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Dear Rinaldo, For Saddam Hussein, it isn't April that is the cruelest month, but March, which fiercely blows the dry wood to the bitter land.
Saddam has soaked Iraq's soil with the blood of scores of thousands of children, mothers, fathers. He has murdered dozens with his own hands, and turned tens of thousands of others over to the most sadistic torturers. His thugs rape children in front of their parents, to make the latter talk. He has forced generals whose loyalty he doubts to watch one of their number, hands and feet tied, torn apart by wild dogs. His torturer-in-chief delights in putting out cigarettes in the pupils of his prisoners' eyes. The reports of Amnesty International and Middle East Human Rights Watch must be read in small doses, so terrible are they to absorb. The public of the world should steel itself to hear thousands of these stories, which will burst suddenly from the silence in the next few days, when Saddam's people are at last freed from fear of him. For months now, the world's press has not exposed the whole sordid story of Saddam's rule, for they were preoccupied with the efforts of France to block the United States — and, incidentally, to prevent the whole truth from coming out. For France is deeply implicated in the building up of Saddam Hussein and his rule for thirty years. "My friend Saddam Hussein!" Jacques Chirac has boasted for years and years, as he toasted him and welcomed him in Paris, signing commercial deal after commercial deal with him. A cartoonist in France once called him "Jacques Iraq." Watching the early news from the front, watch for signs that units of the army start surrendering in large numbers. Watch for many citizens rushing forward to tell their bitter stories with tears streaming down their faces and clutching photos of their dear dead ones tortured to death or "disappeared." (Recent reports say that the regime seizes as many as a hundred Iraqi every month, who simply disappear.) Watch for news that the circles within circles who protect Saddam Hussein from his own citizens and his own army begin to crumble inwards, one betraying another, until there is no one willing to be the last to die for the dictator. Watch, too, for signs that the thousands of scientists whom Saddam recruited with high salaries from all over the nearby world to build up his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, start to come forward to tell everything they know, and start leading Coalition troops to evidence they would otherwise never find. I believe that the world, which has so long averted its eyes from the suffering of this noble Arab people, is going to learn shocking lessons about how negligent the reporting of the press has been for months and even years. We should have known. We should have known. Saddam should have been exposed for what he is. The interests and investments and contracts of the French, Russians, and Chinese should also have been exposed, so that their threats of vetoes might have been better understood. As for the future, let us hope that Iraq soon builds again the basic institutions of an incipiently free society — a free press, open debate, safe opposition parties, the beginnings of a federal system uniting a pluralistic people, free and energetic enterprise, and thriving and vibrant schools. Let us pray for the speedy arrival in suffering Iraq of what Franklin D. Roosevelt once spoke of as "the Four Freedoms." Freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. It is time for the Arab world — and the whole, worldwide Muslim community — to begin sharing in those freedoms. — Michael Novak is the winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize for progress in religion and the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. |
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