fundamentalism lost adhesiveness and
the strange bed-fellowship fell into benign neglect by the sole
remaining superpower. With the post-Cold War spread of the US global
neo-liberal economic empire, Islamic fundamentalism, fueled by its
holding of the short end of the economic stick, then turned its wrath
toward US neo-imperialism and neo-liberalism. Continued foreign
interference in the Islamic world poses profound reactive consequences
that push all Islamic movements to adjust political goals with a return
to the purity of fundamental Islamic values.

Arab Islamic fundamentalism has been centered in Saudi Arabia, where the
state religion is Wahhabism, an extreme form of Sunni Islam
fundamentalism out of which rose Osama bin Laden, who would become
leader of al-Qaeda, meaning "the base" in Arabic, a guerrilla force
sponsored and trained originally by the US in Afghanistan to oppose the
Soviet-backed communist Afghan government. After the Cold War, al-Qaeda
turned its militancy against the US, its erstwhile sponsor. Followers of
Wahhabism are opposed to communism: which they consider a profane
ideology formulated by a German Jew (Karl Marx); Ba'athism: another
profane ideology formulated by an Arab Christian (Aflak): and
Pan-Arabism: a secular ideology that denies both the truth faith and
tribal culture. The Saudi Wahhabis believe it is God's will to reveal
the Koran (God's constitution) in Saudi Arabia and god has blessed Saudi
Arabia, the true defender of the faith, with oil riches and tribal
social harmony. Saudi Arabia, for decades a closed society of minimal
social contradictions due to its homogenous tribal culture and as a
result of new prosperity brought on by the sudden quadrupling of oil
revenue after the 1973 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries oil
boycott, feels it needs no instruction from the decadent West on
democracy and social reform. The vicissitude of its oil fortune in the
1990s, with oil prices falling below US$10 per barrel, caused
socio-economic stress hitherto unfamiliar in God's kingdom and led Saudi
Wahhabis to blame the infidel US for interfering with God's will. The
rise of Wahhabism in the Muslim world coincided with the revival of
Christian fundamentalism in the US, exacerbating the conflict, leading
some to superficially frame it as a clash of civilizations, obscuring
geopolitical factors.

The US, with its foreign policy under the second Bush administration
hijacked by neo-conservatives supported by Christian fundamentalists,
blinded by its fixation on the need to control Mid East oil and
misguided by its dismissal of the relevance of Arabic history and
culture, made the geopolitical error of misidentifying the secular
Ba'ath Party as its target enemy in its "war on a terrorism" waged
principally by Wahhabi extremists, such as al-Qaeda.

Non-Arab Shi'ite Islam fundamentalism, as espoused by the late Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran, mistrusts both Arab nationalism and Arab
Islamic Sunni fundamentalism as parochial and anti-progressive
philosophies to the point of being obstructionist against true faith and
holy justice. This ideological conflict between Arab nationalism and
meta-Arab borderless Shi'ite Islamic fundamentalism was a major cause
for the decade-long Iran-Iraq war, in which Saudi Arabia, despite its
opposition to Arab nationalism, provided substantial financial aid to
Ba'athist Iraq because the Saudis, who are fundamentalist Sunnis,
consider fundamentalist Shi'itism a worse enemy than secular Arab
nationalism.

The Saudis, like other Regionalists, are not against Arab solidarity.
Out of self interest, they are weary of Arab nationalism in the form of
a unified Pan-Arab state. While both Arab nationalism and all the
diverse sects of Islamic fundamentalism oppose Western political,
economic and cultural imperialism and neo-imperialism, there is no
convincing evidence that Arab nationalism is linked to Wahhabi/al-Qaeda,
the branch of terrorism on which the US has focused its global "war on
terrorism" after September 11. Al-Qaeda is opposed to the Ba'ath Party
of Iraq and considered Saddam an evil infidel. In fact, the 2003
toppling of the secular Ba'athist government in Iraq served to enhance
both Sunni and Shi'ite extremist Islamic fundamentalism in the region.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FI03Ak03.html

> It is not up to us to impose
> democracy on the peoples of Iraq, Iran or Zimbabwe from afar. It is up to
> them to build better ways of life in their own countries.
>
> Best,
>
> Sabri