December 31, 2009
This is the third anniversary of the martyrdom of Iraq President Saddam Hussein. It is an occasion to reflect on his qualities and qualifications as the greatest of Arab resisters and the most unwavering champion of the Arab nation. We may do so by citing authoritative and eloquent Islamic, Arab and even American sources, as well as the words of the man himself, as he addressed Americans and his fellow Iraqis from captivity and as he faced his martyrdom.
We will begin with the Editor of the Islamic "New Trend", Dr. Kaukab Siddique, who outlined and summarized Saddam's heroic struggle in the following terms:
"Under the most severe sanctions and embargo in the history of modern times, he kept the Iraqi people united and refused to surrender Iraq's sovereignty...
"Saddam knew that the U.S. had decided to attack Iraq with overwhelming military force but he refused to surrender. Russia offered him a chance to spend the rest of his life in luxury in a dacha in the Crimea but he refused.
"Owing to Saddam's persistent support for the Palestinian people and for martyrdom operations against Israel, every Zionist Jew in America, from professor to politician, raised a storm of dirty propaganda against him. It was evident that International Jewry would destroy Iraq.
"The choice before Saddam was to die like a lion or live like a jackal. He decided to die like a lion.
"Famed U.S. novelist (Tom) Clancy, closely connected to the military establishment, revealed that the U.S. tried to kill Saddam 33 times during the sanctions decade before the war.
"When the massive bombardment of Baghdad known as 'Shock and Awe' began, the primary target was Saddam. A superpower was trying to kill the President of a sovereign nation. Saddam decided to go down fighting.
"When the U.S. actually captured Baghdad and occupied Iraq with 135,000 heavily-armed troops with tremendous firepower, Saddam went underground and continued to lead the Resistance. The President had become the Mujahedeen, a first in modern Arab history! Saddam's sons and his grandson went down fighting against the occupation forces.
"After nearly nine months of fighting, the Americans captured Saddam. Among his meager possessions was a little notebook in which he kept account of every dollar he spent in the Jihad. Such was his honesty.
"During the show trial which was held to 'convict' the mujahid President, it became apparent that the charges against him were bogus. His attorneys were terrorized and the witnesses against him remained concealed. He stood strong throughout the trial, constantly seeking inspiration from the Qur'an and urging the Iraqi people to resist the occupation.
"Finally the U.S. arrived at its pre-determined plan to execute Saddam. This execution on 'Eid day was a slap in the face of the entire Islamic world.
"Saddam went to his martyrdom with a demeanor which was so calm, spiritual and full of the light of faith in Allah that people could see what a martyr is like: unafraid, focused on the honor of Iraq and the Arab and Muslim people and admonishing his Shi'ite executioners about their shameful behavior as agents of America."
Saddam's martyrdom inspired Layla Anwar, author of the blog-site "Arab Woman Blues" to address him as in these terms:
"Forgive me, Sir, I am not a very sophisticated woman. I speak a simple language, the language of the heart. No one hardly ever recognizes this dialect these days. But I have a feeling that, despite all your alleged hardness, You would.
"You know, my Dad before passing away said to me a few sentences that have remained with me since. He said 'My daughter, many things will come to pass in this life. You will face many trials and many errors. One thing you need to be certain of, though, don't ever lose your integrity or your dignity. The day you sell those, you will have sold your soul, and all is downhill from there.
"Sir, I am proud that you have not sold either. In that, you have helped us preserve our own intact. As for the rest, don't worry about them. They will end up cited as thugs, profiteering, sectarian, opportunistic hypocrites.
" What pains me most is that they succeeded in massacring yet another True Iraqi, a True Iraqi among many thousands. And that is what you are."
