Family Issues

[Ivo Skoric]

Saddam Hussein tried to immitate his great idol Joseph Visarionovich 
Stalin in almost every other aspect - brutality, secretiveness, 
backstabbing, manipulation, fear - except for the chilly manner in 
which the old Georgian, trained by Jesuit priests, treated his 
family. Saddam, au contraire, was a warm father, encouraging his 
bratty offspring to participate and even enjoy in such adult 
pleasures as torture and mutilation of ones political enemies. And 
trying to pass a dictatorship on ones kids proved many times too 
often to be a bad idea, with North Korea and Iraq being just the most 
recent examples. The heirs lack the superb survival skills, because 
they never had to fear anybody, and their habits are just too much 
even for the constituency that is well trained into submission, 
because they could always do whatever they want.

Even passing a democracy on ones child may be a bad idea, as the 
situation in the U.S. suggests now. On a different scale, of course, 
GW is as removed from GH, as Qusay (or, worse, Uday...) was from 
Saddam. He just did coke, drove drunk, and dodged military duty. 
Compared to Uday, Bush is an apostle. But compared to his Democratic 
opponents he is a lowlife hoodlum.

On the other hand, Saddam might have done better if he had recognized 
that among his children, girls were the smarter ones. With a reason. 
True, Iraq was a modern Arab Muslim state. But it was still an Arab 
Muslim state. Women migh have been as free as it goes, but men were 
still more free. Uday and Qusay could do what they pleased. Sisters 
had to behave more modestly. As the rest of the women, they learned 
how to moderate themselves, and how to apply brains to get what they 
wanted, since the brawn was not as available to them as it was to 
their infamous brothers.

First, they fled Iraq, with their not-so-bright husbands who spilled 
the beans to the West, when they arrived in Jordan. Then, they 
followed them back, as the hubbies swallowed the bait (that nothing 
is going to happen to them, yeah, right), and saw them executed by 
the big bro. I don't believe little sisters really liked Uday or 
Qusay that much, particularly not after that. One of them appeared on 
CNN after the brothers were wacked Hollywood style. She looked a 
little amused and quite tired of answering questions about her dad's 
whereabouts. When she said that she doesn't know where Saddam is, it 
looked like she might have known where the brothers were.

So, they are dead, and sister is getting global air-time. Nice job. 
There are 3 sisters, and there were 2 brothers. Brothers were $15 
million each, that makes 30, $10 million per sister. If Macciavelli 
lives today, and in the Arab Muslim world (which needs renessaince 
badly, anyway) he would be a she, I guess.

ivo