The View From Baghdad
Sorting through conflicting thoughts on Saddam
“It’s a very humiliating issue. Now they will think all Iraqis are only men of words, without deeds. They say lots of things but do nothing.”
Iraqis will, of course, spend the rest of their lives struggling with the meaning of Saddam, while many foreign journalists are trying to reduce it all to simple emotions. This happens all the time. The American occupation is summed up in two kinds of images: the positive — the Saddam statue toppled — and the negative — suicide bombers, looters and U.S. Humvees blown up. But I’ve found it impossible to ascribe any single emotion to Iraqis. So much has changed so quickly that they still have no idea what their future will look like or how to take account of their past. The capturing of Saddam is definitive, and, given all the big problems in Iraq now, it’s also kind of irrelevant. And we’re just going to have to give Iraqis time to figure out what all of this means.
Adam Davidson is the Iraq correspondent for Minnesota Public Radio’sMarketplace.
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