SADDAM HUSSEIN went to his death bravely and heroically, executed by agents of imperialism – the leaders of a puppet government that came to ‘power’ after returning to Iraq in the baggage trains of the imperialist armies of occupation.
The execution was a mark of the desperation of the puppets and their sponsors, the US and UK imperialists, at the defeat that is staring them in the face.
After holding Saddam captive for more than two years, the decision to murder him was taken because of the imminence of the defeat of the US and the UK. If they have to quit Iraq they definitely do not want to risk the return of a regime headed by Saddam.
It is a fact that the sectarian civil war that the imperialists and the mullahs have plunged Iraq into had only one political gainer, and he was of course Saddam. His popularity was increasing on a daily basis as people compared the way that they lived under his regime with the daily car bombings and sectarian crimes in today’s Iraq.
Bush and Blair could no longer tolerate Saddam alive, while puppet Prime Minister Maliki saw the execution of Saddam as the only way to curry favour with the religious fanatics who are his party’s base and who were growing extremely impatient with him.
That the assassination of Saddam will encourage the insurgency to reach new heights is obvious. This is why the British Prime Minister has got nothing to say about Saddam’s execution. The whole course of the development of the Iraq war has deeply demoralised Blair and he is not longing to spend the rest of his life dodging those who blame him for Saddam’s murder.
The question in Iraq now rests on the insurgency opening wide its doors to all those who want to drive out the occupiers and their puppets, and in this way striking a mortal blow at sectarianism.
This was in fact Saddam’s advice on his dying day.
The war talk about action against ‘the Persians’ and ‘the Persians wearing Iraqi clothes’ must be stopped.
In fact, the seeds of Saddam’s downfall were sown by his refusal to ally himself with the revolutionary masses who overthrew the Shah in 1979, and his decision to attack the Iranian revolution as an ally of Presidents Reagan and Bush, and their diplomat Donald Rumsfeld.
There was then, as there is now, two Irans: the Iran of the working class and the poor, who still receive precious little from Iran’s oil wealth; and the Iranian bourgeoisie and their clerical representatives, who have become the millionaire mullahs, busy privatising industry.
The US was pleased to be able to use Iraq against Iran, and then to attack Iraq, using as an excuse Saddam’s attempt to reclaim Kuwait.
The Iranian burgeoisie then paid Saddam back with his own coin, giving the US the go-ahead to invade Afghanistan after 2001 and then to attack Iraq in 2003.
Additionally, they provided the US and the UK with its SCIRI-Badr Brigade allies, who were allowed back into Iraq in May 2003, to provide suitable allies for the British occupiers in southern Iraq, who then became the basis of a ‘democratic government’.
Now the US is manoeuvring to attack Iran again, and is looking round for suitable shock troops for the ground fighting.
The cry for ‘war with the Persians’ risks repeating the mistake that was made in 1979, with even more disastrous results.
The task is to unite the Iraqi masses of all religions to drive out the occupiers and then to proclaim the united interests both of the Iraqi and Iranian masses in having a solid and unbreakable anti-imperialist alliance.
This is the only way to defeat imperialism in the Gulf.
The weakness of Saddam’s nationalism is that he thought that imperialism could be dealt with, and did not really appreciate its uncontrollable, rapacious nature. The need today is to replace nationalism with revolutionary socialism that aims to unite the masses of the Gulf to foil imperialist attempts to divide and rule, and drive it out of the region.
