Inside Saddam's mind The ideology behind the thuggery.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) ^ | December 2002 | David Brooks

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The Baathist ideology requires continual conflict and bloodshed. Saddam likes to call himself The Struggler, and his rule has been marked by incessant strife. He led his nation through a bloody eight-year war with Iran that produced World War I level casualties, a ruthless campaign of genocide against the Kurds, the invasion of neighbouring Kuwait, a war with the United States and the rest of the world, civil wars in the north and south of his country, and now another potential war with the United States and its allies over weapons of mass destruction. There has been no respite. The Baathist ideology commands that there be no respite. The Baathist ideology allows no remorse over the mass murder of those who belong to racially inferior groups. Once a dictator assumes the Aflaqite belief in the superiority of the Arab race, it is practically inevitable that he will find his arena for genocide, he will find his Kurds. Moreover, his theory of history will pardon him if he sets out to commit mass murder against lower races, such as Americans. The Baathist ideology demands a revolution in world affairs. The United States and its democracy must be humiliated and brought low so that the dominance of the Arab nation can achieve its final and fitting triumph, and so realise God’s plan for the earth.

No leader, not even a highly ideological one like Saddam, is unfailingly guided by his belief system. Ideas are not everything. All leaders bide their time, looking for opportunities, looking out for themselves. But in the current argument over what do to about Iraq and Saddam, ideas have been treated as if they were nothing. The argument has been over weapons of mass destruction, unilateralism vs. multilateralism, and nuclear capabilities. Very little attention has been paid to what Saddam wants and what Saddam believes–which is like analysing Hitler without reference to the ideology of the Nazi party or Lenin without reference to communism.

The CIA and the State Department might think otherwise, but we are not all game theorists. Human beings are not all rational actors carefully calculating their interests. Certain people–many people, in fact–are driven by goals, ideals, and beliefs. Saddam Hussein has taken such awful risks throughout his career not because he "miscalculated," as the game theorists assert, but because he was chasing his vision. He was following the dictates of the Baathist ideology, which calls for warfare, bloodshed, revolution, and conflict, on and on, against one and all, until the end of time.

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