darkpenguin
Charismatic Enigma
Seyorni said:
Personaly I see bush as a street sweeper with one of those car ones and blair would have a brush and be cleaning up whatever bush missed!
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Is Saddam a martyr?
- Thread starter Ozzie
- Start date
Personaly I see bush as a street sweeper with one of those car ones and blair would have a brush and be cleaning up whatever bush missed!
lilithu
The Devil's Advocate
Saddam was put to death because the U.S. wanted him put to death. (Lest anyone argue that this was a matter of justice on the U.S.' part, one need only look at all the other ex-dictators out there that we quitely bought/pressured out of office who spent the rest of their days lounging in their mansions in exile.) He was not put to death for any noble cause. He did not live for any noble cause while he was in power neither.Ozzie said:
He is not by any merit of his own a martyr. But we made him into one. I'm against capital punishment on principle but even if I weren't I still think that his execution was tactically stupid. By killing him, especially in the way in which he was killed, we gave him a nobility that he did not have in life. (No one can watch that video and not be impressed with the way that he faced death as compared to the way his executioners behaved.) By killing him, we gave him meaning for other people. And in the end, that's what it takes to be recognized as a martyr.
------
Ozzie, the definition that you give is interesting. By it, one cannot kill oneself and be a martyr no matter how noble the cause.
greatcalgarian
Well-Known Member
This article clearly explained why Saddam is not a martyr but just a pawn of the US neocon:
http://infowars.net/articles/january2007/040107Saddam_execution.htm
http://infowars.net/articles/january2007/040107Saddam_execution.htm
greatcalgarian
Well-Known Member
Tyrant or martyr?
GEORGE GALLOWAY
Khaleej Times Online
Thursday, January 4, 2007
NOTHING became the Saddam Hussein era like his leaving of the stage. If he had died the day he was dug up from a hole, the collective memory of the Arabs — the only audience that ever mattered to him — would have been different. Instead, they will recall his astonishing sangfroid before a kangaroo court. The first judge resigned in protest at American interference. The second one was sacked by the US-installed puppet regime for refusing to obey orders. A 20-minute time delay had to be introduced into the televising of the proceedings so the censor’s scissors could trim back the ever more effective sallies against the claque on the bench opposite the accused.
Saddam’s riposte to the jeering of the prosecution lawyers: ‘Let the monkeys laugh in their trees, the lion walks on,’ was cheered in every coffee house in Arabia. It is this Saddam whose memory will live on.
When the extrajudicial murder of Che Guevara took place in 1967, the authorities made the fatal error of photographing the cadaver of a man who until then had been in world terms a relatively small thorn in their side.
The image of the slain Guevara would encourage others to take up the sword in the decades to come. Saddam Hussein is no Che Guevara, but the foolishly videotaped pictures of Saddam twisting on a rope fashioned by the illegal occupiers who overthrew him will return to haunt those who directed them. Of course, there are those for whom even to mention such points is tantamount to apologia.
I well remember the fury directed at my Mail on Sunday interview with Saddam in August of 2002, in particular, my observation that he exuded an ‘almost Zen-like calm’. It is with that calm that he faced his accusers.
For Saddam’s captors, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. When he was caught we were told this was a turning point in the occupation (remember those?). He was supposed to collapse into a pitiful wreck, rave dementedly, play the pantomime villain our government desperately needed him to be.
But the cliches of Saddam as ‘evil’, ‘mad’ and ‘a monster’ fail to explain anything of his motivation.
He fervently maintained that he had been treated unjustly by the West. A baseless delusion? Well, not entirely. I recall in 2002 appealing to Saddam to invite in Hans Blix and the weapons inspectors who had been withdrawn at the behest of Bill Clinton in 1998.
He looked me directly in the eye and said: ‘We don’t have any weapons of mass destruction. I am telling you in all honesty — we don’t have any.’ It turns out that the ‘evil despot’ was telling the truth about that and he felt betrayed.
