Abdallah El-Ashaal* decries the relationship between Saddam and the United States and suggests the former dictator may live to rule another day The Americans used Saddam Hussein as a pawn his entire life, first as a bulwark against Iran, then to provide the US with a casus belli for invading Iraq. He was arrested at the right time to boost President Bush's popularity as it dipped at home. And his sentencing on 5 November was timed to help the Republicans in the mid-term Congressional elections. Iraq will remain a scar in the face of US foreign policy for years to come. The US has proved itself to be clueless about regional politics all the way from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Lebanon to Palestine. Oil and Israel were all that the world's sole superpower could think of, and the consequences were nothing short of disastrous. Ironically, while Washington was contemplating a showdown with Iran, Israel was shoring up its relations with the emerging powers of the world: India and China. Washington has turned Saddam's trial to a pathetic piece of theatrics. The US chief of intelligence, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defence all visited Baghdad recently to make sure that Saddam would be sentenced in time for the mid-term elections. Putting Saddam in trial was good in a way. For one thing, it showed Arab leaders that the Americans can turn against anyone -- regardless of how much that person had been dedicated to them. But in the US, the sentencing of Saddam did little to revive the political fortunes of the Republicans. So Bush will spend his last two years in office hobbled by a Democrat Congress, a lame duck president. The American public has spoken. The Americans have passed their sentence on a president with a flair for dubious foreign policy. Under the current administration, the US has become an anathema to both friends and foes. Will Saddam be executed? I, for one, don't think so. Some people may be already scheming for Saddam to go back to power and help quash the resistance in the country. Extraordinary as this scenario may be, anything is possible. And yet, President Bush acted as if the sentencing of Saddam was a cause for celebration. Iraq was sinking deep in blood and hatred and still the US president would have us believe that the country was edging closer to democracy. When US troops went into Iraq, President Bush promised to bring down Saddam and establish democracy. Saddam was the easy part; too bad for democracy. Don't tell me that Saddam didn't know he was a pawn for the Americans. Saddam knew what he was doing when he attacked Iran. And he thought he knew what he was doing when he invaded Kuwait. As it turned out, Saddam only managed to disrupt the course of Arab-Israeli struggle and bring humiliation on his people and all the Arabs by extension. The US used Saddam for years. And it is squeezing the last benefits it can get from the former dictator. What scares me is that Washington may be contemplating another adventure in Iraq, one in which Saddam would be freed and allowed to become part of the country's political life. The only thing that makes such scenario out of the question is that Iraq has changed beyond recognition. The Iraq the Americans invaded in 2003 is not the Iraq we have today. Washington used Saddam because he was a dictator with all the myopia and misjudgement this term implies. The Americans portrayed Saddam's death sentence as the end of Sunni domination in the country. But the final chapter in the story is yet to be written. The story does not end with the kangaroo court that sentenced Saddam. The UN, EU, and various legal organisations have already spoken out against the sentence and challenged the legality of the proceedings. Interestingly, Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, said he would be reluctant to ratify such sentence. Now let's not forget that Talabani is part of this show and he knows that Saddam was being tried by a law passed by Paul Bremer, the former American civil administrator of Iraq. The law was tailored especially for Saddam and doesn't give the president the right to veto it. Can one think of a situation in which a freed Saddam would help forge an alliance with the Kurds against the Shia? Unlikely, I hear you say. But, in today's Iraq, who knows? * The writer is former assistant to the Egyptian foreign minister.
