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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (4946)	10/14/2001 8:31:10 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Saddam Hussein is of Sunni roots. The ruling regime is already Sunni. Why technically the first statement is correct, but can you be so sure of the latter? After all, Tarik Azziz, Iraq's foreign minister is not even muslim. The ribbon that ties Iraq and Syria together is their baathist ideology. I would explain it myself, but I found this link, which dates back to the gulf war, which does a much better job than I could: washingtonpost.com (scroll down) Ideology and Ambition Saddam's call for a jihad against the Arab monarchies of the gulf and their Western allies contradicts the relentlessly secular ideology of his Baathist Party, which is hated by many devout Moslems. "The Baath (Renaissance) Party was founded in Damascus in the 1940s by a small group of French-educated Syrian intellectuals. As with many of the Arab world's most radical movements, it was led initially by a Christian, Michel Aflaq, rather than a Moslem. Aflaq hoped that the party's pan-Arabism could provide a secular alternative to Islam for uniting the Arabs. Although committed to the Baathist dream of Arab unity, Saddam has never been able to bring himself to forge an alliance with Syria's Baathist president, Hafez Assad, in large measure because such an alliance would inhibit Saddam's own aspirations. Ironically, Syria's stand in the present crisis could be a determining factor in his fate should Syria decide to help Western powers tighten the blockade or use it as a back door to strike at Iraq. Despite a visceral animosity between the two rival Baath rulers, Baathists in Jordan have urged Assad to reconcile with Saddam "to serve the interests of the Arab nation." But given Saddam's effort to humiliate Syria in Lebanon last year by arming its main foe there, Lebanese Christian Gen. Michel Aoun -- and given Assad's and Saddam's stormy history of attacks and distrust -- few analysts believe Damascus will rescue Saddam despite the popularity of his Arab nationalist stance. Since even before he was sworn in as president after a power struggle in 1979, the Iraqi leader sought to become the champion of the Arabs. When he invaded Iran in September 1980, his propagandists described him as an Arab knight, and likened his assault to the battle of Qadissiyah, a heroic victory in 637 A.D. by the early Moslems over the Persians. In his speech Friday, Saddam again painted his campaign as a glorious equivalent of past Moslem crusades. In invading Kuwait, Saddam was acting out an old threat. His Baathist rhetoric historically has called for the elimination of existing Arab borders, which were drawn by British and French colonial powers. A specifically Iraqi claim long has been that Kuwait, which once was ruled together with southern Iraq under the Ottoman Turks, should have reverted to Iraq when the British left in . One of Saddam's greatest arguments against the man he helped topple from power in Iraq in 1963, Abdul Karim Kassem, was that Kassem had not taken Kuwait by force when the British left." ************************* Now maybe Saddam, who fancies himself the Don Corleone of the Middle East (the godfather is reportedly his favorite movie), might be changing his tactics towards undermining his neighboring regime, but I don't see him suddenly becoming an advocate for some religious theocracy. Hawk