"What does Saddam Hussein see in himself that no one else in the world seems to see? The answer is perhaps best revealed by the intimate details of the Iraqi leader's daily life"

On the eve of Saddam's interview with Dan Rather - and almost certainly of war - I thought it important to direct my readers to a profile of Saddam that might provide a good base on which to judge his public behavior and the abovementioned interview.  In May of last year, Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down (the book, not the movie), presented the most comprehensive profile I've yet read of Saddam Hussein.  I've found this article (which, incidentally, solely convinced me to become an Atlantic subscriber, rather than continuing to buy it at newsstands) to be immensely useful in understanding the situation we find ourselves in today. 

I'm sure CBS will replay the interview, and if not, the important bits are available at the above URL.

"What all this means is that when it comes to building democracy in Iraq, the Europeans are uninterested, the Americans are hypocritical and the Arabs are ambivalent. Therefore, undertaking a successful democratization project there, in a way that will stimulate positive reform throughout the region, will require a real revolution in thinking all around — among Americans, Arabs and Europeans. If done right, the Middle East will never be the same. If done wrong, the world will never be the same."

Thomas Friedman calls everyone to the carpet on Iraq and the Middle East.  First, Europe:

"We all know what this is about: the Jewish question. "For too many Europeans, Arabs are of no moral interest in and of themselves," observes the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen. "They only become of interest if they are fighting Jews or being manhandled by Jews. Then their liberation becomes paramount, because calling for it is a way to stick it to the Jews. Europeans' demonstrations for a free Palestine — and not for a free Iraq or any other Arab country — smell too much like a politically correct form of anti-Semitism, part of a very old story."

Then the US

"Only after 9/11, as we realized that what was going on out back in these countries threatened us, did the U.S. begin to call for democracy in the Arab world — but only to get rid of Yasir Arafat and to punish those Arab regimes it did not like, namely Saddam Hussein's. You still have not seen any serious democratization effort being directed at Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Kuwait. For America, government of the people, by the people and for the people is only for our enemies, not our friends."

And lastly, the Arabs themselves

"But then, other than a few courageous Arab liberals, Arab intellectuals have not made democracy promotion a supreme value either. In part it's because liberating Palestine has always been treated by them as a more important political value. And in part it's because many Arab societies are still so tribalized, and have such a weak sense of citizenship, they fear that democracy could bring forth fundamentalists, a rival tribe or anarchy. Hence the Arab saying: "Better a hundred years of tyranny than one day of anarchy.""

John-Paul may now proceed to make mustache jokes.