Word: saddamism
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...years as dictator, Saddam undid all the progress he had achieved, leading his country into three wars that devastated Iraq's economy and left more than 1 million dead. Hundreds of thousands more died at the hands of his henchmen and security forces. The true measure of his monstrosity, however, was not in any body count but in his subjugation of Iraqi minds. In February 2003, on the eve of the U.S. invasion, I visited a small village on the border with Kuwait. The local elder, known as Abu Mohammed, knew that when the fighting began, his tiny watermelon farm...
Less than two months later, Saddam was gone. By the end of 2003, when he was caught near his native Tikrit, his military and political networks had been dismantled, his ubiquitous statues and portraits had disappeared. His ruthless sons Uday and Qusay had been killed. The republic of fear had been destroyed. And Saddam's prospects of becoming one of history's greats--hero or villain--were dashed. Nebuchadnezzar, Hammurabi and Saladin had never cowered in a spider hole...
...what, in the end, did Saddam bequeath to his people? Some of Iraq's new demons were spawned by him. Remnants of his regime dominate the Sunni insurgency and many jihadist groups. Some of the Shi'ite anger that fuels the current sectarian war can be traced to the mass murder of Shi'ites that the dictator ordered in the 1990s. Saddam's malevolence indirectly begat al-Sadr, who was destined to a quiet life in the seminary of Najaf until Saddam in 1999 ordered the murder of his father and two older brothers, thrusting Muqtada into the limelight...
...Saddam's more enduring legacies are also more mundane. By killing off anybody who might pose a threat to him, he prevented the natural emergence of new generations of leaders, so that the country is now run by political neophytes without experience or the skill to rule. The corruption that characterized every government department under his regime continues to this day. The reconstituted police force practices the same forms of torture instituted under Saddam. An Iraqi politician compared the dictator's legacy to what the Romans did after they conquered Carthage: "He put salt in our fields, and it will...
...prior to his hanging, Saddam had become something of an afterthought. The nightmare of his tyranny has been replaced by the new plagues of terrorism and sectarian carnage. Many Iraqis--not all of them Sunni--hark nostalgically back to the dictatorship, pointing out that for all the terrors Saddam visited upon his people, at least there were no suicide bombers and death squads roaming the streets. But once his trial began, even his most ardent followers conceded he would never return to power. The Sunni Baathist insurgents have long since stopped fighting for him. Many have recast themselves...