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Osama
and Saddam: Dead or Alive?
April 15, 2003
By Joe Vecchio
When you're prosecuting a war, and you want to get people
behind your cause, personifying your enemy is a pretty good
way to motivate people. It gives them something to focus their
hatred on. There are thousands of examples of this throughout
history, even in America's relatively brief history we've
had a pretty decent share of them. After 9/11, that personification
came in the person of Osama bin Laden. George W. Bush made
it a point to single him out, using a lot of Old West terms
like "Dead Or Alive" or "He Can Run But He Can't Hide." And
rightly so: bin Laden has been using terrorism against the
United States for many years. President Clinton did a lot
to try to capture him during his term (despite the numerous
lies being spread by the corporate media), but there were
limits to what he was able or willing to do in order to accomplish
that. George W. Bush didn't recognize those limits, and was
quite willing to launch a war against Afghanistan in order
to to get bin Laden. And while we've succeeded (to a point)
in removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, the actual
person is missing, and no one seems to be talking much about
that right now.
When Iraq was made the focus of our war machine, Saddam Hussein
was made into the next personification of war. It's all well
and good to say that the reason this came about was because
we needed to make people forget that we had failed to find
bin Laden, and there is some truth to that, but Hussein has
been a poster boy for regime change for the Bush administration
since long before 9/11. Bush's father, for his own reasons,
stopped short of getting him twelve years ago. President Clinton
did an excellent job keeping Iraq contained (despite the numerous
lies being spread by the corporate media), but was unable
or unwilling to launch a war for the purpose of removing him
from power. George W. Bush was willing to launch a war against
Iraq in order to get Hussein, and while we've succeeded (to
a point) in removing the regime, the actual person is missing,
and no one seems to be talking much about that right now.
My question, then, is a simple one: where is Osama bin Laden?
And where is Saddam Hussein? The answer, unfortunately, is
a lot more complex.
Rumor has it that bin Laden escaped when a group of US Special
Forces were delayed during the assaut on the stronghold of
Tora Bora, and that bin Laden, who supposedly is hooked to
a kidney machine, escaped into Pakistan. The Bush regime has
claimed that it's likely bin Laden was buried somewhere in
the rubble, but without a body it's hard to know for sure.
They have played down his disappearence, saying he's been
"marginalized," but they put a lot of emphasis on getting
bin Laden personally, so it's important that we get some sort
of evidence proving something one way or another. Fighting
between US forces and those of the Taliban are still going
on near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, and the Bush regime
is steering clear of tough talk when it comes to nuclear-capable
Pakistan. So what happened to bin Laden?
It's possible that he's dead, killed in the bombing of Tora
Bora or elsewhere, and that can be quite dangerous. Because
if he is dead and we just haven't found his body, his "voice,"
manufactured by who knows who, can continue to manipulate
his followers from beyond the grave. And even if proved dead,
he would be a martyr for the terrorist's cause for years to
come.
It's also possible that he escaped. Many countries would
take bin Laden in, and Al Qaeda has branches worldwide, including,
I'm sure, some in the United States (though I doubt very much
he would be hiding here somewhere!). But if he escaped, the
question remains: did he do so because, like Jean Valjean,
he was able to stay one step ahead of the authorities, or
did he have a little help from the ones supposedly chasing
him?
The fall of Baghdad has raised some interesting questions:
first of all, the fact that no chemical weapons, or other
"weapons of mass destruction" were used by Hussein adds credence
to the arguments by anti-war spokespeople (such as myself)
that they never existed, which shatters a major argument for
the war. Also, the amount of resistance within the city dropped
tremendously as soon as US forces reached the city, after
a short delay. Consider that Baghdad is a city of five million
people, making it among the larger cities in the world. A
concerted effort by citizens aided by a smaller, more organized
military force to resist an assault of a city that size would
mean massive losses on both sides: look at Stalingrad, or
more recently, Grozny. American military superioity is based
upon air power, and in such a setting all these advantages
are useless. With such resistance, taking the city could conceivably
take months, even years.
But the resistance never materialized, and US forces took
control in less than a week. What happened? That the civilian
population never rose up is no surprise: most of them simply
left before the bombing began. Many others, with good reason,
saw no purpose in fighting to support Hussein. But that doesn't
explain why an estimated ten divisions of Hussein's Republican
Guard, thousands of his most loyal troops, suddenly disappeared,
along with the civilian leadership of Baghdad. What happened
to them?
Considering how many bombs we dropped on Baghdad, it's quite
possible that we've killed all or most of them. Even if Guard
units decided, for their safety, to hide in civilian population
centers to avoid being attacked, that may not have saved them.
Much as I hate to say it, the US military has used weapons
against civilians before, I see no reason for them to have
stopped now. But honestly, I don't consider this to be likely.
The best soldiers understand that to survive to fight another
day is the most important thing.
