Ivan | December 14, 2003
The capture of Saddam Hussein can be considered the first success of the United States “war on terrorism.” Largely, however, it was a symbolic act. While the Bush Administration implies resistance to the occupation has been secretly orchestrated by Hussein, supporting evidence has been thin. Tellingly, the former dictator was found in a small hidden room, unarmed but for a pistol he never fired, and with no communication devices. The United States will no longer be able to claim him as the leader of Iraqi resistance, even though some analysts are predicting attacks to increase in the wake of these events (as they did after the assassination of Hussein’s sons). Some Iraqis, who skillfully frame their protests as a question of local elections versus imperial appointments, will become increasingly troublesome to the Administration’s narrative of democracy-building.
Engaging in a classic colonial rule strategy, the United States is appointing leaders who are not supported by the local population. As a result, the leaders can’t “transition to democracy” — because they would be voted out in an open election — and thus have to rely on the United States’ power for protection. We can see this playing out already in Afghanistan, where US-backed rulers are barely holding on to power even with American fighter planes defending them.
And even the symbolism of Hussein’s capture may be fleeting, in the end. Unlike iconographic and zealous leaders such as Lenin, Saddam Hussein did not inspire personal loyalty among Iraqis. Even those who supported him did so because of his policies rather than his personality. This is important, because it means the “unreconstructed Baathists” (a term I’ve heard bandied about lately) will not give up after the fall of their former leader. Rather, like a Western political party, they will simply transfer their support to a leader with similar priorities. This is overplaying the Baathist movement, of course, since most of the resistance comes from religious circles and those calling for direct democracy. But it is questionable whether in this situation, the elimination of a former leader will lead to less violence — and may even lead to more. The United States is not safer because of this war — if anything, it is less so.
Now that an explicit “objective” of the Iraq War has been achieved by the United States, expect the attention paid to the country to plummet, despite the primary objective — finding and destroying “weapons of mass destruction” — utterly unfulfilled. Troop forces may well be cut, as US political leaders become less and less interested in risking political capital to patrol Iraqi streets. Paul Wolfowitz is so driven by the neoconservative project that he may even be willfully sabotaging negotiations with Europe over contract bids for reconstruction. Since this will only increase the proportion of the costs borne by the United States, it may increase the appeal of the “cut-and-run” strategy just before election season.
This does not mean, however, that US influence on the shaky provisional government will markedly decrease, either politically (black ops) or economically (dependency due to ten years of sanctions). As in Afghanistan, the news reports and (American) casualty lists will slowly fade away, while behind the scenes in the government and the international community various contradictory political impulses will struggle over both the overarching imperative and the daily operation of the American empire.