Now, in the determined demonisation of the man, there is little time devoted to rehearsing what he brought to Iraq as a leader and achieved as a statesman. But in the Seventies, Saddam framed himself as a father to the nation. At a time of high energy prices and with the oil industry nationalised, such paternalism meant genuine advances in Iraqi society.
By the standards of dictatorships, Iraq in the Seventies was a modernising society. The electricity grid brought power to 4,000 villages. The state distributed free fridges and televisions. There was a minimum wage, women entered the workforce in record numbers and he tried to eradicate illiteracy. Looming ever greater was Saddam’s desire to be seen as a hero of the Arab world. When he rose within the Ba’ath Party in the late Sixties, that dream could still take the form of seeking pan-Arab unity. By 1990, it had become sadly threadbare. Now it was Saddam the Arab hero acting against ‘the Persians’, but as a cat’s paw for American interests.
Those who knew him say that he was convinced that he had, if not the support, then at least the declared neutrality of America when he occupied Kuwait in August 1990. The invasion turned out to be a colossal error of judgment. But it came after he had enjoyed US and British support for invading Iran in 1980 and at critical moments throughout the eight-year war.
In March 1988, his forces used chemical weapons against the Kurdish village of Halabja. The victims came, after the 1991 war, to symbolise his crimes: the man who gassed his own people. Yet at the time there was no international outcry over Halabja.
It was the militarisation of Iraq that threw Saddam’s authoritarian features into sharp relief. His ruthlessness was turned against Iraq society. At the same time, his family’s riches reached Croesus-like proportions, while sanctions threw the country back decades.
It is testimony to the calamitous Bush/Blair policy that they have succeeded in awakening among so many Iraqis warm memories of life under Saddam compared with the hell that is Iraq today. With each day that passes, the full magnitude of the Iraq folly will become clear. Already it has brought about what Ayatollah Khomeini could not in the Eighties: a pivotal role for Iran in the south of Iraq and, by extension, into the rest of the region. Could it possibly achieve what Saddam so dismally failed to in life — his status as an Arab hero?
The images of his final hours look so ordinary, as ordinary as he did on the two occasions that I met him.
But the fact that he was executed at the start of the festival commemorating the deliverance of Ismael from sacrifice at the hands of Abraham will fuel the perception of Saddam as something more than ordinary: a martyr, killed at the behest of Washington.
I had imagined it would be only hardened opponents of the war such as myself who would feel a deep sense of foreboding on news of the execution. But — in the hours since that final drop — that already seems to be a much more general sentiment.
Yes, a man who ended up squandering his country lies dead. But he was never the heart of the matter.
George Galloway is a British MP for Bethnal Green and Bow who had visited Iraq before the invasion. This comment first appeared in the Mail on Sunday.
Khaleej Times Online
Thursday, January 4, 2007
NOTHING became the Saddam Hussein era like his leaving of the stage. If he had died the day he was dug up from a hole, the collective memory of the Arabs — the only audience that ever mattered to him — would have been different. Instead, they will recall his astonishing sangfroid before a kangaroo court. The first judge resigned in protest at American interference. The second one was sacked by the US-installed puppet regime for refusing to obey orders. A 20-minute time delay had to be introduced into the televising of the proceedings so the censor’s scissors could trim back the ever more effective sallies against the claque on the bench opposite the accused.
Saddam’s riposte to the jeering of the prosecution lawyers: ‘Let the monkeys laugh in their trees, the lion walks on,’ was cheered in every coffee house in Arabia. It is this Saddam whose memory will live on.
When the extrajudicial murder of Che Guevara took place in 1967, the authorities made the fatal error of photographing the cadaver of a man who until then had been in world terms a relatively small thorn in their side.
The image of the slain Guevara would encourage others to take up the sword in the decades to come. Saddam Hussein is no Che Guevara, but the foolishly videotaped pictures of Saddam twisting on a rope fashioned by the illegal occupiers who overthrew him will return to haunt those who directed them. Of course, there are those for whom even to mention such points is tantamount to apologia.
I well remember the fury directed at my Mail on Sunday interview with Saddam in August of 2002, in particular, my observation that he exuded an ‘almost Zen-like calm’. It is with that calm that he faced his accusers.
