Baath resistance views for the post-Saddam period: A more global, AlQaeda-like world-view

Al-Quds al-Arabi publishes the full text of the Baath party statement on the sentencing of Saddam Hussein, and there are a couple of important points about resistance strategy, in addition to the two points highlighted by Al-Hayat and summarized in the prior post.

The statement is divided into seven background points, then another series of points relating to plans for action. The claim that Saddam refused to bargain with the occupation is point number 5 of the first list. It is followed by a point emphasizing the relationship of the judgment against Saddam (Nov 5) to the US congressional elections (Nov 7). Then in the seventh and final background point, the statement outlines the Baath party view that what the US is aiming for in Iraq is not necessarily partition, but first and foremost a weak Iraq, without a strong enough central government to be able to resist caving in to US and other foreign pressure.

The argument goes like this: The Americans condemned Saddam to death just before their occupation project fails completely, because they know that with Saddam at the head of the government, restoration of security, stability and services would be a matter of hours, not of years. And one result of that would be that Iraq would again have a voice in the affairs of the region, stronger in fact that before. And for that reason the Americans are against a rapid restoration of stability, favoring rather the creation of "an Iraq free but weak, susceptible to external pressure and to the dictation of conditions, incapable of responding or warding off the return of American colonialism via the window of governmental weakness, after having been expelled by the door of armed resistance. The American plan now, having become convinced that the coming freedom is a certainty (meaning: US forces will be expelled by force), is to agree to the establishment of a national government, but a weak one, and one lacking the polarizing element necessary to unify attitudes, and take the required bold and historic decisions necessitated by the absense of Saddam..."

In other words, the US on the verge of being expelled will be too weak to partition the country, so the next best thing will be make sure that the government is a weak one. (As an assessment of American strategy, this is worth noting quite apart from question whether the net effect of executing Saddam would actually be to make an eventual government stronger or weaker).

In the second series of points, relating to future actions, there is an interesting combination of traditional nationalist positions with a more global view. For instance, point number two of the second list is a call for "complete and unconditional withdrawal" of the US troops. But then point number three warns that if Saddam is executed, the hardliners will have the upper hand in the councils of the resistance, and that means switching to a strategy of attrition against US and actually barring the troops from leaving. Here the focus shifts from merely freeing Iraq, to bringing down the American empire by bleeding them in Iraq. This is a view much closer to the global near-enemy/far-enemy long-term analysis of AlQaeda than to traditional national resistance.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Iraqi Baath party is reaching out to the Baath and other parties and intellectuals in the region. This isn't just the problem of one party or one country, the statement says: "Rather, before all of that, it is a question of the fate of the ummah faced with annihilation and change in its national identity. Because on the day when Iraq is destroyed amid the silence or the collusion of intellectuals and national parties, the next day they will see that it is their turn..."