Grendel on the Tigris
by Joshua Adams
Opening his mouth for a tongue depressor, Saddam Hussein looked a bit like Grendel
might have if Beowulf had given the monster a dental exam before rending his limbs.
Hussein, the fearsome tyrant of the Tigris who murdered thousands of his own people
and countless others, who defied the will of the international community for years,
found himself saved from a hail of bullets but not the poking and prodding
of a U.S. military doctor. How deliciously mundane the images were — a fitting
end for a man whose lowly criminality was writ large in his final moments of freedom:
boxed beneath the earth, trapped like a rodent fleeing a broom, he reportedly told
the US troops, "Don't shoot."
It is easy to glorify this scene, especially since it is some of the first good
news from Iraq in months. And though even President Bush prescribes continued patience in Iraq,
it's hard to say Saddam's capture isn't a major step forward. Indeed, those of us who
doubted the war or outright opposed it will wake at night with the grainy video of the
toppled dictator still dancing through our brains. Are we wrong? Does jailing Saddam
Hussein for his crimes against humanity finally make this war worthwhile?
Yes and no. The car bomb that killed six Iraqi policemen the day after Saddam's
arrest makes it painfully clear that the insurgency will not automatically fade. Of
more concern is the emerging expert consensus that Hussein's role in the
insurgency has been primarily symbolic. Clearly, without communications equipment in
his "spider-hole," it's doubtful he could have been a potent logistical resource for
those whom the administration has labeled "terrorists." But symbols are
relational things: they change their form, but not their function, and Hussein isn't
the only one in Iraq. As long as the US military occupies the country, the insurgents
will have all the twisted justifications they need to kill their countrymen, and ours.
What may make sense is Saddam's trial, because it will finally offer some evidence
that the neoconservatives mean what they say, that this war has not only been about
American hegemony but also about the liberation of the Iraqi people. The rule of law
will come to Iraq with its own symbolism, in the form of a tribunal, and it will
inspire other trials, other settlements and, in our wildest cosmopolitan dreams,
reconciliations. Inept as the Bush administration has been during
the occupation, it now has a chance to show it has learned that power and
authority are not the same thing. Hoping for an international court similar to
the one trying Slobodan Milosevic would be too much. But giving the Iraqis a say in
trying Saddam seems doable even for the battalions of Republican appointees running
the country. Such a gesture would show that this war was more than a convenient
vendetta for a beleaguered president.
Still, questions persist. And much to the delight of doubters abroad, and to the
dismay of doubters at home, the capture of Saddam only throws these problems into
high relief. If Bush was right that Iraq possessed large quantities of chemical and
biological weapons, where are they? Surely it is easier to find massive amounts of
sarin and anthrax — or at least the traces thereof — in a country the size
of California than it is to find one man who employed a legion of body doubles.
Where is the evidence of Iraq's nuclear weapons program? If, under interrogation,
Saddam admits that he and his lackeys destroyed long ago the offending ordnance,
we will have vanquished our enemy, but not for the reasons we sought him in the
first place. And where are the connections to Al Qaeda? Debunked, save for the
conspiracy-theory wallpaper appearing under the banner of the Weekly Standard.
Recall Paul Wolfowitz's explanation in Vanity Fair that weapons of mass destruction
were a convenient "bureaucratic" cover for going to war. The capture of Saddam
Hussein, then, looms as a convenient, "bureaucratic" measure of success. It lulls
us not only into thinking we are making real progress, but it also helps us forget
that the reasons we went to war were, baldly stated, a fraud. Conservatives bloat
like goldfish at this accusation, but it's the Left that should be outraged: The
Bush administration demonstrated how little it respects human rights by declining
to make human rights the sine qua non of the conflict. In reality, it was
the only justification that stood on two legs. Even then, Republicans, disdainful
of a foreign policy that complicates international business, never made it walk
very far. Capturing Saddam Hussein was not a victory in the war on terrorism: The
terrorists who threaten America immolate skyscrapers; they do not say, as Saddam
reportedly did to his captors, "I am prepared to negotiate."
Until the ink has dried on a new Iraqi constitution and all the US troops is home,
until the Iraqis hold free elections and guarantee their own human rights —
until these Herculean goals have been met, billions of dollars will be spent,
hundred of lives lost, in vain. In the event that we succeed, we will warm our consciences
with the notion that we have finally done well by our Arab brothers and sisters; we
will say, much like Paul Wolfowitz's teachers did, that noble ends justify
indelicate means. But when the next tin despot ambles into our sights, whether in
Iran or Syria or North Korea, what will we say then? Convince us you have weapons of
mass destruction, so we can liberate your people?
E-mail Joshua Adams at joshua at uchicago dot edu.