For Saddam’s captors, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. When he was caught we were told this was a turning point in the occupation (remember those?). He was supposed to collapse into a pitiful wreck, rave dementedly, play the pantomime villain our government desperately needed him to be.
But the cliches of Saddam as ‘evil’, ‘mad’ and ‘a monster’ fail to explain anything of his motivation.
He fervently maintained that he had been treated unjustly by the West. A baseless delusion? Well, not entirely. I recall in 2002 appealing to Saddam to invite in Hans Blix and the weapons inspectors who had been withdrawn at the behest of Bill Clinton in 1998.
He looked me directly in the eye and said: ‘We don’t have any weapons of mass destruction. I am telling you in all honesty — we don’t have any.’ It turns out that the ‘evil despot’ was telling the truth about that and he felt betrayed.
Now, in the determined demonisation of the man, there is little time devoted to rehearsing what he brought to Iraq as a leader and achieved as a statesman. But in the Seventies, Saddam framed himself as a father to the nation. At a time of high energy prices and with the oil industry nationalised, such paternalism meant genuine advances in Iraqi society.
By the standards of dictatorships, Iraq in the Seventies was a modernising society. The electricity grid brought power to 4,000 villages. The state distributed free fridges and televisions. There was a minimum wage, women entered the workforce in record numbers and he tried to eradicate illiteracy. Looming ever greater was Saddam’s desire to be seen as a hero of the Arab world. When he rose within the Ba’ath Party in the late Sixties, that dream could still take the form of seeking pan-Arab unity. By 1990, it had become sadly threadbare. Now it was Saddam the Arab hero acting against ‘the Persians’, but as a cat’s paw for American interests.
Those who knew him say that he was convinced that he had, if not the support, then at least the declared neutrality of America when he occupied Kuwait in August 1990. The invasion turned out to be a colossal error of judgment. But it came after he had enjoyed US and British support for invading Iran in 1980 and at critical moments throughout the eight-year war.
In March 1988, his forces used chemical weapons against the Kurdish village of Halabja. The victims came, after the 1991 war, to symbolise his crimes: the man who gassed his own people. Yet at the time there was no international outcry over Halabja.
It was the militarisation of Iraq that threw Saddam’s authoritarian features into sharp relief. His ruthlessness was turned against Iraq society. At the same time, his family’s riches reached Croesus-like proportions, while sanctions threw the country back decades.
It is testimony to the calamitous Bush/Blair policy that they have succeeded in awakening among so many Iraqis warm memories of life under Saddam compared with the hell that is Iraq today. With each day that passes, the full magnitude of the Iraq folly will become clear. Already it has brought about what Ayatollah Khomeini could not in the Eighties: a pivotal role for Iran in the south of Iraq and, by extension, into the rest of the region. Could it possibly achieve what Saddam so dismally failed to in life — his status as an Arab hero?
The images of his final hours look so ordinary, as ordinary as he did on the two occasions that I met him.
But the fact that he was executed at the start of the festival commemorating the deliverance of Ismael from sacrifice at the hands of Abraham will fuel the perception of Saddam as something more than ordinary: a martyr, killed at the behest of Washington.
I had imagined it would be only hardened opponents of the war such as myself who would feel a deep sense of foreboding on news of the execution. But — in the hours since that final drop — that already seems to be a much more general sentiment.
Yes, a man who ended up squandering his country lies dead. But he was never the heart of the matter.
George Galloway is a British MP for Bethnal Green and Bow who had visited Iraq before the invasion. This comment first appeared in the Mail on Sunday.
Laila
Active Member
It was barbaric for Saddam to be killed the way he was; what was wrong with imprisonment? I'm no fan of Saddam but I was very against him being hanged; it will only (and already has done) cause more problems between the sunni and shi'ites - watch this space for a civil war in Iraq. So much for the civilised Iraq and war on terror!
It's really sad - Saddam was a monster but I must ask who created him?........and has the situation in Iraq improved or just gone from bad to worse?..........what timing!
