HISTORY TURNS ON SADDAM'S CAPTURE
History can turn on the strangest things--a battle won or lost or not even fought, a word said or left unsaid, the actions of figures once believed to stride the world above the level that the rest of us inhabit. Sometimes history can turn on the creation of a myth, or the destruction of a legend. The weekend discovery of a lonely old man hiding in a hole in the ground may go down as a major turning point in history.
When World War II ended, it brought with it the end of an aggressive religion-based state. Japan's emperor was thought, pre-war, by his subjects to be divine, his life the embodiment of the state. Part pope (of the indigenous shinto religion), part warrior king, Hirohito commanded unquestioned loyalty and was believed by his people to be infallible, beyond human. He was so much superior to the average Japanese citizen that they never even heard his voice on the radio or television. Such things were beneath him.
But the Japanese people did eventually hear his voice. It was in September 1945. Hirohito took to the airwaves to announce Japan's unconditional surrender to the America that he had promised to defeat, changing Japan's view of him and of itself forever.
No longer divine, the emperor lost all power. Japan's post-war constitution put politics in the hands of the people's representatives, though the imperial family did get to stay on as figureheads. Over time, Japan transformed from a strict theocratic police state to a true democracy, to an economic powerhouse, even though it lacks many of the basic natural resources one would think are necessary to fuel such a rise. Japan had, in fact, embarked on its disastrous war course in the early 20th century in part to acquire those very natural resources. Imperial Japan believed it was its divine right to do so. Now an ordinary, human Japan can buy those resources, turn them into something useful, and sell them, and sell them in peace. Its transformation is one of the most remarkable achievements of the Pax Americana. Not coincidentally, Japan is one of America's best friends today.
More than the atomic strikes that ended the war, Hirohito's step down to ordinary humanity transformed Japan from empire to republic. Most Japanese would have kept on fighting, even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if he had ordered them to. He humbly asked them not to, and they agreed.
That was a turning point.
Fast forward to December 2003. A totalitarian state run by a man who called himself the Tiger of the Tigris has been conquered or liberated depending on your perspective, but the Tiger remains on the loose. His loyalist troops team up with a blend of fighters from around the region to try and reassert his ruthless authority, or at least chase off the interlopers. Since he symbolizes their struggle, they keep him abreast of their attacks like schoolboys vying for favor from their teacher. Like a ghost the old dictator haunts his former subjects, whose hearts are torn between supporting their liberators or hedging their bets on his return. It is in some sense a decision to bet on the strongest horse—the far off Cowboy or the fearsome Tiger? The Tiger always seems to outlast these crises, though this one is admittedly the most dangerous yet. His sons, heirs to his dynasty, are already dead. His statues have been pulled down, and his palaces are now military headquarters for the armies that deposed him. But still, the larger than life tyrant stalks the desert like an ill wind.
And then suddenly he shows up, a bedraggled old man, dirty and tired, climbing up out of a hole in the ground. He gave himself up to the infidel army without a shot, though all through the long, difficult years of his rule he exhorted his fighting men to martyr themselves for his Iraq. He had once paid suicide bombers in Israel, on whom he bestowed the highest compliments for their bravery and dedication. But when it was his turn to offer the full measure of his own blood for his people, he just gave up. Without a shot. When the battle began, he ran away and hid. When the infidels discovered him, he gave up without so much as a whimper. And then he let some American doctor stick a tongue depressor down his throat while the world looked on.
What might Saddam's surrender do to the Islamicist cause? There are a few hints, and they are all encouraging. Islamicism depends on its own belief in its inevitable triumph. Its ally Saddam’s ignoble capture is a powerful argument against that inevitability. The Arab street feels let down, as though their Tiger was all along really just a braggart feral cat. A mixture of disbelief, a swirl of conspiracy theories (signs of denial, which will eventually pass), and a grim resignation seem to have set in. Even those who hated him, and they are the majority of his former subjects, expected a more heroic end. They expected him to at least live up to his own hype. But he failed. Saddam’s capture has created the US military’s long promised shock and awe.
In the same way that Japan's defeat discredited its "divine" emperor for all time, Saddam's surrender will probably discredit the myth of the Arab strongman for a long, long time. Saddam was the strongest Arab strongman of the last three or four decades. He always stood up to the Great Satan, and lived to tell the tale. He was once within inches of obtaining the Islamic bomb, until the Israelis stepped in. Now some Cowboy from Texas has him in the palm of his hand, and the people who once feared him openly mock him. Justice surely is not far off; the Tiger will be put to sleep.
This is a turning point.
MORE: Charles Krauthammer agrees that Saddam's capture demystifies him as a pan-Arab strongman, and is a major turning point. Austin Bay comes to similar conclusions.
I think those who don't think Saddam's capture is a major turning point are kind of missing the point. Arab culture is based on a rumor-based, myth-based kind of information processing (in that sense, the left is becoming more and more like medieval Arab thinking every day). The scientific method by which the Western mind comes to conclusions based for the most part on hard evidence, reasonable assumption and testable hypotheses is utterly alien to most of Arab culture. Saddam's meek oral and lice exam at the hands of his old enemy destroys the last Arab strongman, which is one of Araby's larger myths, right in front of Araby's eyes. The titan has been revealed to be a mouse when his own life was on the line. Exposing that fact will make a difference, maybe not today, but over time as the myth evaporates and leaves a gaping hole in the Arab world's self-image.
The connection of all this to the Islamicists is that their ideology is based in part on their fascist/Islamic radical stew (the fascism imported from Europe, mostly), and in part on their own cultural heritage. You might compare it to the way the Hitler used the Teutonic myths, combined with his Aryan mythology, to create in Germany a kind of myth that Hitler and anyone who followed him would be invincible. The Nazi ideology was equal parts naked militarism, nationalism, and ethnocentrism. Ditto for the Arab-driven Islamicist terrorist enterprise, except that its nationalism includes all of Arabia as one nation.
Saddam's capture, and the way he was captured and the way he conducted himself before the camera, rips a big hole in their construct, and may over time expose it for the hollow house of cards that it is--in the minds of his own followers and allies, and those who hated him but nevertheless grew up believing in the Arab or Islamic strongman mythology. That's big.