Word: arabism
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...time soon, that the Middle East is about to become as pleasingly democratic as the Midwest. All true; all beside the point. In a part of the world where myths are often as powerful as facts, the capture of Saddam is a huge deal. For skeptics in the Arab world and beyond who had started to mock the muscle-bound inability of American forces to secure their primary objectives, Saddam's detention proves that the U.S. can do things right. Once again - just as when American and allied forces sent the Taliban packing or marched into Baghdad...
...also direct him to a café where smugglers are known to pass. There, at around 10 p.m., he meets the man he hopes will get him to Libya. At a corner table in the dimly lit café, Abdi Salan listens intently to the local man, who speaks Arabic in a faint voice. (Abdi Salan's native tongue is Somali, but he understands enough Arabic to get by.) The man is tall, lean and dark, wearing a flowing white Arab robe and headdress. He is flanked by a pair of shorter, younger subordinates in Western clothes. The smugglers agree...
...come. And so what is the gift this capture has brought? Perhaps a true taste of freedom from fear for 25 million people who could never quite have faith that the tyranny was over while the tyrant was still loose. It was an antidote to the contempt expressed by Arab and European commentators who poked the American tiger: See, you can?t even catch Saddam...
...spitting fire. Had Saddam been taken in a pressed shirt, well-groomed, standing tall, spouting defiance, the Americans would have a new problem on their hands. A dignified Saddam being manhandled by imperialist troops could well have become a rallying figure not just for former Baathists, but for Arab nationalists in Iraq and outside it. Whatever posture Saddam takes in whatever tribunal he appears in, he will likely never live down that image of him scruffy, defeated, opening his mouth for the doctor like a good boy. ?It?s like he?s a goat,? one Iraqi delighted, watching the images...
...weapons, his money, his remaining allies? What were his plans? Will all the Iraqis who have never learned what happened to their brother, their uncle, their neighbor now get the maps to the rest of the mass graves? Will they find a way toward reconciliation, Sunni and Shi?a, Arab and Kurd, as every hopeful official set as a necessary step on a path toward true peace? The world waits for a new chapter and history prepares, once again, to turn on a dime...