Saddam addressed the American people directly from his captivity in a handwritten letter dated July 7th, 2006, less than six months before his martyrdom:
"People of America, I address you not from weakness nor as a supplicant. I, my people, my brothers, comrades, my nation, we address you on the basis of our moral and human responsibility. I tell you that officials whom you know, and first among them your President, lied to you and deceived you and tricked you, using the media that portrayed Iraq to you as incorrigible and Saddam Hussein as a hateful dictator, and that his people hate him and are just waiting for their chance to get at him. Some of them just wallowed in lying falsehood to the point that they openly declared that the Iraqis would meet the invading armies with roses and celebration.
"I know that lots of people don't do a lot of analysis; they don't have the time or the ability or the desire to do careful assessments when presented with falsified news so as to uncover the truth. The American people had no chance to inquire, for example, why, if the people of Iraq hate Saddam Hussein, how he managed to defeat the Iran of Khomeini after eight years in the aggressive war that Iran sought to impose on us under the slogan of exporting the revolution beginning with Iraq? People of America, the victory over Khomeini's Iran was not due to the short length of the war, but came only after eight years of grinding warfare in which tens of thousands fell, hundreds of thousands on the Iranian side.
"If Saddam Hussein were a dictator, why did he establish a parliament with elections for the first time in the year 1980 during wartime, when there had been no parliament in Iraq since 1958? If he and his government were dictators, how could he visit schools, universities, towns and villages and spend the night with the people wherever the sun went down? How could he travel around and lead at he battle front during the day, even in the trenches in the front lines on the battlefield among the Muslim soldiers?
"Yes, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, your government deceived you, and you, or rather most of you, had no chance to inquire of themselves or of others in order to discover the truth because the Zionists in the lobby who advocated the war together with some of the centers of power were deceiving you and tricking you, hiding from your eyes the real truth, exchanging the facts for falsified and slanted information. Last but not least in this regard, if Saddam Hussein were a dictator hated and despised by his people, how is it that his people endured him and why was he chosen President by referendum?
"People of America, the misfortunes that have afflicted you and afflicted our Arab Nation and within it our heroic Iraqi people, including the breakdown of America's standing and reputation, were only caused by the reckless behavior of your government and by pressure from Zionism and power centers that influenced your government to commit those crimes and scandalous actions for specific ends that have nothing to do with the interests of the American people. The massacres and the blood flows in the streets and countryside of Iraq in torrents and the responsibility for that falls on America before all others. You know, or rather you have now come to learn, that neither the stooges whom the Americans brought in on board their aircraft or as shamefaced presents aboard their tanks, nor Iran, which pushed and still pushes forward those who support it and whom they support, would be able to cause the bloodshed or the destruction of the honor and the
property of our people and our state had not America undertaken the aggression and invasion and issued the orders, It is still issuing orders in the Green Zone. Therefore America bears the burden of all those crimes and outrages. So, will you put an end to what is going on by using the methods of direct truth without evasion and digression, or will you invite the machine of death to continue to eat away at the flesh of Iraqis and the flesh of Americans without doing anything to resolve this?"
Jeff Archer, President of the Palestine Iraq Center, distinguished American writer and investigative journalist and author of the incomparable "The Mother of All Battles", the authoritative book on the U.S. war against Iraq, brought out many little-know facts about Saddam's Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party-led government and its accomplishments in the face of the obstacles imposed by Imperialist and Zionist assaults. Besides the monumental advances in education, literacy, medicine, housing, women's rights and the welfare of children and the elderly, Archer noted:
"Many western observers are not aware that Saddam Hussein was well-regarded in much of the world. Brazilians remember that thousands of their countrymen were recruited by Saddam to build the advanced highway and bridge systems that once crisscrossed Iraq. Egyptians did not forget that two million of their countrymen owned and worked land in Iraq prior to January 1991.
"The Lebanese remembered the dozens of Iraqi trucks that showed up daily at the Lebanese border during that country's civil war. They were laden with food and clothing for any Lebanese person in need. The convoys' recipients included all Lebanese, not just certain factions of those battling in the civil war. Most Palestinians display a picture of Saddam Hussein on their walls. Over the years, many nations have temporarily supported the Palestinian cause, only to withdraw aid once threatened by the U.S. Saddam Hussein, even during the embargo years, supported the Palestinians with no exception, while other Arab regimes did not want to get involved because they did not want to upset their puppeteers in Washington and Tel Aviv."
