A British academic defends Saddam's regime

What is it with lefties? No matter how vicious, dangerous and monstrous a regime is one can guarantee that some group of lefties will find some justification in its existence, provided, of course, that it is anti-American. This is certainly the case with Neil Clark, a tutor in history and politics at Oxford Tutorial College in England.

Writing in Murdoch's Australian (Hatred fuelled by warmongers 16/5) Clark praised Saddam, saying that "Saddam Hussein may have been (italics added) a corrupt and brutal dictator but he also promoted women to positions of authority, had a Christian as his long-serving deputy and went out of his way to protect the religious freedoms of Iraq's Christian community."

Note that Clark uses the verb may instead of the verbs is or was to describe Saddam. This is not a syntactic quibble. Words have meanings, particularly when used by leftists. Thus Clark's phrase "may have been" is meant to convey doubts about the sadistic nature of Saddam's regime and by doing so impugn the legitimacy of the allies' actions.

What we really have here is the old Leninist adage about breaking eggs to make omelettes. But Clark's Leninist morality withers in the light of Saddam's cruelty. This is the man who used rape as an instrument of terror and who had women beheaded in public and their heads displayed on their front doors.

And while Saddam promoted Drs Germ and Anthrax to "positions of authority" he had Dr Najat Mohammad Haydar, a Baghdad obstetrician, beheaded for exposing corruption within local health services. An incident of which Mr Clark had nothing to say. Nor did he have anything to say about Aziz Salih Ahmed, one of whose official duties included the "violation of women's honour,"

Any honest observer, and even the not so honest, will admit that no one was really safe in Saddam's Iraq, including Christians. Anyway, Clark's insinuation that Saddam was secular tyrant who supported religious tolerance is not born out by his persecution of Jews and Shiites.

Now Clark boldly asserted that the Iraqi threat "was a mythical one". Ignoring Saddam's attack on Iran and Kuwait, two countries that, at least in the case of Saddam, can distinguish between fact and myth, his well established links to terrorist organisations easily disposes of Clark's ideologically motivated claim to the contrary. There was, for example, the terrorist training facility at Salman Pak and Ansar al Islam's terrorist camps in the north of the country. Moreover, Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, a senior al Qaeda leader, was treated in a Baghdad hospital after being wounded in Afghanistan by US forces.

Desperate to support his outlandish views Clark feels impelled to quote the arch isolationist Buchanan that "interventionism is the incubator of terrorism" In other words, America asked for it. However, only a political halfwit or someone completely contemptuous of the truth would really believe that Islamic fruitcakes like bin Laden are driven by a hatred of so-called US interventionism instead of a hatred of anything that stands outside of their particular interpretation of the Koran.

The real lesson of "Bali and Riyadh" is the same as that of the 1930s — despots and terrorists must be defeated and not appeased.

There is growing evidence that the resolve of Bush and Blair to militarily stand up to the barbarians of the 21st century and crush them may already be having an effect in the Arab world. For example, the Middle East Media Research Institute provided the following from Hamad bin Hamed Al-Salame writing in Al-Jazirah, a Saudi newspaper.

"Oh foreign cave-dwellers, depart our country and go to hell! . . . Leave us. We are a believing people, and our government is wise. . . . Go with all your ugliness and baseness. . . . Go to hell. All your terrorist acts and bomb blasts will not make us bow our heads. . . . Go to the place from whence you came, to the caves of Tora Bora, and kiss the feet of your masters who taught you to spill blood and kill innocents. . . . They were the ones who taught you how to lie, deceive, and mislead the simple folk. Go, cowards. . . . go to hell, or go to the heaven of your leader, who taught you sorcery in the caves of Tora Bora. Sit by his side in the dark paradise of ugly ideas and deeds. . . which if distributed to all the inhabitants of the Earth would suffice them until the Day of Judgment. . . .

"Go, idiots, and awaken all the sleeper cells. . . . Wake them, and go with them, far from us. You have no place among us. . . . Go to hell."

Then we had an op-ed in the New York Times by Sulaiman Al-Hattlan, a columnist for the Saudi daily Al Watan:

"Because of the dominance of Wahhabism, Saudi society has been exposed to only one school of thought, one that teaches hatred of Jews, Christians and certain Muslims, like Shiites and liberal and moderate Sunnis. But we Saudis must acknowledge that our real enemy is religious fanaticism. We have to stop talking about the need for reform and actually start it, particularly in education. Otherwise, what happened here on Monday night could be the beginning of a war that leads to the Talibanization of our society.

"On the streets of Riyadh yesterday, I saw thousands of angry Saudis. I am angry too. What our extremists exported is coming back to hit us, dreadfully, at home. This Saudi anger could be a sign that our society soon might be able to start looking at itself."

What is striking about these comments is that they came from what is basically a government controlled media. A sure indication that the Saudi Government is giving serious thought to political change in the Kingdom. Only the liberation of the Iraqi people could have brought about what was unthinkable only a short time ago. This is the kind of news that the likes of Clark do not want to hear.

Clark prophesied that "In the years ahead, the war against Iraq will come to be regarded as one of the most monumental failures of US foreign policy". On the contrary, my prophesy is that in the years to come the actions of Bush and Blair will be trumpeted as a noble and brave deed carried out by men who were not afraid to confront evil when it challenged them, and in doing so freed a people, who were neither kith nor kin, from a vile regime.

Saddam "promoted women",etc. Note the similarity ro the Left's defense of Bill Clinton. Clinton may have done some "inappropriate" things where idividual women were concerned; but, he supported women's rights, including abortion. Therefore, he received the full support of feminists,liberals and Democrats. What he did in his "private" life was not important. What counted only was what he advocated politically. The real meaning of all this is that the Left is morally bankrupt and totalitarian in nature.

Because they live in their own little ivory tower of ignorance. If they were to live the way the Iraqs did under Sadam, I doubt if they would be spouting this bs. There is nothing like actual experience.

It's not that complicated. The leftist are racists. They suffer from a form of the "white man's burden", i.e. only whites can act civilized. With such low expectations for the non-whites of the world, it is easy to understand how they are impressed by the likes of Saddam and Fidel.

6 posted on 05/18/2003 9:55:35 AM PDT by TheDon ( It is as difficult to provoke the United States as it is to survive its eventual and tardy response)

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