Saddam and Stalin

[The Great Quail]

> The thing with Stalin was a consequence of Baathism and the "Arab
> socialism". Remember Nasser.

Not exactly. Saddam Hussein has always been an admirer of Stalin -- during
his youthful exile in Cairo (after his failed assassination attempt on Iraqi
president Qassem) he made claims to be studying Stalin, and during his rise
to power, he made constant references to Stalin and Stalinist methods. In
fact, during one televised interview, he was sure that numerous books about
Stalin would be seen in the background, and he was fond of Stalinist maxims
such as "No person, no problem."

Once, when questioned about the paradox inherent in his love of  Stalin and
his hatred of communism, Saddam remarked, "Stalin -- a communist?" To
Saddam, Stalin was a nationalist dictator, not a true Marxist at all. "He
Who Confronts" never really viewed "The Man of Steel" as anything but a
spiritual brother. 

In fact, there are numerous similarities between Stalin and Saddam. Both
came from more provincial backgrounds, their accents and lack of education
giving them something of a surly inferiority complex when compared with
their revolutionary comrades. Their pathways to power were very similar,
especially given the fact that they both kept continually purging the Party
of anyone who opposed or even threatened them, especially colleagues from
the "old days." (They both favor expatriate assassinations of exiles as
well.) The thing Saddam most wanted to learn from Stalin was the best method
of setting up a security-based totalitarian regime. (He also studied Hitler
as well, bit more with an eye on appealing to the populace.) Saddam's
hyper-paranoid, "wheels within wheels within wheels" array of internal
monitoring and security agencies are not only very Stalinist, they one-up
the Georgian "grey mediocrity" on several accounts. One Saddamist innovation
is the idea of shared complicity -- he would "invite" high-ranking officials
of the Ba'ath party to carry out the executions of their "traitorous"
colleagues, thereby making them 100% complicit in the terror-tactics of the
regime. 

Saddam Hussein truly is a monster -- in fact, he's almost a "beautiful
monster," he's such a case study in brutality. Whether or not you support
this war, it's impossible to dispute the evil of Saddam Hussein.

Regarding the Nasser comparison, though -- one "good" thing Saddam did take
from Nasser was the idea of nationalization. After the Iraqi petroleum
company was nationalized, the Ba'ath party had enough funds to truly
modernize Iraq. It's a shame that Saddam *is* so evil: he did lots of truly
good things for the country in the 1970s, before the horrors of the
Iran/Iraq war.

--Quail