More than a decade ago, when I was a reporter for the University of Arizona’s student newspaper, I spoke to some male Iraqi students about life in Iraq and their views on the impending Gulf War I.
Understandably, none of them wanted me to use his name, for fear of potential reprisal against his family members in Iraq by Saddam Hussein’s regime. (I don’t recall that any of them was overly concerned about his own safety.)
The one thing the Iraqi students told me about life in Iraq that sticks out in my mind, more than 10 years later, is that in Iraq everyone must put on a display of loyalty to and affection for Saddam Hussein. To lack a portrait of Saddam prominently displayed in one’s home, the students told me, was to court disaster, as even family members might turn in other family members for not appearing to be loyal enough to Saddam.
I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein is an evil man. None. While I believe that the U.S. propaganda machine has portrayed Saddam to be far more dangerous to the United States than he actually is, I believe every word that those Iraqi students told me more than a decade ago, and I doubt that much has changed in Iraq. If anything, I suspect, it’s even worse there.
But just as the U.S. propaganda machine has painted Saddam to be more dangerous than he is, the U.S. propaganda machine has painted the Bush regime to be more benevolent than it is.
The simplistic thinking that good Americans are encouraged to adopt is that good is the opposite of bad, and if Saddam Hussein is bad and George W. Bush & Co. oppose Saddam Hussein, then the Bush regime must be good.
Wrong.
The only difference between Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush that I can perceive is that Saddam Hussein is doing what George W. Bush would be doing if he could get away with it. I see no measurable difference between Saddam’s and Bush’s delusions of grandeur and lust for power. Both of them are evil men.
Bush’s lust for power and delusions of grandeur were such that it did not matter to him whatsofuckingever that more than half a million more Americans voted for his Democratic opponent that voted for him.
Bush gladly had the Republican machine – which included a gaggle of Republican lawyers, the five members of the U.S. Supreme Court who were appointed by Republican presidents, Republican Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and, of course, his brother Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – fight ruthlessly on his behalf to install him in the Oval Office.
Would Saddam Hussein not have done the same were he in Bush’s shoes?
I indicated that the only difference between Saddam and Bush is that Bush is more constrained than is Saddam.
But Team Bush is working on that: Feeling empowered because Republicans now control the White House and both houses of Congress because their platform of fear worked wonders on Nov. 5, now the Bush regime is working on those pesky courts that rule against the regime's agenda, and the new Department of Homeland Security is beginning its work of ridding the United States of perhaps millions of threats to “homeland security.”
Anglo Americans won’t worry too much about it, because it’s not they who are being detained by the U.S. government, and surely their government would never unfairly detain anyone; if the government is hauling off those of Middle Eastern descent, surely it has very good reasons to do so! This is the United States of America! By God!
But, if the trajectory continues, it will be those of us who write things like this whom the U.S. government will snatch away and try in secret courts, if they bother to try us at all. How will we defend ourselves? I mean, how can I prove that I am not a threat to national security?
The Bush regime is working, slowly but surely – actually, it’s not even working slowly – to close the gap between the degree of totalitarian power that Saddam Hussein’s regime possesses and the degree of totalitarian power that the Bush regime possesses.
Recent headlines include:
U.S. Argues for Secret Detentions
Justice Department Wins Wiretap Authority
Bush Aides Consider Bolstering Domestic Spying
Secret Court OKs Broad Wiretap Powers
Agencies Monitor Iraqis in the U.S. for Terror Threat
Cybersurveillance System Being Built
The daily headlines in the United States would make George Orwell not just turn, but spin, in his grave.
What made me think of those Iraqi students I interviewed years ago was their testimony that in Iraq the people must display pictures of Saddam Hussein or jeopardize their lives.
What made me think of the fact that Iraqis must display pictures of Saddam Hussein is the number of American flag stickers I see on the vehicles – mostly gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs – on the streets of Sacramento. (The post-9/11 cloth flags have long since deteriorated; most of them, I think, were made in China.)
If I see as many American flag stickers as I do in Sacramento, which is moderate to left-leaning, I have to wonder how many American flag stickers I would see in, say, um, Texas.
And I wonder if, as dull and sheep-like as these American-flag-sticker-bearing Americans are, they, like the Iraqis, are right about one thing: They sense that if they don’t display a symbol of their loyalty, they might be suspected of disloyalty and bad things could happen to them and possibly to their families.
And I wonder if perhaps one day in the not-too-distant future, portraits of George W. Bush or another Republican president will be as common in American households as portraits of Saddam Hussein are in Iraqi households.