It's the same old game of divide and rule.
It's really sad - Saddam was a monster but I must ask who created him?........and has the situation in Iraq improved or just gone from bad to worse?..........what timing!
It's the same old game of divide and rule.
lilithu said:
Unfortunately, that is true.
I was listening to a programme the other day during which 'experts' were gauging Saddam's 'credibility and respect' from his own people. When he was pulled out of the pit in which he had been hiding, his 'respectability' was at an all time low; being filmed while he was being poked and prodded by Doctors did him no good.
Unfortunately, it seems like he then began to carry a copy of the Qu'ran arround with him; he refused to acknowledge the validity of the cour that tried him, and he refused a mask when being hanged.... Those acts made him "A good martyr" in his people's eyes.
What could have been done with him though, if not execution ? I don't approve of capital punishment either (because there is always that small chance that the verdict reached might be wrong), but that certainly could never have been the case with Saddam.
Had he been held Prisonner, I believe, he might well have become a 'tool' for extremists.. Kidnap and then "Let Saddam out or we will kill..."
Ozzie
Well-Known Member
lilithu said:
I don't think it is possible to argue against the fact that Saddam is a martyr except on personal moral grounds. This is in itself interesting because it shows that an inconsistency can be sustained between personal opinion and political belief with respect to martyrdom.
I agree with the tactical stupidity of killing Saddam as a political act. I have no personal opinion of whether or not to consider him a marytr. Given his record it is a nonsense question.
"Ozzie, the definition that you give is interesting. By it, one cannot kill oneself and be a martyr no matter how noble the cause."
Could you unpack this statement a bit for me?
I see that the logic that one can kill oneself and intentionally enter martyrdom as a matter of personal morality as flawed. But I can't see the same act interpreted politically as excluding martyrdom.
Judgement Day
Active Member
He is not a martyr, a martyr in Islam is a person who dies for standing up for his religion under the name of God. He killed a lot of people, makes a lot of people suffer, what that has to do with Islamic teachings? He just died in wacky way, hung by his opponents from the syi'ites for mere revenge purpose because of his own past actions. I despise seeing the sunnis and shi'ites fight over each other and whenever someone dies they call that person a martyr, thats just plain ridicolous. Why can't they just unite, after all, according what their own Prophet said, division among them will only cause destruction, and victory will only be achieved if they unite. Why can't they just listen? Apply what is taught!
lilithu
The Devil's Advocate
Hi Michel,michel said:
Letting him live, he might have become a 'tool.' Killing him, he most certainly becomes one. Killing him does not prevent "extremists" from killing others. They will kill regardless.
It's gotten to the point where I am suspicious of the truth of American media reports, but supposedly in the early months after Saddam was in American custody, he gained a lot of weight eating doughnuts and other western frivolities. If that's true then that's the image that we would have wanted people to have of Saddam - a pudgy pampered man who cared more about sensory pleasures than his country. Instead, the image that we are left with is a man who held the Qur'an in his last moments of life and faced death with calm resolve and courage.
lilithu
The Devil's Advocate
No need to unpack. I wasn't making a complex moral argument. I was simply going by the definition that you quoted from dictionary.com:Ozzie said:
Martyr: a person who is put to death or endures great suffering on behalf of any belief, principle, or cause: a martyr to the cause of social justice.
The wording necessarily implies that death is imposed upon the person by someone else, not self-imposed. That's all I was saying. And the definition surprised me because, like you, I can't see suicide as being excluded from martyrdom when viewed socio-politically.
krashlocke
Member
For those who criticize the timing and method being for the benefit of the US: Does it strike anybody as odd that a video is released of his gizzly execution on a high holy day after a speedy Iraqi trial and instantly the US is held to blame? Perhaps it was done on this time in this manner precisely to raise aggression towards the US?
This certainly goes back to the fact that this was an Iraqi trial by Iraqi judges in Iraqi courts and the execution was made by Iraqis.There may well have been US influence (I'm not naive), but its' interesting that the backlash from these lapses in judgement regarding the execution are almost exclusively considered the fault of the US.