In his Final Will, dated 26 December 2006, four days before his execution, Saddam displayed his magnanimity and his steely resolve and commitment to Iraq and the pursuit of social justice and liberation. Speaking to the Iraqi people, he exhorted them in the following fashion:
"The enemies of your country, whether they are invaders or Persians, found that (your) unity prevented them from enslaving you. Thus they drove their old-new wedge in the midst of you and the foreigners with Iraqi nationality responded; the hearts of these foreigners were wither already full of hatred or the envious in Iran filled them with hatred.
"They thought (that) they would vanquish you through sowing division between you and the true sons of the people in order to weaken the will and turn the sons of the country against each other rather than turn them against the real enemies. In order to confront the real enemies, we all have to pull together, even if we act under different banners...
"Brothers, mujahideen and fighters, I call on you to do this, and to abandon malice, because malice does not leave the one who harbors it any chance to be fair and just, and because it closes the minds. Malice takes the one who harbors it away from balanced thinking, correct choices, avoiding what is wrong, and prevents him from seeing the changes in the minds of those he thinks to be enemies, especially the delinquent ones who repent and go back to the true path, the path of the true people and the glorious nation.
"Brothers and sisters, my sons and sons of Iraq, comrade strugglers, I call on you not to hate the peoples of the countries that have committed aggression on us. I call on you to distinguish between the decision-makers and the people. Hate only the deed. Even if someone's deeds deserve to be fought, do not hate him as a human being. Do not hate the individuals who do evil, hate only the evil deed itself, and repel that evil as it deserves."
Layla Anwar summarizes the purport of Saddam's life, struggle and martyrdom as he approached the hour of supreme sacrifice:
"They say you were authoritarian and totalitarian. Come and see them now. See their fascism infesting the streets. See it in every neighborhood, see it in every corner. You said Women are the pioneers of this Arab Ummah, come and look at us now. Rape has replaced sexual intercourse, censorship has replaced education and forced domestication has replaced public life.
"You said Education is the sign of a Progressive Ummah. Our schools and universities are empty, and our brains drained and killed. You said Health is Free for all. Our hospitals are dilapidated and our doctors in exile. You said Kurds are our brothers, they are now trained as snipers by Israel. You said Christians and Muslims are part of this mosaic called Iraq. The Christians are fleeing by the thousands and the churches are deserted.
"Look at me Sir. I am a product of this wonderful mosaic called Iraq. I am half Muslim and half Christian, and the Muslim half has Shi'as and if you dig hard enough you will find Kurdish, Armenian, Turkish, Chaldean, Arabic roots all the way back...
"Where is my place now Sir? You are about to find your place soon, like a bird flying to nest into the arms of the sky, while I am left behind waiting my turn, and in the meantime searching, desperately searching for a place to rest my tired head, and finding none.
"Sir, I heard they will execute You within 36 hours, in time for the 'Eid, our sacrificial feast. You did say you are willing to be sacrificed for Iraq. You still believe they are worth it. I envy your Faith. May you go in Peace now, my True Iraqi."
Such a one as Saddam Hussein will never die. He will always live in the hearts and souls of the honest, suffering, dispossessed people, wherever people face slavery and oppression and whenever they fight for justice and dignity. He will abide forever, long after the Bushes, Clintons, Obamas and the predatory denizens of Congress, the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and Wall Street have gone to the final and lasting hell which they deserve, long after the exploiters and oppressors and their minions have rotted into oblivion.
Saddam Hussein will remain and endure as a shining light, an immortal in the pantheon of the truly great, a testament and an example to all that we could be, should be and need to be if we indeed seek to better ourselves and our world.
al-Ustadh Husayn Farajullah Zaki Al-Kurdi
Muharram 13, 1431
December 30, 2009 |
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