Saddam Hussein's greed and totalitarian quest for power

Saddam Hussein & his Totalitarian Regime

Saddam Hussein's reign as one of the most powerful leaders in the Middle Eastern region has been, over the years, riddled with both criticism and support. These criticisms and expressions of support has been signified by different nations over the years, in the same way that Saddam and his regime has made allies and enemies of these nations. Decades after he rose to power as the leader of Iraq, Saddam transformed from a nationalistic leader to a dictator allegedly guilty of numerous human rights violations and war crimes, within and outside Iraq.

Perception of Saddam as a hostile leader whose non-cooperative stance is reflected in his 'containment' policy of Iraq, 'closing' the country to exposure to other nations, as well as preventing the outside world from getting any news about the state of Iraqis under his leadership. Saddam's perceived hostility is further intensified when ex-U.S. President George W. Bush declared an offensive war against Iraq, claiming that Iraq provided support to the 9/11 terrorists by providing them with weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs (O'Reilly, 2004:60). The 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and continued hostility of Saddam made it easier for the Bush administration to justify its offensive move against Saddam and the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Six (6) years after the U.S. offensive attack against Iraq, Saddam was prosecuted and sentenced to death, the Taliban government was dissolved, and Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group were forced to disband and hide. However, despite these developments, it seems that the fight against terrorism has yet to end. Even though Saddam was prosecuted and sentenced to death, the terror that he brought to Iraqis and the damage his regime has done to Iraq's social, political, and economic structures continue to haunt the international community as reports and new discoveries are increasingly made known to the public. Through records and pieces of documents discovered and collected from the regime's former government offices that were not destroyed, investigators and the international media tied together this evidence to create a holistic picture of what happened to the nation under Saddam's dictatorship (Tompkins et. al., 2008).

This paper discusses in detail Saddam's ascent as a dictator and the 'success' of his totalitarian regime in Iraq, lasting for decades until the 2003. The discussion will be in the form of historical analysis, which attempts to answer three (3) critical questions related to Saddam's prolonged rule as dictator of Iraq and leader of a totalitarian regime. First, what led to the escalation of Saddam's ambition from being a top leader in the country to being a dictator/totalitarian leader? Second, why was Saddam's reign as dictator prolonged despite the active role that Western countries such as the U.S. And Britain played in Middle Eastern politics and issues during his (Saddam's) rule? And third, were allegations against Saddam, such as human rights violations and war crimes committed to civil society, proven to be true? If yes, how was this conclusion arrived at?

These questions form the core of the discussion provided in this paper. The argument presented herein posits that Saddam's totalitarian regime escalated and was prolonged because it was initially tolerated and financially and politically supported mainly by the U.S. Saddam as the dictator of his totalitarian regime became a U.S. ally when his actions and orders will benefit its 'ally,' and support for him waned when his directives became too risky for the U.S. And detrimental to their relations with other Middle Eastern nations.

Escalation of Saddam's totalitarian regime

Two (2) important events in Iraq's history served as the foundation of what would be its role in the international political arena as the country ruled by Saddam's totalitarian regime. These are the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars. Both are pivotal in establishing Saddam's regime as a political force in the Middle Eastern region, to the benefit of Arab nations, which Saddam advocated for, and to the detriment of the victims these wars.

The Iran-Iraq war solidified Saddam's place in international political as an influential leader in the Middle East, mainly because he was able to get the support -- financially and politically -- of powerful Western nations such as the United States. In this war, Saddam was aligned with world leaders' objective to prevent Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini from spreading radical Islamism in the Middle East region. And because Saddam and world leaders agreed that radical Islamism must be prevented in the Middle East, the world leaders supported Saddam's attack against Iran. Dickey and Thomas's (2002) report on the U.S.'s involvement in the Iran-Iraq war disclosed that the U.S., knowing that Iraq was gradually losing the war against Iran, provided the former with intelligence information through "satellite photos showing Iranian deployments." In addition, the report also indicated that the U.S. supplied Iraq with the following military "equipment and materials": "computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry, helicopters, television cameras for "video surveillance applications," chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and numerous shipments of bacteria/fungi/protozoa," also to the IAEC.

This kind of support that the U.S. government had provided for Iraq goes a long way back, even when Saddam was not yet the top leader of Iraq. Another report linking the U.S. with Saddam's war crimes and civil and intra-regional attacks argued that the U.S. has been funding Saddam's ascent to top Iraqi leadership as early as 1963, wherein Saddam successfully overthrew the Abdul Karim Kassim's government (Sanders, 2002). This led to the rule of the Ba'ath Party in Iraq's political landscape, and eventually, led to Saddam's success as the future dictator of the country.

