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US Shows Saddam to Iraqis: ""He Now Knows It's All Over" - But When Is The US Mission Accomplished?

Angelique van Engelen - 4/7/2005

When American officials communicated to the Iraqis that their ex-leader was watching the new Iraqi president Jalal Talabani take the oath from a lone jail cell, the message won't have missed its intended impact on the collective psyche. Saddam Hussein apparently was visibly shaken watching the proceedings. "It is now clear to him it's all over", they told the Iraqi people. But when is it 'all over' for the US troops in Iraq? It is increasingly believed that the US idea of 'mission accomplished' is by no means ascribed to tangible realities only.

You have to hand it to US decision makers, much though you may despise the war against Iraq and its inherent manipulative action, which left 120,000 Iraqis dead and a further 200,000 severely injured - already significant change at grassroots level has been brought about in Iraq. What's more, the brutal force of power might have slightly balanced the persistent urge of most Arab societies to stick to beliefs that their relations with the West are ultimately supposed to end in a clash.

On the one hand the war in Iraq shows the frightening extent to which the US government thinks it is allowed to go to influence large parts of the world. Not only did it invade Iraq militarily, but control of all other public levels has also largely been in the hands of US public officers, who consult the nationals on virtually all issues to do with state building. A laudable effort to which it is morally obliged perhaps, but it is also a dangerous stepping stone to ensuring more permanent influence.

On the other hand, the fierce debate that's broken out in Iraq's homegrown political circles and the strong will that the chosen leaders are displaying in wanting to resolve their differences displays the strong national Iraqi identity that can't be easily be pushed aside.

Time will tell if the Iraqi democratic experiment ultimately will translate as merely the result of a ploy by the US to maintain its influence in ways that even the most paranoid of Arabs wouldn't have dreamt up years ago. It will also be interesting to see whether Iraq will manifest itself indeed as one of the healthier societies within the Arab world. It is hardly useful to make predictions to this effect today. What is certain however is that experts from all kinds of disciplines will be studying Islamic tensions, suspicions, confrontations, and enmities that characterize the relationship of the Arab world to the West in a whole new light after the war in Iraq. In that sense, the US has accomplished its mission in more than the ordinary meaning of the word.

The relationship of the Arab world with the West is dominated by certainly not purely affairs of the spirit, or simply clashes of religious ideas or theological interpretations, or merely matters of beliefs, values, images, and perceptions. They are the normal affairs of history, power politics, international relations, and the pursuit of vital interests", says Sadik J. Al-Azm, an emeritus professor of modern European philosophy at the University of Damascus, in a paper a few years ago - debunking the myth many Arabs believe in - the one of the ultimate clash and survival of the Islamic faith as triumphant.



But these words don't dispel the fears of people who have been shouting for years that the US is aiming to find a way into the national agendas of the Middle Eastern countries in a quest to police pretty much the entire world as it sees fit. Not least considering what's going on in the media in Iraq and the entire Arab world, which have become so strongly Americanised that even the sceptics must have noticed.



From feeble post-Cold War presence of Voice of America, a plethora of US media outlets are now directly broadcasting to, yet not catering for the Middle East population. Ironically their message and sometimes overt propagandistic methods employed would years ago have been ascribed to communist regimes that stations such as VOA themselves were meant to provide an antidote to.



In Iraq people for the last six months have gained access to all the main tv shows and soaps and news programs that are aired in the US. CBS is shown live from Fifth Avenue. "Two years ago, the major part of the war in Iraq was all about bombarding us with smart bombs and high-tech missiles. Now there's a different sort of war- or perhaps it's just another phase of the same war. Now we're being assailed with American media." one famous pundit blogger from Iraq writes.


It's not only international stations airing the products of their model market economies toward the Middle Eastern public, but what's really objectionable to some is that local Iraqi tv stations are broadcasting programs along similar formulas. One station, Al-Hurra, is perhaps the best example of a heavily Americanized organization which portrays reality almost exclusively from a US point of view to somewhat bepuzzled Iraqi citizens. Some highly controversial formulas of US tv shows do find great popularity in the Arab world. It appears that the excesses of irrationality that dominate shows like Jerry Springer in the US have a natural overlap with the tastes of many Arabs.



One such controversial television show that educated people believe is insulting and ridiculous nevertheless has helped a portion of the Iraqi society tremendously in reducing fears of terrorists and building some confidence law and order. It has hit international headlines for showing terrorists as humans to the Iraqi public, having convicted terrorists publicly confess to the most insiduous crimes and immoral sexual escapades. But it's not only a few shows that render the media landscape quite uncharacteristic to the society as it is now- people say that watching all local news anchors of the five stations without exception are mimicking US tv.



The high dosage of overt anti Sunni bias of some stations is making people aware of the partiality of the media and this has led to a highly critical attitude not found in many Arab countries. Efforts are underway to create a better domestic journalist base. A recently formed organisation called the Iraqi National Journalists Advisory Panel is one example. It unites journalists in their struggle for greater protection -as many as 70 journalists were killed by the insurgents since the start of the war and over half of them were acts of attribution against local reporters- and to promote independent journalism.

