Toying with Saddam

It has been a rapid metamorphosis for Saddam Hussein. In the course of a few days he has been dramatically recast, twice over. The Evil Dict...

It has been a rapid metamorphosis for Saddam Hussein. In the course of a few days he has been dramatically recast, twice over. The Evil Dictator, the Ace of Spades on whose head American troops announced a 25 million bounty, was a trifle difficult to detect in the scraggy bearded fugitive located this weekend in a spider hole near one of his deserted palaces. He may have whispered, I am the president of Iraq, but this man whose realms had shrunk to a six by eight foot dugout looked more disturbed than disturbing. No one with even a modicum of allegiance to the rule of law can wage a defence of Saddam Hussein, but this new, enfeebled, avatar in the care of American doctors is hard to reconcile with the horrors at Halabja and elsewhere.

How wonderful, then, that within days of the capture another Saddam has appeared, appropriately bearded to denote his post-presidency makeover but with a wicked gleam back in his eyes and muscles in his biceps to restore the menace now synonymous with him. Captured Saddam, as he has been coherently restored to us, is now a doll. He is on sale for 30. Now that the imminent threat posed by the former Iraqi dictator has receded, he himself has gone pop. In today8217;s society of spectacle, he has passaged into popular culture. Which is only apt, since George Bush Junior8217;s military operation in Iraq has far too often seemed like a movie 8212; often comically so. The manoeuvre to net Saddam was called Operation Red Dawn. Red Dawn was a very forgettable, anti-communist Hollywood film released in 1984 that tracked a few good insurgents8217; attempt to overthrow a dictatorship. Umm, movie buffs have immediately queried, isn8217;t that rather ironic 8212; because in Iraq the Americans are the occupiers and Saddam was now in fact leading the charge of the insurgents.

But don8217;t blame the Bush White House for these glitches. In a battle for the hearts and minds of the Arab people 8212; of any people 8212; Washington perhaps has no better tested medium than Hollywood to exploit. So what if President Bush8217;s Top Gun moment this summer, with a Mission Accomplished banner fluttering loudly in the background, boomeranged. It did not stop Paul Bremer, chief administrator in Iraq, from once again paying homage to westerns by bragging, 8216;8216;We got him.8217;8217; Now what would he say of Saddam the Doll?