WASHINGTON — I had a strange experience the other morning at
the Heritage Foundation. I watched seven Iraqi men as they sat
through a documentary that included scenes of their own right hands
being lopped off by Saddam Hussein’s “physicians” at the now-famous
Abu Ghraib prison in the mid-'90s. Some fidgeted, some cried, and
others stared straight ahead, muscles tensed.
These men are the subject of Remembering Saddam,
produced by former ABC and NBC correspondent Don North shortly
after the liberation of Baghdad last year. Interviews of the men
and their families are juxtaposed with footage that was seized by
the U.S. forces of the amputations and other atrocities.
The seven men lost their hands for the crime of dealing in
American currency, which was forbidden by Saddam Hussein in the
aftermath of the Gulf War. Two of the amputees had only been
checking the value of the American currency by phone to determine
the price of gold, which is tied to the dollar. Nevertheless,
Saddam’s thugs came knocking and, for nearly a year, they called
the same cramped 20-by-30 foot cell home.
Finally, punishment was meted out: Right hands were lopped off
and crosses were tattooed to their foreheads designating them as
marked men — literally. Two weeks later, in what has got to rank
somewhere near the top on the tragic, tragic timing scale, Saddam
lifted the ban on trading in American currency.
The whole presentation — including the Iraqis showing off the
new $50,000 prosthetic hands American doctors had donated to them
— was touching. To hear these men speak about living under tyranny
and the liberation was unforgettable.
IN THE PRESENCE of these Iraqis, it was difficult not to feel that
the much-maligned recent war was, yes, just. Both in the
documentary interviews and in the Q&A session after the
screening, the mostly shy, soft-spoken Iraqis frequently thanked
God for testing them with the loss of their hands, and refused to
curse their fate.
“I know God gave me patience and another hand,” one man said.
“But even so, I still feel saddened.”
After watching their own leader build palaces and live the life
of a reclusive egomaniac, the men were in awe of the
approachability of George W. Bush, whom they had all recently spent
close to an hour with. The Iraqis picked up on the small things we
never think about: the modesty and smallness of the Oval Office;
that an “ordinary person” could meet the most powerful man in the
world; that they were not strip-searched before the meeting, and
that they waited only minutes for him to show.
Tempers flared whenever the war was called into question. “I
wish there were demonstrations as well to show the injustice and
the suffering of the Iraqi people,” said one of the amputees when
asked about peace demonstrations. This echoed a refrain from the
documentary, that there was “stability under Saddam, but it was
stability with a price,” and it was steep: “complete
submissiveness, complete silence.”
This, the interviewee explained, has given way to “no stability.
But now everyone is equal. Now everyone is talking. Everyone
expresses their opinion. It was never like this before.”
But the men also made comments that American policy makers may
want to write down. First, even these Iraqis, who suffered torture
and terror at the hands of the Hussein regime — our absolute
biggest supporters in Iraq — were looking forward to the day we
leave.
“The liberation of our country was well justified,” one of the
men said. “But we hope they don’t stay too long.”
Second, the Iraqis tend to have an inflated opinion of what and
how fast Americans can accomplish things. One amputee noted that
the U.S. “went to the moon and space, so of course we have a
positive view of this giant.” But the space shuttle will likely
prove much easier and faster to build than democracy in the Middle
East.
AFTERWARD, AS PEOPLE milled about, waiting for free copies of
Joseph Agris’ White Knight in Blue Shades: The Authorized
Biography of Marvin Zindler, the chitchat took a predictable
turn. Since these men lost their right hands at Abu Ghraib and
since Abu Ghraib was the scene of the recent photos splashed across
the front pages of newspapers around the world, this conservative
crowd started with the better-than-Saddam game.
Specifically, it was said that, sure, what the guards did was
not a good thing, but they hardly hacked anyone’s limbs off, or
stuffed seven men in a small cell for nearly a year on absurd
charges. Why, for that matter, the U.S. forces as a whole had
acquitted themselves much better than Saddam Hussein ever did, so
what’s the problem?
Pardon me while I mount my high horse — that trusty steed —
but do we really want to go there? Do we want to use Hussein’s
crimes as the standard? Is everything up to the chopping off of a
prisoner’s hand now acceptable? When I raised the objection, fellow
book-liners pulled out the well-worn conversation-ending objection
that “Saddam Hussein gassed his own people.” So there.
“These Americans who did this will be punished,” one of the
amputees recently told the Washington Post. “Under Saddam,
such abuses were rewarded and praised.”
This Iraqi understands the issue better than some of my fellow
conservatives. It is not the intensity of abuse that determines the
righteousness of a civilization. It’s the willingness to punish
abuses.
As for the man responsible for the construction of Abu Ghraib,
focal point of so much suffering for so many, one amputee, chin
held high, had a message, “Look at where the person that cut off
our hands is now, and look at where we are.”
Shawn Macomber is a reporter for The American
Spectator. He runs the website Return of the
Primitive.