The first feeble steps toward a true democracy in Iraq have been set completely under perhaps stomach turning US tutelage, yet in the short term, the US guided transition to democracy might be very necessary to bring about an acceptable post-war Iraqi political landscape. And who can object to the division of power at first glance? A Sunni speaker is going to be installed in the National Assembly. The country's going to be run by a Kurdish president, and the top job of prime minister is going to a Shia. And there will be Sunni and Shia vice presidents. Sounds all fine. Foreign Affairs is going to be done by a Kurd, Defense by a Sunni, and Oil, Interior and Finance ministries are run by Shias too. All candidates that are named are subject to enormous scrutiny and any news so far out of the negotiations is also reason to be hopeful. Lastly, people in power are also putting their heads on the line for the jobs, so they can't be anything but altruistic decisions, indicating good integrity.

The efforts to remove the rather large stumbling blocks that stand in the way of a healthy cooperation between the factions that the new government is made up of also bode well. Any work that's done now is reducing the threat in weakening the upcoming government later. In this light, the agreement on the inclusion of Kurdish freedom fighters, the Peshmerga militias, into the Iraqi armed forces is a hopeful sign that the rest of the Kurdish issues are also going to be resolved. The Kurdish fighters will be deployed regionally. Oil revenues which are among the most tough issues the new government will have to tackle, are said to also have been agreed on.

Meanwhile, the main element believed to be the largest single factor undermining any possibility of any kind of normal life in Iraq - terrorist insurgency - is slowly, but tangibly being pushed back. It won't be a carefree sunshiny day any time soon in Iraq, but things are less war torn now than a few months ago.Terrorists are said to be moving away from the cities and are now taking to roads connecting cities and provinces. A number of highly publicised instances where ordinary citizens dared to hand over and name suspected terrorists to their local lawmakers has meant a psychological breakthrough in this process. Having been subject to one dictatorship hasn't exactly taught the Iraqis to decisively say 'enough' in the distant past perhaps, so this is progress. "We won't stand for you no more, boyz", the Iraqi people are increasingly saying.



Polls that are quite representative for the entire population in Iraq reveal sociological factors that differ from the general idea that it's hardly possible a society ruled by law and order, let alone a democracy is going to emerge in Iraq. Oxford Research International Poll, which conducts opinion research in newly emerging countries came out with a report ahead of the elections which showed Iraq's population as having emerged from a war. One in ten respondents to the survey answered the poll's first question of whether you can trust other people in the affirmative, which is far lower compared to other countries. Yet overall trust in institutions was on the rise, with religious figures achieving top-scoring trust levels but people also displayed increased levels trust toward indigenous security institutions (the police and the army), as well as to the UN.



At the same time, Iraqis were highly critical of the Coalition Provisional Authority, with two in ten respondents rating it as successful, another two in ten saying there were both successes and failures. Four in ten think it was 'entirely unsuccessful'. Similar views are known to exist on most public affairs issues by Iraqis. It's likely that some of these ideas have changed over the months during which political parties bickered over the distribution of power and which saw the return of the Sunni political party to mainstream politics, yet the ideas on what constitutes 'democracy' will have to be learnt by trial and error. The practical issues inherent to a democracy, such as having a real parliament, a constitution and a functioning multi party system, are all quite novel concepts to a large part of the eligible voters in Iraq at this present day.



However obscure day to day politics of a democratically chosen government still might seem, Iraqis are already objecting to blatant propaganda in their new media loud and clear. The Arab world once again somehow unites - this time in being appalled at how the contours of the 'imperialising' power of the US are becoming visible in the media throughout the Middle East. One famous Egyptian feminist opionion leader, Nawal al Saadawi, speaks for many when she says that no longer is the battle for the Middle East restricted to its territory only, but that the American superpower is now annexing the Arab idea of struggle too. This romantization of otherwise quite horrific realities makes the US hegemony to the Middle East itself appear somewhat more of an established fact though.

Tricks that have been played on the Iraqi psyche for the last few years faintly resemble my ten year old son's dealings with his toy soldiers who he plays out entire wars with on the floor. The general tendency of the under-his-breath rhetoric is pretty much along the lines of "You are dead meat, you are. You know why? Yesterday, you fouled up pretty bad....". Words spoken invariably just ahead of gutteral gunshots or near mortal injuring that livens things up beyond empty threats. The punishments for 'fouling things up' never change, which I find interesting. But what's perhaps more interesting is that they are never communicated beyond the realms of the game. Implications are all the game is. There's nothing more irritating to my son than me questioning what the hell he's actually fighting out.

Similarly, PR-like government campaigns to prepare a people for 'what's next' are somehow less queried and the more implicit the ingredients, the more psychologically tinted they are no doubt. Maybe events in Iraq might make a case for defining psychology as another word for 'effective governing'. Playing on people's collective psyche is very much like conducting a puppet show; you pull one string and get a result that's according to your premeditated target. So easy in some ways. So difficult in others though. Let's hope that the post-authoritarian Iraqi society is successful at the creation of a free press. If every journalist in Iraq adheres to an ultimate goal of all round myth debunking perhaps Saddam ought not be so alone when he's pulling his hair out at what his country has come to. It certainly makes for great stories.