Is this by design?
This certainly goes back to the fact that this was an Iraqi trial by Iraqi judges in Iraqi courts and the execution was made by Iraqis.There may well have been US influence (I'm not naive), but its' interesting that the backlash from these lapses in judgement regarding the execution are almost exclusively considered the fault of the US.
Is this by design?
The Truth said:
And yet another unsubstantiated opinion; the idea is, and always has been to give Iraq back to the Iraqi people, for them to rule, without a dictatorship in which only opinions that were in line with Saddam's every word were the only ones allowed.
Wouldn't you honestly like to see Iraq become a self-sufficientdemocracy?
lilithu said:
Lilithu, Namaste.
I guess you are right, even though I am sick of conspiracy theories, and the various twisted manipulations of politics.
Unfortunately, you begin to sound like a cynic - and that is sad; of course you have every right to think as you do, for you are far better placed to judge, but it is still disheartening.
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
Sadam was no martyr.
He was a failed dictator.
He killed people of his own branch of the Muslim faith as with almost equal abandon as he killed others.
It was always a question of power not faith. He killed two sons in law because they had opposed him.
The manner of his death was unfortunate , but went with the unsavoury territory he inhabited. The manner of death has never been a descriptor of martyrdom.
He was a failed dictator.
He killed people of his own branch of the Muslim faith as with almost equal abandon as he killed others.
It was always a question of power not faith. He killed two sons in law because they had opposed him.
The manner of his death was unfortunate , but went with the unsavoury territory he inhabited. The manner of death has never been a descriptor of martyrdom.
michel said:
Let the democrasy go to hell if it will cause the death of thousands of people and yet, there is still more to come from this irresponsible act by some arrogans in the american government.
I wish that you live Iraq to taste how people live there but sadly you have no idea. You just lie on your sofa watching tv then come here to talk nonesense about so called fake bloody democrasy.
The Truth said:
The Truth - your first paragraph seems to indicate that you have conveniently forgotten that Saddam was responsible for thousands of equally innocent people during his regime........
Secondly, as I have pointed out before,
Whilst I agree with that sentiment, I notice you rattle your sword from Malaysia.
and what you term
, I note that you enjoy democracy in Malaysia; would you deny your Iraqui brother the same political system ? - or would you perhaps enjoy a tyranical dictatorship where people "Just disappeared" for disagreeing with Saddam ?? (as revealed by the findings of mass graves after the Americans arrived and the Iraquis felt brave enough to go and look for themselves)
michel said:
Awesome !!! two wrongs can't make a right Mr. Michel.
I didn't claim that the situation in Iraq is better like you. That's why you deserve to go there and see, feel and experince it.
Only if he still gurantee that he will remain alive the next day when he go out to feed his family. He might be killed whether by a crazy stressed american soldier singing God bless America or by some iraqi shi'ite working with the government to spread terror in the heart of people so no one can speak up for his rights.
For Michel and those like him who think Iraq now is better ...
Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese05112005.html
Read also:
Iraqis better off under Saddam, says former weapons inspector.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/10/25/iraq-failure.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/24/earlyshow/main1649689_page2.shtml
National Public Radio foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR's Baghdad bureau, met earlier this month with a senior Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the NPR report as "a moderate" and as a person trying to lead his Shiite followers into practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked him: "What would you think if you had to go back to Saddam Hussein?" The cleric replied that he'd "rather see Iraq under Saddam Hussein than the way it is now."
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/06/better-saddam-than-way-it-is-now.html
Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese05112005.html
Read also:
Iraqis better off under Saddam, says former weapons inspector.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/10/25/iraq-failure.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/24/earlyshow/main1649689_page2.shtml
National Public Radio foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR's Baghdad bureau, met earlier this month with a senior Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the NPR report as "a moderate" and as a person trying to lead his Shiite followers into practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked him: "What would you think if you had to go back to Saddam Hussein?" The cleric replied that he'd "rather see Iraq under Saddam Hussein than the way it is now."
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/06/better-saddam-than-way-it-is-now.html