Posted on 12/23/2003 6:11:33 AM PST by SJackson
Saddam Hussein prepares his defense speech. He sits in the high-security cell, surrounded by American soldiers. All his palaces are gone, his sons dead; his regime is in ruins, his country under the control of his worst enemy.
The mass graves that he filled have been opened. He has killed his people directly and through the wars that he began. He has thrown the riches from their oil into the sea. And finally, when put to the ultimate personal test, he surrendered rather than die a martyr's death.
Is that any reason for him to feel that he was wrong, or to be intimidated, or to feel remorse?
Of course not! Here is what he might say:
How dare they! For I have done nothing wrong by the standards of Arab governments, principles of Arab ideology, the publicly voiced acclaim of the masses. I have fulfilled your will, oh people of Iraq and of the Arab world.
I have done what you would have me do. And thus it is true to say that this has been an attack on the Arab and Muslim people, an invasion of our sacred soil.
I am a hero, your hero, and everything I have done has been justified. I am the embodiment of your dreams, the fulfiller of your commands.
For did you not say that the highest value of all was the unification of the Arab world? Has this not been our sacred principle for half a century or more? And this is the great task I took upon myself. I built a mighty army and what did I do with it? I attacked the Iranians, who tried to subvert the Arab nation in the name of their Islam. I attacked the Jews, attempting to destroy the Zionist entity which you all demanded be wiped from this earth. I fought the Americans, whose imperialism you said was the greatest threat. I seized Kuwait, so that I might use its money in the great enterprise of unification rather than spending that money on mere luxuries.
DID YOU not demand this? Did you not cheer this? You say that everything must be done for the Palestinian cause, and who did more than I did?
Yasser Arafat himself, whom Arabs extol and Europe praises, admitted this. "I have for Saddam Hussein a limitless admiration and gratitude," he said. On the platform in Baghdad he turned to me and before tens of thousands exclaimed: "We will enter Jerusalem victorious and will raise our flag on its walls. You will enter with me, riding on your white stallion." That is the horse of Saladin, the victorious general to whom he compared me.
And they say I supported terrorism? Yet there is no such thing, if it is against the Americans and against the Jews. I gave money to those who committed suicide in order to kill Zionist children so they would not grow up to be our enemies. Is not this the policy you endorse, if not publicly surely when we sat together in the meeting rooms? Did you not demand this? Did you not cheer this?
As for what I did within Iraq, is this much different from what your governments do, or would do if they needed to in order to survive? I was oppressive, they say. I tortured and murdered, they say. But these were enemies of the state, traitors, American and Zionist agents, Shi'ite or Kurdish rebels.
Did you complain of my deeds? No, you extolled me.
And not only the Arabs, no! What about France and Russia and China? Were they not my friends? Did they not defy the Americans to help me? Wasn't Europe ready to open the doors to me at any time? There were the massive demonstrations throughout the world, the Americans who prefer me to George Bush and George W. Bush!
And when you read the great newspapers of Europe, the Guardian, Le Monde, and all the rest of them, don't they tell you endlessly of the crimes of the Zionists that justifies their being murdered? Don't they reveal to you the conspiracies and crimes of Bush that justify my struggle?
All that you must remember and repeat is that I was a hero because of all I did and all whom I killed! Don't your songwriters and journalists and men of culture say that my defeat is a defeat for all the Arabs? Yes, there are a few liberals who speak differently, but most of you have contempt for them. I certainly knew how to deal with such people.
Yes, there are now opportunists who say they are glad I am fallen. But we understand, you and I, that what I did all derived logically and directly from what we all believed, what we all said, what we all claimed, what we all wanted.
Condemn me, oh Arabs, and you condemn yourselves! You may pretend otherwise but deep in your hearts you know this is true.
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