UNDERSTANDING THE MIND OF SADDAM HUSSEIN

Victor Bloom MD

The middle east is in turmoil and I strain my mind to make sense of it all. Perhaps if I put together everything I know about human psychology and human history, it will make some sense. The Peace Process is stalled in Israel. Iraq is intransigent again. Another terrorist act in Luxor, Egypt. Random bombings of civilians, ambushing of Israeli soldiers, Arab kids throwing rocks, another Arab teenager dead. How to make sense of all this?

Saddam Hussein is pictured as a trouble-maker, not without reason. But what is really going on? I cannot find any useful information about him in the news media. I turn to my computer and seek information on the Internet, something I have been doing more and more lately, to answer difficult questions. Sure enough I find a web page from Iraq, pictures of a friendly, smiling Saddam Hussein, and a rough translation into English from Arabic of a speech he made recently to his people.

He talks of the Arab Nation. He talks of Unity. He implores his fellow Arabs to find their roots, otherwise they are lost and weak. He says they are lost and weak because of Imperialist America. He is referring to the strangling sanctions placed on Iraq by the United Nations because of their losing the Gulf War. He is sitting on tremendous oil reserves that cannot be used until the sanctions are released, and a precondition for that is Iraq cooperating with the UN agencies to monitor and prevent his having weapons of mass destruction.

Since Might Makes Right, we can have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and he cannot. He tells his people it doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem fair that powerful nations have power over weaker nations, and that the developed nations are affluent and the undeveloped nations are poor. Again we have the Haves and the Have-nots.

Saddam Hussein wants to do something about that. And why not? He wants to be a Great World Leader. He wants to join the company of Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, Attila the Hun, Hannibal, Napoleon and Hitler. If you win, you go down in history. If you lose, you're a... loser. Nobody wants to be a loser, especially a megalomaniac like Saddam Hussein. I believe I read once that as a boy he watched the murder of his father, a socialist who was opposed to the hegemony of the powers that won World War I, which passed to the powers that won World War II, in which the United States of America is prominent.

Part of the history of the middle east is that the Powers That Be supported ruthless dictators who were our allies. The persecution and oppression of their people was accepted, tolerated and supported because the alternative, it seemed, was worse. And that would be for the middle east to become socialist or communist, or God forbid, separate and autonomous and powerful, so that they could put a stranglehold on the tremendous oil reserves below the Sahara. They could conceivably grind our economy to a halt. Remember the crisis of 1973, when there were lineups at the gas pumps.

Now, over a quarter century later, it seems that the world's oil reserves are endless again, and gas is relatively cheap, oil is plentiful for our heating and lubricating needs, and consequently, our economy is strong and growing. A united Arabia could put a stop to all that. Imagine the oil sheiks who are fantastically wealthy, sitting by their cash registers, next to their oil wells, raking in the billions. And not sharing the wealth with their people. Why are the Arab nations still undeveloped with all that wealth? Why do the sheiks have palaces and harems and fleets of Rolls and Benzes, jet planes for their jet setters and huge deposits in Swiss Banks?

Is no one outraged? From what I read of Saddam Hussein's speech to his people, Saddam Hussein is. He knows that before Khomeini was the Shah of Iran. The Shah was our man. He was the lesser of evils. But while he endorsed some advances and the westernization of Iran, he brutally oppressed any dissents, and he was supported by American money and the CIA. We were defending our interests in the Middle East. Our interest is oil. Oil, oil, oil.

Without oil, our economy would grind to a halt. So we had reason. But we made a lot of enemies. Maybe it was true that a young Saddam Hussein saw his father killed, a father that was working for Arab independence, unity and autonomy. Maybe he, in his mad, ineffective way, is trying to right a wrong. Maybe. Maybe he just wants to feed his own ego and be more powerful than his father, who succumbed to a greater power.

Might makes right? Is that what we are left with? We have the might, so we must be right. Therefore, we have to get our allies together and work through the United Nations to prevent Saddam Hussein from becoming what he wants, the leader of a united Arab world, who can call the shots and set the oil prices. Saddam Hussein says that the United Nations is a tool of the United States. We have the armed might, the aircraft carriers, fighters and bombers and technology to do a repeat of the Gulf War. Another insurrection against our hegemony can be put down.

But we must understand that behind all the violence and complexity of the Middle East is a historic force that we have to be familiar with. There was a time the thirteen colonies organized and fought to be independent of the British. We won the Revolutionary War. Less than a century later it was necessary to fight the Civil War to prevent secession and maintain the unity which we cherish today.

We must understand that there are forces in the Arab world longing for fairness, unity and strength, not to be ruled and controlled by the developed nations, who are utterly dependent upon them for oil. On the other hand, they must understand that they have the resources to correct the ills of their own society. There is money enough so that no Arab need be poor or rootless.

comments can be directed to vbloom@comcast.net.