Through the course of his reign as Iraqi President, Saddam ensured that his goal of uniting all Arab nations will be achieved in the Middle Eastern region. This goal, in effect, will help lay the foundation for him to be eventually called the leader of a new world order -- the united Arab nations in the Middle East. The Iran-Iraq war was just the beginning of Saddam's plans to gradually increase his influence and power in the Middle East. The Iran-Iraq war became possible through financial, military, and political support from a superpower, the United States. But further into Saddam's leadership, he sought to extend his power over Kuwait, which he considered a threat because of the nation's strong-willed opposition to Saddam's proposition to increase oil prices, wherein both Iraq and Kuwait are considered two of the biggest oil suppliers in the Middle Eastern region.

Mainly as a response to Kuwait's firm stand to oppose Saddam's proposed oil price hike, he set out to conduct an offensive attack against the nation. This was considered an unwise decision for Saddam, both tactically and politically, having just suffered economically from the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq's "ally" in the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S., assumed the opposite stance when Saddam decided to attack Kuwait. It was reported that the U.S. withdrew its support in the Kuwait-Iraq case because not only was Saddam jeopardizing the U.S.'s diplomatic relations with Middle East nations such as Kuwait, but the attack also threatened the U.S. In terms of international security, wherein intelligence reports alleged that a "[c]ustom sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs" (Dickey and Thomas, 2002).

Now that the U.S.'s international security and diplomatic relations with Middle East nations were on the line, Saddam's former "ally" decided to support Kuwait against Iraq, resulting to the historical Gulf War, a step that then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush took against Iraq, critically impairing the relationship between the two countries. This also acted as a precedent that led to the declaration of George W. Bush's decision to launch a "shock and awe" offensive attack against the Iraq after it was found that Saddam helped Al Qaeda terrorists with the 9/11 attack against the U.S. when it supplied them with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) (O'Reilly, 2004:60).

Setting public perception and opinion against Saddam

Following Saddam's failure in securing U.S. support in its attack against Kuwait, and with the eventual disintegration of any support or mutual relationship with the U.S., the Iraqi leader continued to pursue his objectives through different means. The Gulf War paved the way for Saddam to implement a 'containment policy' for Iraq, creating a hostile environment along the country's borders, and maintaining close relations to nations, groups, and/or individuals that seek to promote Arab leadership in the Middle East, and those who oppose the political 'maneuverism' of the U.S.

Despite the transparency of Saddam's goals against the U.S. And totalitarian stance when it comes to leading Iraq, he was not easily displaced or ousted from his position. This is mainly due to his stronghold within the country, controlling almost every aspect of Iraqis' lives -- economically, socially, and culturally. Also, from the part of leaders in the international political arena, there is no appropriate replacement yet for Saddam, someone who can effective lead an ethnically-diverse country without easily being overthrown by opposing forces/groups. In the words of BBC Middle East analyst Gerald Butt (2001), "…his (Saddam's) opponents have not been able to nominate anyone else who might hold Iraq together -- with its Kurds in the north, Sunni Muslims in the centre [sic], and Shi'a in the south. What the outside world calls terror, Saddam calls expediency." Interestingly, Butt's analysis took into consideration the fact that despite the atrocities that Saddam had and has purportedly done to Iraqis and Iraq's neighbors, world leaders, particularly Western leaders like the U.S. And Britain, are still actually taking an active role in Saddam's political decision-making, albeit the latter has chosen to contain himself within Iraq's borders. Prior to 9/11, U.S. leadership continued to tolerate Saddam's regime, only until the point that it is able to find a 'suitable' replacement for the dictator (Dickey and Thomas, 2002).

In addition to "covert actions" taken to secure that Iraq would have a suitable leader in the event that Saddam is overthrown or ousted by opposing group/s, an active propaganda campaign against Saddam has been ongoing ever since U.S. explicitly and militarily opposed Iraq through the Gulf War. A dossier released by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London (2002) provided specific details about the "crimes and human rights abuses" Saddam has committed against his fellow Iraqis. This report was an integration of self-reports and interviews of Iraqi refugees, asylum seekers and defectors, as well as retrieved/salvaged documents from Saddam's regime. Among the cited crimes and abuses Saddam has purportedly committed are the following: torture, abuse of women (specifically rape and harassment), inhumane prison conditions, arbitrary and summary killings, persecution of the Shia community and Kurds, and harassment of Iraqi defectors.

This report provides a reinforcement through which Saddam is finally 'demystified' for the whole world to witness, reiterating that indeed, the U.S. government was right in portraying Saddam as also being responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In a study of media coverage on Saddam by researchers Paz and Aviles (2009) found that media has a significant role in the 'demonization' of Saddam as a totalitarian and 'anti-U.S.' leader in the Middle Eastern region. The study argued that through propaganda and slanted media coverage of Saddam as a dictator, there had been "excessive revisioning" that portrayed him as "[t]he enemy, rendered absolute and thusly isolated" (72).

Thus, what sustained Saddam's leadership was the 'isolation' he enforced upon his country and regime, therefore making himself vulnerable to propaganda organized outside of Iraq, and coursed primarily through mass media. These elements contributed Saddam's continued reign as the president of Iraq, but ultimately determined his fate when U.S. conducted its offensive attack against his government in 2003.