Middle East Focus: On my Gulf: an Iraqi Ba’athist Strangelove Advices his Victims…….

Arabia Deserta

On my Gulf: an Iraqi Ba’athist Strangelove Advices his Victims…….

Walking on water

This 'formerly murderous' chief of Ba’athist military intelligence under Saddam Hussein during the years of genocide and wars of aggression and use of WMD, is at it again. He is advising, in the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, the authorities on the Gulf, my Gulf, on how to handle their Shi’a minorities (and Shi’a majority in one case). He connects them to Iran: his own main concern and that of all Iraqi Ba'athists. He does not recommend doing what his boss Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds, not openly, but he is veering that way (hard for him to resist it, sort of like the Nazi arm salute of Dr. Strangelove). Give it time. There are many of his Ba’athist ilk giving advice in Gulf media from Kuwait down to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region. He and others like him are good at soothing the potentates, by kissing their “noses”, as we say in the Persian-American Gulf (in the USA they use kissing a different part of the anatomy to describe these Ba’athists). These same people were giving people on my Gulf advice in the 1980s, even while they were preparing to invade. He and others are doing the very same thing again, spreading sectarian discord, and there are enough fools in the Gulf states to listen to him again (asininity has never been in short supply in the Middle East, and it is rarely considered a shortcoming, au contraire). He is itching to fight the wars of the 1980s, but with Israeli or American troops. Iraqis do not trust his type, even as he comes recommended by some in the West. Many potentates in my Gulf region are like fools, they never learn, perhaps because he makes them feel important, more than they really are. Clearly we have our fair share of asses over there, and this is not news to me, it has never been news to me.

I am beginning to discern some warming toward the Ba’ath down the Gulf. That started to be noticed after the first Iraqi election in 2005. It became more pronounced during the campaign of 2010, and now it is kosher on the Gulf to openly miss the days of the Ba’ath (except for one country where they are still shy about it). Will the Ba’ath rise and come to power again? Not in Iraq, but it certainly is in the Gulf media, largely owned or controlled by the oligarchies and their plutocrat sidekicks and retainers.
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com