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The Arab World Grapples with Saddam's Captivity

(Wall Street Journal) Fouad Ajami - Saddam, it is true, was alone in that "spider-hole" amid the litter of a run-down farm house. But he had been a creature of the Arab order; as late as March 2002, his principal lieutenant, the barbarous Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri (still on the run, an illiterate former street-vendor of ice who came into great power in the rise of the Tikritis) had come to an Arab summit in Beirut. He had been embraced by the rulers assembled there, and reconciliation was in the air. The crimes of the Baathist regime were papered over. It is not so difficult to see that a different destiny could have been had by that stupefied man flushed out of his "rathole" by soldiers of Task Force 121. He had once been the "knight of Arabism" marked by destiny to crush the "fire-worshipping Persians," and to lay to waste the Jewish state. The "knight" has stumbled, but those deadly dreams are not abandoned.
2003-12-18 00:00:00
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