It's also possible that they escaped, as a group, to a neighboring
country, though this is even less likely than the above option:
we certainly would have seen such a massive troop movement,
and besides, who would take them as a group? Hussein pissed
off a lot of people in the Arab world, the only reason other
Arab nations are defending him is because they see the US
as a greater, common threat, which of course we are proving
to be. A more reasonable explanation is that they simply mixed
in with the civilian population, and the number of discarded
uniforms that have been found makes this scenario pretty likely.
Another possibility is that they never existed in the first
place, at least not in the numbers our military said. It wouldn't
be the first time we've lied about enemy strength in order
to manipulate people into using overwhelming force.
Since there's as of yet no definitive knowledge of where
Hussein is, rumors are beginning to circulate: one is that
the US made a deal with him to move him out and relocate him
somewhere, or that Russia agreed to take him in. Similar stories
have been told about bin Laden, and frankly, given the secretive
history of the Bush family and the CIA, anything is possible,
and the sad truth is that we will probably never know the
entire truth of the matter. Consider this: while Osama and
Hussein are two very different men with very different motivations,
they both have one thing in common. They were both CIA operatives
receiving the support of right-wing Republican administrations
(often without the knowledge or consent of members of Congress),
who turned against the US. But if we know anything about the
affairs of powerful men, we know that their actions are often
not so much a matter of things like justice and law so much
as they are matters of advantage and disadvantage. It's not
inconceivable that, in order to secure a swift military victory
which makes them look good politically, they would be willing
to cut such a deal even with men like Osama and Saddam, hiding
them away in obscurity, perhaps even to be killed when the
moment is convenient.
But while there is certainly motive for doing just that,
this also might simply be a case of screwing up. Having a
military as large as we do, and relying as we do on superior
technology, can make smaller objectives more difficult than
larger ones, and our technology can be used against us. Osama,
for example, is said to have gotten away in part because we
were tracing his cel phone, and he led us away from him by
doing nothing more complicated than giving it to someone else.
And there is always the matter of normal human nature: jealousies
between the different services, or between different units
within the same service, the need to keep some things secret,
all of these things can contribute to a big enough breakdown
that would allow a single person to escape our net.
One other thing we know for sure: that the Bush regime isn't
that much different in application than that of Saddam Hussein,
just infinitely more powerful. Both are ideologues with an
overinflated sense of self-importance who either disregard
the rule of law or use the law as one of many tools to suppress
opposition. Both will use religion as a means of motivating
people whether they believe in the religion or not, and both
will say one thing publicly while doing the opposite in private.
And finally, both have no qualms about killing anyone who
poses a serious threat to their power.
This is where the Bush regime is ultimately wrong. It believes
that it's just a question of having an overwhelming amount
of military force. But wise leaders know when and how to use
force when trying to reach a goal. Ideologues never change
their minds and never change the subject, and you deal with
them by striking sideways, cutting off the sources of their
power: fear, hatred, resentment, poverty, hopelessness. But
in order to do that you have to be setting a precedent, and
the precedent they have set is horrible: they lie so often
and so badly that it's blatantly obvious to anyone whose main
source of news is something other than FOX. Look at what's
happened in Afghanistan. We've forgotten all about them because
we're so focused on Iraq. When (not if) we attack Syria, Iraq
will have fallen by the wayside, and when we attack Iran,
Syria will also be forgotten.
A skilled regime would have been able to secure the proper
international support that would have legitimized the need
to remove Hussein before striking, winning not only the war,
but the peace as well. You can accomplish goals more easily
when you establish a foundation of trust by keeping not only
your promises but the promises of previous administrations,
recognizing that you are merely keepers of the law, and not
the law itself.
But instead of a foundation of trust, we've built one from
scorn. From day one the Bush regime has made its position
clear: we are the rulers of the world, and you do as we say
or pay the price. We do not recognize international laws and
agreements, except of course when it's to our benefit. We
do not recognize and will ignore agreements made before we
came to power, even if sometimes they benefit us, because
to do that would legitimize the former administration which
we have demonized. Rights only come into play between equals
in power. The strong do whatever they want, and everyone else
does whatever they can.
They don't even care about whether Osama or Saddam, their
two personifications of evil, have escaped, or even if the
impression is given that they had something to do with their
disappearence. In their minds it increases their power by
throwing the opposition off-guard. How much do they know?
What are they hiding? While we're busy trying to grasp it
all, they've already moved on to the next stage, whatever
that may be. It's a web of deceit and deception as complex
as the Gordian knot. But just as Alexander did, we can break
that knot by cutting right through it. And when we do, we'll
learn a great deal. We may even learn what's happened to Osama
and Saddam.
Visit Joe Vecchio's blog, "Pax
Liberalis: One World, One Peace," and hear his Internet
radio show at The
Joey Joe Joe Show.
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