| Two Down, One to Go |
28 July 2003
|
Hussein Brothers Killed in Firefight
Simply, John Donne was wrong. In Meditation VXII, he wrote that "any man's death diminishes
me." In the cases of Uday and Qusay Hussein, the loathsome offspring of Saddam Hussein the mass
murderer, their deaths have made the world a better place. The value of a human life lies in its potential
for good, not in that simple fact that it is human. With this evil expunged, the monstrosity that is
Ba'athism has less hope for survival, and Iraq might just have a chance at internal peace.
Like all totalitarian ideologies, Ba'athism rests on the aura of the great ruler. The inherent weakness of
such a system lies in the mortality of the ruler. In the old Soviet Union, the death of the leader usually
sparked purges and lethal encounters as the successors jockeyed for position. In North Korea, when the
first Kim died, his son simply took over, a monarchist trick.
In the case of Iraqi Ba'athism, as in Syrian Ba'athism, the next generation were the obvious next tyrants.
The deaths of the Hussein boys have certainly prevented them from taking on the mantle of the old man,
and there are no credible candidates to succeed him. When Saddam Hussein dies, Iraqi Ba'athism is likely
to go. That does not mean that the Iraqi people will start their own version of Mr. Bush's Republican
party, nor will they like the occupation any more than they do now. What it does mean is that there is no
focus for continued opposition.
The significance of this cannot be underestimated. As the Bush administration learned the hard way, the
Ba'athist Party virus spread into every part of Iraqi society. Failure to root it out would permit
neo-Ba'athism to resurface once Iraqi's are allowed elections and self-governance by their occupiers. The
sad truth is that irrational ideologies are not refuted by reason and experience, but rather the people who
hold those beliefs die, and no one picks up the idea. The gunfight at the Mosul villa last week helped end
Ba'athism by ending two of the leading Ba'athists -- the only way that works.